No, not telling time.   Time, as in, where does it all go?

In my imagination, homeschooling provides us all time.   Time to have leisurely mornings in bed soaking up our latest literary treasure.  Time to make bread by hand–together of course, with the kids taking turns kneading and shaping the loaves.   Time for the kids to intently pursue amazingly creative and academic projects that will impress grandparents (and blog readers of course!).   But—where exactly is all that time from my imagination?   How come the simple list of projects–kids and mine—keep getting put off.  Yes, we’ll make the butterscotch candies tomorrow (ok, well maybe the tomorrow after that…)   I’ll organize the household filing that is about to take over my office tomorrow….   And what about that bread?

So, what exactly are we doing with all our time?  It certainly isn’t being devoted to housework.   Soccer?   Does it really take that many hours of the week?  Work?   I only work about 15 hours a week, and most of that from home in hours stolen from the day (translated—from 5:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. after dh leaves for work and before kids start stirring).   So how come I feel like we are rushing through the bare minimum and not even making it to the strewing, the projects, the experiments?  

Things we HAVE made time for:

Healthy meals.   Due partially to Alex’s digestive problems, Aubrey’s declaration of vegetarianism and the reading of “Fast Food Nation” and “Omnivore’s Dilemma”, we have done a better job of eating healthy meals and we are eating out much less and pretty much avoiding fast food.     In an attempt to avoid dairy (for at least 2 of us), food coloring, high fructose corn syrup and transfats, we’ve been cooking a lot more and paying a lot more attention to food labels.

 Exercise/Play.   Jordan and I take walks almost every morning.  Even when I’m cringing because it is already so late and we really should “start the day”.   The dogs appreciate it, my jeans appreciate it, and it really centers Jordan.   We have structured activities–horseback riding, dance, gymnastics, soccer, classes at the community center… and free time riding bikes, learning to play tennis, playing at the park.   I can truthfully say that my kids get the “at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day” that all those guidelines say is important.

Park Days.  I decided I needed to make hanging out and making friends a priority this year.  I’ve been trying to get Aubrey to more teen events, and we are mostly making it to some sort of hang out every week.

 The basics.    Everyone is making progress in reading, writing and math and I feel we are devoting enough, but not too much time to these subjects.  Though I still dream of the day Alex will pick up a book and read it for pleasure, he is definately reading.

Things I really need to make time for:

Sleep.   Everything I read reminds me how important it is.  That elusive thing that determines the outcome of the day before it begins.   When will I figure out that, though it seems like I can steal more time, if that time is spent foggy and grumpy, I haven’t really gained anything?

Romance.  Ok, three kids, two demanding jobs plus keeping the house from falling down or being declared a disaster area… Nuff said.

 And, of course, all those quiet moments.   The bread, the projects and the cozy reading in bed.  

Maybe today, there will be time.

So, I decided that I was going to not sign us up for everything this year and I was going to make sure we spent our mornings at home.   Everything was going good, until this past week, when mornings were about the ONLY time we were home. 

Monday we decided it was a perfect day to go to the local park and practice tennis.  I took lessons in my BK (before kids) life, and apparently my kids think this qualifies me to teach them.   We had fun, managed to hit a few volleys by the end and we certainly got some good exercise (which I really felt the next day!).

Tuesday we needed haircuts, which turned into errands which ended in trip to PETCO in which Alex decided he wants to have a pet rat.  So then we had to extend the errands to a stop at the library to check out books on having rats as pets.   Gulp.  I’m trying to be supportive.  His beloved gerbil, who lived so long we were starting to wonder if he was really a transfigured wizard, died a couple of months ago and he’s been lobbying for a new critter.    But a rat??? Shudder.

On Wednesday afternoons we go to a local community center for co-op classes.  

Thursday I’m at work all day, and then at soccer practices all evening.

Friday we didn’t make it to recess, but we ended up going out to do some grocery shopping.  Jordan has a new passion for cooking and she got some cookbooks from the library and we had to shop for ingredients for the dishes she wants to make.  We’ve been discussing food a lot around here.  Aubrey has been vegetarian for several months now, and Alex has many restrictions due to some health problems he’s been trying to get under control and Jordan has been off dairy for a while.  They are getting good at checking labels and they know I will get them anything they beg for—from the produce department.

In the moments we were home, we managed to read together most of the first Spiderwick Chronicles book and Jordan has already convinced me to find activities (www.spiderwickchronicles.com) to print out for her to do.    She is happily making a family of fairies with several outfit options.

Alex made a skip counting book to help him with the larger multiplication problems.   He filled in the charts on this page http://www.apples4theteacher.com/math/games/100-number-chart-zero.html with a separage page skip counting for each number through 10 and he can easily go to each page and count by 6’s to figure out 6×7, etc.    He is very visual and quickly figured out the patterns when coloring in the numbers.   He is anxious to do some more mythmatical battles armed with his new book.

Aubrey has been doing many projects with her new Geometer’s sketchpad.  One of those purchases I kept putting off, thinking we don’t need anything extra, and now I’m kicking myself for not getting it sooner.   She is still enjoying her Physics in Your Life lectures and also started Biology this week.     For science, Jordan and Alex and I built some things from our Physics Workshop.  

So, next week will be quieter, right?   Well, dr. appointment Monday, park recess Tuesday, co-op again Wednesday, work Thursday, Girl scouts and another dr. appointment Friday…..

Jordan at the fair we went to last week on the super bungee trampoline.  And she is my cautious, tentative, fearful kid.   She was doing back flips before her turn was over.

