We end week 3 on a pretty good note. I told William he needed to choose a book to read for at least 30 minutes a day. He finally decided on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. We'd read the book together a few years ago but he's never read it on his own. He picked it up yesterday evening and is now on chapter 6 :) He's never read anything before like this, hopefully it will spark something.

William is still doing well in all of his subjects. In math we're touching on fractions again and he is understanding it better this time around.

His paragraph writing is still not getting any better. He pretty much refuses to indent the paragraph and ignores all instructions about writing a concluding sentence. I found this site that details the parts of a paragraph. He's read through the page once and I'm going to have him read through it again to hopefully help him understand what I'm trying to tell him about writing. His handwriting is getting much better though, as well as his spelling. We're still reviewing some grammar and punctuation mark usage with the Abeka English book and he's doing well, already understanding apostrophe usage and possession.

I said last week that I wanted to begin some life skills like cooking, pet care, etc. He's given his dog a bath weekly for the past few weeks and on Sunday we're planning to bake cookies. He mentioned wanting some chocolate chip cookies the other day, so we're going to make them together. We haven't been able to take up typing again, but he is sending emails to his Nana in Florida and typing while playing an RPG online. I do want him to learn to type correctly, though, so that is something we will definitely focus more on as the year progresses.

I do think he is making progress so far and I'm confident that it will continue as the year continues.

On my work message board today the homeschoolers are discussing what they are planning for the year and helping new homeschoolers learn about the ins-and-outs as well. One discussion was illness. Many moms who had their kids in kindergarten or public school had very sick kids very often. I remember when William first went into daycare at the age of 15 months. He wasn't there a week before he was sick with a fever of 103 and I had to take time off work from my new job. When he was in private school he was also sick often - at least once a month he had a fever from a new bug going around. We had to wait hours at the doctor's office to be seen and then have to pay over $30 for prescriptions. It was crazy! I would also have to take time off work then arrange for child care so I could go back to work and someone else would have to care for my sick son.

Most of the homeschooling moms now have the same story as I do - since homeschooling there hasn't been one serious illness in our families. No flu, no bronchitis, no asthma, no stomach bugs, nothing. Maybe a cold here and there, but those are recovered from quickly and they don't really stop homeschooling in a serious way.

To me, a big plus for homeschooling is lack of illness, which means fewer - or no - doctor visits which means less money spent on medical care and prescriptions, which means money in my pocket.

What are some of the major plusses for homeschooling for your family? Leave a comment or post on your blog and leave the link.

This idea came from Trinity Prep School. I thought it was a good idea and since I haven't really posted a scheduling type post for this school year I decided to join in.



1. Minimize distractions - computer, TV, phone, video games. We are a technical family, we love our Tivo's and our computer, but we are also a very distracted family. I strongly believe that everyone in our family has a type of ADD - we lose track of time if we allow ourselves off of the plan for the day. I'm not one to stick to a strict schedule, but I tend to have IGAD syndrome. This is originally from the book Sidetracked Home Executives. It means "I've got all day". If we turn on the TV to watch something during a break or while we eat we end up spending more time than intended. This has been something I've really tried to work on since we started school again 2 weeks ago.

2. Planning is good, but too much can be overload. I am a planner and a list maker, but I'm not very organized at all. I do use a planner system called Full Year Notebooks. I have used it for over 2 years now and I really enjoy it. I plan out maybe 6 weeks at a time, not a full year. I don't date my pages because I would freak out if we missed a day and something didn't get done. Have you ever met a perfectionist who was disorganized? You just have. If I planned something on a certain date and something happened to screw up the schedule, I would just toss it out the window and give up. Then I would make another one, wasting more paper, ink and time. Now I just use the notebook, plan out a short period of time, and when things get done I make a check mark. It's a lot less stress.

3. Have books and materials in one area. We don't have a school room any longer, so William's Lifepacs are in the living room in a 3 drawer bin I bought at a local store. I know where his current workbooks are, the new ones with the teacher editions and the Lifepac tests from each book. I also keep a few pencils, extra lead (he likes mechanical pencils), and a marker for the white board in a drawer. The white board is not attached to anything, unfortunately. It sits on a chair in the living room when we use it. I would love to hang it on a wall but right now there is no permanent home. Anything we use for school is on that table and either in or near that bin.

4. Stay calm. I remember when William was just over one year old I took him for his checkup. There was a little girl in the office who was the same age. She was walking all over the place while William was still cruising from one chair to the other. I brought it up to the doctor. He said this, and I'll remember it forever. "Don't compare your child to another one. He'll walk on his own when he's ready. Besides, when he's 10 you won't be able to tell who walked first anyway." You know what? He's right. So while I do have my moments of freak out, I try to stay calm and not compare William to my neice or any other child, homeschooled or not. Besides, when he's 20 you can't tell who learned what first, right? This goes double for moms with younger kids, like kindergarten and first grade. Stop worrying about high school and college! It will happen, just enjoy it.

5. Find a balance. I guess this goes along with being calm. I have gone from almost-unschooling to being really relaxed to being eclectic to doing school at home. Even though we use Lifpacs, I still feel that we are more relaxed now than school at home, but not as relaxed as unschoolers. I think I've finally found a balance between school and play. I remember a Simpson's where Marge was going to homeschool Bart because he got kicked out of school for some reason. She made him call her Mrs. Simpson :) I have never been that strict :)

6. Let there be tangents. William has a fascination with sharks. He watched Shark Week on Discovery Channel. He reads shark books. He can rattle off information about different breeds at the drop of a hat. We watched Jacque Cousteau's grandson make a shark submarine and float around among the Great Whites. He loves anything having to do with sharks. There is a time for him to nurture that interest, even if it takes the place of a scheduled lesson.

7. Have fun!! Enjoy your kids, love your kids, and enjoy the ride.

I said that I would post my anniversary gift to him once it was finished, but I never did, so here it is. This is the video I created for him in June. I tried to save it to a CD, but since I don't have a DVD burner it would only play on the computer.

Remember that Scott and I knew each other when we were little. As part of the slideshow you'll see a picture of a brown haired boy having a birthday party. The little girl in the green dress to his left is me :)

There is music, so be warned.

William has been moving ahead quickly, sometimes with arguments but once he decides to do the work it goes well. He knows more than he thinks he does. I created a grade book in Excel to help figuring averages on his Lifepacs because I just don't get the Lifepac scoring system. Individual tests are fine, I get those figured, but then they go into this point system to figure the final grade. If I was doing it right, then the points system had him making Bs and Cs in subjects where he was getting all As on the Lifepac tests. So I'm no longer doing the point system. I'm doing what I know how to do - I take the grades from his self-tests and his final pace test and average them for his final grade. Excel makes it easy to do.

His favorite thing to do this week was science. He's working in the plant book now and as an experiment we sprouted some lima beans for him to disect. He thought seeing the sprout growing out of the bean was a really cool thing to see. He disected one every other day and then today we planted about 5 of them in some potting soil and set them outside to watch them grow. Unfortunately we can't eat these beans, they came from a science kit and have been treated with something to make them germinate faster. Here are some pictures:

This first one are the beans soaking in a vase of water. They had to soak for 24 hours.



The next one is the best picture I got of a sprout. It's in the circled area.



That was on day 1. I tried taking pictures of the other days when the sprout was coming out of the bean, but they all turned out very blurry.

So that was the second week of our school year. The new routine is working out well, we just have to be consistent. He has written 2 paragraphs doing the paragraph of the week program and it's just something we have to be consistent with so that he will continue to practice and get better with writing. Next week he'll be choosing his paragraph topic and also a free reading book. He never finished White Fang and decided to choose something different this time. I also want to choose a read aloud from the Ambleside list. Even though we no longer use the curriculum, I did enjoy the time we spent reading Princess and the Goblin and Robinson Crusoe. I probably would never have read those stories if I hadn't been doing a read aloud.

Next week's plan looks like this:

Science, Math, Bible, History and Geography done with Lifepac. Grammar with an Abeka workbook as a guide, mostly done on the white board. Paragraph of the Week, his choice for a topic, following my paragraph writing guidelines. Free reading book to read on his own for 30 minutes minimum per day plus a read aloud book for us to read together at least three times each week. We're also going to toss in some life skills - cooking, washing the car, and pet care, plus we'll pick up typing again.

With the changes Blogger is making I'm not able to remove the navbar above like I did before. I had to spend over an hour trying to get the title picture under the bar. It looks better now than it did an hour ago and it's presentable even in IE, even though it looks better to me in Firefox.

I'm sorry if you hate the navbar, I hate it too, but as long as I am hosted for free with blogger I guess I have to put up with it for now. I'm just glad I was finally able to make the template look better.

Some of the changes they are working to integrate include categories, they call them labels. That's good for me because I've been here over a year and while I thought about using another type of blog, like Wordpress, I really didn't want to have to learn a whole other system.

