Funday!

Yesterday we all needed to take a school break. We have been working hard and that means we were all tired and the house was a huge mess. So we decided to clean up instead of do school for a day. So we rearranged furniture. Now, rearranging furniture is not cleaning. We are not finished. And I hate to say it, but I do not think that I like the new living room look. Which is hard to say for sure because I have a loveseat in front of my fireplace, a rocking chair in my hallway, an entertainment center that is on the way out in the middle of the room, and the new to us entertainment center not fully loaded, as it were. But even after the aforementioned furniture is in place, um, not sure. Which I hate to say, mostly because the furniture is heavy and I have been dragging it with Angel’s help. She might revolt if I move one more thing. SOOOOOOoooo, what does that have to do with fun you may ask? Nothing, but it is my blog so I added that bit just for me. 
Today we are going to try something really adventurous. Any of you who ever were in my youth group for any amount of time know that this could easily lead to disaster. I, along with my brave husband, am taking my kids… (dum, dum, DUMMMMM)…Bowling!! Now, that may not sound to disastrous to you, but then you may have never seen me bowl. I do not bowl badly. I earn an EPIC FAIL (which I hear in a deep voice in surroundsound) at bowling. I get excited if I knock down A pin, let alone all of them. Which I have only ever done a grand total of ONE time. And it was totally unfair that that one time it was not counted. I mean, ANYONE can get a strike in their own lane. I got a strike in the NEXT lane, which in my estimation should have been double the points seeing that it it about twice as hard to do on purpose. Which I did not do, but that was besides the point. My ball knocked down all of the pins. Usually a good thing. With points involved. BUT NO. I had to try again. And even if those points HAD counted I would have had to do the same at least 30 times to catch up to the next worsest score. Add to that the time I threw the ball backwards, well, you get the idea.

But at least no one was ever hurt when I bowled, unlike mini-golf or volleyball. However, the time I broke that poor girl’s arm at volleyball I was not even playing, so you can hardly fault the ball for that. Come to think of it, I at mini-golf, it was not the ball either. That was totally the fault of the club thingy. And I have only ever maimed children of youth leaders. So, if you are a youth leader who is planning on taking your children bowling in PA tonight- don’t. I obviously cannot control myself in a sport that involves me moving and a ball, so you have been warned. Stay home. Or bowl at your own risk. Or more accurately at the risk of your children, so I guess that totally depends on how much you love them, or if you happen to have any spares. (Notice how I worked in that nice bowling pun…)

Coming out of the colset, so to speak...

It is the time of year where I beging to think, in a mild panic, about portfolios, especailly the preparation of portfolios. I even begin to dream of portfolios. They dance around mockingly, sort of like derranged sugar plums, beconing me to turn the pages which are either stuck together or blank. Every year I get to the point where I am not sure if we did enough work, learned enough stuff, or did enough school. So even though I have been seeing our progress in the completed work, I get to be concerned about how much is left. We buckle down to finish strong. We find work we set aside to do later for one reason or another. I put together book lists, field trip logs, and video lists. Finish lap books and unit studies. Try to make something managable out of my jumbled log book, which is, um, around here somewhere. I know in my heart and in my head that the best thing to do would be Just Do IT! The whole year I could be all organized. Have all of this started and just add to it as we go. And that is always my attention. I start well. I have binders for the portoflios, and smaller binders for videos, websites, books and a fieldtrip log. I begin to add things as we go. But then, IT happens. Life, school, and the most wonderful thing about the freedom in the life we have choosen- field trips!Most people assume, of course, that when you HOME school you are, well, home. I have even had people make comments about this as though we perhaps store our children somewhere (the closet seems lovely ANY time of year) and pull them out to do school, putting them back when we are "finished" for the day. They don’t go out of the house, don’t play with other kids, don’t know how to act when given the opportunity for freedom. It makes sense on some level. It is right there in the name even. HOMEschool. But that is not the case. (And I can’t get the closet door to stay shut- too many of them in there…)

The biggest problem all my organization runs into is the field trip. We are going along well. Getting work done. Keeping paperwork up-to-date. Then our routine is disturbed by a trip that has been scheduled. We put aside what we are doing to finish on another day. But that other day already has plans for school work or another trip. So it gets pushed further down the list. Things pile up while we are busy living a homeschool life. And so in the spring I find myself trying to find, finish, polish, and even start over on some of these things.

We do 180 days of school work. Plus field trips, which is different from public school in that they count their trips as days. We could, but want to keep learning instead of putting it aside. So we finish. And sometimes even go beyond with a labook, unit study, or by checking out a whole bunch of books or videos to learn more about what we were studying. I know we could be ‘done’ with less work, but we enjoy learning. I will have a kid come find me to log onto a website to find more info, drag a school book after me to hear that one more time, be asked to read a ZooBook yet again, or be asked more questions than I know the answers to about something we are studying. So we look it up together and keep learning.

