My Little Soapbox

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Our first post with an actual plant photograph will go up this week yet. I was thwarted by the rain this morning.

We’re still recovering a bit from a long weekend made longer by our State Fair trip today. On the plus side my boys are happily tired from a weekend spent with their some of their cousins.

We actually had a more quiet visit with most of the time spent just hanging out with the cousins. It was a lot harder than normal for my 11 year old niece. I think she’s finally crested that age where she can play with the “little kids”. She’s the oldest of all the cousins so I think everyone made an effort to keep her included on the adult level rather than leave her with the rest of the kids (7, 7, 5, 4 years respectively).

The visit wasn’t long enough for the kids and my boys were already missing them before they’d even gotten home. It makes me wonder sometimes how the pioneers handled the long and untravelable distances between relatives. I suppose that’s on of the reasons that the letters from long ago were more frequent and descriptive.

Well that’s the short notes from Friday/Saturday. More notes from the weekend to come shortly..as soon as I catch up on some sleep!!

determines whether we have internet! We’ve had some good growth on our trees which is affecting our internet. So things will be sparse until we get it sorted out fully. Occasionally we’re up for hours and then sometimes I’ll sit down to work on things and *poof* no internet.

I love the trees though so we’ll figure out what we need to do with the antenna rather than chop, chop our trees.

In other news are school year is off with a “hooray!” and so far so good. (tongue in cheek). I am planning on to dilegently type up my weekly overviews this year and add some videos of things we did/do as well. I’m focusing on MY documentation this year too.

Well time for me to get back to the kiddos as Cyberchase is about over. What’s up for the afternoon should be yummy and fun: Chocolate Zucchini Bread!

Jr. will begin his Year 2 next Monday. This year we have lots to do and hopefully most of it will be fun for both of us. I am almost ready which I suppose is better than not ready at all. Finding time to actively focus on planning is still an issue. And one that must get resolved if we are to get a significant portion of our plans completed this year. Unfortunately without time to plan what falls to the wayside are the fun, big projects that require me to make sure we have stuff on hand. My goal this year is to carve out time to plan and to gather up the necessary materials for the big projects.

The plan may seem ambitious but if last winter was any indicator of what’s to come this year we will have a number of months where we are effectively here, home and hardly anywhere else. Long winter days are perfect for keeping busy with learning fun!

Year 2 Plan

Math: Singapore 2A/2B
We will be continuing with Singapore Math. Jr. is still lightening fast with picking up math concepts and continues to develop his interest in numbers. This program has worked well with keeping him slightly challenged and growing. We will be adding in Challenging Word Problems this year.

Grammar: Growing with Grammar 1st/2nd
I love this program! What’s more so does Jr. The lessons are nutshell lessons that are easy to complete with no frustration from my reluctant writer. The writing is there but not so much that Jr. gets fatigued which is what leads to frustration. We started this late in the year last year so we will not actually hit the 2nd grade pages till closer to November.

Reading: ETC Online, Various Read Aloud Books
Reading is the bane of Jrs. existence. He can read and read well for his age in my opinion. But he loathes reading aloud. So this year we have an assigned books for him to read to one of us (the parents) at varying levels. We’ll be starting out the year with easy books to encourage his confidence in himself and move up as the year progresses. For additional reinforcement of the phonics rules Jr. will use Explode The Code Online.
This is probably the area of I expect the largest adjustment throughout the year.

Handwriting: HWT 2nd Grade
We need to refine some of the technique and then add more writing to the day. Jr. has nice chunky handwriting when he takes his time but does still tend to utilize all uppercase letters when writing. He’ll also be continuing with writing to his pen pal across the pond. And we’ll have copy-work pages to change up from the technique days.

Geography:
I do not have a set resource for Geography as our focus for this year is just exposure. We’ll touch on Oceans, Continents, US Geography and some World Geography. But the main idea of the year will be to make him more aware that there are other places, countries and peoples.

Science: R.E.A.L. Science Life & Earth & Space
Originally I was just planning on working on Life but instead I am going to be combining the two throughout the year. Depending on how it goes this combination may extend into next year as well. Due to the time of year and what is available we actually started this two weeks ago to cover the first two preliminary units so that we could jump ahead to the butterfly unit since we have caterpillars in a jar now. We will focus on life science for August and then switch to the Earth & Space weather units for September while I regroup for Life again in October.

History: History Odyssey Level 1 Middle Ages
The Ancient while fascinating just never grabbed my boys attention. So while we plodded through as much as we could we will not be continuing on Ancients this year. Instead he will move forward to the Middle Ages and return to Ancient times in a couple of years. I will reiterate my love for rotational nature of history in the Classical method. In a fun and interesting twist on history Jr. has already snagged a few of my “to be read” books for History - knights seem to be right up his alley this year.

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So there is our plan well along with some extra curriculars, art projects and field trips. It will be a full year but one that I hope only keeps us pleasantly busy and learning. If it seems to overwhelming I’ll dial back a bit. On paper it looks crazy but when I look at the lessons themselves it evens out to be an engaging, doable year.

Supplies Tape, Crayons, Scissors, Paper, String and a odd leftover pool part
Add in one four year old

What you get is a floor covered with paper bits and a happily creating boy who is busy long enough for you the mom to get something done and snap some quick photos of your busy little bee.

Writing a letter to a friend across the pond.

Enjoying a butterfly friend visiting our science lab

Our lab wasn’t about butterflies (or rather moths as I think this one was) but we were delighted with the opportunity this little friend gave to us. As we were working on our lab questions from our outdoor lab Jr. felt something on his leg. When he looked down he saw this moth/butterfly. Who very graciously allowed us to hold him and watch as wings flexed, proboscis tasted and little tiny feet clung to fingers. Finally in a fit of natures wonder the little moth/butterfly came back and let us take some pictures!

I am making some random notes for the memory box.

Jr. has an old man tooth. His second front tooth is crooked as all get out but not actually that loose. Thus far he’s not been bothered by it though yesterday when Lil’B smucked him in the mouth we had tears for a bit.
Lil’B is afraid of thunder. This has made for long nights for we parents and the little man himself. He’s fine once he snuggles with us but then he’s snuggling with us. And to be honest he’s not that small anymore. Also he likes to sleep with his arms in strange locations like poking into my back just under my shoulder bone making me quite uncomfortable.

The boys saw the Chipmunk movie - two actually the new one and an classic chipmunk movie. They like the music especially the updated version of witch doctor. This tickles me because we (my siblings and I) used to dance like nuts to the classic witch doctor. And I remember how proud/excited we were to finally get all the words down.

Harley is being a chewy puppy again. Tonight he murdered a poor stuffed parrot. I had parrot fluff guts all over my living room. That I don’t care about. What I do care about is that the rotten mutt some how got a hold of my favorite purple pen and chomped it to bits?! Why he eats things like that when the floor is filled with lots of Harley toys I don’t know! Strange rotten mutt….