There is no one like me. Or my family. There is not a model I can look at to know the right answer or the right thing to do.

I am not perfect. Nor do I profess to be.

There are some things that seem to be something that we want, and we strive for it. Sometimes, there are obstacles in your way; and who knows? maybe they are put there to make sure you really want what you think you want.

But how long do you have to struggle with something to realize, maybe it wasn't the right choice? maybe there is a reason there is such a struggle.

I'm struggling. And I have been for a while now. I keep wavering back and forth, but I'm really struggling right now.

Now what?

Plans for next year

It has been well over 6 months since I've updated this blog, and last year I had a sort of feeling of ... being lost, unsure and that I was doing something wrong/leaving something out. I have a better sense of what I'm going to do for this year, and I'm already planning it out. I had a moment of "maybe they should go back to public school", I'll admit, after they came to me and said they wanted to go back. They said "we miss our friends". I had a moment of, maybe I'm being a bad mom by keeping them out. Luckily, I have a husband who is almost always opposite of me, so when I'm down, he's up, and he can help bring me up. He reminded me of why we signed on for this in the first place, why it wasn't a "lets see if it will work" but a "this will work, and we will make it work, because this is what is best". and while the kids say they miss their friends, when they are at school, they whine about not having any friends. and when they go to school, they will be gone all day from about 7 am to 4 pm (riding the bus) and have to come home and still do homework. So, he pulled me out of my "bad mommy" funk, and now I am excitedly looking forward to next year's curriculum.

Trying to get my ducks in a row, I started out with a list of the subjects we wanted to work on, and then fill in the blanks from there.

Typing -
art - Class?? (Sister Wendy disks)
history - History Odyssey for the Middle Ages
science - biology for logic stage (elemental science)
math - MM, LOF

spelling - AAS
writing - WWE/WWS
logic -
latin - Lively latin
grammar - Advanced Language Lessons
nutrition - Just an idea I had when I saw THIS

Obviously, I'm still looking for Logic and Art. I seemed to recall there was a list of artists and composers that corresponded with our history of the middle ages, so I'm still looking for that. I keep falling short in logic, though. I originally thought I'd use the Fallacy Detective, but after purchasing the book I found a thread talking about it and how it was very pushy from the author's perspective on certain things (and apparently abortion was considered an ok topic, which is NOT ok with me) and then I get the book and the first pages are all bible quotes and whatnot.. that book is going back. I'm still looking.

Ms. Artsy-Fartsy has asked to sign up for soccer again, and this year will be her last year to be able to sign up with upwards. I'm not sure if the hubs is planning on going back to kung fu, but if they do, that will pretty much take up any and all time they would have for various extracurriculars. I think its a great thing, but it also takes up 4 days a week, which is not always a great thing.

Now that, for the most part, I have my curriculum picked out for next year, I have to start making my schedule to see where it all fits. and I'm looking into some of those "playful preschool" blogs where people give ideas on what to do with rambunctious toddlers underfoot.. that'll be a challenge, as well.

Its been forever.

Yes, I know. I did not feel the need to update/blog anything prior to this moment, just because everything I do feels inferior. Its LESS THAN what needs to be done, and I don't want it scrutinized too intently.

I spent most of the day going over our January lesson plans. The entire month. of January. Having the last 3 months or so under my belt, so to speak, I have an idea of what better will work for us. Now if only the kids will work with me on that…

What works for K is not the same as what works for J. But I am hopeful that this new way of organizing the lessons will help us out much better, and having it all in advance lets me see where we are going much sooner. Its very similar to the file folder system of organizing, which I thought was a neat idea, but was scared to do in the beginning of the year because it was my first year homeschooling. What if I took all that time planning, and ended up hating the curriculum less than a month in?! that would be a huge waste of time. I'm going to try it now, and see how it goes, and if it works, I may very well do it this way for next year, over the summer. That way I don't have to threaten to kill my printer on a monthly basis, like now (before it was weekly).

Still finding a groove...

I read somewhere that it takes several years, 3 I believe, for the newly homeschooling mom to get a feel of their "groove". so, the first 3 years of homeschooling is a lot of trial and error, and movie days, and outside days, and field trips to fill up the time when you are just at a loss for what to do. That, however, is the beauty of homeschooling; you don't have to stick to the plan that is mapped out for you if it is obvious it is not working.

I'm still getting into my groove. Obviously. So far, my excuses have been "we are all new at this, and dont really know what to expect", "we are still at the beginning "review" part of the year, it will get better", and what I keep telling myself "I'm trying to ad lib the science and history before I get into the program I bought". which is probably what is screwing me up the most. I know what I want to do, and I know what order I want to do it in; I just never found one thing that had everything, so the first 4-6 weeks was going to be me piecing stuff together before I got to the point where my bought curriculum started and I could use it. and it is WAY more organized than I am.