As for not being around other children, my kids play sports, do dance, are in plays, puppet team, drama team, and go to Good News Club, Sunday School, Children’s Church, Bible Club….. Sometimes we even let them out of the closet to have their frinds come over. And the home part, well, here is a completely incomplete list of the places we have been this school year, not even counting the entire month we spend at the beach. Here goes: Camping, Family Fun Day- twice, Community Days, Fundraisers (that they planned and helped lead), Lakemont, Idlewild, Flight 93 Memorial, MagiQuest (twice), Ripley’s Aquarium, panning for gems and dinosaur bones, boating (twice), fishing at the beach, fishing in PA, craft events (several times), Harvest Parties (2), Game night (many), Co-ops (about 8), Parades, Cantatas they performed in (2), Hershey, Harrisburg, the PA State Capital, The PA State Museum, Batfest at Lincoln Caverns, A Chinese New Year Party, plays, the Science Center, movies, parks, hiking, geocaching, train watching, more than one library, and several friends houses. And there are more to come. If only we STAYED home once in a while, perhaps I could get the house clean…

Getting Back on Track

This were going well around here. School getting done in a reasonable amount of time. An *almost* clean house. I was keeping up with the laundry as well as could be expected with this crew. Waking up with Andy was doing wonders for all of us. Then they started this sickness we couldn’t shake. For three weeks there was someone sick. Daily doctors visits. David in the hospital for a couple of days. Laundry piled up. School work went undone. The house got messier because I was using all my spare time to sleep. Then came Easter. Which meant more time off school, a busy schedule, candy fueled kids, and for some reason a messier house as we played the catch up game at school. How we can all be doing school for a few hours and the house is instantly a huge mess I am not sure. And we are starting to dig our way out from under the mess, the dirty laundry, the mountian of unfinsihed school projects and forgotten school work. So I am back to blogging!

We decided to hustle our school work along and have already finished science. We were so close and it feels sooo good to have something done. On to history. We will finish that in a few weeks, and have the last few weeks of bookwork include only math and language arts. What a joy to have more time to play outside! And with the sunshining we are looking forward to playground days and trips to the lake to go fishing. Camping out in the backyard and long hikes in the woods at Grandma’s house. Ahhh, summer is on it’s way!

And speaking of summer, and odd thing has happened here. Isaac has begun to wear clothing. Oddly enough after an entire winter of seeing him in shorts and no shirt he has decided to usher in the warmer weather with long pants and a long sleeved shirt. All black. With green frog rainboots and a black cowboy hat. And a light saber. He calls himself the space cowboy. Even moment of his free time he and Faith are building an obstacle course in the back yard for their spaceship. To practice flying. So when they fly in outer space they can easliy avoid meteorites, other spaceships, and missiles. All while screaming YeeeHaaa!! And Faith, of course, has been wearing brown pants, an inside out off white shirt (it was white but we are going on day 3), and a long flowing brown hooded robe. The customary outfit of any Jedi in training.

Angel has been spending here time with a book. She curls up all over the house or yard, which ever is Faith and Isaac free, and reads. And has an apple. Or chocolate. If it is not her book, it is her DS. And David loves her DS because she has Nintendogs. He follows her around barking at her no matter which game she is playing. To him, all dogs are Max. So he calls her puppy Max. Her puppy’s name is Daisey. And he pets the DS. And barks at it. Even when it is turned off.

Now that he is over being sick, he has been running all over the house terrorizing everyone and everything. He took a toy from Isaac and ran from him. As Isaac caught up to him, David threw himself to the floor and played dead. Very dramaticaly. Have no idea where he gets that. Yesterday he began talking more. Well, that’s not accurate. He was talking a whole lot, but yesterday he finally settled on the English language a little more as opposed to the Klingon-Chinese blend, neither language being one that I am fluent in. He said BE-MAN-NUM-A. In a loud and strangly deep voice. It sounding like he was trying to mind control me, and what with his sister being a Jedi, that seems likely.) Repeatedly until we gave him a bemannuma. Which he rubbed on Isaac’s head before eating. Isaac didn’t seem to mind beacuse, as he said, he does use apple shampoo, and banana and apple make a good kabob. David has also said cheese (chee), Cheerio (cheerio), cracker (crackie), chocolate (chocky), and numanum (any food). He can also say our names, night night (ni-ni), I love you ( i lalala eww), bye (bye-bye-bye-bye-bye) and duck. I think he means duck. He might mean bath. Ohh, and NO. He uses that one a lot. As a filler or some sort of vocal coverall . It goes nicely with everything at 15 months. (Notice a vocal pattern here? He likes food.)