Great Day!

Yesterday was so dreary around here and I had gone to bed so late the night before that we took the day off in favor of cuddling under blankets on the couch :) Today I felt the need to play catch up and since she's been zipping right along lately I thought today would be a good day to add in a little more work and see how she handled it. In a word: fantastically! I think she seemed more focused if anything. Maybe it's just her mood today. But for math she was due for an assessment yesterday so I gave her that and a regular lesson page and she did both, no problem. Normally she does 1-2 phonics pages but today I gave her 3. They were tidy and completely correct. We also did a science lesson about the 3 main parts of a plant which she liked and set up a celery experiment with colored water so we can observe how the stem moves food and water. Very good day!! I'm going to try and stay focused for the rest of the week but it'll be hard with her recital this weekend. She has dance class tomorrow, then dress rehearsal on Friday, then the recital twice on Saturday! Talk about intense! She's so excited though. She wanted to get her hair cut last month but I told her she had to wait until after the recital. Now she wants me to take her on Sunday. lol, talk about impatient!!! I told her it was unlikely that we'd go Sunday with it being Mother's Day but we'd see. The nice thing about having the recital the night before Mother's Day is that my MIL and GMIL will come back here for supper afterwards, eliminating the need to go up there on Sunday. Thank goodness!!! I would say Mother's Day is pretty high on the list for me as far as holidays go...Christmas and Easter I can happily sit back and let the kids have the glory, Thanksgiving is about families, Birthday is no big thing to me. But I really feel like everything I ever wanted in a family I work so hard for and need that one day to be appreciated. Unfortunately Dan doesn't get it and I usually spend the day shuttling around between his mom and my mom and now my sister is a mom so I have to share the day with her as well. :) Maybe with the extra time this year Dan will think to focus on me a little bit...hahahahahahaah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, here's todays info:

~~Phonics (X3)
~~Book Adventure
~~Math (assessment and lesson page)
~~Spelling
~~Science with game and experiments
~~Math game (dominoes or yahtzee...tbd)

Fun Friday

Or is it LAZY Friday? I'm not up to setting up much today. I have a ton to do so we are having a laid back day...even more laid back than our typical Fun Friday, if that's possible. haha. The only 2 requirements today are spelling quiz (completed, got a 90) and book adventure. We just got a bunch of books from the library yesterday so she has plenty to choose from. She likes one called "Our Granny" about grandmothers and their differences. She thinks it's funny when it says "Our granny has a wobbly bottom." lol...and something about baggy underpants? It's a silly book but a really nice book about different types of grandmothers. For example, the first page says they might live in a house, apartment, farm, trailer, nursing home. It was the Story hour book yesterday and we enjoyed it so much we brought it home. Today I am working for our church's fair booth at a Ham radio festival all afternoon into the evening. Then tomorrow I'll be back there early and work until about 3. Jillian's having a sleepover with 3 friends tomorrow night and they are arriving at 4 (WHAT was I thinking???????). Then Sunday she has dance rehearsal for sacred dance at church then I'm hosting a Lia Sophia party. Sometimes I can't wait until Monday, except that Monday is craziness too. I guess Tuesday is my weekend!!! Oh, Jillian also needs to email my friend Vickie and thank her because she let us borrow her Sissix machine. Jillian and her friends are doing paper dolls at the party. :) Probably won't be back on here for a couple days, have a fantastic weekend!!!!!

Wednesday

Jillian is just flying through her work this week. It's great but maybe she needs more challenging work? I know math is challenging enough and I'm working hard to be sure I provide her with plenty of activites and games to do along with the lessons to take some burden off of the lesson/"learning" part. But phonics and spelling come pretty easy to her. I wonder if 20 spelling words is too many? Anyway, today is gym/music day (can't remember which) which she's always excited for (BTW I hate gym/music days...next year she's only taking art I think). Her boxes are:

~~Phonics
~~Spelling
~~Math activity (pattern blocks again)
~~Math page
~~Intro to frogs worksheet
~~Book adventure

Spin master (the company that made the broken butterfly thing) is not getting any more from the supplier in HK anytime soon. So we could wait or get something else. So we are getting pixos. I'm not thrilled about it but jillian's really excited. I'm happy they are sending us something!

