Week 2

It was a great week.  We're on a roll!  Here is how our day goes:

I wake up at 530 and do Ripped in 30 by Jillian Michaels.  *APPLAUSE*  Thanks.  Yep, about to be half-way ripped, or I would be if it weren't for that daily bowl of ice cream. 

Then I shower and dress. 

You heard me right.  I've showered and dressed EVERY MORNING for the last two weeks. 

*APPLAUSE*  I know!  I'm pretty much amazing.  These are things I haven't done in a very long time.  You know WHY???  My 5th baby is about to be ONE!!!!   The fog is lifting and the clouds are parting.  I'm becoming human again.

After being a rockstar in the morning, at least half of my kids are awake and the baby is wanting fed, so I feed her sweet, chubby face.

7am I wake up the other half of my kids and we eat breakfast.

Right after breakfast we have family prayer and read scriptures together.
Then immediately do latin & math. 

The rest of the day is scattered with spelling, english, reading, copywork, myths, piano, lunch, dinner, etc.  It lasts all day long, from 530 am to 830 pm.

The kids do a lot of chores and keep the house clean.  I do a lot of cooking, cleaning, changing diapers, wiping bums (Zach is potty training himself!!!!), laundry, teaching, nagging, sneaking chocolate, etc.

Usually at the end of the day we squeeze in devotional (song, scripture verse, scripture story) and then recitations (IEW poetry & The Living Christ).

And then we watch Ben Hur until bedtime :)  It is so good!  I've never seen it before.  We've watched about 4 1/2 hours of it so far.  It is perfect because we are learning about the Romans in our history book right now.

Then the kids go to bed at 8pm and I read to them from Story of the World-Middle Ages & Our Island Story or a fairytale.

Tuesdays we go into town about 45 min away and take Savannah and Charlotte to piano lessons (I'm not sure about this teacher though...) and gymnastics (Savannah, Charlotte, & Maddy).  Next week we will also be going to homeschool class (PE, art, computers) on post on Wednesday mornings and Savannah will start Activity Day Girls on Wed. nights.

I have to say that I am really loving homeschool.  I love our full schedule.  I love learning along with the kids.  I love my kids!

We did do a curriculum switch this week.  I put aside Spell to Write and Read and purchased Rod & Staff's spelling for both girls.  They love it; I love it.  Charlotte wants more workbooks like her spelling, so today I bought her Rod & Staff's phonics and Climbing to Good English.  She will be just as busy as Savannah now, but that's what she wants!  Who knew?

Week 1

Done!!!

It was a great week.  The first few days were long as we were getting used to doing so much, but by the end of the week we were figuring things out.  However, our days are still quite long & busy.

Savannah has quite a bit on her plate this year.  Savannah and Charlotte both do Math, latin, spelling/writing, literature, piano, & enrichments (poetry, geography, science), but Savannah also does English, Greek Myths, Book of Mormon reading, summarizing, and Discovering the Scriptures.  It is just a lot more than what we've done in the past.  She really applies herself and gets her work done without much proding from me.  I made her a to-do list to help with this.  The only subject that she hates and drags her feet on is math.  Today, math took around... two hours or more for one front and back page of math.  Yeah, really.
I love Math Mammoth.  I love how it shows patterns in numbers; how it shows different ways of solving problems.  It is an amazing math program.  *sigh* 
She usually does just fine and completes her math page quickly without much help from me.  Today, however, her brain was MIA.  It might have been that I told her she had to complete her math before we went to a swimming party.  Her mind was on swimming, not work.  So maybe today was my fault. 

I am exhausted.

Getting ready

Well, we are getting ready to start our first day of school on Monday.  I am particularly excited about the latin.  Savannah listened to O Come All Ye Faithful in latin over and over to get the pronunciation down all day today.  She will really enjoy learning a new language... just to show off.  I'm excited about latin because she is excited.  It is fun to teach enthusiastic students (Charlotte will be learning it too). 
Charlotte is excited about spellingcity.com and the fact that I'll let her play spelling games until her heart's content.  I put their spelling lists, vocabulary lists, and latin words on there for them to play with.  Should be quite helpful.
I took our school pictures today; I'll have them up soon.  I like to make IDs with them.
Monday I am going to surprise them with something special... I'm just not sure yet.  A trip to get donuts maybe?  Or frozen yogurt?  Maybe I can wake them up early and we'll go stand at the end of the driveway and wave at the bus as it drives by, lol.  That is MY favorite part.  We are going to a Not-Back-to-School pool party on Friday with other homeschoolers in the area.
Piano lessons start on Tuesday; we took the summer off.  Homeschool class (PE, art, computers) starts next month, along with Maddy's gymnastics class.