Listening in...

DD loves the Boxcar Children series.

She is 7. I am very type-A, so skipping something KILLS me, but I have been working really, really hard this year to let things go! I think I will take a black marker and cross out every clock in her books so I'm not tempted to force her to do them for awhile. I guess I feel like I'm doing her an injustice, but I truly know I'm not. Gah. Sometimes homeschooling can be so hard on us parents ;)

Someone please have a great resource for telling time/clocks! We literally do clocks every single day, and have done so for well over a year now. DD cannot seem to grasp telling time. Multiplication...no problem. Adding/subtracting numbers in the thousands...easy peasy. Telling time/working with clocks...melt down...every.single.day. Last week, we took a break from our normal math to break out the old Judy clock and Math Mammoth time worksheets, which went fine. Back to normal school this week, and she is having issues all over again. I get her having issues with time lapse problems, because that is very new, but she can't even properly tell time. If I sit and walk her through the steps, she can sometimes do it, but I only have so much patience for something that I literally teach her every day. And she hates math to begin with because she has to actually think, so that doesn't help any:( She is a great kid! But this is driving me crazy. Advice, encouragement, etc. much appreciated.

Ok, so this may not really help, but Friends and Heroes is releasing a Bible Study in December for kids. DD and I just finished the one week preview and she loves it, so I will be purchasing it when it is out. It doesn't really cover the whole Bible (focuses more on stories in the Bible and bounces between OT and NT), but I did really enjoy teaching it and she loved doing it. We were doing Bible Road Trip, which was nice, but F&H just fit her better. She is a fluent rider, so I just printed out a Bible chart with all the books and chapters, and she has her own Bible reading time in the AM where she works her way through. We then talk about what she read if she wants to share.

We have been cleaning ALL day today :/ Literally, we got home from church and have been cleaning ever since. And our house still feels like it needs work. On the bright side, DH cleaned our bathroom today, so I didn't have to do that part! Dishes are nearly caught up (only a few things need to be hand washed and I'm currently waiting on dishwasher to finish up). We also found our remote control, which had been missing for a month ;) DH has already prepped dinner and is currently taking a nap with our DS (3.5), so when we get home from church tonight it won't be hard to get together. He has also promised to take the kids outside tomorrow to do yard work so I can get lesson plans and laundry done! I'm off tomorrow, so it is just my 2 kiddos. We are also starting Medieval History soon, so I need to get DD's learning shelf set up. Soror, I think you may have passed the PMS on to me ;)

Mrs.Robinson - yes, days with littles can be tough;) And boys can be particularly challenging, particularly my oldest ds. That little boy can get into more mischief than I ever thought possible. Good thing he is so darn cute;) Jean, hope you are doing better. Yesterday was a much better day! School was done and our attitudes were much better. We had history yesterday, which is one of dd's favorite subjects, so that helped. Around nap time, my oldest ds developed a fever. He ended up in bed with us all night with a fever of 104 :/ Needless to say, I did not get any sleep last night, but have decided we are still going to have a great day. DD is a bit upset that we are missing our weekly art/piano/playtime meeting, but I told her she can have a short school day today to make up for it. DS is allowed to do whatever he wants with the iPad since he feels so yucky and keeps me from needing to carry him constantly. We are off schedule of course, but since we do a routine more than set times, that is ok. I am skipping some of our usual routine stuff to accommodate my little man. Hopefully, I will get some cleaning in today, but I'm going to not stress out about much. Hope you all have a great day!!

Our day was pretty much a complete flop yesterday. The house is still a mess (one load of dishes done), the pile of give-away items is still unsorted, and school was...ugh...I can't even think about it. And then the finger incident. That poor finger bled soon much. I have resolved that today will be a better day! I did manage to get sensory bottles for the little crowd made yesterday, and that was a hit. DD and I are getting ready to work out this morning. DD has literally forgotten everything she has ever learned about clocks and telling time. After much yelling (then guilt) and frustration from both of us, I stopped school early yesterday. I printed off all of the Math Mammoth time worksheets we needed to review and put a hold on her regular math program to focus on time this week. After venting to DH last night, he calmly suggested I break out the little clock manipulative we have. DD is only 7, but has always acted wayyyy older than she is, and I often forget how young she truly is. I am going to focus on making lessons fun this week. My 2-year-old is doing fine;) He didn't even cry, and I was able to stop the bleeding. I also searched their room for any other hidden items. Those boys... Jean, I hope you feel better! soror, I hope you feel more focused today. It is hard to have a good day when we feel bleh. I blame it on the sugar, too.

bzymama23, we pretty much do the same thing you do for reading. We have an assigned literature book of my choosing (although I do make a master list and let dd choose what order she reads them in), and then she has 20-30 minutes of free reading. For literature reading, I have her keep a spiral notebook and she fills it with random stuff about the book. Sometimes, she draws me a cartoon based on what she read. Others, I have a question written down about plot, characters, or setting (simple, like tell me about your favorite character and why you like him/her, what is the main problem of the story and how do you think it will be solved, etc.). We keep it low-key. I do ask for full-sentences, but I have stressed that there isn't really a right or wrong answer...I just want to know her thoughts on the book.