We’re still muddling along here trying to be a bit more academic, though life keeps getting in the way of that, lol.  

I’ve restructured our days/activities so we have nothing out of the house in the morning.  I work from home early in the morning while the kids sleep in, and we used to have activities on 2 of the four mornings a week that I was home.  We’ve dropped and rearranged and I’m trying to focus on open-ended activities like park day so everyone gets a chance to play and develop friendships.   So far it is making the flow of our days so much better to know that we will have un-interrupted mornings.

Today we went to the Rennaissance Festival and everyone came home high on medeival violence (the jousting show was a big hit).   Alex and Aubrey bought painted wooden swords and went right to work when we got home on making shields and then they did battle.   They also got a lesson in economics, because I paid for admission and some food, and they had to use their allowance for games, rides and toys.  Alex got a good lesson in the wisdom of not spending most of your money in the first five minutes.  

The highlights of the last week or so have been that Alex has been non-stop building lego stuff from kits he got last Christmas and then declared too hard.  Now he has a long list of additional kits for this Christmas.   Aubrey and I are reading “Annotated Alice” to go along with a lecture series we are listening to called “Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind”.    This is a nice change from Poe, whom we read last and I’ve never really enjoyed.  One of our butterflies emerged from her Chrysalis today and we’re anxiously awaiting the other.   Aubrey continues to really enjoy the “Physics in Your Life” DVD series and she is zooming through highschool Geometry.  Hmmm, future engineer?   Now, if only I could get her to write more than a 4 sentence paragraph for a writing assignment.

We are listening to “Inkheart” as our audio book and it seems to be keeping everyone’s attention, but I’m not enjoying it as much as I’ve enjoyed other Cornelia Funke books.   This week I’m hoping to convince Jordan and Alex to read the first book or two in the Spiderwick Chronicles in anticipation of the movie release.   It looks like it might be a bit challenging for independent reading but I’m hoping if we read it together and take turns that it will spark their interest without frustrating them too much. 

We started fall classes at the community center last week.  Jordan is doing drama and modern dance and Aubrey is taking stop motion photography.   Alex was sad that the only thing offered for his age group in the afternoon (other than drama and dance which he refused) was choir.   So, he’ll be hanging out with friends I guess. 

My goals for this week are to get Aubrey started on an offical course in HS biology (we have a text and are doing the online cybered program) and to come up with some sort of unit study type thing on music for Jordan and Alex.   I kind of realized that is one topic we’ve literally not touched.  There was a free lapbook download and since Jordan loves assembling lapbooks I thought it would be a good launch point on some discussion about the different types of musical instruments, types of music and to try to bring Alex into it a bit more, the technical side of making music.  We’ll see how it goes–by the end of the week I may be thinking that a round of “Kareoke Revolution” on playstation is more our speed of music instruction.

http://support.pcrm.org/site/PageServer?pagename=dissalt_digital_frog2

I’ve found online virtual dissections, but since we have dial-up they aren’t particularly user friendly.  This place will send you a copy of a virtual frog dissection on cd-rom.  For FREE!  I love free.

Most of our nature study falls under what the heck is this______ (noisey thing, smelly thing, gross thing, pretty thing, ) in our yard.  This week we started trying to formally identify the types of trees in our yard and Jordan is working on a “Backyard Tree Identification Book”.  

So far we’ve identified:

Black Walnut

Osage Orange

Eastern Redbud

Shingle Oak

Post Oak

Burr Oak

Honey Locust

Sycamore

Sandbar Willow (We think–definately willow)

Red Mulberry

Shagbark Hickory

Hackberry

We’ve done about 1/2 of the yard, but many are repeats now so we identify them pretty quickly.

Also, Fred and George had the urge to climb and hange upside down this week and are now pretty little chrysalis. 

 And, we have had a few fall visitors.  We found a big walking stick and this friend keeps hanging out on our bay window enjoying the gnats that are attracted to our kitchen light.

The kids sat and watched him for a long time.    I’m hoping to plan some fall hikes as soon as the weather is agreeable.

It’s like the weather read the calendar and I woke up September first to a rather brisk morning cool.  Dh and I actually drank our coffee on the patio.   The flowers that survived August’s heat and neglect (I run out of gardening steam by July) are unwithering a bit and the kids are rediscovering the back yard–a little.  It takes a while for them to get used to being outside a lot again.

Last week I found two monarch caterpillars in our butterfly garden and so we now have Fred and George in an aquarium in the school room.  They’ve tripled in size I think.   We’ll have to wait until they emerge as butterflies to figure out if they are really a Frederita and Georgina.

We had another relatively calm week.  I’m having one of those thunk myself in the head moments.   Alex likes routine.  Jordan likes to know what we are doing every minute of the day and asks relentlessly what we are doing.  SO, I figured out how to print out a calendar from Homeschool Tracker that listed the subjects we’d be working on.  Now instead of “Do we have to do ____ today?” I’ve been getting “It is time for math!!  My favorite!”   And Jordan loves checking off each item on the calendar as she finishes it and seeing her activities on there.  Ok, so I know the newness of this will wear off, but I’m enjoying it for now.

 Since I’ve been selling old stuff on ebay, I ended up with enough money in my paypal account to check out the mythmatical cards everyone raves about.   Alex loves them and Aubrey seems completely willing to play them with him (though I did learn how as a back up).  

We’re having a relaxing weekend and then I suppose we’ll be back at it.