I'm not dead, I promise
Yeah, it's been a while. Right now it's 7:20 a.m. and all my children are still sleeping (!!!!) so I have some unscheduled time to myself. Yay! I've been up since 6 planning the homeschool week, which didn't get done this weekend because we were just so busy!
We have finished 5 weeks of homeschooling and it has been going relatively well. I have had my first curriculum fail (Spelling Workout doesn't work, at least not for us!), now I'm trying to decide if we start with something else or wait until the boys are stronger readers to work on spelling. It seems like when I was in school we started in 3rd grade or so but that was a really long time ago and I might be wrong. At this point I'm thinking it might be best to wait until after the baby is born regardless. I did a survey on a popular homeschooling board and it was seriously a 3-way tie on whether people thought I should do spelling with C only, C and Y together, or wait to start spelling until later. So even the experts are not in agreement on this subject. :)
Speaking of the baby, she is staying put! I am 33 weeks pregnant, and honestly I'm feeling pretty good. I am tired, at the end of the day I just want to crash and I nap pretty much every day also. Having an almost 19-month-old who just started walking is physically just demanding. He has a mind of his own, he is all over the place, into everything. Plus we're trying to homeschool obviously, and the burden of that is mostly on me. It is hard. I've still only gained 15 pounds give or take, but let me tell you, those 15 pounds are all in front! I've had some sciatic nerve pain for over a month now and it is getting worse. It's not bad when I'm sitting but when I'm lying down, carrying a certain uncooperative toddler, or walk a long ways it starts acting up. But I know it will be worth it. I am so excited to possibly have a take-home baby, I can't even tell you! It's going to be so strange to have a baby and then just bring her home the next day. And at this point, even though a NICU stay would stink, a baby at 33 weeks is so, so much better than a baby at 29 weeks. 33 weekers often stay in the NICU for only a few weeks! A far far cry from the 10 week stay we had with Ben.
D's school starts back up tomorrow and let's just say I think we are both ready. Ha!
Cassius told me the other day that he likes homeschooling better than regular school because he gets more breaks and more time to play and he likes me to be his teacher. But he also made sure to add "But I still like Mrs. Shields too!" (his teacher last year). That made me feel pretty good.
It's such a joy to teach my kids. Seriously. It amazes me how quickly they can pick up on something. We are working on some memorization, and after I read a poem to Cassius twice he already had it memorized except he made a mistake on one line. That is pretty darn amazing. The kid has an amazing memory.
Oh also we've taken a step back with handwriting. Cassius never learned how to hold his pencil properly, I can't even mimic the way he holds it because my fingers will just not do it. It is so strange. He told me that his friend at preschool taught him how to hold it like that, and he's been holding it that way ever since (!!!!). So I guess no one ever noticed. I watch him like a hawk when he is writing and correct him every time. He has gotten a lot better. We're also working on forming letters and numbers correctly, which he should be able to do at this point but again no one ever noticed in Kindergarten I guess, and so now he has bad habits. So we started a handwriting curriculum with him, which I wasn't planning on doing (I was just planning to do copywork). But it is fine and it really is getting better, I'm hoping we'll be back to copywork here in the next month or so. And all this makes me very happy that I am the one teaching Y to write and hopefully we will nip any problems right in the bud so we don't have to go back and fix things. He's doing very well so far.
And see, these are the reasons I love homeschooling! Correct what needs corrected, change what needs changed, individual attention to fix problems before they become habits. It is hard work, I'm not gonna lie. But I think it will definitely be worth it.
Mercedes has requested to learn how to read. I'm trying to figure out how exactly to fit this into our schedule or if it is really even feasible. She is nearly 4, and she is capable I think, but I am already struggling to get everything with the other kids done. The main problem is Ben, I'm not gonna lie. He wants to be involved but really can't do anything yet, won't sit still for read alouds but wants to crawl all over everybody, pull Mercedes' hair, eat the book, tear the pages, etc. It's a struggle. A lot of that stuff ends up happening at night after he goes to bed or at the table while he and/or they all are eating. So, I don't know. I think again that if we do start that it might be best to wait until after the baby comes so that we don't start learning and then take a long break and then have to re-learn what has been forgotten. She will be 4 by then.
