Well, hello there!

Yes, I know, I know. I don't keep up with anyone. However, while Alex, James and Kate are watching a show, and William and Ben are still asleep, I thought I'd share my cup of morning coffee with you and catch up a bit.

Its amazing how life can keep you busy with the mundane. Once Ben was about a month old, I was finally able to attack homeschooling with vigor. In all honesty, this is the first year that we've done homeschooling in a more sit down, traditional way. Alex is now settling down more, and can actually handle sitting down and doing work, which he just couldn't do up until this point. Mind you, he doesn't exactly shout for joy when I say its time for schoolwork, but what kid rolls out of bed with a smile on his face and a spring in his step every morning to get to school! James is a bit more willing, unless I have to pry him away from something he's "creating". They're doing well with it, though, and at the moment, its just nice to finally be in a routine. This is the first year that I've been faithful about sitting down on Sunday and writing out our week's schedule for lessons, and it feels good. I know I'll be tweaking as time goes on, and I'd like to make science more of a priority, but I'll get to that next week. If you are interested, here is what we are working on right now:

Math: Alex, James and Katie are all using Right Start Mathematics. I had gotten the program for Alex when he was in Kindergarten, but it didn't go well for us. First of all, its very involved for the parent. Ironically, it should have been easier for me when I only had three children, but mathmatically speaking (is that a word?) Alex was already past this level, since he's more mathematically inclined. Add his "not going to sit still for anything" phase, and it was a recipe for disaster. I put it away and used regular math workbooks in the next couple of years, but I came to hate them. I think Alex did, too. With the "regular math", the way we learned it, I felt that he was just doing math for the sake of doing math. Yes, there is logic involved, but Right Start was designed after the way they teach math in Japan and China, and there is more strategy involved with teaching math. Everyone I know who uses this has raved about how well its worked for them, and the kids are enjoying it so far.

Language Arts: This was tricky. I taught Alex to read using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It worked, but he was lacking a good phonics base, which I realized when I noticed he couldn't spell. According to my mom, his spelling was on par with other kids at the beginning of third grade, but it was frustrating to know that we had gone over many rules that he seemed to forget when writing. Everything was phonetic. I asked around my friends, and decided to use the Explode the Code books with all three kids. I started right at the beginning with Alex and James, and we're flying through it, with the intent on hitting all the basics. Once they get tripped up on something, I'll know what they missed and we can concentrate on that. While they can read (and are reading at the same level), I know they have holes in their phonics, so I want to make sure we get a firm foundation before we go any further. Katie is using Get Ready for the Code and is loving it.

One of the best things I've found for us is the Evan Moore workbooks. This is nothing new, as many teachers use these in the classroom. What I like is that it hits the basics on many topics, and the lessons are broken up into what to do each day of the week. In fact, its not much work for each day, but depending on what you're working on, its a constant drum beat to help them remember what they're working on. Alex is currently using they're grammer book, and both he and James are using the handwriting practice (they really needed work in this area!!) and Daily Geography Practice. I'll get to history in a moment, but this book is great because its great practice in reading all kinds of maps.

History: We're doing both world history and American history at the same time. For World history, we're reading The Story of the World. I'm having Alex narrate the stories back to me to make sure he's retaining them, and we're also doing activities from the accompanying activity book. For Early American History, we're using the American History Study guide from Beautiful Feet. What I particulary love about this is that instead of learning history from a textbook, we are reading actual books on each subject, which is far more engaging. The study guide starts with Leif Erikson and goes straight through Lincoln. I also plan to supplement and learn about certain people that are mentioned in the Virginia Standards of Learning as being on the curriculum for this year for social studdies for the boys.

Religion: James is making is First Holy Communion this year, so he's enrolled in the CCD program at Church. At home, both he and Alex are working their way through the Baltimore Catechism. We're also reading about the saints from Fr. Lovasik's books for children, which are wonderful.

Science: Again, I've got a great Evan Moore book. What I'd like to do starting next week is pick up books at the library over the weekend pertaining to the story that is introduced each week in the EM work and delve a bit more deeply into it. For instance, this past week's work was about thunderstorms, but I don't think Alex got much out of it. Some great books with pictures taken from the heart of a storm will be far more interesting!

Art: The kids are contstantly drawing around here, but I've decided to make Fridays our art day. This way, we have a certain day when I'm forced to pull out the messy stuff (paints, etc) and really our hands dirty creating things. I picked up Museum ABC. We're going through, letter by letter, and looking at famous pictures from the Met pertaining to each letter (eg: A is for Apple, with examples of apples from four different types of art) and we do our own interpretation of them.

Wow. This has gotten long! I'll get to more day to day "what we've been up to" stuff, but as it is, the kids have to get some work done, and I haven't eaten yet! I hope I didn't bore you with our schooling details, but I know I always find it intersteing to see what others are doing. Catch ya later!