Well, it’s been forever sense I have gotten on here, but I thought I would get on here and post an update. We have been really busy, life seems to grab hold and before you know it weeks seem to have disappeared! Ds started reading a few weeks ago, I am still amazed! I knew he was a smart cookie but I never expected him to come so far so fast. I was a little worried at first at how dd would react, she is doing extremely well now becoming more fluent every day, but she struggled for so long I worried she would resent how easy it was for him get started. She has actually been as excited for him as I am. She thinks it’s wonderful that he is doing so well and she has started sitting with him daily in their free time reading with him, helping him to learn more. I keep telling her that he is doing so well thanks to her great teaching!

We are getting ready for a trip north to visit family. My husband is unable to go due to work but the kids and I are leaving next Thursday to spend just over a week in MA. It will be a long trip, 14 hours drive, but we are anxious to see everyone. We have a lot of visiting to do so we aren’t going to be doing much sight seeing, but we are going to go to a glass blower studio while we are there. We have been learning about fossils, landforms, and rocks in science and the kids were amazed that sand is melted to make glass. There was a photo of glass blowers in their textbook and they were very interested in it. There just happens to be a studio in the town over from where I grew up that I used to go to all the time as a teen with my friends where they open it up to the public to watch the artists at work so I am going to take them to see it done first hand. Other than that though I think we will pretty much just hang out and relax as much as we can.

Well, hopefully I will get on here again before another 2 months goes by!

Until then!

Well, my family and I are almost halfway through our first year of homeschooling. It has been a trying year for us all around, we moved to SC from MA at the end of May 2007 which was a huge change for us. My husband and I were both born and raised in New England primarily and thats where the majority of our family still resides. After the move we looked into education options and decided that homeschool was what our family needed so after a lot more research we dove in and started homeschooling dd 7, and ds 4 1/2 last August. We ended up moving again just before Thanksgiving (short move this time lol) just down the road really when the landlord situation became more stressful than we could deal with and now that the move and the holidays have come and gone we are working hard to get our studies back to normal.

The kids are doing so well at home. DD was in ps when we lived in MA, she went to pre-K for 2 years which she enjoyed, and then she did K the year before we moved here which she didnt enjoy so much. Pre-K was basically a play group, socially she was very satisfied but academically it lacked a lot. I guess that has its good side but I think for her she would have thrived with more academics mixed in. Her K class seemed to have good academic goals, but the class size was much to big with not enough staff. I tried to be involved as much as I could and I saw the teachers struggles to manage 20 students, I am surprised any learning was able to take place. Academically she did as well as I could have expected I guess, she was in the top of the class but she struggled with the reading instruction. In hindsight I think it was the method used in her school that was the problem because now that she has been "de-programed" from what they had her doing she is flying along in reading and writing. Socially though her K year was rough, a lot of the kids in her class had behavioral issues and she had a few problems with some of them. I was amazed to see such bullying issues in K! This year though she has come so far and she is doing so well with everything. Her favorite subjects are Math and Science right now at least. We haven't had a lot of luck finding homeschool groups in our area, but she is in a great girl scout troop that meets every week and does a lot of activities outside of the regular meetings.

DS has never been in ps, he will be 5 in April and could have gone to pre-K the year dd was in K but we decided against it. He was a very shy boy, and we felt he just wasn't ready. This year he was very excited about joining in on school and he has done amazing! I always read to my kids but outside of that we didn't really do any "work" at home before this year so I have been very shocked by his progress. I mean he knew a lot before we started but in my mind I guess I would call it "the normal stuff" colors, shapes, counting, he colored but didn't really write, that type of thing and at this point he has completely lost interest in doing the things I had planned for him. He is starting the second "semester" of the year at the beginning of my dd's math curriculum at his request, and we are going to be starting to work with explode the code and bob books.

I guess we would be considered eclectic and secular. I probably over did things a bit but with my and my dd's personality's what they are I knew we both needed structure. We are working from Harcourt science and social studies texts, I am pretty happy with the science but the social studies leaves a lot to be desired. For math I went with rod and staff because I really liked the structure of it, I thought it was a great fit with my dd's learning style and I couldn't find anything else comparable within the budget. It is definitely where I plan to stay for math. For reading and writing I couldn't find anything prepackaged I liked so I put together bits and pieces and it seems to be working out well. My dd's favorite parts are explode the code and bob books. With dd I am pretty structured but with ds I am defiantly child led, he has been dictating his pace sense we started in August but he never seems to get enough. It causes some tension with dd as she is not the self led type, she doesn't really want to do anything but math given a choice.

Ok well I think that pretty well covers "background" so I am going to get caught up on the never ending to do list.