The more I try...

Things have been sooo stressful around here.  Lil Man is doing FANTASTIC with his school work so far.  He is loving Easy Peasy's curriculum, which we are using the Getting Ready 2.  He has a lesson from the McGuffey's First Reader a day, learns a capital letter to write from a hooked on phonics video a day, and then we do SOTW.  He is really enjoying it.  Sophie on the other hand... ugh.  The Easy Peasy 5th grade curriculum was proving too hard.  The language arts is focused on poetry that year, which was just too much for her.  She has a very literal mind, and doesn't understand how poetry compares things (i.e. My love is like rose blah blah blah).  She was getting more and more frustrated with it and herself, which is not our style at all.  So, we went back and started over at Day One with Easy Peasy 4th grade.  It uses McGuffey's Third Reader, which I do like.  It is building vocabulary and helping her with writing skills.  So I refuse to complain.

Math remains ambiguous for us.  I do NOT like Easy Peasy's math curriculum ideas.  Sophie doesn't respond well to the "Watch a video, answer questions" at all.  And Lil Man has me stumped as to what to teach.  He needs to learn how to write numbers and recognize larger numbers in their written form.  But he is well beyond Kindergarten arithmetic.  He can add, subtract, and even understands multiplication and division MENTALLY.  As soon as you write an equation down, he's lost.  I may just grab them some workbooks from the Parent-Teacher Store and call it a day haha.

Every time I turn around, I'm drawn more and more towards unschooling.  Obviously its a win-win for the kids, as they're just living life like always.  The only problem is ME.  I feel like they need to be doing some sort of traditional stuff for it to be school, even though I've read over and over that it isn't necessary.  Unschooling does work.  And I've proved it to myself that it works for my kids.  Why can't I just let it be a that?  Ugh.

Outside Fun

        Well, I mailed out Sophie's portfolio this morning.  I spent half the night going back and forth on what to include and what to leave out, and what to say in the summaries I submitted for each of the 4 subjects.  I knew some of the things I definitely wanted to include, such as the dino trading cards she made and a sample of her recipes.  The rest didn't feel like it showed much.  I kept telling myself that I only had 2 and a half months of work to choose from, but still.... I had 2 writing examples.  Period.  And they were only a paragraph each.  UGH.  So hopefully, her extensive reading/resource list makes up for it!

        On the bright side of homeschool paperwork/red tape:  Lil Man has decided he is DEFINITELY staying home with Momma next year.  The thought of getting up before the birdies does not appeal to my little night owl lol.  I'm so happy!!  I already have a good idea what we'll be doing; I'm getting the Life of Fred elementary series, and we'll be working through that as a group, which I'm hoping will help reinforce Sophie's fundamentals.  I'm also  going to get Sophie a 5th grade workbook to fiddle with if she chooses.  We will also be doing our Social Studies side-by-side with Story of the World vol. 1.  I found a free pdf file that has the text, student book, and parent guide :)  It can be adapted for a multi-level instruction, which means less paperwork and fuss for me.  Science will continue to be child-led, with the both of them studying similar subjects at the same time, once again, easier for both of us.  And of course we will be reading, reading, reading.  Sophie is going to start writing more, hopefully, with the incentive of typing instead of "writing" things out.  Lil Man will be using a free phonics program I found online called FunFonix and I'm going to buy him the Kindergarten workbook for Handwriting without Tears.

         Its SOOOOO nice out today!!  The kids have been in and out all day, going between some more educational movies off Netflix (i.e. LeapFrog) and doing noisy, summer activities like playing Rock Band with my pots/pans/metal bowls.  We also used the play castle to dry some blankets, thus creating an even cooler play house lol!  It was all fun and games until Sophie got stung by a bee on the foot :(  She tends to overreact to these types of situations, even if it isn't her its happening to.  So the outside play ended abruptly for her and she seated herself (limping all the way) on the couch to watch Pocahontas and pouted.  Hopefully this doesn't ruin her for the rest of the summer, which is entirely possible unfortunately.  She's my little drama queen lol.

:( AWOL and sorry

        This is a quick update on the monkees....  I have been sooo sick.  I have kidney problems that occasionally raise their ugly heads, kidney stones being the most common.  The other day I was hit by a really bad attack of stones at 4am (after the hubby left OF COURSE) and I've been pretty well medicated since.  Because of that, we've done less around here.  Sophie has been helping out A LOT while I've been laid up in bed, feeling awful.  I explained about kidney stones, and why I was in so much pain, trying to lessen the scariness of the whole situation.  The boys both started a little game of what has kidneys lol, like cats, dogs, and horses, versus things that do not, like cars.

        Sophie hasn't done much other than play Animal Jam on NatGeo kids.  She likes it because she can be a variety of animals, she is socializing with other kids, and there are a lot of mini-games on there.  She's already learned several codes that you have to enter to do things, and I feel like its teaching her language arts skills in a very "Real" setting.  She is typing conversation back and forth with other kids her age and developing friendships.  She is on a limited account right now, but is requesting membership for her birthday.  Its $50 for a year of membership, which isn't too bad, but definitely a present type purchase.  If she is still super interested in it by July, I think I will get her the year package.

        Lil Man is becoming more interested in writing and reading.  He has been writing his name a lot, and does quite well.  He has also been asking how to spell other things, and how to make those letters, with minimal mistakes.  He is noticing words in his environment as well, and will ask me what things say, or will trace a letter in the air and ask what it is.  His natural curiosity is a great learning tool and I'm amazed by what he can absorb in a day.  I print out worksheets for him when he asks, but he quickly loses interest with those, so I'm not in any hurry to purchase a curriculum for him.  I wish he would stay home with me longer, but he is dead set on going to kindergarten next year.

      Hopefully I will be back to posting more regularly, again, but there are no promises with medical things lol.  I'm going to be researching our "curriculum" for next year in the coming months, so there will be a lot about that going.