New Domain!!!

I have my own domain now, and it's set up with the RSS Feed, so please go to my new site to continue the story! :)

www.domesticallyemployed.com

Thanks!

A Perfectly Potty Day

Well, so it hasn't actually been perfect. At least not with regard to potty...not at all. But it sounded good. Sweet little Geneva has been blowing through her training pants today and is currently sitting on the pot once again. I am pretty sure we missed some kind of window with her training...she has had some success in the past, but now interest is low while need is high (at least from my point of view).

The day started well. Little ones worked on d's and e's. Big D, little d. Big E, little e. It's all VERY exciting! :) Beau's dexterity is improving daily, although he is still not able to form letters well. No rush. Kat and Dane worked on Math and Vocab. Then we went on to Grammar. Sigh. I like Grammar. I tried to explain to my dear friends today about my enjoyment of Grammar jingles, but I seem sadly alone here. :) (I love you, Jenny!) I really can't explain it. I just get such a kick out of the Shurley Grammar lady trying to sound all jiggy with her jingles at 10am in my home school. It makes me laugh OUT LOUD and the kid do think I'm crazy. There is no doubt of that. Regardless, the kids effortlessly diagrammed their helping verb sentences today, and they even managed to write a couple of their own. Kat's: "Did a stupid princess dive into our well?" Dane's: "Did the weird prince live through his chicken pox?" They went on to "improve" these sentences, which then became, "Did a brainless pauper jump over our well?" and "Did the geeky royal son die from his chicken pox?" So much for mixing in synonyms, antonyms and word changes...sometimes they really don't improve much of anything!

Bailey read our History today AND she made lunch. She is indispensable. I am glad she gets to go to college next year. (I'm not really so very glad, but I'm going to keep saying it to myself so that I will start to believe it. Haha...) (I love you too, Bails!)

We finished our moon study today (with the exception of Astronomy notebook work, which we will do tomorrow). Our experiment involved the reflection of light (from a flashlight) off the surface of a CD onto Dane's hand. This was an example of how the moon (the CD) reflects light to earth (Dane's hand) from the light of the sun (flashlight), demonstrating that the moon has no light of its own. Cool! The other experiment had something to do with a lamp, a styrofoam ball on a stick, and me spinning in circles...we skipped it. Need I explain why?

Bailey finished Robin Hood today, all except the Epilogue. We will read that tomorrow. I didn't get to hear all of this book read aloud, but the parts I read as well as the parts I heard were so great. I would like to own this version. The one we have must go back to the library. What could we do to celebrate the end of this wonderful book? Maybe I'll have the kids wear green and they can pretend to be merry men.

The kids finished the day with Spelling Wisdom and Cursive Handwriting (for Dane). I found it a bit amusing that Kat diligently wrote out her sentence, circled the word, "habit" as being a word to study, then wrote that word out 5 times...as "habbit." Hmmm. Much like "hobbit." I'll have to make a "hobbit" of checking her work before she leaves her desk!

After school, we were temporarily disappointed that our friends did not arrive. But then, just as we had given up hope, they came along after all! Yes, we had a fun visit with the Schmitt family, and Jenny and I had the chance to wax loquacious once again (to the delight of all, I'm sure). All kinds of fun things, from dollar stores to shoe boxes, from underpads to the French pronunciation of "pine" (or "pin") and everything in between.

Pizza night again, and my wonderful hubby remembered and brought it home on time. After a game of "Sorry," we let the kids watch some "Pirates of Penzance" on Hulu...the music is so fun! "Yo, ho, yo ho...the home school life for me!" (Yes, I know. I'm a geek. No argument.) :)

Back on Track!

We had an atypical Friday, then our field trip was rescheduled for Saturday, since it was supposed to rain Monday (which it did, copiously). So Monday, since we were so tuckered out from the weekend, and we had missed our Saturday by doing a field trip, we did a short day. Kat and Dane did Math and Grammar, and then we all went for doughnuts! :)

Today, Tuesday, we got back into our normal schedule. Kat and Dane had Math tests...Kat did great, Dane will need to rework 5 of his problems. For Grammar, we studied the introduction of helping verbs in diagramming. Both kids successfully diagrammed 3 sentences each, including the new helping verbs. They also worked on the "Helping Verb Jingle," which teaches 23 helping verbs. They also did Vocab, Chapter 8, Lesson 1.

