First Day of School (Sept 9, 2010)

We finally officially "started" school. We're been doing it thru the summer, but not a full schedule. So, today we had a full day of school. Getting Jonah a planner was the best thing I ever did-he is so motivated by it. He's very time oriented, so I guess that's why-he always wants to know what time it is, what we're doing next, what we're doing after that-he likes to know what we're doing every day of the week, etc. (drives me nuts, actually LOL-I don't even wear a watch & never know the date) When I woke up this morning, he was already up & working on his subjects. Today I showed him how to research on the computer and copy & paste onto word doc.

Hannah loves her Beautiful Feet curriculum-totally loves it. It's worth 2 credits-for history & literature. The first lesson took her awhile-it's very involved, but she enjoyed doing it.
Both kids like apologia for science. For Jonah, I got the audio disc so he can listen to the book while he reads along. He's auditory, so it really helps.

I have Hannah reading the Uncle Eric series of books-we both love them. She kept saying, "Mom, listen to this" and then reading excerpts of the book to me. I'm enjoying reading it, too. I plan on getting the whole series eventually along with the study guide. I think it's 11 books total. Does anyone else read these for economics, law & gov't?

Another thing we're enjoying is the Fallacy Detective-and now my son tells us all the time when we say a "red herring."
Jonah had to do research on geocentric system vs heliocentric system & which one is correct. He knew what geocentric was & told me he knew what heliocentric system was without looking it up. I asked him how & he said because helios means sun in Greek, so it must mean the sun as the center of the solar system since geocentric was Earth the center. So many times the kids have been able to figure out words due to our studying Greek & Latin roots with "English From the Roots Up."

I'm really excited because Hannah starts a Latin class next week. A lady offered to teach it to anyone in our HS chapter twice/week for 5 dollars per week. Hannah is thrilled, too. There's been so many things offered-debate classes, biology classes w/ dissection labs, IEW classes...but they're all about 30 minutes away & all on different days of the week. I wish we could do it all, but we'd never have a whole day at home to get our schoolwork done!! It's so frustrating because it all sounds so wonderful, but realistically I can't afford all the classes & don't have the time, especially since it would disrupt our schedule. :(

I wasn't able to get all of Susanna's schoolwork in, but we did get a fair amount done plus reading a pile of library books.
You know what I noticed last week? We have books in every single room of the house-even the bathrooms. I never noticed before until I had to watch a neighbor's daughter for a couple hours at their house last week. I wanted to read to the kids, but could not find any books anywhere!! I asked the girl where the books are & she said in her closet in a box & showed it to me. Well, it was all twaddle, but what surprised me was the lack of books in the house. Now I know why every time this girl comes over she spends most of her time looking at books!

Alyssa did really well keeping occupied, everyone took turns playing with her or she colored. She's getting a little easier to keep busy without demanding everyone's undivided attention. LOL. She's so funny. She put her baby to bed & was hollering at all of us to be quiet because her baby is taking a nap. We said ok, but she kept yelling, "quiet, guys-baby taking nap!" I finally told her she was the only one making any noise & then she laughed.
We were even able to get the house back in some semblance of order so we can start fresh tomorrow.
I hope tomorrow is as good as today was, but we all know how that goes at times, eh?
I'm excited for this weekend. Hannah & Susanna have a horse show and Jonah & Pat are competing in a trap shooting competition & going to a ducks unlimited dinner. They're all going to have so much fun! I'm going to have to tow the trailer, though, so yuck. :)