Yesterday, my house did not get cleaned. We did go through both kid's rooms and purged a ton of stuff. I literally have the floor of my front room filled with toys needing to be sorted into sell/give away/throw away. I also made a trip to the craft store to purchase items for fall sensory bottles for the 3-under-3.5 crew;) Having DH home did not help yesterday;) I was constantly being asked to come snuggle on the couch and watch TV (who can turn that down?!) or make some food item for somebody. The Science Shelf is all set up, too, so that was a win. Today is our normal school schedule. We just wrapped up morning time, complete with reading aloud one chapter. Moving on to daily work while I try to keep the 3 little ones occupied while trying to clean something. Oh, and my 2.5 year-old just cut a good bit of the tip of his finger off with nail clippers...I don't even know where he found them!!! Oh vey...

:lol: Sounds about right here, too;) Except it was some butterfingers bars, crunch bars, and twix (all minis, but still!). Stupid Halloween candy. I have NO self-control.

Hi, all! We had a great weekend, filled with a fun Halloween night at our neighbors, followed by a birthday part and a trip to the Farmers Market on Sunday. DH made a delicious dinner and we ended up skipping church (both am/pm services) due to the b-day party and our yummy dinner ;) Today, I'm prepping for our school week. Monday is the kids TV day, so they are watching Garfield right now while I clean/lesson plan/check computer. My goal today is to finish setting up our Science shelf (ended up buying Earth Science Task Cards bc somebody HAD to mention them on another thread). DD is thrilled with the shelf so far and has already gotten into the library books. I also plan on doing a cloud demonstration with them at some point. Setting up sensory bottles for the 2.5 and 1.5 year old is also on the plan for today. I really, really need to prep for the week and CLEAN my house...it is horrible at the moment. Mostly the bathrooms...I loathe cleaning bathrooms. And mopping...I hate that, too. DH is home Mondays, so that really helps. We (ahem...I) was complacent with read-alouds last week, so my primary goal is to get back on our morning routine. I would also like to knock out a sewing project today. I have several half-done and really want to finish them by December. Hope everyone has a great day today!!

No. The ones from Creek Edge Press! They are exactly what I was trying to do on my own without much success (not enough time to plan with 3 littles underfoot). We are using them a bit different. DD picks which card she wants to do, and we do it. We are adding notebooking pages from Considering God's Creation when we have them, but the task cards are great alone, too!! http://shop.creekedgepress.com/Science-and-Grammar-Task-Cards_c16.htm

So, I should not have read this thread. Someone posted about task cards, and I just had to check that out. I ended up buying the ones for Earth and Space Science and I plan on buying the Medieval ones in a few weeks when we start SOTW2.

Hmmm... We switched from Elemental Science to Considering God's Creation with a bunch of supplementing. ES was great, but dd was really interested in a few areas so we chose to focus on those this year. I may be adding some cursive practice into our day. Other than that, our year has gone surprisingly smooth!

Can you link to this?? Sounds interesting!! I have yet to go over to digital planning because I much prefer to right everything down! Yesterday was a pretty good day! We finished daily subjects (math, grammar, literature, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Spelling) and worked through our Loop A. We did writing, logic, word problem, history, geography, and Rod & Staff Grammar (personally requested by dd in addition to our main program...so I added it to loop). We did not paint our pumpkins yesterday...maybe we will get to it today. DD is starting her daily subjects now and DS is drawing pictures on a mini chalkboard. I'm drinking a cup of coffee (instant because our coffee pot broke) and eating chocolate chip waffles (the toaster kind ;) ). Sahamamama, I hope you are feeling better!! sorer, hot chocolate sounds delicious!! Jean, hopefully your stress level will back down!!