Sickies in the Hurley house

Well yesterday was one crazy day! I had training class in the morning at 6:15, Allyson's PT at 10:30, Jillian's art class at 12, playdate at 1:30, dance at 4 and work at night. I was so tired all day but figured it was just from that exhaustive schedule. Last night I buzzed out of work as early as I could get loose, crashed at home and stayed in bed until 8:30 this morning. I woke up feeling like I was run over by a truck and thought a coffee might perk me up. No way, now I've been running to the bathroom. Jillian's complaining of not feeling well but I don't know if she's truly ill or just feeding off of my symptoms. Nonetheless I set up work boxes today since yesterday she didn't get to school work until supper time and it was a huge struggle. Today's workboxes are:

~~Spelling (I changed the setup on my printer so I can print the pages smaller and fit 4 on 1 page using both sides rather than using 4 pages which is what I had been doing)
~~Book adventure
~~Phonics
~~Math activity (playing with tangram shapes today)
~~Math worksheet
~~Art project
~~Frog book (science)

ETA: I called the manufacturer of the butterfly house and they'll either send me a replacement or a similar item of equal value. Hooray! I have to call to follow up today because they didn't call me back Friday afternoon but they were soooo nice there.

FUN FRIDAY!!!

It's Fun Friday again. I don't have much to say today except hooray for nice weather finally! Jillian is at a pottery class in the next town over right now making a coil bowl. The place is called Salty Dog Pottery and they have a show room where you can buy things and they also run lots of classes. I wonder if they have a parent/child class, that'd be fun to do together. It was very reasonably priced I thought. $25 total for an hour and a half class today (includes supplies, lesson and kiln firing) and going back in 3 weeks to glaze it. They had 4 classes this week for vacation: plate, mug, bowl and statue. I told her to choose 1. :) She wanted to make a cereal bowl so I can't wait to see it. We're going to spend some time outside today for sure. I bought her a bike the other day off of craig's list (a Little Mermaid bike, even better!) and she's itching to ride it but she was only outside for 10 minutes or so yesterday before it started raining. Since it's Fun Friday I'm only going to do a couple of work boxes today, to leave room for pottery, outside play and laundry. Yes, she is excited to help with laundry. It's apparently her new hobby!

~~Spelling Test
~~Math worksheet
~~Phonics page OR journaling (I'll let her choose)
~~Book adventure

OH, and I bought ground flaxseed last night so we are going to bake some yummy healthy muffins too. I'm really getting into the healthier living thing. Hey, I'm not spending $160 a month on a personal training class just to blow it on my food choices! :)

Happy Weekend!!

Rain, rain go away

What a rainy blah day. Good napping weather. If only my kids thought so too :) Jillian set up her own workboxes today, with the exception of the phonics page which I chose. The math pages just go in order. So today's workboxes are:
~~Book adventure (she requested it to be one of the first boxes before she runs out of steam)
~~New puzzle
~~Spelling
~~Math page
~~Matching sounds game
~~Dot to dot
~~Spring book and questions
~~Phonics
~~Journal

I'm pretty disappointed. We bought Jillian a butterfly house for Christmas and I pulled it out to look at sending away the coupon to start our caterpillars. Unfortunately the zipper is broken on the little doorway so it doesn't seal up! I bought it back in November or something from Toys R Us, I guarantee I don't have the receipt! I'm going to call and see if they'll exchange it anyway since it's never been used, I still have the coupon and everything. Grrr, so frustrating. I'm looking into doing frogs too but I was hoping to spend less than $20. We have an aquarium so if we could find tadpoles it'd be essentially free. But I don't see that happening. Plus there is a type of frog I was looking at and the skin of the tadpoles and froglets is pretty translucent so you can see the heart beating. Now Jillian has it in her head that she wants to keep the frogs as pets! At least they are low maintenance! :)

Earth Day

We are going to focus on Earth Day this week. I very foolishly last night in a flash of "brilliance" told Jillian that we could do a paper mache earth today. What the heck was I thinking? First of all my kitchen is a mess and it would take all day to get it picked up! Second of all, I have no balloons or newspaper. *sigh* Well, maybe I'll just have to run to the store and get balloons and a paper. Or maybe we'll just postpone till tomorrow, I can bum a balloon from my mom tonight since I'm sure she has some and get papers out of Dad's recycle pile. That would be more sensible, yes? :) We scrapped the idea of working on a country right now because we have so much going on with science. We are studying spring and this week Earth Day and I'm also going to send away for frogs and butterflies. Since I'm planning on schooling without a summer break I may do country studies in the summer and drop science for then. So today for workboxes we are doing:
~~Spelling
~~Phonics
~~Reading Spring book from library
~~Dominoes war game
~~Math page
~~Book Adventure
~~Some kind of science project

Hooray for a Successful Day!

