And Back To School We Go.....

So when I woke up this morning I was sooo excited to get back into our normal school routine (minus getting Hayley off to school as she still has a few days left of winter break). The kids are just finally starting to sleep in, lol. No, no, no! Time to wake up and get this day a-going. Ty wasn't too bad to wake up, of course, he was asleep by 10pm last night. Anyone who knows Ty knows that is WAY early for him. I guess his inner clock knew Mom would come a-knockin' earlier than usual this morning.

Ty actually was a bit excited to get school going himself. He ate his breakfast while I did some tidying up and then he was ready to go. "Mommy can we start with English?" Who could resist? Not me! Fortunately he kept that motivation the entire time. No whining, no complaining, no stalling. Just "get 'er done" kind of work. Lots of effort and eagerness to answer my review questions, lots of effort to get the answers right the first time, even asked for more math because I only gave him a 25 problem review sheet. Are you kidding me? Am I dreaming? I really expected some resistence to the routine since we haven't done it in a little over a week and there are all of these shiny new toys to play with. But, boy was I wrong.

I think we will spend our afternoon at the community center getting in some exercise and swimming. The weather is chilly and I don't think I could do anything outdoors at this point. I am really looking forward to spring where we can do more outdoor activities for longer periods of time.

All in all, a great way to spend a Monday. No complaining from this homeschool Momma!

So where have you been????

Hmmm, where to start……

How about August, where I left off.  Well we really got into a routine with homeschoooling.  We both love it, making it much easier to adapt to the things that we needed to change.  As our routine balanced with Ty’s school, Hayley’s schedule on public school, football and cheerleading I had to put off some things. This blog ended up being one of them.  Now that Christmas has come (and sadly gone) the schedule is lightening (at least till softball and baseball start).

As I said before we are REALLY enjoying homeschool.  Ty has really excelled at Math and English.  English was a surprise.  I didn’t realize he would enjoy that so much.  Some changes we have made to the curriculum are that we are only using MFW for the history and geography.  I love that aspect of their curriculum.  We also read the literature that is included with the program.  We do use their Bible lessons as a guideline but I felt it was a little light for him and have given it more substance.  We have taken up Apologia’s Exploring Creation through Zoology 1 for science.  I LOVE IT!! I was really struggling getting into the MFW science curriculum and it made me very nervous about Apologia’s just because I felt like I was going to have to force myself to teach it though I was bored.  Well let me tell you how wrong I was!  I really enjoy his Zoology.  The reading is so easy and yet interesting.  The experiments do not require a lot of things you wouldn’t normally have around the house but they are still so cool to do.  I don’t think we have made any other changes to our curriculum.  I guess that is a good thing since it is time to start thinking about what we are going to do in August.  I will have 2 that are homeschooled next year.  I am REALLY looking forward to that.  I miss Hayley every day while she is at school.  I  just want her home experiencing the things that Ty and I are.

I also learned of a homeschool co-op not too far from our house so I will be checking into that for the kids next school year. 

Hayley will be playing softball again here in the next few months.  Ty has decided he may want to try his hand at baseball also.  This will be his first year playing baseball.  He did have one year of T-Ball but that was all, it didn’t really hold his interest.  I don’t know what he will think of it this time around.  He is very hard to read until he tries something.

We have had a colder than usual winter here with lots of snow.  The kids have enjoyed their snow days, spending them sledding and tubing.  The snow has been real dry so very hard to build a snowman.  They did finally get one built but it was a stout little thing. We are looking forward to more snow in January and having more fun.  I think we’ll get it, lol.

We are also beginning planning for our summer vacation.  Hmmm, where to go?  I don’t know, we shall see.  Lots and lots going on here, but looking forward to more time to post on here as I do enjoy it.