Wordless Wednesday: Too cute

She had a real smile a second ago!

Zach channeling his old man look.

Accent

I don't know why Jon is teaching Ben his accents. Ben isn't allowed to use them on the ladies for at least another 25 years!

Wordless Wednesday: warm weather pj's

I love how the shorts show off the bruises!

Happy anniversary

Jon and I have been married for 8 years today. I never thought that this is where we would end up 8 years later, but I'm so happy we found our way here to Lakewood, with 4 feisty kids, amazing friends, a church, home schooling..... The ride gets more exciting each year. How are you going to top this one? I love you "skinny baboo."

A little giggle

My step dad retired last year and 6 months later was setting up a new house 12hrs south of the awful Cleveland winters. They were sick of the cold, sick of the garage door freezing shut and sick of shoveling snow. I wonder if they know Jon has shoveled twice this winter and considered using the snow blower my parents left us one time, but decided we just didn't have enough to warrant the trouble. I wonder if they know Cleveland has had the least amount of snow in a decade. I wonder if they know we haven't worn a coat in weeks or that its going to be 80 tomorrow and Wednesday. I know they are happy in their new home, but every time I look outside I have to giggle just a little!

Its so sunny, they can't even look at me.

Curriculum

For the past month I've been researching home school curriculum for next year (you may have noticed the blog postings were a bit short recently). Its slightly exciting and incredibly overwhelming. The amount of curriculum out there is amazing. I thought about getting some sort of curriculum for kindergarten, but I didn't think it would really be necessary. While it isn't necessary, its been a bit of a challenge.

I got a print out of the states kindergarten standards and have referred to that from time to time, but most of our school time consists of reading. We go through a reading lesson every day, practice words that he has struggled with, we review the calendar and the rest is up in the air. While I like the freedom to cover whatever Ben is interested in, I sometimes feel like we are all over the place and we aren't really learning anything. The idea of some structure and a real course of action is exciting to me!

I've heard that if you get a full curriculum from a company, you should have it ordered by now because they are usually on back order by the time summer hits and its 50/50 if you'll get it by fall. I went into full research mode and got a bit overwhelmed for a bit. I started looking at some popular curriculums, some that friends use and moved to what ever looked interesting. I referred back to The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise and looked at some of their suggestions. Then programs and reviews started to run together. I have a basic idea of what I want and what will work for Ben so once I found something I liked for history and science, I bought it and moved on. I'm actually not using a real curriculum for those two subjects. I found a few books that will work together, cover all the major topics a first grader should be aware of and that looked interesting, thought provoking and offered activity suggestions not just sitting and reading then moving on to the next subject.

I decided against a full curriculum from one company mostly because the prices are ridiculous and because Ben is ahead of the game in some areas and severely lacking in others. I wanted to make sure what I got fit his needs rather than getting something a company thought should fit every first grader.

Next, I moved on to spelling/writing/grammar. I took The Well Trained Minds suggestion and am using Spelling Workout for spelling work. A friend uses that and she and her son really like it. I checked out her book and thought it had plenty of diversity in the lessons to keep Ben from getting bored while covering a range of topics. My friend also uses First Language Lessons (also by The Well Trained Mind authors) for grammar and writing. I was torn on the book because it has several poems to memorize, practices story and picture narration and does some copy work. All of that I liked. It just seemed like the actual grammar part was lacking just a bit. I found a program called Growing with Grammar which focuses on everything First Language lessons seems to just breeze over. I think I will use both books and pick and choose which lessons we will use every day.

I would like to cover subjects like art, music appreciation and Bible study. Those wont be daily subjects (unless we are working on Bible verse memorization). While I've looked at several art books, I think we're going to stick to library books for those subjects.

That leaves math. I've slowly weaned out several programs leaving me with 2 choices. They are completely different from each other. One seems more basic, but boasts of being real world applicable. One seems more challenging, but is heavy on the use of manipulatives. Ben is definitely a finger counter so I think the manipulatives would be very beneficial at this point, but I don't want him to become dependent on them or become overwhelmed or bored with the program. On the other hand, I don't want to get the more basic program and have him become bored or become overconfident and stop trying/focusing--something he's been known to do once or twice! I'm going to give math a little more thought before I make a decision. I'm just excited to have a plan for next year. The best part, every book, except 1, has been less than $17. Knowing that should we continue to home school the rest of the kids, they will be able to use many of the same books, makes it that much better!

Wordless Wednesday: Brothers

Love!

For Momo and Papa

Ellie walking:

Sam lending a hand:

Ben had to get in on the act!

Wordless Wednesday: Babies

They love daddy!

Stop the Insanity

We have officially been training for the half marathon for a month now. I've also just completed the first month of Insanity. For the past 2 or 3 weeks I've woke up with sore shoulders, lower back pain, knee pain, foot pain and toe pain which is steadily getting worse. It takes me a minute or two to stand up and sit down and once I stand up (or get out of bed) I can't walk correctly, or straight for a few minutes. I am always in pain and its getting old. The plus side is I'm starting to lose some weight. I'm down 14lbs in a month and a half. The down side (not counting the constant pain) is my long runs the past two weeks have been horrible. I've been slow, feel like I can't catch my breath and my legs feel like they have 10lb weights on them. I think its time to take a break from the Insanity. While I know that a lot of the pain I have is from the running, I think the extra pounding is making it worse and I'm hoping that by stopping the Insanity workouts I'll feel a bit better and have more stamina to make it through the long runs. I know this is best for my joints, but I hate stopping a work out program (especially one that is working for me) half way through. When you get good advice you just can't ignore it: