What we are up to....

Broken record time...Homeschooling is hard. :)  It is a good hard though, because we can see what doesn't really work and change it. Or vice versa.  We decided in our scheduling of the school year that we are taking the week of Thanksgiving off and we have a plan to follow until then.  Back to the basics is the plan. Read. Write. Math.  Throw in a little science (weather experiments) with Papa and we are calling it good.

 I am still on steroids for my breathing so we are taking it easy and that has gone right along with our plan.  We made up some writing notebooks (I am slightly addicted to composition notebooks...)  that ALL of our writing will go into.  If we are reading a book and don't know what a word means we write it down in our book and define it.  If Jake is reading his Black Beard book (he is doing a project on Blackbeard that he has until 12/16-the last day before Christmas break starts) he jots down his notes in the writing journal.  No more wondering what happened to that piece of paper....

    Our first writing exercise to get our brains working in our writing journal was pretty fun. I found this cool head on Pinterest and printed it off.  The assignment was easy: finish this picture of yourself (funny neither of us included our glasses...I just noticed that. :) ) and fill in any words that come to mind about yourself.  What do you like to do?  Eat? Family

members...Anything.  Just write what makes you tick.  It was fun and they came out pretty cute.  AND it did the trick our brains were ready to WRITE!  We also printed off lots of other fun writing tips I found on Pinterest that you can find here.  We taped them in our journals if we ever needed inspiration.  Next we piled up a load of poetry books and our writing journals and got all propped up on pillows on Jake's bed and got to our poetry.  I found this amazing book at our local library and we love it.  It tells you about different styles of poems, how you write them, and then you push play on the CD player and listen as a poem written in that style is read out loud. Then we wrote our own poem.  Some of them we hadn't heard of so we took notes.  Others we knew all about so we didn't need to.  After we listened we wrote our own poem in that style.  One time we gave our selves 5 minutes to write a certain style and we realized we are pretty good poets!  It was so fun and we are excited to do it again.  We are going to pick up in that book where left off and see what we can come up with.  On Wednesday we are going to enjoy a day of Shel Silverstein.  We found a CD of "Where that Sidewalk Ends at the library and are going to read, listen, and write.

This may be boring for you so I don't mind if you stop reading.  I decided that my blog would be a good place to remind myself what we have done, what we need to do more of, and what we can just call it good and move on with as far as homeschooling goes.  Days cuddled in bed reading and writing is definitely a keeper.  Khan Academy is also a keeper.  I am not a math champion, but I am learning to like it through this website.  The other day as Jake was working independently I was on it for over an hour.  That is big for me.  Jake is loving it too.  So, until Thanksgiving we are going to close up our math book and see just how far Khan Academy can take us.

I just had to stick this picture in of this sweet puppy...Sadie is going to be 1 year old the end of December.  I pick on her a lot about being goofy but she really is an amazing dog.  I just loved this picture and decided to stick  it in here...I could put it in a less random spot in this post but this works too.

(The picture below popped up in the wrong place and I am being lazy and not moving it...Sadie and Pooha enjoying the dog beds in the sun room together...)

Papa G. took Jake to an airshow on Saturday (where he got this cool face painting) and they had a great time.  So good that Jake was still tired Monday morning and wanted to take the day off. (He stays up until Aaron goes to work on the weekends to so that made him even more tired.)  He said it was for me to relax since taking steroids make sleeping next to impossible...but really he needed a break. 

It turns out we worked harder than we thought we would by taking the day off.  We moved some furniture.  We dirtied some rags (Jake gets $0.50 for every rag he dirties by cleaning with it.  I had to tell him to switch rags yesterday his was getting so dirty!), doesn't that sound more fun than cleaning baseboards?  We used some of our fancy chore magnets today and it was AWESOME!  I owe Jake $3 and it is WELL worth it.  He is thrilled.  I am thrilled.  The dust bunnies are cleared out in 2 rooms and there is room to breath in the two living spaces in a home that is serving 2 families.  Here are a couple pictures for you to check out Mom.  After moving the couch from the Sun Room to the Living Room the question of the Christmas tree was raised...We will figure out a place for it. It feels like an awesome hang out space with room for everyone in the living room now. The Sun room still has piles of things to put away (as you can see from picture) and the dog beds aren't staying where they are (we are dog sitting for Nana so we have to make our doggie guests Penny and Pooha feel extra special by having a grand view of the backyard from the dog beds. :) ), but I wanted to get a shot of it for you to see.

The sun room is kind of the study/dinning room now.  We may have to rearrange later but we figured this will work to get us through Aaron's graduation and what will happen then.  We were pretty excited to have created a little reading area in the Sun Room too.  Jake was very excited about the furniture moving since it was all his idea.  Aaron was not so thrilled to see that we did it with out him, since I should not be moving furniture...Darn medicine that fools you into thinking you are all better.  It was so worth it for the breathing space though. :)  And Jake will be happy to know  I am not counting it as a day off.  Education isn't just books-it is labor and service too. Hard work can teach you more about yourself than just about anything!  Jake was so proud of himself for all that he accomplished. And so was I!  He came up with the idea to pull the couch on a slippery blanket so we weren't breaking the rules of taking it easy and we were keeping the floors scratch free at the same time.  Now we just have to hit all of the little piles that we didn't get too in the Sun Room and our task will be complete.  I may go bankrupt and wish we just gave Jake an allowance at this rate. :)

Jake's favorite books at the moment are a series called Far World  and he has been telling me to read it for ever.  (I usually read what ever he is reading to make sure it is okay-unless it is a book that a trusted friend suggests...or in this case is by an LDS author and I got the book at Deseret Books).  So, I put Tom Sawyer on hold and started reading the first book in the series and I LOVE IT!  It is seriously good.  Jake has been making little Lego people and scenes that go along with the 2nd book he is reading and has decided to make a movie with them.  He is a pretty creative dude so I can't wait to see how it comes out. 


Life is good, this year is flying by, and I need to get off the computer and do something!!!  This counts as my homeschooling though right?  :)