School

I sit here on the bed at the end of a long but pleasant week.  We hit the ground running Monday morning, and I didn't catch my breath until this afternoon.  Football and basketball are going to make the first half of the year quite interesting.

This is my day,
6:45 wake up ( I know that is not too early, but it is too me)
7:00 wake Luke and Dania
7-7:30 coffee time with Nate (half the time)
7:30-wake up Austin and Evan
7:45 -Drive the 2 to school
8-8:30 coffee time with Nate on some of the days, or Bible time with the 2 big kids if he can participate.
8:30-12pm various school, I let them do what they want, but some things we have to plan, because they do them together.
12-1pm lunch break, this is where things have really worked for me this week.  During the lunch break I cook dinner.  I do all prep work and cooking and stick it in the fridge to pop in the oven later.  I cooked 4 big dinners on M-Thurs, and tonight we had all the leftovers.
1-3:30 school. I am spending the majority of the time doing school with them.  I am reading all of their assigned Readers and Read-Alouds, I am also reading the books for the Bible course.  I have my own account on Rosetta Stone so that I am learning Spanish along with them.  I grade Math, and go over History to make sure it is sticking.  I am not reading History, Poems, or checking their vocab.
3pm-Tuesdays and Thursdays I take Austin to basketball
3:30- small children arrive home on the bus.
3:30-4:30- talk to small ones and look over the stuff they bring home, clean kitchen, make sure they do homework, listen to Dania read.
4:30-final dinner prep
5:00-pick up Austin
5:30- eat dinner
6:15-leave to take Evan to practice (most of the week I stayed and watched, Thurs Nate rode him on the motorcycle and then came home, since the bike uses way less gas.
8:15 get home from football practice, eat snacks, clean up kitchen (kids that are home clean up dinner while I am gone), get small kids organized for next day, night grooming.
9:00 everyone upstairs, Luke and Dania lights out.
9:30 lights out for Evan and Austin
We go to sleep somewhere after this, but I can't remember it.

Thursdays are the really, really long days.  I leave the house at 8:25 and stay in the neighboring town till 1:30 while they take their writing class (Austin) and Science classes (both). Evan gets a ride home at 11:30 so he can do school at home. I have no one to carpool with Austin, so when Austin is done with writing he has an hour to kill before his science class, he does school in the car while I go to the pet store to get crickets for Rango, the new reptile of the family.

If I have to run errands in the day I have managed it an hour before lunch, so that if I run over the time I estimate I will be gone I am only missing some of lunch.

The things I really want to stick with are; making dinner at lunch, learning Spanish, reading all the novels, and keep their math graded, and discuss history.  The novels tie in with History that they are learning so it cements it better.

Well, we are off to a good start, but it is week one after all.

School sanity/insanity?

We just got back on Thursday from our beach trip to Hilton Head Island.  I may get around to posting the bad pictures (cause we got no camera that is worth a hoot) but that will have to wait.  When I arrived home the purchases that I made for the upcoming school year were awaiting me.  I took several scholastic financial plunges this year, and for the sake of glimpsing what school can look like when you homeschool for a long time, and things need to be tweaked now and then, I am revealing my thought process and how much it cost.

My first big plunge was that I finally decided to go with Sonlight for the core curriculum.  They are pricey, but my reasoning behind this was I wanted the 2 big boys to be able to do a lot of the same stuff, so that they can do school together.  Evan loves to read and I wanted some really good books for him, and Austin was totally burned out with his textbooks, worksheets and boring and random reading.  I found the perfect package with Core W.  It is one year condensed world history and I purchased the Lang Arts package that corresponds with the material.  Core W is good for people new to Sonlight, and it fit their ages well.  So my Sonlight includes Bible, Lang arts, strong History, Literature and Poetry, Reading(there are about 50 books that they will be reading), Vocab and Spelling(small amount so I am supplementing) and Geography.  This is costing around $650. 

The second plunge into icy waters was my Rosetta Stone Latin American Spanish 1,2,3 homeschool edition.  This I found on sale through Sonlight for $350.  The boys and I decided that this was going to have the most beneficial outcome, because Grandma speaks Spanish and we live in an area that has a high Spanish population, so there are many people to practice with, which helps cement a foreign lang. 

