29 January 2010

Sorry I havn't posted in a while...

Somehow, time is getting away from me again which is why I’ve neglected to update. Between home and school my days are full; I’ll give you a run down on what’s been going on.

We’ve decided to turn the nursery into a homeschool/play room this weekend. We had the homeschool room in the bonus room the first year but when we thought we were going to get a baby we moved Turtle up to the bonus room, the school room into our, very small, sunroom and started calling her old room the nursery or baby’s room. The sunroom isn’t really much of a room. It is more like a wide hallway connecting the living room, breakfast nook and master bedroom. I can’t fit our large calk board anyplace in the sunroom so we have been using Bri’s play easel which is small. We could really use a little extra room and since we have it, we might as well use it. I have been going back and forth on this decision as it feels like giving up; but I think we need to pack up the baby stuff and move forward. Besides, if a baby came to us today, we wouldn’t put her in her own room for at least 6 month.

We have been working on the kitchen. We have a 1963 Flair oven that has been sitting in our garage. I love it and hate the glass top that was in the house when we bought it. We’ve had plans to do this for a while but at some point we thought we might sell. Then the economy took a dive so we took the house off the market. Now, we’ve decided, since we can’t sell we might as well continue with our plans. Moogoo works in metal and brought home a beautiful stainless counter top Wednesday night for our island. He is working on the tops for the rest of the counters but the island is beautiful! The Flair, meanwhile, needs a lot of cleaning and Moogoo has been working hard on that. If you don’t know what a Flair is, Samantha Stevens used one on Bewitched. Our plan is to replace the glass top with the Flair, cover all the counters with stainless, put in black and white checkered floors which will continue into the sun room, and find a unit (Hoosier, side board, credenza?) to store some small appliances and extras like our silver and placemats, and also give us a little more counter space.

We have been using our weekends wisely lately. We went to Rock Hawk and Rock Eagle weekend before last. They are both Native American effigies and parks. One weekend we went to the GA Aquarium and another we went to a Schoolbox store and exploring. We would like to go explore a nearby town over the weekend if the weather holds. They have a lot of antique shops and specialty type stores so besides being fun we will keep our eyes open for a unit for the kitchen.

School is going well. The kids love their new books and have been doing very well with them. I hadn’t done grammar with Butterfly because it was like pulling teeth. She just didn’t understand it. Now, it seems, she is ready. This is proof that if your child isn’t ready for something it is no use forcing her; simply put it away until she is ready. Part of the benefit of homeschooling is teaching to the individual child’s abilities. Not only does she understand grammar now, but she is excelling at it.

For Butterfly, I am using the following resources: Singapore Math, Spellwell, Ridgewood Grammar, Sylvan Vocabulary, and Spectrum Science. I use my own curriculum for history and geography that I’ll post one day.

For Turtle we use: Singapore Math, Vocabulary from Classical Roots, Rules of the Game (grammar), Power Basics Earth and Space Science (she is a little behind as she should be on Biology now) and Power Basics World History. Both girls have various reading, religion, art, social studies and values resources.

All in all, we are keeping busy and doing well. I am actually looking forward to cleaning out the nursery this weekend and getting the homeschool moved into that bigger room. Is it an end, a step forward, a closed door or an open window? I guess we’ll see; it isn’t for us to know what’s to be.

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