Wow, you guys have busy, interesting lives:) I always look on this thread, but never post. So here goes: We are on week 2 of our new loop schedule, which has been going really well. I am very type A, so not following a set checklist drives me a bit crazy, but our school days have been going better and ending at a decent time. I haven't really finished planning this week out yet, so I guess I better get to it. Our school week is Tuesday-Saturday. I'm currently trying not to get frustrated with dd because she can't seem to remember that the long hand points to the minutes on a clock...even though we review this every.single.day. And I'll be happy if we find time to paint our pumpkin project we started two week ago;) I am the absolute worst with hands-on activities.

Treasured Conversations has a book called Designing Your Child's Curriculum for like $6. It walk you through how she plans a study based on one of her children's interests. It was written about an older child (middle school if I remember correctly), but you could easily adapt it to your younger son. It is a fairly quick read, too. On another note, my dd is 7, and also an advanced learner. I always have a hard time finding things for her because she has an insanely high reading level, but doesn't have the attention span to do most of the work on that high level. We basically read a lot and do narrations. Her latest favorite thing to do is make up comic pictures for the material she reads. We are on a weather kick right now. She checks out as many books she can find at the library on the topic and just reads through them during science time. She makes me a notebooking page every few days on what she has read. She also watches any documentaries/movies she can find (or that I can and she finds interesting). I try to add in hands-on projects as often as possible, but I am honestly horrible at hands-on stuff (3, soon to be 4, under 3.5 is not conducive to it). It isn't exactly a unit study per se, since I don't really mix it with other subjects, but she has definitely learned a lot.

So, I am in the minority here, but we do Latin (Prima Latina being finished this week!!), and we also do English from the Roots Up. However, we ignore the derivatives section in PL for the most part and do the vocabulary cards ONLY. I choose one card a week (usually with a root she already knows) and review the card daily. Literally takes like 60 seconds, and we enjoy it! I do not use the book or anything.

:iagree: I just bought this and it looks like it would fit the bill. We were having the same issue with science. I haven't really started using it yet, but it looks great. I love the note booking pages, and we plan on supplementing with library books/documentaries (which is really all we were doing before).

First of all, thank you all for not being judgmental while still sharing your opinions:) And second, I am firmly convinced that "required" courses should not be gifted ;) I put together a wish list on Amazon shortly after posting, which included quality books both kids would be interested in, some of those "___ for Kids" series books (we are doing Galileo for fun and LOVING it), snap circuits, board games, and lego education stuff and shared it with my mom. Within hours of that, I got an email informing me that she had purchased nearly everything on it!!!! DH and I will be buying some other stuff (not sure what since Grandma upstaged us;) ) plus Beast and French. DD has been BEGGING to start French, but since she already does Latin (required by me), Greek (requested by dd), and Spanish (bilingual family), I have been hesitant to add it. I am thinking of buying her a nice set of Prisma colored pencils and an easel and buying ds a bunch of paint and an easel. She is just so hard to shop for because she really, honestly doesn't really play with toys. She is either caught up in a book or busy creating her own stories, so we just can't justify buying toys just to buy them. We also are the most well-off family wise (by no means rich - single-income hair stylist), so when we have Christmas at our house with cousins, socks are honestly what everyone gets. We are always good about buying nieces/nephews as much as we can afford to, and we open our gifts before they get here, but our kids do understand that they are lucky to get what they have and do not expect a lot of "stuff". Plus, Santa only brings stockings to our house, and these get filled with toys, candy, etc.

My DD is in 2nd grade, but she does a note booking page every day for literature. Sometimes she draws a picture, sometimes she doesn't. I let her decide. We may have a week she doesn't want to draw anything, and then the next week she draws one every day. I also only have her writing about 2 sentences per page. Science, we do two a week. History, we do about three pages, but it really depends on topic.

It is a super simple read, but we just finished Beezus and Ramona. Even my three-old son asked for it every day, and enjoyed acting out the Ramona scenes (since we maybe should have named him Ramona ;) ). Fans of All of a Kind Family, A Little Princess, The Princess and the Goblin, and Pinocchio.

Yup. This is our usual list, too. We do not generally do toys because we have bins of them (literally...it is ridiculous...they own nearly every Little People set out there, etc.). I did already buy a set of wooden blocks for DS, because wooden blocks are just awesome. But my DD will choose books over toys every day of the week, so we don't waste our money anymore. Last year, she did ask for the Barbie Dreamhouse and I did find it super cheap on Amazon during black friday sales, but she has literally played with it once. Someone else mentioned Dover coloring books, and I do have several of those on my to-buy list for medieval times, so I may put those in as a gift. I think she would love that. Now you guys have just provided me with a ton of great gift ideas;) Maybe I should have titled this thread great educational yet fun gift ideas?!