I can't believe it is May already! I wasn't on here at all last week, we were busy, busy. DD had a small part in a production being sponsored by her ballet school and last week was the final week. She had to be at rehearsal Mon. - Wed. evenings and then she performed on Friday and Saturday. This was her first experience in a performance and she loved it! I'm so proud of her! On Friday I came down with a sore throat, which turned into an awful head cold by Saturday morning. I spent most of the weekend on the couch, doped up with cold medicine, which didn't give me much relief. I feel slightly better today but not much. The hunt for a new rental house continues. We actually have found a house we would like to rent, just waiting on our application to be approved and all that. Still keeping an eye out for anything new that pops up just in case we don't get this one. I have not done any packing yet. Sigh. Need to start that this week. I am not feeling crazy stressed out about it all anymore. The plan for this morning: read aloud, memory work, cursive, reading and math. This afternoon I am going to take a nap while the kids watch a movie. After DH gets home he and the kids plan to watch some more episodes of Impossible Engineering. They just discovered it last week and really like it. No outside activities tonight, YAY, so we will have dinner and finally get the kitchen completely cleaned up. It's been half done all weekend.

We are starting our new plan for school this week so that I can prepare for our move. This will be a short week because DD and I will be out of town on Thursday and Friday. We are going with my mom and one of my sisters to a quilt show in Paducah, KY. DD and I are super excited for some girl time! Yesterday we had all the family over here for DD's 8th birthday. The house isn't too bad, but today the plan is to clean it back up, prepare for the week ahead and relax. I think we've got the relaxing part down! Currently the kids are outside playing baseball with their cousin, DH is napping on the couch and I'm on here. Here are our school/activity plans for the week: Monday - read aloud, math, independent reading, writing, spelling, ballet for DD Tuesday - read aloud, math, independent reading, writing, grammar, archery for the boys and ballet for DD Wednesday - read aloud, math, independent reading, going to see a play, DD and I leave in the evening Thursday - independent reading Friday - independent reading, ballet rehearsal for DD Saturday - ballet rehearsal for DD I think I'm going to put my packing goals for the week in here too, just so that I see them and am reminded of them! Between now and Wednesday I need to make a flannel baby quilt and pack up all of my sewing/crafting supplies. It pains me to pack them away, but I know that I am unlikely to work on any more projects before we move. I would like to get a start on going through our school stuff too. We have been keeping it all in a big china cabinet and it has become the catch all for every bit of random stuff we find in the house. It is a disaster! I need to clean it out and start packing up all of the stuff we aren't currently using. Time to get off of here and go do something!

Thank you everyone for the sympathy and suggestions! We will get the move done and everything will end up fine, I just don't handle unexpected change all that well and have to have my moment of freaking out before I am ready to dig in and tackle it! :laugh: I have decided that we are dropping everything except reading aloud, math, independent reading and our language arts subjects (writing, spelling and grammar). Written out that still looks like a lot, so I reserve the right to drop the language arts, but those don't take much time and I really want to keep making forward progress in them. Everything else is being let go for now. This will free up the afternoons to get things done. We are going to keep going on those until we move and then take some time off to move and get settled. After that is done we will decide when we want to start back up again. Now I'm going to jump over to the thread for the current week! Thanks again for the help!

I forgot to check in here this week. It has been an okay week. School and activities have gotten done. House has been kept clean. My mind has been on other things since Wednesday though. A little backstory, last August we decided to rent and move into my sister and BIL's basement. Its not as lame as it sounds! The basement is set up as a second living area; basically the house is a huge duplex. The house is rural and we love it here. Doing this was financially beneficial for both of our families and things have been going great. At the beginning of March my sister and BIL decided to get a divorce. My sister didn't want the house and my BIL finally decided 2 weeks ago that he didn't want to keep it either. You can see where this is going, right? They listed it. And it sold in less than a week. Which was a huge surprise to everyone, including the realtor! So now we have to be out of here by June 1st. A little over 6 weeks from now. I am angry that they let us move in here when they knew that things were on the rocks for them. We could have continued renting the house we were in, from the landlord we loved and not be having to deal with the hassle of moving again less than a year later. I am completely stressed and anxious about the idea of finding a rental and moving all within 6 weeks. I'm sure people have done it before but I think its going to be hard. I want to crawl in a hole and let someone else deal with it but I can't. If you made it through my drama, thanks! So I get to start packing! Fun, fun. I am seriously considering dropping all of our school work except for reading aloud, math, independent reading and writing until after we move and then picking things back up in June. Which will kill the short 6 week summer vacation we planned to take. Or maybe we will just drop everything but those things, keep going until mid June, then take a couple weeks completely off and start fresh in July, which is when our new year starts anyway. I don't know. Any suggestions? Sahamamama - I completely agree with you on the activities! Starting the middle of May a couple of our commitments end. Then during June, July and almost all of August we will only have planned activities once a week, ballet for DD and archery for the boys. Both on the same evening! This past year has been a little crazy with activities and so I deliberately planned to slow things way down this summer.