We haven't had this much fun and success in a homeschool day in a while. I feel awesome! Ok, to begin with, we had a great Easter! Lots of running around but that's ok, the girls loved it. I didn't post yesterday's workboxes and now I can't remember them so oh well, forget it. :) I don't think there was anything unusual in them anyway. We STILL hadn't gotten to the poster so while I was setting up school today I put the poster 1st so that we had to do it. It came out great! I had a few suggestions for her on how she may want to set it up as far as spacial planning but she did the real work herself. I gave her small cards on the main water cycle things I wanted her to take from it (evaporation, precipitation, ground water, run off, clouds/gathering, pollution) and she had to include all those things in her poster and use the cards to label the poster. IF my stinkin camera worked I could put up a picture. She painted most of it but used some construction paper to cut out a mountain and the clouds. It looks fabo...well, except the part where she painted the snowy mountain red to look like a volcano. Despite my explanation that a volcano could never have snow on top she exercised her creative license. Oh well, it's ok.

So here were today's workboxes:
~~Poster (done...yay!!!!!)
~~Spelling (final page of these words, quiz tomorrow)
~~Book Adventure
~~Math (lots of fun, we had to open up apple cores that I've been saving to graph how many seeds in apples)
~~Journal (today's topic: Spring)
~~Phonics pages
~~New social studies unit. Today she's going to pick a country.
~~Electronic matching game

Fun Friday

I decided today to use less boxes and make Fridays "fun Fridays" since I intend to work on Saturdays as well because we are so behind. So todays boxes were:
-journaling
-back of yesterday's math page and today's math lesson
-spelling
-book adventure (she got a 100% on a second grade book! I don't know how they level their books, I think it's similar to AR I've heard).
-science poster

We had to deliver a wedding cake today to Warner so that took up most of our midday time so I'm glad that I didn't give her much. However, we still didn't get to work on the water cycle poster and I'd REALLY like to wrap this stupid unit up that's been going on forever it seems like. I think we are going to try to set up frog eggs and see how that goes. We did have Meredith (our dear friend who turned 14 in March and we still hadn't seen her) over for her birthday supper (tacos!) and dying easter eggs so that was fun. Tomorrow is an Easter egg hunt here in Pittsfield, then a playdate with some friends we haven't seen much of since they moved. Then some Mommy time, I'm going out with a friend and my sister. I'm going to try to fit in a math lesson and science poster in there as well but who knows.

So she's really taken to the journaling over these past 3 days, day 1 she was reluctant. Today's topic was water, anything about it. She drew a picture of the ocean with her swimming and wrote "This yis me swimming. i love swimming a lot-i love so much i can do it. April 10, 2009." It was so tidy and nearly perfect spelling. Besides the random hyphen that she put in I added the punctuation, she's not there yet.

Finally!

Jeepers, I've been trying all day to reset my stupid password...is it me? Yeesh. Ok, so last weekend I went out and bought some Sterilite bins and set up an old shoe rack to try work boxes (yes Missy, I really do want to BE you...not just follow you on blog websites but actually BE you!!! lol). I didn't buy the ebook but I'm considering it, I wonder if I can just buy the section on discipline? Actually, today was our first day of me actually filling the boxes and she did great!!!!! I got 9 boxes but could only think of 8 things...lol. So Wednesday's boxes were:

-Journal (a new adventure for us...I am trying not to be picky on spelling but...yeesh. Today her topic was homeschool, I told her sometimes she'd have a topic and sometimes she'd be free to write about whatever she wants)
-Phonics
-Science (reading library book on water and answering questions I made up)
-A gluing project (her choice)
-Math lesson
-Spelling
-Learning Palette
-A reading type page

I already set up tomorrow's boxes (the nice part about this is that I like the visual for me too!). There is a flash card story order game, phonics, science library book, math game with pennies, spelling, math lesson, journal, water cycle poster (which we are creating together so that's fun!). I really like this system, seems like it will work well for Jillian because it's so visual she can't ignore it. It took her until 4 to do all her boxes today but in fairness, she did have music class in there too! Hopefully tomorrow there will be less dawdling and distractions and we can forge on!

I think I've decided to make the 9th box be Allyson's box and I'll put some things in there for her because she kept monkeying around with Jillian's boxes. We can work on colors together.

