I'm a horrible blogger!!!!

       Its official, I suck at blogging.  I honestly think I just have sooo much other stuff going on that I forget to blog.  So from here on out, I'm going to make this a weekly thing, and will write every Wednesday, rain or shine lol.  I think its important to have the blog, and to document our life, so I need to make the effort.

      In other news, we received Sophie's portfolio assessment and..... (drum roll please)......  She is a fifth grader now!!!  Woo hoo!!!  I'm so proud of her!  I really feel like we've made great strides in the last couple months together.  She is really retaining the things we learn about, and that's what is important.  So, we'll stick to what we've been doing, and go from there.


      A little info on what we've been up to:  We have been doing typical summer type activities.  We have been out on the boat once now.  Lil Man went into the water for real this year, the first time everrrr, so that was a big deal.  He finally realized that life jackets actually do their job and keep you up lol.  We also did a little real life math at Chuck E. Cheese over the weekend.  We bought 180 tokens that had to be split up, and then they had to split the tickets 3 ways as well.  We visited Cabelas for the first time and I love that place.  They have  a TON of stuffed animals (the real taxidermy type) that the kids were totally in to.  And not just the animals in our area either... there was even a polar bear!  It was too rainy and nasty to do much else, but we had fun with our indoor activities just the same.  Sophie has been reading like crazy lately.  We purchased the 50 books for $50 from scholastic and she is thrilled!  There were two scary stories books that she read the first couple days, and then you read two A-to-Z Mysteries books, and now she's reading "Super Fudge" by Judy Blume.  I love that she's reading so much!

      I don't know what we have in store for the week coming up yet.  I'd like to get outside with the kids and do some exploring, if the weather will hold up.  We've been trying to be quiet for Gary, since he is back on night shift.  That's hard when you're only 5 and 3!  Sophie on the other hand has no problem as long as she can stick her nose in a book or computer lol.  I guess we'll continue to play it as we go ;)

Notebooking!!!

        I have been turned on to a whole new way of keeping track of progress when homeschooling... NOTEBOOKING!!!  I think its the coolest lol.  It's a lot like lapbooking, but in my opinion, a lot easier.  You can find a bazillion free templates and tutorials online, and I found a couple tutorials that show you how to make your own using PowerPoint or in my case LibreOffice Impress (I'm cheap!).  I have been experimenting for the last couple days and thinking of what I could make now, without the books I'm going to be using next year, to make some for the kids.  I finally decided to make either an alphabet book or a number book for Lil Man.  He's been wanting to learn how to write the letters and names etc lately, so I don't feel like I'm pushing to awful much by making him a little book up to learn them.  I was having some problems, creatively speaking, on the alphabet one, and ended up finding a template I like better than my own attempts online.  The number one, though, was a lot easier.  He already knows his numbers to see them and can count pretty high, so really, all he needs to learn is how to write the number, and recognize it's word form (i.e FIVE versus 5).   Using the tutorial I found by Notebooking Nook on YouTube I created a title page and number pages up to Ten/10.  It would be helpful to know that you can download and install all kinds of fonts online any more.  I found one called Print Dashed on 1001freefonts that looks just like the dashed letters you see in "Learning to Write" type workbooks.  I'm pretty darn proud of myself!  I'm going to use Notebooking to keep record of our learning next year with both kids.  It seems like a heck of a lot more fun than regular old worksheets and essays etc.  And it helps to make things more adaptable between the two of them, which means less money spent on my end.  I'm going to attempt to add the pdf file for the number notebook I created on here, in case anyone should come across this blog post and want it.

Number Notebook

        On the "unschooling" front, the kids are mad about Netflix here lately.  We've watched LeapFrog videos, National Geographic documentaries, and who even knows what else.  We have it on our Wii, Sophie has it on her iPod, and the kids LOVE it!  I know for a fact, one of the documentaries was about sharks because Sophie was asking to look things up on the computer about them.  She has always liked sharks (from a distance! lol) and I'm glad that she is still learning new things about them :)  We have also been learning a lot about baby animals, raccoon's in particular.  My mother in law found an orphaned raccoon the other day and is keeping it for a pet.  It's barely a month old and still nursing from a baby bottle, with a homemade animal formula.  The kids all love the little critter, and I think his/her name is going to be Smokey, a play on Smokey and the Bandit.  It's very friendly and cuddly.  I do believe we are attached already!

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.