This is going to be a busy week. Now that the weather is warming up the homeschool groups we are in are getting much more active in planning park days and field trips. I went a little crazy this week signing us up for stuff on top of our normal activities. Oops! April just looks like it is going to be busy. Today is one of the lighter days. Planned for today: Read aloud Memory work Cursive States & Capitals Reading Math Writing Spelling Grammar Science Games ? DD7 has a ballet class to make up this evening.

This last week ended up being not so great. Wednesday and Thursday all we got done was our morning group things (read aloud, memory work, cursive) and reading. The rest if the time was mostly spent decluttering and cleaning. We found out that the house we rent was listed for sale and so we needed to do some straightening up. The place wasn't awful but you know how stuff starts to pile up if you don't stay on top of it. Friday we did a full day. We are going to need to move within the next couple months and I'm stressing about it. Packing and trying to do school at the same time is no fun.

We got everything done yesterday, plus a short art project! Not sure how that happened but I'm happy about it. The complaining ended shortly after we got started, I guess they realized it was pointless. Today will be basically be a repeat of yesterday except for the afternoon subjects. Read aloud Memory work Cursive Reading Math L.A. - writing and grammar Science Poetry tea This evening the boys are supposed to be going to a class about plants but since it is outdoors it looks like it will be cancelled due to rain. Is it bad that I'm happy it will be cancelled? I just want to stay home. My house needs some attention and I would like to go to bed early.

Everyone is up by 8. We do breakfast and some quick morning chores then start school at 9. We begin with our morning time which lasts about 30 minutes. I read from our current chapter book for about 15 minutes, we do memory work for about 10 minutes and then a quick cursive handwriting page that takes about 5 minutes. Short and sweet is the name of the game here! After that we dive into the rest of our work planned for the day.

I woke up yesterday with a bad case of the blahs. I have been feeling pretty stressed out and anxious the last couple weeks and it all came to a head over the weekend. I just needed a day. I am feeling much better today though so we will be starting soon. Read Aloud Memory Work Reading Math L.A. - writing and spelling States and Capitals study Games Archery for DS10 Ballet for DD7 Today won't be too busy but I can already tell it might be a rough day. The kids are not in the mood to get back with it, I've heard complaints already.

I haven't checked in here for awhile! We took the second week of February off and then limped along for the two weeks after that. Crabby kids, crabby mama. Last week was good though! We finally settled back into a good routine. I needed a change of scenery so we decided to spend the weekend in Branson. It's only a little over an hour away from us and we haven't been there in years. My sister and BIL have a condo there and decided to come with us. We wanted to stay away from the really cheesy tourist places so we ended up going to a museum, saw the dam and the new visitor's center there, sat by the lake talking with my sister while we watched DH, BIL and the kids play in the water and skip rocks for quite awhile, explored the downtown area and ate at a couple of good local restaurants. We had fun and it was so relaxing to just drift from activity to activity with no schedule and nowhere that we HAD to be! We ended up not doing school on Monday, I had a bad headache all day. Not a migraine, just a bad headache that none of the over the counter medicine I took helped much. Today the headache is gone and we have jumped back into our routine without much fuss. Yay! To be done today: Morning Meeting - read aloud, memory work, cursive DONE! Individual Work - math, reading, writing and spelling for each DONE! Family Work - history, art, more read aloud Extra - archery for DS10, ballet for DD7

My oldest DS will be in 5th grade next year. I feel like it is time to expand his reading horizons. Until now we have followed a pattern of me choosing a book I think he should read and then he chooses a book, then its my turn again. That has been our "assigned" reading. We discuss it in a very casual sort of way, just enough for me to check that he is comprehending. He also reads on his own before going to sleep, usually a re-read of something he did for school. He has no trouble reading but it isn't his first choice to do when he has free time. I plan to continue this for the rest of this year. I want to have a loose plan for next year, but I don't want to buy a prepackaged plan, I want to make the book choices. So I'm thinking I want to split his reading into assigned reading, which will be my picks for him. I feel like he needs a little pushing in this area. Then he can do free reading, which he generally does before sleeping, where he can make the choices. So my questions are: What is a reasonable number of books for an 11 year old boy (average reader) to read in a year? How would you split those books up between a mix of classics, more modern books, historical fiction, non-fiction, and maybe short stories or poetry? Would you discuss all the assigned reading? Do narrations or book reports? Literature guides? Thanks for any advice you can give!