I am also having the learning curve of understanding what it is I can reasonably expect from my kids. I'm also learning a bit more about their personalities and the way they learn. Mr. Scarecrow literally shuts down every time he is corrected. I don't really know what to do about this, other than to continue to encourage him and to give him frequent breaks, but I feel like I talk and talk and explain and explain, and then he tries and gets it "wrong" and that its. He's done. And its only been 5 minutes.

Also, I don't know how blogging moms do it. Seriously, either I have the most. boring. life. ever. Or I just don't know how to jazz up the mundane. Seriously, the coolest thing we've done all week is dissolve the shell off an egg. That's our science experiment for this week; I'm hoping to pull out the microscope next week. I spent all weekend dissolving the shell off an egg, so it resembles a cell, and then today we put one in water and one in Karo syrup. I had them guess, or hypothesize, what they thought was going to happen to the eggs. We had a nice little discussion about it, and it was interesting to see their wheels turning and their thought processes. Mr. Scarecrow really is an incredibly bright child. Unfortunately, he's a boy. 8-)

Then, of course, all hell broke loose and they were hungry, and fighting over something, and so I told them to go over their timeline on their own. :P I'm hoping to get through the mesozoic period this week, so we can watch a cool discovery science video on Friday about dinosaurs. Then next week will be the "after dinosaur" period, and we can check out early man.

Socializing....

So, thinking on the whole "cutsey names" thing, I think I've come up with a few! I'll likely have to think longer and harder about the older kids; I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate the names I've given them. HA. N is still very young, so his personality is still shining through, but for now, he can be "chatterbox" cause he loves to talk. L can be "the dancing queen", cause, well, she's the queen and she loves to dance. So far, for J, I have "scarecrow" for several reasons, only one of which being how skinny he is. I'm a bit too ashamed to fess up to the remainder of the nickname, hence the reason for rethinking it (hint: his theme song is easily seen on "The Wizard of Oz"). and K, well, I thought of "miss artsyfartsy" right away, cause she likes art a LOT, and, well, I'll let you guess the rest. As I said, not sure those 2 will stick for now ;)


Yesterday was interesting. It was potentially a disaster, but I think it worked out okay. I've been looking around trying to figure something out for K (Miss ArtsyFartsy) to do with photography; the child is ALWAYS stealing my camera to take pics of stuff!! Pretty soon, its going to get to where she doesn't even ask before she snags it, and then I'll be uploading pics to Facebook, going "where the hell did that come from?!"

Anyway, I was pointed in the direction of the 4-H club to get her into the photography thing, and so I looked it up and asked around; I was basically given the run around, and Jon said that was a sign of things to come, and maybe we shouldn't bother. I still wanted to check it out first before writing it off. I was given the E-mail to one person who was the head secretary or something; she told me "the best way to find out anything is to go to a meeting". Great. The meetings are on the third Thursday of every month; and of course this was the third FRIDAY of the month, so I had to wait a whole freaking month to find out anything!!

So, I was all set and ready to go to check out the September meeting. A few weeks ago, I got an E-mail stating that the location of the meeting had changed to the Noonday Community Center… I responded directly to the E-mail, asking for directions. she responded with "the physical address is… the directions are … " and I left it at that. I didn't bother to READ the directions, I would NEED them for a few more weeks; totally my fault.

So, I forwarded the directions to Jon yesterday morning, since he was driving, and this way 2 people knew the way. I read them, and they ended with "and Flint Baptist Church is right there". Um, okay? I just took it for what it was. Of course, we get to the church, and NOBODY is there. Why? Because the meeting was at the Noonday Community Center!! Ugh. I admit it, I had a breakdown. this is just so typical of my luck, ya know? I'm going WAY out of my comfort zone here, allowing myself to enter into an unknown environment, and I can't even call, because I don't have a phone, and I can't double check anything, because, well, I don't have a phone but I especially don't have one of those cool internet-linked phones. GAH! I remembered the original E-mail said "noonday Community Center", and, well, I knew where noonday was, so we headed that way. Now approximately 20 minutes late.

We stopped at the "blue store" on the corner of the US Hwy that goes towards lake Palestine (the one in Noonday, and Noonday is one of those "blink and you miss it" towns) so we stopped and asked where the community center was. and of course, it was Right Behind the Gas Station LOL.

So, alls well that ends well, I suppose. It seems like a lot of interesting people, and of Mr. Scarecrow is showing an interest in photography now, but it wasn't his original idea, it was Ms. Artsy Fartsy's, so I'm not 100% on his true commitment/excitement level, but we will see. Next month, for the October meeting, they are having a "photo contest" (very informal) for the professional photographer that is coming in to talk during the meeting. They came home wanting to start taking pics; I told them they had an entire month to think about it, and they needed to finish their math. LOL.

My to do list...

Sometime this week...
- Come up with cutsey "internet" names for my kids (other than their initials)
- Take school pics
- Learn how to freeze time...

Moved

To here. I was on wordpress, but I could NOT figure it out, so I came back to blogger. should have stayed here, quite honestly.