Things you learn the HARD WAY

           Its been a rough couple days for me.  My allergies are killing me, the kids are stir crazy, its raining like its monsoon season outside, and I have been getting a lot of negative feedback from "people" about homeschooling and my methods.  Criticism can be a great thing, really... It helps you to see what you're doing wrong, it shows you where you need improvement, but it also makes you question the things you are doing, even if it is working.

        Look, Sophie is LEARNING the way we do things.  No, she isn't writing essays or memorizing useless facts; maybe we DON'T pour over textbooks for hours at a time.  But she is learning.  She reads about dinosaurs, sea otters, and traveling West in the old days.  We color pictures, play with homemade play dough, and bake cakes.  We look at leaves, and dig up worms.  We take trips, and google facts.  We are having fun and figuring out life.  Get the heck over it!

A new Sensory Bin and making Sophie's Portfolio

          I made the kids a new sensory bin the other day.  They had taken the rice one outside and scattered it all over the yard (planting rainbow seeds!), so I had to go hunt down my container and lid and wash them up first.  I have been seeing tons and tons of "recipes" for Cloud Dough, which is basically home made moon dough.  It was super simple, just a bag of flour and a cup or 2 of oil.  You can use any oil you want.... baby oil, vegetable oils, olive oil etc.  I had almost a whole bottle of baby oil so I used that, and had to add some veg. oil to get to the right consistency.  I also added a couple drops of tea tree oil.  We like the way it smells and it deters insects.  A word of warning with cloud dough is that it is MESSY.  Like every where messy.  And I couldn't figure out how to color it, so we kept it white.  The kids got some measuring tools, but quickly decided it was more fun to use dino figures and cars to make tracks in the fluffy dough.  This started a discussion on fossils and how they are formed.  Sophie was pretty into that, of course.  She's interested in anything from that period in history lol

       We've reached the point in the "school" year where I have to provide the county with some sort of evaluation proving I have taught her something productive.  We have chosen to do a portfolio, which I will send to a certified evaluator.  She will look through Sophie's work, decide whether she thinks she has learned enough to go into the 5th grade, and then I will submit her decision to the Board of Education.  I'm a little nervous, having never done this, but I feel confident in what we've achieved in the last couple months.  We have quite a few worksheet type things, and Sophie's reading/resources list is long.  She has read a ton of books and browsed many websites.  I'm going to have to make a run to walmart or CVS to print out some photos to include, but other than that, we have everything ready to send.  We have to turn in the evaluation by June 30th to the board, or they get all butt hurt, and I'm going to go head and send in my NOI (notice of intent) at the same time, through a certified letter.  We're going to continue to learn through the summer, since everything we do is learning, and we'll be reading A LOT.  I have some really cute ideas set aside for making lapbooks to go along with the Little House books we'll be reading, and to explore the West (think Lewis and Clark).  I think we'll do a lot of Math review over the summer too, because I feel like she's still leery of multiplication and division.  I'm excited!!

Time and Money

       Its funny how things can suddenly just "CLICK" sometimes.  Sophie has always struggled with time increments (like decade, century, minute/hour) and money (remembering that a quarter equals 25 cents for example).  I think that's due in part to the weird spiral method math curriculum that the school was using.  They would just touch on a subject before going to something else, and Sophie just can't learn like that.  I never really made a big deal out of it, just correcting her mistakes or explaining when she would ask.  Out of habit, I often refer to times as "quarter of" or "half past" and that ALWAYS tripped her up.  She would pause and ask me what that meant, every time, and I would have to explain over and over.  The same with phrases like  "3 decades" or "several centuries ago"; she just didn't get it.  She's done a little better lately with money, mostly because I've been giving her all my change and she is big into spending her own money on things.  If she has a pile of change, she has to count it all up to figure out how much she has and what she can buy.  She's always been a saver (when she was 6 or 7, she had saved every bit of change and money given to her and had $150!), and loves to splurge at Dollar Tree haha.  Well, tonight we were watching one of our typical scifi like shows (Monster and Mysteries in America) and a man said he had been dealing with something for 4 decades.  Sophie immediately asked me if that meant 40 years... yay!!!  I didn't make a huge deal though, because it tends to embarrass her.  I just said yep, that's right, and we continued watching.  That really might not seem like a wow moment to many people, but it is to me.  Anything math related really comes hard to her, even when it doesn't seem math-y.  Its almost like any time a teacher even mentioned that it was in her math text, she just put up a mental wall or something.  And that's hard for ME, because I love math.  My brain just makes little math equation out of everything.  She's also doing better with things like minutes and hours because of the TV guide thing with our cable.  She can pull up the guide and see how certain shows are 30 minutes (e.g 8:00-8:30) and that would be a half block compared to say an hour long drama show, or even a quarter of a movie.  Its a very visual way for her to see it.  Fractions kind of clicked for her that way, too, when I happened across fraction strips online and showed her.  Now, she will say, "Good Luck, Charlie is on for 30 minutes, and there are 3 of them on until Daddy is home, so that's an hour and 30 minutes."  Another big step for us, that maybe most wouldn't understand :)