I just wish they would remove the navbar.

I've talked about how much I love my Tivo in the past, but this guy has created a music video explaining the Tivo and what he loves about it. Enjoy!

What is Tivo Video

And if you've ever thought about getting one, check out this special for a free refurbished Tivo unit for just the cost of service for 1 year.

If you decide to get one, please say I referred you using the email address clr 1971 AT alltel dot net. (spelled this way to prevent spiders from picking up the email).

Homeschool Math Blog is giving away memberships to The Math Forum Problem of the Week service (great for learning problem solving, for grades 3-10) AND some math ebooks.



Click here to read the details and how to participate!



Learn more about Challenging problems in math and how to use a "Problem of the Week" activity.



The Math Forum's mission is to provide interactive learning services and a
library of resources from the online mathematics community that enrich and
support teaching and learning in an increasingly technological world.

The first week of school has gone pretty well with only minor arguments about completing assignments. For the most part William finishes quickly and is able to move on with other things. The key is staying consistent with him. If we make deals and lapse in the plans it's too easy to let things go.

I'm finding that he needs a major review of his English topics that we covered last year, such as punctuation, capitalization, etc. His paragraph for the week wasn't in the correct format and he's having a hard time with capitalizing words that shouldn't be capitalized. I know as well that if he were in 6th grade in public school he would be writing multiple page essays in cursive. I'm trying to remember that he's not in public school and he doesn't like to write, so we need to go slow. I'm going to type up an example of the paragraph format I want him to use for next week.

He tried to get me to give him something else to do besides writing a paragraph, but at this point the only thing I can think of is to have him write so that he can practice. It's frustrating for me to go over the same topics over and over again, but I'm hoping that with repetition and consistency that he will be writing well at the end of this year.

The sad part of the week involves 2 of our pets. While we were in North Carolina our 2 outdoor dogs decided they didn't like their pens. They were digging holes and even tearing up the chain link on the fences. They were constantly getting out and running around the yard. Scott was working that weekend so he wasn't at home and I was out of town. One of our dogs is missing. We haven't seen her in a week now. We've put up flyers around town and driven around the area. Scott even talked to the neighbors, but no one has seen her. Luckily he was able to catch up our other dog and we kept her in a kennel until we could fix her pen and keep her from digging out under in the dirt.

On another sad note, William's hermit crab, Kermie, passed away sometime yesterday. I'd noticed that he was being very still - more than usual, since hermit crabs don't move very much anyway. On Thursday evening he was still alive but not very active. Friday he was in his shell but not moving at all. We'll be burying him tomorrow and cleaning out the aquarium that has been his home for over a year. I asked William if he wanted to get another crab but he said no. I think he'll start asking for a turtle again soon, though, since we have the aquarium.

Prayers and well wishes for the return of our dog would be welcome. Her name is Jellybean. I'm hoping she is okay and happy where ever she is, but I would still like to know what's happened to her.

Head on over to Sprittibee's blog for the 32nd Carnival of Homeschooling! It's a Wild West Theme and features some great information, including a bit of history about the American west, Southwestern recipes, a unit study in Indians, and much more information than I can include here. I included this post about my mom's foal, Surprise Package, that came by surprise last year - hence the name - that William was able to help bottle feed.

Head on over and enjoy the wonderful information fellow bloggers provide as we head into another school year!

I was able to get a candid shot of William doing a Lifepac during his first day back at school.



Doesn't it look nice working on schoolwork while sitting on a couch with your puppy next to you?

The first day went well, we finished in good time with minimal argument.

Today is going a bit rougher as we're short on time. We only have until 2pm before we need to go into town and run errands, and I have to be back home by 4:10 to log into work.

There was a bad car accident outside of our house this afternoon. Apparently a mini van hit a moving van that was parked at a neighbor's home. The van driver is okay but the mini van is totalled. There is a lot of traffic outside right now and my father's wrecker company was called to tow in the van.

I hope everyone else is having a good start to the school year.

Howdy, Pardners! Sprittibee is rounding up homeschool bloggers for her Wild West Themed Carnival of Homeschooling. Click on the sparkly hat and mosey on over to Sprittibee's blog and learn how you can be a part of the carnival.

Sunday was our final day. William wanted to go rafting again with my brother and his step-son, but my dad was ready to leave. We packed up the car and had told William he needed to change and get ready to go, but my brother offered to let him stay with them since they were staying an extra day. So, William stayed behind with them. I packed him up some clothes and his toothbrush, gave him some spending money, and told him to be good. My brother was packing up their stuff to move to a different cabin, but they were going rafting soon after and then planned to head back downtown for shopping and to visit the arcade for the kids.

