A Birthday Week

The campers with happy meals!

The Weekend: On Saturday we had a pretty laid back kind of day. We took a quick trip to the library to get this week's science books and DVDs for the girls, a few books to tide these readers over the week, and several of the children's DVDs for entertainment (We don't have cable at the house and refuse to get it in the future. Between antenna TV, Netflix, and YouTube we have more than enough to watch when bolstered by the occasional DVD.) The campers all earned a free happy meal from McDonald's through the library and we took advantage of that since they don't often eat fast food. While the girls finished eating theirs ECJ learned about drywall work with his father who was repairing some drywall under the window of ECJ's bedroom. (Putting new carpeting down and repainting will wait for the moment since we're moving the mobile home we live in sometime after Christmas.) Because it was drizzly and icky most of the afternoon we didn't get our outside time in like we like too. Starting last week we began our new year of the 1000 Hours Outside challenge and due to rain we only have about 15 hours in since we restart for our family every Labor Day.

The repaired drywall before mudding.

Shadow dog (15 years old!)

Moragon is now 5!

Sunday was another laid back kind of day with mass at our local parish church in the morning and an afternoon of playing outside. Nothing fancy or exciting much happens on the weekends for us unless we plan it well in advance. I spent the majority of my afternoon with hook in hand working on crocheted Christmas gifts for the family. I have a TON of them left to do but have made sure to give myself enough time this year to do them. I always make something for each child in the entire family and usually a few gifts for Daddy's parents and my mom. This year I'm adding my sister-in-laws and their husbands as well, though they'll get a gift per couple and the men probably won't use the items as much as those precious sisters.

The week: I scheduled a four day school week for the second week in a row because Peanut had a birthday this week! Monday was a typical school day for us with book work in the morning for the girls, followed by an afternoon of DVDs and read a louds, topped with independant reading and Bible story reading right before bed. ECJ is still attempting to get used to his new online curriculum and we're still considering switching him to a different online system, so this week he's actually doing both the K-12 (which is what we're really not liking so far) and Discovery K12 which is also free but not public school based and that we enjoy a lot more. Both YCJ amd Peanut are also working with Easy Peasy (another free online curriculum) to round out their days, about half an hour or so a day right now mainly for the subjects like health that I don't have a set curriculum set up for just yet. ECJ does lessons on Easy Peasy Highschool as well because he enjoys the program and has for a couple of years. If you haven't checked it out yet I would recommend it, use it alone or as supplemental work, it's welled laid out and easy to use.

8 birthday candles.

Tuesday was Peanut's 8th birthday! I can't believe my little girl is already eight years old!!! We didn't do lessons on Tuesday because we decided to spend the birthday with Noni and then having a quiet evening with brownies at home! Noni showed up around 10 AM and we headed to the park for some lunch and fresh air (love being at the park when local schools are in session we get the whole place to ourselves!). After that was a trip to Walmart to buy all of Peanut's gifts from Noni and then a dash back home for cake and ice cream before Noni had to leave.

Grumpy ECJ

History lesson

Wednesday was a typical homeschooling day for us. Book lessons took less than two hours, the online lessons for the girls took less than an hour each even with the worksheets I'd printed out, and ECJ had his face in the laptop screen most of the day with his online lessons. Really it doesn't take him that long to do his work, it's because participation in daily online classrooms counts towards your grades and so he attends all that he can every day. He's still not enjoying it and I'm not enjoying waking up much earlier than normal to make sure he's up to work on it. We're moving from this program to using the online options that we've always known were out there. Beginning next week we'll be shipping back the materials the program sent to us as I'll be unenrolling him from the program. That means that the laptop will be sent back, but between my desk top and his tablet the other online programs can be handled easily enough without having to stop for the campers to switch on and off the main computer. Maybe come Christmas we'll purchase another lap top, we'll see. It rained off and on most of the day making for an icky gray day all the way around. This meant that the campers really didn't get outside much and when their friends from public school got home they didn't get a chance to play with them.

YCJ & math

Speaking of tablets, Peanut got a new child's tablet from Noni for her birthday. I had it all set up Tuesday night and she got to play with it on Wednesday. She's absolutely in love with it and feels very grown up. YCJ is considering asking for a tablet for Christmas so that she'll have one too, what she really wants is her own lap top but that's just not going to happen just yet. I love having electronics on hand to help keep boredom away on rainy gray days, it keeps the campers from fighting as often as they used to. With two campers on tablets and one on her brand new Nintendo DS3 I barely heard a peep from them during their afternoon free time.

Thursday was pretty much a repeat of Wednesday, although the weather was much better and we were able to get outside for a good portion of the day. This improved everyone's moods and kept us all happy and content since the weather was in the 70's. Rooms were cleaned and before we knew it it was bedtime. Which is why I'm sitting here currently writing this post. We have nothing special planned for tomorrow, just more awesome homeschooling and next week is our first five day week since we started our fall lessons. Time for this mama to go lesson plan for next week!

I have one more quick thing to mention although I have a post coming up next week about this very subject: we're going to start some free mini lessons from Spanish for You! with the girls next week! I've been looking into this curriculum for over a year and now seems like the perfect time to implement it.

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