For History, we read more about Wulf the Saxon. He has returned to the city and we have been introduced to his friend, Beorn, who was born frail but has now become much stronger after his own sojourn to the countryside.

The kids watched Latin tutorials today, with help from Bailey. The little ones had room time, and rather than work out, I did some office tasks. We have officially canceled our cable service, as of today. That's a savings of $45 we didn't need to be spending. I also spent time looking for a house cleaning service for our rental. I'm thinking it would be much cheaper to pay a sitter and go clean it myself! Yeesh!

Bailey read from Robin Hood after lunch--we are in part 8 of 8 parts! Amazing how the time flies by...we have a number of shorter books waiting in the wings to follow Robin Hood. They are all from the same time period, which means the kids can enter info into their History notebooks from what they learn in Literature. Nice!

Finally, we looked at the Moon. We have a couple of experiments to do with the lamp tomorrow, but it was fun to read about lunar phases and see cool pictures of the moon.

I'm planning to implement regular spelling work now, and Dane will continue his cursive. Tomorrow is also Geography...we will look at Kuwait.

That's the short and sweet of it! I also have a great video of Geneva doing most of Psalm 23 by herself...I think you can only see it on Facebook, however. The file was too big to put it here.

Friday, Fun day!

Our co-op got canceled due to illness, so what does that mean for our school day? The kids thought it would a GREAT idea to completely SKIP school! (But what kid wouldn't?) I chose a mini-day instead. The big kids did their Math assignments and took Grammar tests. Now, everyone is playing before lunch, and there is much rejoicing! It's great to see how easily entertained everyone is when the schedule is disrupted this way...the two littlers have put down pillows and blankets on the floor and are "reading" books (like Katarina does before bed) and pretending to nap. Nice! I like this activity! ;)

As for the biggers, Katarina is whipping through her latest book, "Peter and the Sword of Mercy." She is hoping her cousin, Avery, has not read this yet so she can surprise him with it. It's a pretty new release, so it's quite possible he hasn't read it. Dane is in the Lego room. He sure likes his Legos. In fact, he told me he was hoping to receive MORE Legos for Christmas. (MORE LEGOS???) Apparently, one can never have enough Legos. Especially if one is a boy.

We get to have pizza night at the Hess house tonight. That hasn't happened in awhile--we are all thrilled! I remember when I met Sally and marveled at her 5-kid family...well, now they have added a 6th, but somehow, we've almost caught up. (And there is NO need for us to "catch up"--it's just a phrase). So it's fun to spend time with them, although they have asked me to bring only ONE ingredient, as is typical. I tried to remind Sally that I have many children now too and should bring more food, but she insisted. So Canadian Bacon I will bring.

Okay, time to get back to enjoying my kids and our mini-day!

Attitude is everything!

Okay, there is NO doubt about it–my kids were HYPER again today. Nobody got very good sleep last night…Dane had a bad dream, Geneva lost her silkie blanket, Katarina went searching for it and couldn’t go back to sleep…it was not the most restful night. For that reason or some other, the kids have boundless frenetic energy. We are the antonym of calm here.

The Bible verses are going so well…it is impossible to describe the pleasure I feel when I hear my 3 and 4-yr-olds saying their memory verses before bedtime. I love Geneva’s cute twist on some of the phrases, i.e. “…yea, though I walk through the valley of MY DEATH, I will fear NO EVULL!” It’s some good stuff.

Math went well. Grammar took a little longer than usual. I introduced Dane to particular objects pronouns as they are used while diagramming. He knows all about OP (object of the preposition), but the new ones for today were DO (direct object) and IO (indirect object). They also took a quiz that related directly to their Grammar Jingles…Kat aced it, Dane did not. Dane will be working on this…

History was a little tough…I was terribly sleepy. Kat and I were chilly, so we snuggled under a blanket, and this did not help my drowsy state. I kept dozing off mid-sentence, so I gave in and let the Kindle read for me for a bit. That worked well, except that the Kindle voice doesn’t always have the right inflections…this can be good, however, since it makes us laugh and that kept me awake. :) I woke up enough to read for awhile again, but then I started dozing once more. I let the guy read a little longer, then we gave up. I remember that Wulf was working on training with his army, and that he was showing noticeable improvement. I remember that he was expressing his satisfaction with Osgod, and that Osgod was glad to be in his service instead of being a blacksmith. The next thing I knew, they seemed to be on their way back to the big city, so those 2 years passed amazingly fast (and in a somewhat monotone voice, I might add!)