We get the kids a little candy and have a fancier than normal dinner. Meaning I break out the candles, tablecloth, cloth napkins and fancy glasses. For some reason my kids adore getting to use our glass goblets. This year the menu will be a beef roast, mashed potatoes, green beans and salad. Apple crisp and vanilla ice cream for dessert. Nothing too over the top. DH and usually don't exchange gifts.

This is for my youngest, DD who will be 8 at the beginning of the new school year. Math - Math Mammoth 3, Xtra Math for fact practice Reading - The plan is to have her read a lot, we will alternate picking the books. Writing - finish WWE2, begin WWE3 Spelling - finish AAS3, begin AAS4 Grammar - finish FLL2, begin FLL3 Typing - probably will use the free instruction at typing.com and then nitrotype.com for fun practice All of this is family learning so she will be doing these with her brothers. History - finish up SOTW4 Science - finish up RSO:Physics, health unit and evolution unit(maybe?) Music - finish the last 2 eras of SQUILT Art - artist study, projects, art club once a month Other - ballet, maybe volleyball, hopefully piano lessons

Today is the first day of our week. DH was off yesterday so we took the day off. We spent the morning restoring order to the house after a busy weekend. We spent the afternoon doing nothing in particular, just hanging out. I got an email from DD7's ballet school last night with the cast list for their next production and she will be in it! She is pretty excited! So I get to add 1 day of rehearsal a week to our schedule for the next few months. I have made some changes to our weekly schedule, things are feeling stale. We are dropping our States and Capitals study for now, just going to play games for awhile to see how much they learn. Fridays are going to be set aside for the kids to pursue some of their own interests semi independently with me there to lend a hand, give advice or buy supplies if needed. DS10 wants to learn coding, DS8 doesn't know what he wants to do yet and DD7 wants to work on her sewing. So for today we have all this, here's hoping we can get it done or I will need to tweak it again! DS10 (4th Grade) With me: math, writing, spelling, grammar Independent: assigned reading, xtra math, free reading DS8 (3rd Grade) With me: math, buddy reading, writing, grammar Independent: free reading, handwriting DD7 (2nd Grade) With me: math, phonics, writing, grammar Independent: free reading, handwriting Extra: ballet Family Learning Read Aloud Memory Work RSO: Physics Art - hopefully we have the time to fit it in!

Ugh, today was a total bomb! I was so tired for some reason, like falling asleep everytime I sat down tired. So we did math and handwriting. Then everyone did a little reading on their own and we called it a day. And I took a nap! The kids quietly entertained themselves without fighting. It has been very lightly freezing rain since shortly after lunch and the roads are slick! Ballet was cancelled so we got to spend the night in. I've got everything prepped for tomorrow and am headed for bed shortly, hopefully I wake up tomorrow not so tired.

Yesterday went well but we didn't get to our poetry tea. That seems to be becoming a habit. I'm thinking maybe we should try doing it on a different day. We will be getting a late start, at 10 instead of 9. We've had trouble starting on time since we came back from Christmas break. All of us seem to be needing more time to get going in the morning than we were. Winter feels like its to blame, we just want to hibernate! Today will be another normal day. Individual subjects: math, reading, writing, grammar and handwriting for each kid. Family Learning: science, states and capitals, read aloud Extracurricular: ballet for DD Keeping an eye on the weather, it is supposed to start raining/sleeting/snowing this afternoon. I hope it isn't bad enough to keep us home tonight.

Good morning! We will be starting our day just as soon as I get my bread dough made, hopefully in the next few minutes. Today will be a very normal day for us as well. Individual Subjects: math, reading, writing, spelling and handwriting for each. Family Learning: history, read aloud and poetry tea. Extracurricular: Basketball practice for DS8 Throw in some laundry, cleaning and cooking and it will feel like a very full day. Hope you all have a good one!

We got everything done except reading aloud! Going to do that sometime between now and bedtime. I don't really have much planning to do for next year, in particular for my younger two, in most of their subjects they will just roll over into the next level when they reach it. We have been very lucky so far in that all of the programs that I have used with my oldest have worked well with minimal tweaks for the younger two. That certainly makes planning easier! Also makes homeschooling cheaper because we don't have to change things very often. I know not everyone is that lucky! I am considering changing writing for DS10 within the next couple weeks. We have followed a slower track with WWE, occasionally putting it aside when he started to complain about it too much, so that he will be finishing WWE 3 by the end of this year, 4th grade for him. We are just past halfway through it and to be honest I think he has gotten all he can from WWE. He can read and answer the questions and give me a narration. He can take dictation, but I do sometimes have to break it up into smaller chunks for him if its really long. I don't know, I'm starting to feel like he needs to move on to something else. I feel like he is stagnating with WWE. I had planned to use Treasured Conversations in 5th to bridge the gap between WWE and WWS, so now I'm thinking that maybe we should drop WWE and go ahead and start TC. Or maybe I should just start writing across the curriculum, we've never really done that. I'm not entirely sure HOW to do that, lol! Decisions, decisions!