        More cooking stories!  We made no-bake cookies yesterday.  They're super simple and have a lot of "easy" measurements that the kids helped me with.  Sophie can whip out ingredients and measurements like nobodies business now, when it comes to cooking.  Also, I arranged them on one long piece of wax paper to set up, in equal rows.  I showed the kids how to count in a fast, easy way by saying "there are 3 rows, with 5 in each row.  That means 3 5's or 3 x 5, which is 15.  So we have 15 cookies."  Doubt this stuck with them, and I didn't really go into more than what I just said, but maybe if we do enough visual things like this, it will eventually "click" like other things have this week.  FYI, those things went FAST.  No more cookies :( lol.

        Sophie has been a texting/emailing demon lately.  She is keeping in contact with several of her public school buddies via Facebook.  I love that they are at an age where written communication is possible.  Sophie isn't a phone person (comes by that honest... I hate to talk on a phone!), but is such a social butterfly.  She has especially been talking to her BFF Makayla, and I've read quite a few of these convos (with Sophie's permission!).  They both type out all their words, no "text language" of u for you or ur for your etc.  Sophie is very good at typing out things, waaaay better than her actual writing of her thoughts.  We still struggle with her putting her words and ideas on paper.  I still blame this on being told that her written assignments were "bad" and that she wasn't good at it.  I wish teachers could understand how much damage they do!!  We have been using the Rory's Story Cubes a lot and I can't express how much I love, love, love these!!  A big thanks to a couple friends for pointing me in their direction (Felica :))).  Sophie can tell some pretty imaginative and awesome stories VERBALLY, but will freeze when asked to write a story on paper.  Something we will continue to work on, but I refuse to push her on.  I feel like if I push her with anything, she will just push back, and that helps no one.  We are still in the stages of "de-schooling" and unlearning all the bad habits and ideas that public school instilled in us both.

        Lil Man has been doing a lot this week, too, besides being a meanie.  He's rebelling a lot, and trying to push our limits.  I'm working on saying NO less and trying to pay him more one on one attention, because I think that's part of his problem.  Typical middle child syndrome lol and he's just naturally a very strong willed person, like his Daddy.  He has been talking about rhyming words a lot, and will ask me if things rhyme.  Usually they do not.  He confuses rhyming words with words that have the same beginning sounds.  Example: he will say, "Do SPOON and SPILL rhyme?" and I will say "No, but SPOON and MOON rhyme."  We'll go back and forth like this forever, and eventually, he will come up with a rhyming set, but most likely, the second word will be a nonsense word.  Its a long road, and I keep reminding myself that he is just five, and really good at math type things.  Its only normal that he isn't strong in all areas.

       We haven't really been focusing on too many "science" things lately.  We've broached the topic of anatomy when I was sick and the kids were curious about what was wrong with me.  Sophie wasn't as interested in this as Lil Man, and I didn't really want to get too awful in depth with him.  Sophie is still super into dinosaurs and reads about them a lot in her free time.  Lil Man has been investigating the world outside, since the weather has been nice, and will often ask me to identify leaves or other plants.  Max is also into the whole, "What is this?" thing when bringing me flowers from outdoors. 

     We have talked about the government briefly when we were still going the textbook route.  Sophie tends to zone out, and I don't blame her, its BORING.  She did really enjoy a supply and demand worksheet we did, and lately we've discussed some things similar to that.  Being a pre-teen girl, she really GETS the whole concept of it, and it appeals to her because of her desire to open a bakery.  We've talked about things she would like to sell in her shop, and how a lot of people really liked our snickerdoodle bars, so they would sell fast, etc.  We've also been talking a lot about our present government and how she doesn't agree with a lot that's going on.  Sophie is very into the Hunger Games; she's seen the first movie and read about half the first book.  She's been talking about how she can see how things eventually led to how they are in the story.  Very intuitive of a 9 year old I think. 

     Just a quick catch-up post since I've been so random about my posting lately.  Its been hard, being sick and trying to keep up with house work and the family.  I need more hours in the day!!!

:( 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.