I hardly blog, esp photos, because for some reason I can’t upload anymore photos, some sort of glitch that I’m not spending time to try to fix. Our homeschool year is coming to a close, and I am in the process of going through a trial membership of TIME4LEARNING.COM. Probably what we’ll do for our homeschool curriculum next school year, it will really save me having to lug around tons of school books.
Pabs has been gone for the last month, finally back for a week, and taking off again next week. The last month I’ve been taking it easy with the kids school, there’s only so much I can do while waiting for.. whatever it is our future holds.
Anyways while scanning articles, I came across this funny one that hits home.
The kids are all so smart, there’s so much going for them that I need to step back and look at the big picture every once in awhile and not stress out.
At the last day of the kids charter school day, Pabs was following hte kids around taking photos in their class, and telling me after how smart the kids were in their classes. Alex was the only one raising his hand to answer the teachers questions and Celine was reading so well etc.., so it was nice for Pabs to see the kids in their element in school, since he’s not super involved with their school, so he really enjoyed seeing that, and it’s perfect for me when I need encouragement.
Now that Pabs has been back, I’ve been sleeping in, and allowing myself to go to the library on my own. Yay! I’m not looking forward to him being gone again. Oh well.
Anges is sharing her wisdom!!! Yay!! For those of babies-preschoolers this is an awesome site. And just wanted I needed for Diego. Who is left handed and I am trying to get his hand to be strenthened for writing!
There’s a job crisis in Southern California. Teachers from North County San Diego are getting laid off (the government spends 35,000 + per inmate verses $4,500-$9,000 per student crazy lack of balance) and it’s the schools and students, and ultimately the economy will suffer even more.
Homeschooling doesn’t throw our life into a tumble when things like this happen, we get to merrily go on our way. On the news families were saying that they might have to move. The less teachers the larger the classes, and that’s not what any families want.
So we had to go to Santa Monica to get the kids australian passports, …and we plan to have the day spent there to take advantage of being in “hollywood” and Santa Monica Pier etc.., here are some photos of the day out.
(The reason we take so many photos of the actual aquariums and signs etc.., is because this is also part of our science for this month (learning oceanography), and we can look back and remember what we saw when we do the worksheet pages on the subject).
We went to this Car Museum a couple years ago when getting the kids Chilean passports, since it was right across the road (unfortunately we didn’t realize we were in the middle of Hollywood at that time).
And they had the Batmobile from Batman Forever, and the Time travel car from Back to the Future movies So this time I really wanted Alex and Eric to see it, but.. they weren’t there anymore. Anyhow.. the first car you see is the car from one of the James Bond movies. And there was so much fun to be had anyways. There was a portion of the musum dedicated to Hotwheel cars and as we passed it (we were going around) Diego said “when are we going to MY place”.
I have been using this textbook for the kids history. It goes along with Classical Education, the process of learning history that I haven’t really looked into. But now that I’ve been in the charter school, this was the history books they were using.
One thing about Homeschooling was being able to incorproate Bible history into their schooling. And this is a very easy, albit minimal way of introducing it.
The Story of the World, Volume one is from the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor
It starts with the earliest people settling in the fertile cresent, and becoming the great Egyptian Empire, it includes the story of Abraham, in a way I had no idea. Starting with his wealthy merchant family, and then when his father dies, and hes wondering what to do, he hears God speaking to him. It goes into him moving to canana.
It includes ancient India, China, Assyria, it’s a read aloud book with minimal pictures, but it’s engaging and interesting. Alex (8 years) is really enjoying it so far. if you want to learn more, its easy to get library books. There’s also a narration activity book, with maps etc that you can buy seperatly. Narration means that after a portion or chapter is read, the child tells back what was read, to ensure comprehension. There’s also lapbooks, or minibooks, coloring pages etc.., that could be done as well. –OR– Just read the book and use the narration questions.
An idea of a 10th anniversary vow renewal came up today. A friend was talking about how fun that would be, esp. now we’re in a city with a host of friends.
The day we met is coming up in May, and that is a date that Pabs and I like better than our actual, going-down-to-city-hall arrangement. I had ideas of a cruise, and now ideas came up for doing it at a beach across the border, or at a winery.
I still haven’t talked it over with Pabs since we already decided that as it gets closer we could choose to do something with our kids in honor of it, and not actually do anything big.
So stay tuned.
–Here’s a cute kids–: Always after a birthday the kids talk about their next birthday and what theme it’ll be. And Diego says “mum for your birthday I’m going to give you a dress”, and Celine says “mum, I’ll be giving you a christmas dress” and Eric pipes in “And I’ll give you a red dress”, Finally Diego says “Well, I’ll be giving you the glass slippers”. Oh gosh. I feel like a princess.
One wonderful thing about Homeschooling is the ability to do lovely hands-on Science, History, Literature.. or whatever your want Lapbooks. I do a combination of Lapbooking and Notebooking. It’s inspiring going through homeschooling blogs and getting the vision. it takes a bit to get started and most likely the first couple of lapbooks are extremely simple, which is ok. There’s no wrong way to do Lapbooking or Notebooking.
What is a Lapbook? This site explains it simply and has a bunch of links to get started checking out other great lapbooks.
I’ll be slowly uploading videos of our lapbooks, most of them I can’t take credit for, and I’ll have links on the side of the main Lapbooking sites I glean the ideas from.
