Wednesday 1/13/10

I was hoping to spend the day tyding up the house and homeschooling. We started the morning by doing some chores and then we went to Lind's in search of a Kindergarten workbook for Mara and ended up buying glossy paper for finger painting and some flash cards for learning addition, subtraction, and multiplication.

Gabe is really enjoying Math. Today he asked if we could start with it. After lunch, when the girls were napping Gabe and I started the 2nd book of Hooked on Phonics, which we did for 15 minutes, followed by math, and science. For math he did a worksheet on tens and ones, one worksheet on addition, and made a bar graph. For science we read for 20 minutes about snakes. It's amazing to me how much he enjoys learning about animals, mostly predatory animals of course.

We seem to have found that another good time slot for "school" for Gabe is while Eve is doing her homework after dinner. Last night I sat with them at the kitchen table and it worked really well. Then to fill the requirement for History, and Eve's required reading time we read "The Story of the World".

It's raining right now, but the kids really want to go to the skate park and ride their new scooters. I think we'll go anyway and try it out. Yes, crazy I know, but that's us... we take risks here and there.

Back Home

After a month long trip to California to celebrate the holidays, we are finally home. Yesterday was certainly an adjustment after a month away from home. The girls are still tired and a bit out of sorts after an entire day in the car. Mostly we did errands yesterday, and continued to find places for our new stuff.

Today, Tuesday, we went to Story Time at the local library. The theme was "porridge" and the craft was making instant oatmeal. The kids all spooned quick oats and powdered oats into a zip lock bag then filled it with the toppings of their choice. The librarian helped Gabe find some books on Snakes which will serve as our Science time later tonight.

After we got home I let the girls watch some TV before nap-time while Gabe practiced phonics/reading. Gabe also did 1/2 hour of Math worksheets. We're now onto subtraction which of course he understood right away and was doing happily on his own.

I realize today that I need to be a bit more relaxed about his lessons. I am often take things too seriously, being that this is my first time home-schooling. I think it would be helpful to get together with some other homeschooling moms to get more feedback. I met a girl in Costco on Sunday who home-schools her kids and invited me to a monthly tea that she hosts for homeschooling moms. I think I'd like to go...we'll see. In the mean time I think I'll check out some blogs.

Later than evening...
We read a chapter of "The Story of the World". Did a language lesson, and a couple more math worksheets. All in all it was a productive day.