I went downtown with my parents to get dh a gift. My mom wanted to ride one of the mechanical bull rides. While she waiting in line, I shopped. I bought dh a coffee mug with a picture of a wolf on it and got my mom a cup with a dream catcher on it. Then I headed out to take pictures of my mom on the bull.

Just as I tried to get a video on my camera, she fell off and decided she'd had enough. She did get a video of the ride, though. I told her pictures would be posted on the website :) Then we headed out of town and back south.



We stopped to eat lunch at The Dillard House in Dillard, GA. Food is served family style, which means they bring out the food in bowls and platters and you serve yourself at your table, passing the food around the same as you would at home. Our lunch consisted of my favorite southern foods - fried chicken, rice, gravy, biscuits, cornbread, beans, cabbage, okra, butternut squash and more. We finished with peach shortcake for dessert - made with fresh sliced peaches. After lunch we hit the road again and got home around 6:30 pm.



I'll have William tell about his day in Cherokee with my brother's family when he gets back.

I do plan to river raft again, but I want to do it as a family in a large raft, not on an inner tube again. My leg isn't sore anymore, but my arms and shoulders are. Inner tubing is definitely a full body workout!

We had planned to river raft on Saturday morning, but rain held us back. We ate breakfast on the deck, watching a fat chimpmunk eating birdseed and a yellow finch on the tree, then got ready to visit the Cherokee Indian Museum. William chose to ride with my brother and his family so he could hang out with the boys. We met up at the museum for a few moments. The museum is a definite must-see. I enjoyed the displays, especially the new display "Emissaries of Peace" that tells the story of 3 Cherokees who visited King George III in England.



After the museum I had lunch with my parents at a nearby restaurant, then we headed downtown to meet up with my brother and the rest of our group. My parents took the chair lift up to the top of the mountain and walked around. I browsed a store and we spoke to a Cherokee craftsman named Johnnie V. There were many Cherokee people around town, having pictures made, creating crafts and performing dances. Johnnie was a singer as well as a jewelry maker. My mother bought one of his CDs and my nephew bought a bracelet.

My parents stayed in town to browse some more and I headed back to the cabins with the rest of the group to go rafting. The rain had finally let up, so we were ready to go. We changed into our bathing suits and blew up our inner tubes. You can rent tubes on the river, but we bought ours before the trip. My parents returned and my mom decided to go with us. We got into the river at the cabins and started floating.

I had seriously considered taking a camera along. I thought it would be a lazy ride down the river in the sun. I was so wrong. Just below the cabins were some rapids flowing over some large rocks. I was flipped under the water at that first drop off. I was able to partially get back on my tube, but the water was running very fast. It was a while before I was able to get to some shallow water and get back on the tube properly. By then, the rest of the group was way ahead of me. My brother held back and waited for me at a bridge.

A bit further down we hit more rapids and I went under again. The water was deeper in this area and soon after those rapid we hit more, so I wasn't able to get back into the tube properly for a little while. During this 2nd dunking and while trying to get back on my tube, I hit my right leg and foot on some rocks under the water. My brother helped me get back up on the tube and by then I was getting tired of the water. I checked my location based on landmarks along the river and realized we weren't even half way to the end point!

We had a few more rapids to go through, but luckily I didn't get dunked again. After my 2nd dunking I was more concerned about William and my mother than myself. William had had the 2 weeks of swimming lessons, but I realized when I was dunked that moving river water was a lot different than swimming in a pool. Luckily William wasn't dunked, but my neice was, and by the time I caught up with them she was very upset and ready to end the trip.

The entire trip down the river from our cabin took about an hour. We headed back to the cabin in the waiting vehicle - we had used 2 vehicles to shuttle my brother back from the parking area at the end of the river ride - and headed back to the cabin to change for dinner.

Dinner was spent with extended family at a campground a few miles outside of Cherokee. Aunts, uncles and cousins were all there. The kids decided to use the tubes again and got back into a smaller river flowing near the campsite. They played in the water, ate dinner, then played some more. When it started getting dark, we noticed the campsite was hosting karaoke, so we talked my mom into singing. She was the last performer of the evening before the main attraction - Elvis!



It was getting late and my leg was killing me. My parents talked about visiting the Harrah's casino, so I offered to stay with all the kids so my brother and his fiancee could go as well. I rested my leg, watched TV with the kids, and then we all headed to bed around midnight.