Yesterday was not a good day. One barfing kid and two more feeling like they might barf made for a morning spent on the couch watching a movie. After lunch everyone perked up so we did the history we didn't get to on Monday plus reading and handwriting. At that point it was time to stop and move onto other things, what didn't get done got bumped to today. Today we have no outside activities and no errands to run so we will be home all day. Hopefully we can get a lot done! DS10 - math, XtraMath, reading, writing, spelling, grammar, handwriting DS8 - math, reading, writing, spelling, grammar, handwriting DD7 - math, phonics lesson, writing, spelling, grammar and handwriting Family - science, states and capitals, history?, read aloud Wow, that's a lot. I told the kids to be prepared for a longish day of school but that we'd take plenty of breaks so we will see what happens.

We got off to a rough start this morning. I woke up with an awful headache, not quite a migraine but still pretty bad, so I waited until that was a little more under control before I even attempted to start school work. It is lunchtime and all we have accomplished so far is math and handwriting with each kid. Oh well, we will get done what we can I guess! So today we have math, reading, writing, spelling and handwriting at their individual levels. Then history, read alouds and poetry tea done together. I have a feeling we will run out of time for the poetry tea. DS8 has basketball practice tonight, a scrimmage with the team from the next town over, should be fun!

I haven't had a chance to get back on since Wednesday! Wednesday went well, got everything done and they had a great time at their art class making clay animals. Thursday went well also, we got everything done and DS8 had basketball practice. So far this week has gone SO much better than I anticipated! Today we have math, reading, writing, spelling and handwriting for everyone at their level. For our family learning we are doing history and starting the program I choose to try to get some music appreciation in. We are using the first volume of SQUILT. Mostly just planning on listening to the music and doing the notebooking page about it unless they want to do more. Hopefully they like it! Later this afternoon I hope to get in a trip to the library. Also need to do a quick grocery shop before DS8's basketball game this evening. I want to get all of our running around done today because the weather this weekend is looking iffy. Rain, then snow and the coldest temperatures we've had all season so far are what the weathermen are predicting. Even if they are wrong a weekend at home without needed to go anywhere will be nice. I have lots of my own projects to work on!

Yesterday was a good day even though we didn't get to science and geography. I ended up spending an hour on the phone dealing with something and by the time we got started back up with school the kids were no longer very cooperative. Thus our day kinda dragged along. This morning we have planned math, reading, spelling and handwriting at all their different levels. This afternoon we go to our monthly art class. And that will probably be all we get done today. The kids don't have any activities this evening so I think we will do a quick mid week house cleaning to touch things up and then watch a movie.

Yesterday went pretty well, better than I expected. We did math, reading, writing, spelling and handwriting for everyone in the morning, then in the afternoon we did history and had a poetry tea. DS8 had basketball practice last night. It was a busy day but we somehow managed to maintain the relaxed feel we had going on during our break. Today we have planned math, reading, writing, grammar and handwriting or typing for everyone on their level, science and our states and capitals study for family learning. This is our last week with minimal activities, next week DD7's ballet classes start back up twice a week, DS10 will be back doing archery twice a week and DS8's basketball continues. I am just so happy though that except for a few occasional classes and field trips, we have no activities during the day to interrupt school. We had a class during the day last semester and it completely messed with our flow during the week!

Critterfixer - Hope you are all feeling better soon! We've been working since yesterday to get the house back in shape after the holidays and to get the laundry all caught up. Yesterday we did a deep cleaning of the kids bedrooms and went through their clothes. I haven't done that for a year at least and got 3 garbage bags full of clothes in good enough shape to donate. And their dressers and closets look so much better! School is pretty much planned out for the next 6 weeks. I'm going to double check it this afternoon and make sure I have everything printed and ready to go. Even though I have been reminding the kids for a couple days now that we were starting back this Monday, I'm a little worried that tomorrow is going to be an awful day! I hope not, and DS10 and DD7 will proably just roll with it, but it is impossible to predict how DS8 will react. I'm off to finish my stuff. I want to be done and sitting down to relax by the time Downton Abbey comes on at 8!

Nan in Mass - I like the homemade journals you did! It's got my brain spinning. I think I'm going to put together my own journal with some watercolored papers to record what I'm reading this year and any thoughts/ideas or quotes I especially like. A sort of commonplace book but just for my reading. I don't really need another project but I can't resist!