My new favorite website

Reading with Jillian is like blowing a ping pong ball up a hill. You can only get so far with one breath but once you take a break for the next it rolls right back down again. Seriously. It's painful. I KNOW I should let her go at her own pace in my brain but I also know she's capable of more than she gives herself credit for. I've come to realize (again) that she's asking for (and I'm handing out like lollipops in a parade) too much confirmation to her BEFORE she's done something. So instead of sitting and doing her math lesson she has to read the directions, ask me to read the directions and then tell me the right answer so I can confirm that it's right before she marks the paper. Because of her over-confidence in so many other areas, this is surprising to me. Nonetheless, I realized what's going on and in an effort to boost her reading beyond "The Foot Book" that we've been reading for months and months (ok, it's not quite that bad, she has read more than one book), I've decided to try www.bookadventure.org which is a Sylvan sponsored website that I knew of months ago but never utilized. Last night she had some real interest in reading a chapter book for the first time ever so I felt directed to keep blowing uphill. :) We spent lots of time on this website this morning. What I love about it is that she chooses a book that they have listed on the quiz section, reads it, takes the quiz and if she gets an 80 or better she earns that many points. This way her reading comprehension is going up and I know she's actually reading it, not just skimming for show. Then there is a prize section where she can choose prizes from the company like a candy bar, e-books, magazine subscription, temp tattoo, book mark, etc or she can choose prizes that a parent picks out for them. I have an ID and Jillian has an ID and hers is linked to mine so I can see her progress and I have to approve all prizes before she receives them. I can't say enough good about this website so far! For prizes I put in there for her to choose: 200 points: Ice cream or parfait from McDonald's; 500 points: A new book; 500 points: A day with no chores; 2000 points: A new Webkinz or Webkinz outfit of your choice; 5000 points: An extra night of camping (*note: Jillian and I have a weekend to ourselves camping every summer, generally just one overnight). Ok, so maybe the 5000 points for camping is a bit ambitious...she'd have to get a 100 on 50 quizzes. But hey, maybe it'll get her to start saving instead of spending!!!

Why oh why?

Why is it so hard to stay motivated? Probably because Jillian isn't into homeschooling right now and so it's easy to brush it off. Especially since I'm so tired. Water cycle is coming along slowly but at least it's not dead in the water (haha!). I'm going to try a new schedule tomorrow that is a little bit Montessori inspired. Each day I'll write up her required work of the day and set up 2 work sessions which she'll choose what she does when. So for example, I'll have: 1 math lesson, 1 math game (we have several homemade math games as well as math manipulatives and a learning pallette from Usborne which we love), 1 phonics page, 1 reading period, 1 lapbook session and something else. That's my rough idea anyway. I think she'll enjoy the freedom a little bit more, for sure! It's better than the $7200 I'd pay for the Montessori school a couple of towns over from me, although it does sound really really cool there. That's about it for now, brief post.

Recipe of the week (w/e 9-14-09)

Nothing too much new to report except that I've instituted a new policy...we will try a new recipe every week. Last night I made a really yummy supper called Pork and Apple Pan-Fry and Jillian wouldn't even try it. It was sweet and a really nice texture and everything but she was resistant. So I said to Dan, you know, Jillian used to try everything and now she's getting a little pickier. I think we need to have a new recipe every week to try new things. So we agreed. I'll post the recipes here and let you know whether it was a bomb or a hit:

Pork and Apple Pan-Fry


-1 T all purpose flour
-1 lb pork tenderloin, trimmed and cut into bitesize pieces
-2 T olive oil
-1 onion, finely chopped
-2 garlic cloves, chopped
-1 T very finely chopped fresh rosemary (I used dry and it was fine, next time I'll use a little less than 1 T though)
-1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
-2 dessert apples, peeled, cored and chopped
-generous 1 C vegetable stock (I used a C made with buillion because I didn't have stock)
-3 T sour cream (mine went bad so I used vanilla yogurt instead and it was good but really sweet so I'll use plain yogurt or sour cream next time)

Put flour in a bag or sealable bowl with salt and pepper to taste, add the pork. Shake to coat the pork, then turn on a plate, shaking off excess flour. Heat oil in a large skillet and cook pork, turning frequently, for 5 minutes or until sealed and browned all over. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened. Mix in the rosemary, carrot and apples, then cook for 4 minutes, or until the apples begin to break down. Pour in the stock and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and let simmer, partially covered, for 15-20 minutes, or until reduced and thickened (I added a little more flour and it still took the entire 20 minutes). Stir in the sour cream and heat through before serving. Serve with rice or egg noodles for a bed.

