Since we “officially” have a year round school year that starts July 1, today was the last day of the school year.
Jordan has been at American Girl Camp all week so a lot of the week was spent running here and there. She really enjoyed it–but it reminded me of public school–there were even some teachers from the past bringing their daughters to the camp. She would get wound up and be crabby and anxious the rest of the day—it is just so much sensory overload to go from activity to activity in a big classroom. Reminded me both how much homeschooling and time has helped (she was able to attend and enjoy the camp) and how much she still needs homeschooling (no way could she do that all day every day). I found myself reliving pick up time at public school every time the class dismissed–waiting for the teacher to ask if I had a moment to discuss….. But it never happened!
Aubrey spent the week trying out for and making a competitive girl’s soccer team-and oh by the way there is an out of town tournament next month. I’m not ready for this, but I think she is.
Alex had his last three baseball games of the season. He spent a few minutes sad about that before asking when soccer starts. How did I end up with these athletic children?
All those things that managed to get put off all year that were supposed to happen this month….. still waiting. We’ve got the chemistry set, the NASA science kit, the project we keep bringing up where we’re going to ID all the trees and flowers in our yard, all those craft projects that looked interesting….
Next week a new year starts…
Monday they will be the right age for us to do a personality profile study for the citizen science group of the Birdhouse Network http://www.birds.cornell.edu/birdhouse/
Our second brood of bluebirds for the year started hatching today. So far 3 of 5 have hatched.
Aubrey, my ants in her pants, can’t sit still, ADHD labeled, always on the move girl standing quietly, still as a post until the hummingbird in this picture came and perched on her finger to feed.
Just finished skim-reading (meaning I read most but resorted to skimming through a lot of sections) the book “Hold On to Your Kids–Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers”. The entire premise was that children are too peer oriented and it is one of society’s greatest ills and that parents need to be a stronger center in their children’s lives than their peers—you know it is the book that tells the reality of all that socialization our kids are supposedly missing. The interesting thing? There are exactly two paragraphs with the word homeschooling in them and nowhere does he even mention that it might be a viable alternative. Nor does he use examples of homeschooling family life as a positive example of children who are less peer oriented. Sigh. Oh well, at least someone out there is admitting that all that school socialization might not be as great as everyone says.
I’m officially here and I’ve managed to figure out the handy dandy import from blogger to move my old posts to here. I’m still trying to figure out things, but I’m about up and running.
It is the time of year where I start to think about what we’ll do next year. I got the Rainbow Resource catalog in the mail the other day and I’ve been looking at this website http://www.educationallearninggames.com/
Bluebird has already started on the Jacob’s Algebra series and hopes to get through both it and his Geometry one because there is a Duke online class that she really wants to do (on video game design) next summer that has both as a prerequesite. She also wants to do the Biology class from MU online distant learning. She has been wanting to learn Spanish and I’m toying around with the idea of getting the Rosetta Stone program–though OUCH on the cost. I realized a week or so ago that some of the works he’s doing can now be counted as HS credit, which I will have to be more organized about.
Singapore math just did not work well for Chickadee. I knew all year that she was really struggling to get the math concepts and started moving towards a more montessori approach about mid-year. The school did testing and said she has profound cognitive visual spatial and mathematic deficits—not quite ready to listen to their gloom and doom but really needing to take some of it into account as I plan. I’m considering a program called Mastering Mathematics which has been recommended for LD and ADHD kids, or Math U See which has received a lot of hype but I’m hesitant about for some reason. Nuthatch did fine with Singapore and I think it will be good for them to be doing completely different math programs. They seemed to really enjoy our unit on Mexico and I’m considering the Story of the World book and activity guide, but it may be more formal than they are interested in. We will do Handwriting Without Tears again and probably Explode the Code, though I’m looking at Sing Spell Read Write because Chickadee loves music so much. When I type all that out it seems like so much structured work. We seem to function best when we have a few days a week that we do structured work for a while, but no more and I’m not quite sure I’ve hit that balance.
We live close to the county line so we end up having to different library systems that we use. One is fairly close and is where we go to programs and “browse” and the other is by one of their classes and where I do most of my requests–they have a longer checkout time and lower late fees. Of course both of them have a reading program where they dangle book lists with prizes at the end. Oh, you mean reading is supposed to be something we’ll only do if we have to at school and here is the wonderful library system trying to trick us into doing it over the Summer?
Nuthatch has NO interest, but both chickadee and bluebird have glommed onto the idea and are busy organizing books and lists from both libraries and comparing requirements vs. prizes. And they’ve figured out with just their normal amount of reading time they will easily meet the requirements for both library systems so we’ll probably end up with lots of free fries or ice cream cone coupons for fast food restaurants. Yeah. At least one of the libraries gives out books to keep as the prize.
When I asked, the books from each list have to be checked out from that library, because it is really about showing a lot of “traffic” from lots of books getting checked out which gets them more funds.
Trying to get back into the swing of things–you get used to living “all-inclusive” resort style very quickly. In fact, Chickadee asked half way through if we could just live there. Bluebird was amazing at scuba diving and has found a new adventure sport–probably won’t keep her out of the trees since we live so far from the ocean. The laundry and unpacking and missed gardening are done, now if I can just get back into the swing of things…
Here is one of my favorites. I love how it really shows the difference in their personalities.
Another of Bluebird scuba diving.
Sacked out after a day of fun.
Today is packing day. By this time tomorrow I’ll be walking along the beach of Cozumel.
We live over an hour from the airport and have a 7:00 am flight. It is essential that I pack everything tonight.