After lunch we studied Western Samoa. The kids were not too thrilled with the picture of the feast on one of the pages. It depicted a “fire” of hot rocks with a pig lying on it (all parts intact), a whole bunch of taro root (which I described to them as being rather mushy) and a big pile of liver (maybe from another pig?) Not too appetizing… No one was wearing shoes in the picture, except the son-in-law. The families were described as being overtly Christian, which was nice to learn. There is apparently some Mormon influence there also (no surprise). The family we studied had one radio, no TV, no car.

For Astronomy, the kids made “advertisements” for the planet Earth. Dane’s was….expedient. It was good, but rather quickly done, i.e. tagline at the top was, “This place is good.” He did point out that Earth “has Wii,” and is “warmer than your place.” Fun! Kat’s was characteristically creative. She raved about the appeal of gravity, blue skies, and “slower spinning” (so you don’t age as fast). I love these and am glad we will have them to look back on.

As for my post title, I am realizing more and more that if I can “roll” with things and have a great attitude, it makes our school day pretty wonderful, even if I don’t get all the things done as well as I’d like, and even if the kids are so high-energy that I wonder where my straitjackets are. It’s all OKAY. We are here together, we are learning, we are striving to glorify God in what we do. And that, my friends, is a GOOD DAY!

Waiting for Pizza...

Yes, it's pizza night. I was just about to commence bolognese preparation when I realized it was Wednesday...nice! Well, but then my sweet husband forgot it was pizza night, which is a problem only in that he is the one who picks up said pizza. Okay, reminded him about it close to 5:30...oh, but then, sadly, he called to say he had gotten locked out of his office. His keys were inside on his desk. Hmmm...no keys means no driving the car, which means no pizza (and no husband, for that matter). But hurray! Turns out a guy was still there who could let Dave in. So the oven is nice and hot, and I am waiting for pizza.

The kids are "getting their energy out" on the wii..."Outdoor Adventure," to be precise. We had wonderful visitors today after school ended...very dear friends who have 3 kids that match up well with 3 of our kids. Much fun was had, and of course I took pictures. I believe my baby girl is beginning to think I have a big black camera growing out of the middle of my face. The bigger kids smile patiently for me, and they have found that the more quickly they assume the pose I request, the sooner the whole thing is done and they can go back to their playing. Someday, someone will enjoy this ridiculously large collection of digital photos I have stored away on my computer and on the external hard drive (there are over 15,000 now, which is more than a little scary to me). (And I sure hope nothing "crashes" and erases it all. But I'm not going to think about that now.)

On to our school day. Things were pretty much as always...I had a little less energy than yesterday, but not too noticeably. In Grammar, it was mostly review. The kids had to compose sentences and then change them to "improved" sentences. I never liked that exercise much, and I don't think my kids do either. Good practice, I suppose.

In History, Wulf is leaving the court (King Harold) and heading back to the countryside, where he spent his childhood. He expects to learn about managing land and people, as well as training people to fight.

I worked out during Latin...it tired me out appropriately. Bailey read from Robin Hood after we had Minestrone leftovers (yum!) For Science, we tried some candy experiments. Sadly, the "floating M's" didn't work very well...the M's were supposed to release from the candies and float to the surface of the water. It DID work with the Skittles, however, and we saw some very fun S's floating around. On the other hand, we soaked the color off the different colors of Skittles in order to make a rainbow. The colors should have temporarily maintained separation due to variations in solute load, but it didn't really work out. We must not have done it right...but it was still fun. And it smelled luscious! Bailey and I declined eating the wet, sticky leftover Skittle centers, but the kids liked them just fine.

I realized we forgot to do Geography today...will have to try for tomorrow. We'll be looking at Western Samoa!

Last of all, we organized some things in the History and Astronomy notebooks, Dane finished his Vocabulary, and both older kids did their first "Spelling Wisdom" spelling tests. They did very well...I think it will get tougher as we go along.

Ah...pizza has ARRIVED!!! Husband has also ARRIVED!!! Soon, happiness will ARRIVE as my tummy stops grumbling...:) GOOD DAY!!

Soup

http://100digits.com/index.php?s=minestrone if you want the yummy minestrone we had tonight. YUM, YUM, YUM!!!! Thanks, Rene'!!!! I'd put a picture on, but the one one Rene's site is better than I can duplicate...

Well, never mind...I took a couple with my phone, so they're not great pics, but you get the idea.