The reviews:

Me: Loved it but would prefer it with egg noodles rather than the Pasta Roni I made...2 saucy things together weren't that good.

Dan: Loved it

Aunt El: Liked it, but it was a little too sweet for her taste

Jillian: Blech, kind of like green olives

Allyson: Ate about half, seemed ok with it

The bottom line, I'd definitely make it again because sometimes the kids need to try something more than once but I'd tweak it from how I made it. Enjoy!

Shocker, havne't blogged in over a week

Man, I'm bad at this blogging regularly thing! Just a quick update on us. We've started lap booking the Water cycle and it's pretty fun! We've also mastered a few more origami shapes. On to Allyson which is the real story of note...she's been having physical therapy for a couple of months for a gross motor delay. We originally had her evaluated for speech which, although she didn't qualify for services then, has not improved much since. I took her to the doctor this morning for a follow up ear exam to make sure there wasn't any recurring fluid issues. She had a tympanogram done and her right ear measured perfectly but her left ear was flat :( So now she has to go to an audiologist next week so they can see if she's deaf/has hearing issues in that ear or if it's just left over pressure from her cold 2 weeks ago. WTF. I hate dealing with this. Nobody wants anything to be wrong with their children and this is really a lot to deal with but I'd rather face it and find out what's going on so we can move forward. *ugh* Well that's about it for us. Oh, I started a new exercise class and lost 5 pounds and 1 inch in a week! woohoo!!

Who we are, besides sheep.

My first post! :) Although it goes against one of my personal mottos (don't be a sheep!) I am being a follower. My old friend (old as in, long time, not eldery!) Missy, also homeschool mom with kids around Jillian's age, moved here from homeschool blogger so along I came. I hope I can make this pretty, figure out how to add things to it and love it. If not, I'll start blogging on myspace pretty soon...that one I can use!

A little bit about us: I'm a very happily married mom of 2. Jilly Bean is 6 and, although she'd be in K in public school, we are working on first grade here at home. She's quite bright in many regards, although her reading comprehension is leaving a lot to be desired. Her actual reading skills are great but I don't know how much she takes away from a story. Allyson is 2 and not doing much of anything other than writing on my teacher's manuals when I'm not looking. haha. This is our first year homeschooling officially although we did start a little bit last spring to get our toes wet. I'm glad I'm in NH where K isn't mandatory and nobody is looking over my shoulder this year because it's been a bit of a disaster. Not unlike a shark's feeding style (attack when the seal swims by) I'm definitely more of an opportunistic teacher. The shark is really the best analogy that I can think of...I see an opportunity and I grab on and don't let go and milk every drop of possibilty out of it. :) This morning Jillian asked me if I knew how to make origami which launched us into a search on the globe for Japan, research and a discussion about the culture and of course, a crash course in the paper folding art. We made dogs and kitties today which were painfully simple but will probably do some harder ones in the next few days. I'd like to look into some japanese cooking as well. Had I tried to plan a lesson about Japan it would have bombed, but that's just my style. :) With that said, I also have respect for structured lessons. Our curriculums are Bob Jones Science 1, Saxon Math 1 and I really really really want to start Five in a Row to strengthen Jillian's reading skills but I can't spend the money right now so it can wait until Dan has a job :) Oh yes, my husband...he's been laid off and hopefully close to a job offer but time will tell. Organized learning around here comes in fits and starts and is best when sitting Indian style next to the coffee table, hence our new school blog title: Living Room Learners. We work in the den too :) I'm quickly learning this year (ok, it's been nearly 7 months so I guess not that quickly) that, while some structured learning is important (handwriting, concrete math skills, spelling) spontaneous learning is equally important and sometimes more successful. So here's our outline in the 5 W and an H form:

Who we are: Jennifer (mommy, perpetually 26), Dan (30), Jillian (6) and Allyson (2).

What we use: Bob Jones, Saxon, various workbooks for writing, enchantedlearning.com for spelling

Where: the coffee table and computer desk in Tiny Town, NH

When: sporadically, when we feel like it.

Why: Because we live in a mediocre to crummy school district; because I love teaching; because I believe my children should be fully entrenched in their morals before society can heap their sludge on them; because we believe that our children belong with us as parents and we can do the best job...afterall, a school can't have the same heart and soul invested into a child and that child's future as a parent can.

How we want to move forward: I'd like to try FIAR as well as lapbooking which we've looked into a little bit but may require more organization than I'm capable of.

I'm done for now, time to go do the mommy thing. Look forward to blogging more and reading others' blogs.