Posted in The Fun Stuff
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Oh, I've been longing for a nice cool, rainy day!! We, of course, had to cancel classes so we could do the kind of relaxing a day like this requires. It was a moral imperative! The windows are open. The AC is off, and life is good!
My morning glories are even open at 11 am! I hope you have a beautiful day too! Jennifer |
Posted in Who is this lady?!?
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I'm blushing. When she asked me a month or so ago, I was shocked. I mean, I've never even gotten one of those cool glittery blog awards (not that I'm hinting So, Nikowa, thank you. You made a weary momma's summer, and thank you for making even ME look like I know what the heck I'm doing! For anyone checking us out from the link, WELCOME! Please let me know you're here! For my friends who've stuck with me through bloggy breaks, whining, and constant changes of mind, LOVE YA! Have a great week! Jennifer |
Can you tell? Nikowa at 
)! Posted in Whatcha doin'?
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Oh, not much, but thanks for asking! But seriously folks! Last week was, well, it was interesting. No, actually it wasn't, but there were a few things of note: 1. "George" decided to do a bit of "rock" climbing. The mountain of choice was the canvas set of shelves hanging from one of three wire shelves in the laundry room. I now have only two wire shelves in the laundry room. Thankfully George wasn't hurt. I ran in to find him hunkered under about a million bottles of whatever, a portable steam cleaner, feather duster, the entire 5 foot length of shelf, and a host of guardian angels muttering under their breath. 2. I FINALLY finished filing my mass of non-school paperwork. Ladies and gents, this pile has been alive and growing for over two years! Picture Marjorie, the Trash Heap from Fraggle Rock. Guess how long it took to fix it. Go on! Guess! Six hours spread over three days! That's it! I've hauled this thing through a multi-step move and sighed at it every time I got dressed (It lived in my closet.), and all it took were 6 measely hours!
B-E-A-U-TEEFUL! LOVE that label maker! 3. George lost his first tooth! (This was not related to the shelf incident.) The tooth fairy left him a shiny new quarter, even though he accidentally swallowed the tooth. This is the first time in 3 years that he's had the right number of teeth. He has what we call his "snaggle tooth" on his upper left.
So there was my week. I hope yours went well! Stand by for a cool announcement on Sunday! Jennifer |
(Hee, hee, gotcha didn't I?)
But now, it looks like this. 
Posted in Homekeeping
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Yeah, I know. We don't really need lunch boxes, but now that they're on sale, I thought you might like to know how we use ours. Every night before I go to bed (or in the morning if I forget We have a strict No Grazing rule. If the boys want a snack they have to ask, but this takes away the need. What's in the box is what they get for snacks for the day. I dole "Ringo's" out for him, but the other two can grab as they feel the need. It's easy for me, and the boys love having their cool boxes. Of course, they're good for field trips too. I know it's not the novelest of ideas, but for some reason it took me 8 years to think of it. Go figure! Jennifer |
Posted in A Method to the Madness?
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The idea is that I'll outline our week for you (and for me) on Sundays. This will typically include school plans, menus, and any other projects we have going. Today's will be longer than usual because of . . . well, you'll see. SCHOOL PLANS: After much prayer and discussion, we've pretty much hammered out how we're going to be structuring school (curriculum wise) from now on. I told you a little about it before, but now that we've gotten it settled (until God changes our minds again First off, let me say that this plan mainly involves the science/history portion of our homeschool. As I've said before, "Paul" is in unit study mode where pretty much everything but Latin and Math fall within the science/history topic we're studying. "George", though, is still at the stage where I think it works best for his core subjects (except reading) to mostly go along a straight, orderly path, outside of our history/science studies. As he gets a firm grasp on the rules of spelling, grammar, and writing, they'll be incorporated into the "unit" work too. Before the last minute overhaul, we were basically following the pattern set forth in The Well Trained Mind. History and science followed a four-year rotation that repeated as the child hit a different level of development. This all looked great on paper, but after 3 years of trying to make it work, I found that four years is not enough time to cover 3,000+ years of world history. Even doing it three times, I just thought it didn't leave enough time to delve and discuss let alone to firmly grasp the facts involved. Hubby and I were both history majors, and we just couldn't live with it. I like The Well Trained Mind, and I'll always be grateful to the Wise's because it led me to homeschooling. However, I just couldn't continue to cram so much into so little time, and the thought of doing it two more times sent me over the edge. We also didn't want to cultivate a habit of shallow study in the boys. I'd rather they learn to really delve into a topic rather than only looking at the surface. NOTE: If you follow this pattern, and it works for you, fantastic! I'm not saying it can't work well for anyone. I just know, it doesn't work for us. That's the great thing about homeschooling! So here's what we're gonna do. We're going to start over, literally, at The Beginning. The topic list is below. I'm not seperating it out by years so we can decide how long to take with each subject as we go along, but I'm guessing it'll take about 6 years to go through the loop. Depending on where the boys are when we come to the end, I'll either let them take a few years to dig really deeply into a few favorite topics, or we'll just start again at an even higher level.
Wow, that looks like a lot, and there may be things that we only touch on because of lack of interest or things we'll add that we'd forgotten. We're going to involve Biblical perspectives in everything (not that we all agree on what that means) and try to do a better job of incorporating Biblical events into our history studies. I also understand that we've kept it very focused on America and Europe, but we had to draw the line somewhere.
Can I tell you what a sigh of relief I'm breathing, knowing that we won't have soccer on the schedule this year? I know the boys enjoyed it, but I think they enjoy having a slower pace at home more. We're still planning on getting them into running, but we'd forgotten how stinkin' hot it can get during the summer. We're hoping to pick that back up in the next few weeks or so. . . maybe October. Oh, one other stress buster we're trying is starting a family "Happy Hour" every evening. At around 4:30 the kids and I'll stop what we're doing to pick up the house and fix a nice snack that's really more of a first course for dinner. That way Hubby will come home to a nice, relaxing environment and we'll all have a little fun, pleasant time together while dinner is finishing. We tried it last night on a non-work day, and it was really nice. (Hmm, that's a lot of nice, oh well.) You'll see the snacks I have planned in italics on the menus below. Monday:
Tuesday: Cub Scout Kick-Off (7pm)
Wednesday: Planning meeting for mid-week program kick-off (6pm)
Thursday:
Friday:
Saturday:
Sunday:
I hope at least some of that made sense. Thankfully, even though it's a long post, it shouldn't be too busy a week. All of our activities are starting to ramp back up, but this week doesn't involve any preparation. *yeah!* Oh, but I do have to sew Cub Scout patches this week! *sigh* Still, it could be worse! We could have soccer practice too! Have a great, relaxing week! Jennifer |