I'm going to try to be more consistent with this blog. I want to be like the blogs that I LIKE to read; I want to be something I would read LOL. Which means that I have to post more than once a month. and I can't post long rambling paragraphs without bright shiny pictures to keep people distracted long enough to complete the blog lol. and hopefully, this hobby won't take up more time than I already don't have!!

My First week..

Did NOT go as planned. at all. in any way.

First of all, I don't have everything in. But I'm feeling pressure to get started from all sides... the kids, the husband, my dad, the calendar...

So, I thought we'd get started and just have a "light" week, easing into it.

At the "last minute", I decided I wanted to do a little bit of prehistory before getting into the SOTW/HO I have laid out. and I thought I did good when I had it all mapped out; we ran by the library on Sunday because the "prehistoric life" book was checked out on wednesday when we went. guess what? Library was closed on Sunday. :P why? cause monday was labor day (a holiday) :(

So, that threw everything out of kilter.... So monday we pretty much just sat and talked about what we were going to do this week, this year, we put together our notebooks, labeled our dividers, and notebooks, and I let them set it all up; we moved a bookshelf into the kitchen to keep everything on so we didn't have stuff strung out all over the house...

That was about it. I didn't even get to do pics, cause nobody got dressed

So, Tuesday morning, my son had a dentist appt at 8 am to pull some teeth (baby teeth that never loosened and his adult teeth are already growing in), and then I was planning on going to the library afterwards... unfortunately, my 19 month old decided that she didn't want to go to bed when we all went to bed at 10... so she was up, screaming and crying and fighting sleep till about 1. Through all of that, I was trying to keep her in her bed and work at the same time... so I didn't go to bed until around 2. She woke up at 4 am bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready for the day :yawn:. so, we camped out in the living room, watching dora until about 6 when daddy came home from work, and he was able to get her to sleep and then I crawled back into bed... He took DS to the dentist, came home, and went to sleep! He didn't wake me up to go to the library!! So when I woke up, about an hour after he went to bed, I woke him up and made him take me to the library because I couldn't do anything without that book.

That was the start of our Tuesday. Not very good, obviously. I think we did ok, but I had a screaming toddler that I had to keep picking up and moving to a different part of the house, only to come back to the kitchen and forget the last thing I said, and have to take time stumbling and fumbling through what I was trying to get at.

Wednesday, we got a bit started on biology; this is where DS has a meltdown. about 5 times that day, if I remember correctly. He writes slow, I talk fast, and he is a perfectionist, so he kept asking me "is this right? did I do it right? does it look like this?" everytime he got frustrated and started crying, I would send him to his room to cool down, and we would take a break (I"m not sure if this was the correct approach, I just felt that we should take a step back instead of trying to plow through).

He had another melt down with our attempt at spelling (which I now question my sanity when I picked up the WRTR and thought, "I can do that!") and also with the timeline I was trying to have them draw (for fun! it was supposed to be for fun! and he had a meltdown because what was supposed to go under the 4 went a bit over into the 3.5 and he didn't know what to do!!) so after that I just stopped. I felt like a complete failure.

Yesterday didn't happen. We ended up gone ALL DAY with running around and everything. (I forgot to mention, to top it all off, we were broke all week, so I couldn't buy a new ink cartridge, and I was out of ink, so there were several things I couldn't print off, like logic puzzles, or math worksheets. and speaking of math, we bought into the math mammoth coop, so we didn't even have it until yesterday!!)

So, today I think I'm going to just finish the week off easily, since it was pretty much a lost cause anyway. We watched "Galapagos" to introduce evolution and they are now reading over "eyewitness" books or something on evolution, and I was going to have them do a bit of writing. but I'm done for the week. Completely wiped. and I didn't even do anything :P

Oh, and we'll be in the middle of doing something, and they will stop me and say "is this all we are doing in homeschooling?"

My plan...

Hoping this will help me to write this down.

I have a 4th grader and a 5th grader; for the most part, we are going to be combining (history and science, with grade specific assignments):

Science - (Sort of wrote my own life science curriculum that starts with the microscope moves to the cell and then goes to animals for approx 20 weeks, human body for 10 weeks, and plants for 6 weeks)

History - Ancients I have SOTW, and History Odyssey, so will be doing a mis-mesh of this

Math - Teaching Textbooks 5 and 6; also LOF for my 5th grader

Latin - I have the Bridge to the latin road, though Im skeptical that there's actually any latin in this, it looks more like english grammar to me, so i'm wondering if I'm mistaken as to what this program is, I'm thinking of using lively latin

Spelling - I have the WRTR to come up with a spelling notebook for the kids; I'm not sure how necessary this is for their age, but I'm planning on doing it as a "go over" in the beginning just because I'm not sure how much of a boost they need, this is our first year HSing out of PS

Writing - I got the IEW Ancients, but we will see lol

Logic - I'm still looking for some workbooks, but just planning on doing this about 3x a week

For music we'll be working with a recorder (i figure that's a good jumping off point into a "real" instrument)

For art, I'm still waiting to hear from our art teacher from last year

DD will be in soccer, and DS will be in baseball.

nothing new

From me today, just wanted to share this blog I stumbled upon today