My day, in a Nutshell

Hey there,

We have been busy the last two weeks.
We are doing Home School every day of the week, with the weekends off.
We have been doing Home School co-op every Friday for the last 2 weeks, and will for another 4.
We also have Tae-kwon-do every Friday evening.
We had two play dates this week, which was great, and will be adding one of those as a regular Wednesday visit.
I have been cleaning out all of the stuff in the house that has no place, and have continued my desire to downsize, I have been getting rid of a lot of things, and this makes me happy.

A rundown of my day, (typically) unless it's Wednesday, or Friday, lol:

I get up in the mornings with Jerry at 6am.
After he leaves at 7:00-7:30 depending on the day, I sit and get online with my cup of steamy coffee in hand. I check my email and my facebook page and see what the world has to say and who is up earlier than I am.
I get anywhere from 1-2 hours alone before baby girl wakes up and wants to nurse. In this time I do different things, fold laundry, read, look at a magazine, work out, just sit and think about the day.

I listen to the monitor for Norah to let out that one cry she does to let me know she is aware she is in bed alone and I need to join her. I usually slip back into bed at that time, and nurse her back to sleep while I watch something on t.v. and try to sneak back out of bed, this of course does not always work.

Once Norah is awake, it is all about her, lol. First order of business? Breakfast! Norah loves food, and it is the first thing she wants in the morning besides her brother.

Eventually Patrick emerges from the bat cave, either by choice or from me calling his name 900 times, either way the first thing on his mind is food as well.

We eat and get dressed, and try to start our Home School day as soon as possible. We start around 9am and go until about 11-11:30am. We have to finish before 12, because Phineas and Ferb comes on and Patrick will die if he knows it's on and he can't watch it, lol.

We start off the day with the day of the week, and the weather. Then we mark off the calendar, and say the Pledge Of Allegiance. Then we start on a lesson, or theme. Each week we focus on a letter and number. We write, read, do a word of the day, memorization, shapes, matching, bigger than, less than, science, and we have even started on 1st grade math because he is supper smart. Oh.....did I mention my son is reading? He is! Every day he gets better, but he is doing so good, and he is so proud of himself.

Then comes lunch, and a little lite cleaning if possible. Patrick watches his t.v cartoon, and Norah goes down for a nap around 1pm. I now have about 2 hours to hang with Patrick, and do some things around the house.

By 3 or 3:30 Norah is up, and in a great mood ready to eat again, (the girl can put some food away). At this point I attempt to finish whatever I was doing, and get the dishwasher and washer going, vacuum, things I could not do while she slept. Now it's 4-4:30 and it's time to think about dinner. Jerry walks in the door anywhere between 4:50 and 5:20 and so starts the process of dinner, conversation, cleaning up dinner, jammies, teeth brushing, and bed by 10pm so we can begin again.

Wow, I feel tired just from writing it all down

School Days

We are in full swing of things now, I tell you.

Home School Rocks!

Patrick is loving it, and I am too, it just seems like the way it should be. No separation anxiety, no worrying all day, not parent teacher conferences, or required time in the classroom, I don't have to worry about him eating something he shouldn't because of his food allergies, or kids being mean to him, or teachers belittling him. The thought of being away from my child all day, freaks me out, and no one can teach him like I can.

I hear from several moms about a certain elementary school in town, "It's the best", all the mom's try to get there kids enrolled in kindergarten there. However.....this particular school only has two kindergarten classes, and each has 28-30 students. 1 teacher, 28-30 students. How could this possibly be conductive to a good start in education? There is no possible way that teacher can meat the needs of the children. I see schools like feed lots now, lol, no really, they cram as many in there as they can for the cost, the health, wellbeing, sanity, emotional stability, or quality of life are of no value.

We joined the local home school co-op and  joined in a pic-nic last night as a kick off for the fall co-op. We are really excited. It was really neat to be among all those people, our own little community of home schoolers. The cool thing is, we all have at least that one thing in common. I can't wait for co-op to begin. It is a Christian group, which does not bother me either way, (we don't go to church) and we will be meeting every Friday afternoon for 6 weeks. Very exciting!

We ran into some acquaintance's of Jerry's last weekend, and the woman present started talking with Patrick. (I was not present for the conversation, but Jerry told me about it after the fact)She started asking him things like , "How old are you?", "What's your name?" and so on. She then starts to quiz him in a sense, and then comments on how bright he is. She asks what school he is going to, and he proudly says, "I go to home school". She seemed to be a bit taken back, and then asked him some more questions, as if to determine whether or not I was doing a good job, lol. She then tells Jerry how impressed she is, and how smart he is, and how much he knows for a five year old, which is awesome, but Jerry is telling me this and I am thinking, "Why does she care?" He smiles at me and tells me that she is a kindergarten teacher in town. So the moral here is, that I rock, lol! Sometimes I doubt myself and my ability to teach him, teach him well, but it was so nice to have the compliment from her. She was impressed, and I should be too. Patrick is smart, and a great, enthusiastic learner, and I love making learning fun for him.

This week we did so much, I am so proud of him.

He memorized in one day a limerick, and here it is.

There was an old man from Peru,

who dreamed he was eating his own shoe,

he woke in a fright,

in the middle of the night,

and found it was perfectly true.

Lol, we thought it was cute and fun to learn.

Things Patrick can do thus far:

Can count to 100

Can count backwards from 10

Knows his ABC's

Knows all of the sounds every letter makes

Knows all of the days of the week

Knows how to Spell and Write his name

He knows all of his shapes and colors, has since he was 2 1/2

Some of the things we have been working on:

Phonics/Learning to read

Five senses 

How to tell time

Adding and Subtracting

Money