Our third plunge is Science.  As of yesterday I signed the boys up for classes in the neighboring town (25min away).  Austin will be doing Apologia Biology, and Evan will be doing Apologia Physical Science.  Evan is on the younger side (usually this is a 8th grade class with some 7th graders participating), but they were not offering a general science class, and since he was a good student I am hoping he can handle the class.  The class runs for 28 weeks, starting next Thursday and cost $360 for each student, plus the student Textbook for $43 each.  Thankfully they are on the same day, so that I don't have to expend so much gas driving that far twice a week, but it will be a long day.  Evan's class is from 9-11 and Austin's is 11-1pm.  I am going to pack lunches and do school in the car or at McDonald's with the kid not in class.  Science in the upper grades is one of those hard classes to teach (IMO).  It is hard to make it interesting unless you love it, it can be pricey to do all the labs, not to mention incredibly time consuming making sure you have supplies on hand, and I think it is much for enjoyable to do it in a group.

They are also doing Wordly Wise for vocab and spelling. (really like these workbooks) $12 per student
We are sticking with Math U See for mathematics. $75 and $25

Both boys are playing a sport.  Evan is playing football since this is the last year he can play for the Rec dept. and Austin is playing Basketball with the homeschool athletic league.  We decided that sports can play more of a vital role when kids are homeschooled for the purpose of physical activity, time management and responsibility to the team, and some time spent with peers in a controlled environment.  I love Austin's basketball coach and felt that he was an asset to Austin's character development.  Evan just really wanted another go at football.

We will be one of those families that I never thought we would be.  (the running like a chicken with it's head cut off kind.) With the 2 younger ones in public school still, I will be a slave to their schedule, while still running my own school.  

So that is our coming year in a nutshell.  I didn't even mention that I am trying to find electric guitar lessons for Evan (since he bought himself a guitar) and that Austin wants to take drum lessons or do martial arts. The martial arts are out for now, but I would like them both to have the music if possible.

Sad day at the salon

All summer long Dania has had her hair "au natural", she has not been to see the nice ladies since May. Her hair is very slow growing, I have no way to gauge how slow compared to other black girls, but compared to mine it is slow.  In the 18 months that she has been home, judging by how far I could stretch her bangs over her eyes, and by how far down her neck it was, I would say that it has grown no more than 4 inches, maybe only 3.  Her hair always seems to be everywhere, all over the counter, all over her shirts, and in her bed.  The ladies always stated that it was shedding, just like my hair comes out all over the shower and in our food.  At the same time that they told me of shedding, they warned me over breakage.  Well I have never been able to tell the difference.  Recently I had noticed that the hair on the back of her head was really short while the bangs were past her eyes.  She was getting excited about her hair growing out and would always show me how much it was growing.  I thought that the back was seemingly shorter because it is thicker and she doesn't brush and style it that much back there.  Well to end this painful story that no one but her and I seem to care about (and the ladies) she lost all her new growth to breakage on the back of her head, due in large part to the fact that she swam in chlorinated water and never washed it out of her hair IMMEDIATELY after swimming.  In the spring they had told me to wash her hair after swimming and get her a swimming cap (which I did on the later) but we rarely washed the chlorine out.  She swims and plays at the neighbors and sometimes I don't see her for 5 or 6 hours.  The cap helps some but water still gets up underneath it and half the time she had left it either at her grandparents or friends house or at home.  I feel sorta depressed over the whole thing, I guess for being so ignorant on black hair care.  There is soooo much to do that would never occur to me.  We are headed to the beach Sat, and I am dreading the pool at the resort.  Do you know how many times they get in and out of the water, and now in order to save the hair that is left I have to become the pool/shampoo/washer/rinser nazi. She is not yet handling all her other hygiene issues by herself yet and I hate having to hound her about this, reminding her to come home and rinse/wash after each dip in the pool, or having to send all the paraphernalia with her everywhere she goes and expecting that she will remember to use it. Ugh!