Ah, the joys of schooling with 4, soon to be 5, children ages 6 and under. :)
We have finished 5 weeks of homeschooling and it has been going relatively well. I have had my first curriculum fail (Spelling Workout doesn't work, at least not for us!), now I'm trying to decide if we start with something else or wait until the boys are stronger readers to work on spelling. It seems like when I was in school we started in 3rd grade or so but that was a really long time ago and I might be wrong. At this point I'm thinking it might be best to wait until after the baby is born regardless. I did a survey on a popular homeschooling board and it was seriously a 3-way tie on whether people thought I should do spelling with C only, C and Y together, or wait to start spelling until later. So even the experts are not in agreement on this subject. :)
Speaking of the baby, she is staying put! I am 33 weeks pregnant, and honestly I'm feeling pretty good. I am tired, at the end of the day I just want to crash and I nap pretty much every day also. Having an almost 19-month-old who just started walking is physically just demanding. He has a mind of his own, he is all over the place, into everything. Plus we're trying to homeschool obviously, and the burden of that is mostly on me. It is hard. I've still only gained 15 pounds give or take, but let me tell you, those 15 pounds are all in front! I've had some sciatic nerve pain for over a month now and it is getting worse. It's not bad when I'm sitting but when I'm lying down, carrying a certain uncooperative toddler, or walk a long ways it starts acting up. But I know it will be worth it. I am so excited to possibly have a take-home baby, I can't even tell you! It's going to be so strange to have a baby and then just bring her home the next day. And at this point, even though a NICU stay would stink, a baby at 33 weeks is so, so much better than a baby at 29 weeks. 33 weekers often stay in the NICU for only a few weeks! A far far cry from the 10 week stay we had with Ben.
D's school starts back up tomorrow and let's just say I think we are both ready. Ha!
Cassius told me the other day that he likes homeschooling better than regular school because he gets more breaks and more time to play and he likes me to be his teacher. But he also made sure to add "But I still like Mrs. Shields too!" (his teacher last year). That made me feel pretty good.
It's such a joy to teach my kids. Seriously. It amazes me how quickly they can pick up on something. We are working on some memorization, and after I read a poem to Cassius twice he already had it memorized except he made a mistake on one line. That is pretty darn amazing. The kid has an amazing memory.
Oh also we've taken a step back with handwriting. Cassius never learned how to hold his pencil properly, I can't even mimic the way he holds it because my fingers will just not do it. It is so strange. He told me that his friend at preschool taught him how to hold it like that, and he's been holding it that way ever since (!!!!). So I guess no one ever noticed. I watch him like a hawk when he is writing and correct him every time. He has gotten a lot better. We're also working on forming letters and numbers correctly, which he should be able to do at this point but again no one ever noticed in Kindergarten I guess, and so now he has bad habits. So we started a handwriting curriculum with him, which I wasn't planning on doing (I was just planning to do copywork). But it is fine and it really is getting better, I'm hoping we'll be back to copywork here in the next month or so. And all this makes me very happy that I am the one teaching Y to write and hopefully we will nip any problems right in the bud so we don't have to go back and fix things. He's doing very well so far.
And see, these are the reasons I love homeschooling! Correct what needs corrected, change what needs changed, individual attention to fix problems before they become habits. It is hard work, I'm not gonna lie. But I think it will definitely be worth it.
Mercedes has requested to learn how to read. I'm trying to figure out how exactly to fit this into our schedule or if it is really even feasible. She is nearly 4, and she is capable I think, but I am already struggling to get everything with the other kids done. The main problem is Ben, I'm not gonna lie. He wants to be involved but really can't do anything yet, won't sit still for read alouds but wants to crawl all over everybody, pull Mercedes' hair, eat the book, tear the pages, etc. It's a struggle. A lot of that stuff ends up happening at night after he goes to bed or at the table while he and/or they all are eating. So, I don't know. I think again that if we do start that it might be best to wait until after the baby comes so that we don't start learning and then take a long break and then have to re-learn what has been forgotten. She will be 4 by then.
Ah, the joys of schooling with 4, soon to be 5, children ages 6 and under. :)
They start spelling in kindergarten here but it is words like the, a, an, cat, dog ect. I think they try to correlate the words to sounds they are currently learning to read. You might just be able to make your own spelling list this year. I also here great things about All About Spelling
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