Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Busy Days

Between more teacher intensive subjects, more emphasis on keeping up with grading (we have one high school credit class, and I let math slip last year so we are repeating it this year.), and adding in a kindergartner and preschooler, I'm finding myself very busy.  Today for example:

I didn't get to sleep until after 2am last night.  I had a splitting headache keeping me awake.  I finally got up and took a couple of Benedryl to bring me some sleep.  That lead to me waking up late...about 8am...when I promptly discovered that my neck was out and causing me a ton of pain.  I spent half an hour laying on a neck roll and ice pack waiting for two Excedrin to start to work.  I finally dragged myself out of bed, showered, and got dressed around 9am.

I spent the next hour washing last night's dishes (Monday's are crazy so they don't always get done), making breakfast, and eating.  While the kids ate, I grabbed my piece of toast and headed to the drug store for something I needed.

When I got back, we started school.  It was about 10am by this point.  The bigs and I worked through some of Starting Points World View Primer together.  This is our Bible study, and the difficulty of the material (for my kids at least) requires my direct involvement.  Once we finished that, I moved onto the littles' Bible, which is reading out of The Jesus Storybook Bible.  We've never reliably done Bible, but I'm determined to get it done this year.

To solve the problem of not getting to certain subjects at all, I created a loop schedule.  After Bible, we start the loop which meant today started with writing with the bigs.  This consisted solely of telling the kids that they would not get a separate writing assignment from the one they were already working on for science.  I also gave them the suggestion of looking back at lessons 17-20 from last year, which was a similar essay.

Then I moved back to the littles and did penmanship with Josh.  We worked on the number 5 and 6 on the chalkboard and the number 5 in his workbook.  Maddie didn't want to join us for this part until we were done, and then she wanted to use Josh's workbook.  She wasn't happy to find out that I didn't buy her a penmanship workbook!

Normally, I would have moved back to the bigs at this point, but Josh and Maddie were needing more to do so we went on a nature walk in the preserve, picking up a variety of things on our way.  We brought everything back, dumped it all on the table, and added a bunch of stuff (ie. books, watch, spoon, hotwheels car, toys) to the pile.  I then grouped some things together and had them guess how they related.  I ended with grouping living things together.  We then did a couple of pages out of our Evan-Moore Plants book that involved determine which things were living and which were not.

It was time for lunch.  While cleaning breakfast dishes, the bigs biked to the store to buy bread.  When they returned, I prepared and ate lunch.

After lunch, I read two versions of The Little Red Hen to the littles: this creatively illustrated version by Barry Downward and this nicely illustrated version by Jerry Pinkney.  They liked the first one best.  Maddie ended up falling asleep on the couch.

Following this, I went to work with the bigs on state history.  We corrected/graded the work from the last chapter and the worked they've completed so far this chapter.  I also gave them their next assignments.  We also discussed they assignments and due dates for botany: working on their nature journals (turns out they are both waiting for help from me) and finishing their essay by Friday.

It was now 3pm so I excused both Josh and Sam for the day.  Mika, having goofed off earlier, completed 30 minutes of Spanish with me.  She's completed two years of Rosetta Stone, but we've decided not continue with that at this time (cost) and moved instead to Mango, which is available through the library.  Because there is no voice recognition or testing ability, we are doing this together.  This way, I can check her progress and pronunciation and relearn my Spanish.

Maddie was awake again by this time and wanting to paint.  So, I set up her and Josh up with watercolors and took a short break before washing lunch dishes and starting dinner.  We all ate together, and I'm here now writing this post.

Once I hit publish, I plan on doing my math assignment (I'm doing Sam's math so I can learn, understand, and help him through it...it is beyond my ability to just do the problems without the lessons).  Then I'll go wash dishes, yet again before seeing what laundry I can put away and what laundry I must wash before tomorrow.

When I look at my to-do list, all I see done is half a day's school: Bible, writing, state history, science, and Spanish for the bigs and penmanship and science for the littles.   My body says it's a whole lot more than that.  

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