Thursday, July 21, 2011

My rein as a stay at home/work at home mom has partially ended. I took on a part time job at a laundry mat that is just a few blocks from my house. I enjoy the work, but it's hot around all of those dryers. Of course, everything is hot in West Texas, but I bet that I will fully appreciate it when the weather starts to change. Therefore, I have the laundry mat, ChaCha.com and my twirling students to keep me busy earning money for quite awhile.

Abbey is on Year 6/Week 5 of Charlotte Mason. I finally decided how to handle the Book of Centuries issue. Abbey completed one spiral notebook after 4 weeks of work. In the back of the spiral, we made a timeline of historical facts that were learned over the course of the four weeks. The new spiral is larger, so we may have to break things up into timelines reflecting four weeks at the time.

Melody so far has a 95 average in her first college course. I know that things will get tougher, but this is one proud mama.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

I'm suffering from a little writer's block, so I'll just share a few things going on in our lives in a list.

* I got an "outside the home" job to supplement my three work at home ventures. It's not in my field, but it fits into my family life, so I figure that more money is always appreciated.

* My husband was out of work for a couple of months, but he's back in the saddle again.

* A man has been bringing stacks and stacks of books to Melody at her job. They are amazing books, and I have started reading one of them. We are still on the 52 Books Challenge, and Abbey is in the lead.

* I'm itching to get started on my crazy coupon trips again. My coupon file needs to be cleaned out. Maybe that can be a good project for me to do today. My coupon file is amazingly large, though not nearly as large as those on Extreme Couponing.

* I need a king sized bedspread. Just thought I'd throw that in there. I could make one, but it will take a long time.

* I need a storage shed to help further our clutter conquering project. I have visions of red boxes for Christmas stuff, blue for general stuff, pink for girly stuff and green for schooly stuff. Hmmm......yes.....I'm just crazy.

*I also need to buy or make a toy box for Tarja.

* We have company today and are expecting more.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

One of the drawbacks of homeschooling is that it's hard to keep the house clean when the kids are home being educated all day. However, I am proud to announce that my bedroom is now free of clutter. Hootie hoo! It took two days to move old things out and new things in. In fact, it took three adults, three teenagers, a one year old, and a three year old to get it all done. Of course, in the process, we added more clutter to the kitchen and living room. Will it ever end? I don't know. I just know that neat freaks need not apply for homeschooling. My dream home would include an office, library, computer room (with several computers), and a bathroom for each princess. Until then, we have to keep up the endless shuffle of books, papers, music, videos, etc.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

This day started off with a twirling lesson. Our budding twirling groups is really cute right now. It consists of two families, and each of those families have three princesses each. We got together and chose uniforms today. I am really, really pleased with what we all agreed upon, but I don't like to get excited until those uniforms are actually in our hands.

During this time, Melody has been at work, so she won't do her school lessons or twirling lessons until later in the day. In fact, I expect her to call me to pick her up from work at any time as I write.

Tarja likes to be read to right before lunch. I don't know why this is, but as soon as we finish whatever it is that we need to do in the morning, she brings all of her library books for me to read. I have to time our reading, because she gets a prize from the library for every 5 hours that we read to her.

Abbey's weekly lessons are both online and off, and she works very well independently. After she did some of her reading assignments and math, we listened to The New World Symphony by Dvorak, then did dictation and Spanish. Now, she is reading The School of the Woods online. Since she's an animal lover, she should really enjoy that book.

I'm debating on how I want to set up her Book of Centuries this year, because this term has a big focus on the 1920s, and if I make the book in the way that I usually do, she will run out in one area and have lots of blank pages in others. I have lots of ideas, but will welcome more. If you have an idea to share, please post it in the comments.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Official Home School Schedule

*Daily Lessons:

Penmanship or Copywork
Math
Foreign Language

*Weekly Lessons:
Art Appreciation
Art
Grammar
Book of Centuries
Handicrafts
Music Appreciation (including folk songs and hymns)
Nature Study
Plutarch
Shakespeare play

*Grammar Schedule
Formal Grammar
Oral Narration
Written Narration
Dictation
Copywork

Week 2 Lessons

*Bible-Creation (continued)
*Penicillin is discovered.
*The New York stock market crashes.
*Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.
*Story of Mankind-Chapters 67-68
*Story of David Livingstone-Chapter 2
*Albert Einstein and the Frontiers of Physics
*Poetry of Robert Frost: Copy next poem for notebook
*Romeo and Juliet
*Our Young Folks' Plutarch
*Age of Fable- Chapter 29
*Youth Heritage Project
*Math
*Spanish
*Grammar: Grammar Monster
*Art appreciation: Mary Cassatt
*Art
*Book of Centuries
*Handicrafts
*Music Appreciation: Dvorak
*Nature Study
Abbey is loving her Charlotte Mason weekly schedule. I wasn't sure if she would really like it or not, but I am happy to report that she does. Her favorite book for this term appears to be The Story of Mankind.

Melody is not loving her job, but she is loving the money that she's making. As of today, she's sporting a new dress and a smart phone. She also took us out to breakfast this morning. I'm so happy for her.

My husband got a new job. It's a weird job, but he seems to like it. I say that it's weird, because he's on call 24 hours a day. The kicker is that he never knows when he's going to work, or when he's coming home.

For the fourth of July, we have the first parade that we've been in for about two years. It's exciting to get back in the saddle. We got new white tennis shoes and socks for the effort. Our song for this one is "Jesus is Just All Right With Me" by the Doobie Brothers. I never get tired of hearing that song.