My Apologies 7/15/2017

Wow! A whole and I posted absolutely nothing! Sorry about that. It has been a crazy year.  Been trying to find balance with teaching and keeping a toddler busy during that time. Found out it is NOT easy! Lol!

I guess the one thing I am glad about with homeschooling is that it is not by grade but by mastering skills(either way we are behind with some and on target with others) Our biggest hurdle has been language with finding the right curriculum that works for BOTH of us..shwew! I am excited to say I FINALLY  found something! (Only took 3yrs) I also found a penmanship program that I think will work great too! I know this particular part is slowly becoming archaic BUT I think it's important to know and especially READ! History and science have been a breeze and on target with that. Did some FUN experiments that I will try and post in another at a later time.

As of now I have discovered my need to ACTUALLY plan out the year but instead of dates it will be number days..ex Day 1, Day 2...so on. You get the picture. So in my "planning" I discovered that you actually get even more of an idea how to teach your curriculum! Who knew?! I am a little late in figuring this out but I am okay with it and just happy to have FIGURED it out now! Yay! With having 2 kiddos so far apart in age, I knew I had to do something to keep my mind sane and also keep flexibility. This will help I do believe. We also have the condo for sale so flexibility is needed even more of a showing pop's up onto the schedule.

So that was my break now back to planning.

First week

So I realized that I never wrote this blog and had to laugh over it. So now we have finished 2 weeks and starting our third. It had been going very well even with the differences in ages.
Weekday has been working is the curriculum! Yay! Also I have been working at "going with the flow". If the school day is spread out with good breaks throughout. Which is needed since my daughter needs to get her energy out..haha!
We start the day with devotions and then a walk. After, we try to get at least 2 subjects and then lunch with a trip to playground for an hour. Then home and finish the last subject. It seems to be working well so far so we will continue with it.

Working Out Of the Box

I have been learning many things as I have been on this home-school journey. One of the most important ones is to let go of my old school learning style! It has been a hard lesson to learn, one that had caused arguments, tears, and wanting to quit all together. Today was my "Aha!" Moment.  We are in math and today he did borrowing in subtraction. Now in my world I would have made this a huge issue because he did not make the tens column showing the lesser value BUT as I took the extra seconds to keep my mouth shut and noticed his answer, I saw that he got it right!  In his world he saw the subtraction problem differently which still gave him the correct answer. So rather ending in misunderstandings and frustrations on both sides it ended in high fives which made this momma feel pretty darn good!

The Otter

This was my son's very first presentation...EVER! It was for science and he had to research his favorite animal. He chose the Otter. I was so proud of him. He chose the pictures, which we had just  taken from a previous visit at the zoo! He has grown so much this year in participation of co-op. It has truly blessed me to see him in this element. He also is in an IEW (Intro essay writing) class. This class has helped him learn to explain his thoughts and communicate much more clearer so you understand him! I actually just allowed this class to be our language arts class since it was going over parts of speech, sentence/paragraph structure, and the obvious, essays. Really am glad to have made the decision to participate.

Flower Dissection!

Okay. .I well admit to you right now. .science is my absolute favorite subject. I am glad to have a son who lives it as much as I do! Yay me! This was our biology project: the dissection of a beautiful rose. We should have used a lily to really get to see the different parts better but this was good too! He had a lot of fun looking inside it and labeling.  To bad he forgot to take it out of his backpack for class! Lol Gotta love him :)

State Report

We have official, in Co-op time, 1 week left of school and this week in history is JD'S state report presentation.  I know he will do well and am proud of all we accomplished together! He has grown by leaps and bounds with this journey that was a huge step out of my box but I am so glad we did it.  He had verbally grown in being able to communicate his thoughts and feelings more clearly, which is amazing! He is now 11 and is growing like a weed. .lol
I can't express how proud I am of  him. We will then after this time of school tale t weeks off but then continue with math and learning cursive (since I feel that is very important). I figure with less subjects we can take our time and really work on writing plus do 1 science project a week, which he will really love!
In all this year has gone well even with a highly active 2 year old.

Back in time

So in science this week. .technically last week, we were learning and studying creation, evolution, dinosaurs. We were learning the difference between the beliefs and did dinosaurs really live.  Answer: yes they did.  Our belief: historical biblical account

Anyway across the river at the planetarium they had the dinosaur in motion exhibit, so I thought it fun to do that for a field trip! Everything was made fromdissent routes of metals and pullies and levers to make them move, some used old Playstation handheld to do it which was very cool! In all it was fun to see where a majority of dinos were located. I really hope Walking With The Dinosaurs comes back to town cause I think the kiddos would love it!
Happy schooling!