Homeschool Week 1

Well we have almost survived one full week of homeschooling!  Praise the Lord!  Tomorrow we have a light day and then we are done for the week.  I have to admit, I'm ready for a small break this weekend...but not because the homeschooling has been difficult.  I am just exhausted.  Chris says that is due to the fact that we have been battling a slew of random illnesses in him for the past 9 weeks, I am almost 9 months pregnant and I have a sinus infection.  He's probably right..he usually is...darnit!  ;)  So here's a roundup of our week. 

Background information:

So I spent most of my summer getting things ready, planning and trying to prepare as much as possible before the actual home school year started.  This included selecting curriculum, purchasing home school furniture (a big "industrial school" table, little people chairs and a huge white board for all of our lessons), planning lessons, reorganizing the playroom to fit the home school stuff and learning how to teach!  Yeah...so since I'm the uber planner of COURSE all of my planning has been stifled by various interruptions or delays.  For example, I tired to order our home school furniture the week before July 4.  The lady that I was working with was out of the office for 2 full weeks with kidney stones...doh!  So we waited.  I was finally able to order my furniture around the 3 week in July...no big deal, we don't start home school until the 13th of August!  The table came in about 6 days later...SCORE!!  Oh...but it was damaged.  DOH!  We sent that back.  The second table arrived...DAMAGED!  So here we are starting home school on Monday and we have NO table.  You might think, well where are the chairs and whiteboard?!  My question exactly!  The chairs were "lost in shipping" but did finally arrive on Tuesday of this week...and they are not damaged!!  Wahoo!!  The whiteboard was "returned to the manufacturer" by UPS because it was "rejected by the recipient."  Only...we never RECEIVED the whiteboard!  The manufacturer shipped it again and it will *hopefully* arrive today or early next week.  No one knows exactly what happened to it...  Then yesterday afternoon my third table arrived.  The box was pretty beat up...again, but it didn't look like there was any damage.  So we brought it home and unwrapped it...guess what?!  The corner is busted and jagged!!!  Talk about frustrating!  So we are now waiting to see what the company is going to do, while the lady we worked with locally will be investigating another vendor for us to purchase the table from.  GGRR!!!  So we have finished our first full week of home school sitting on the floor with a tiny little easel and no table to work with.  It worked, but definitely drove my Type A, planner personality NUTS this week.  Add in the fact that I'm majorly pregnant and hormonal and I was a mess.  :)  But that's ok, I am reminded that in order to gain the Fruit of the Spirit, we must be tested.  So I'm thinking I was learning about peace, self control, kindness and gentleness this week...  :)

Aside from all of that chaos with the furniture, Christopher has been battling kidney stones!  The poor man was in the ER 12 days ago and just FINALLY passed his stone last night!  PRAISE THE LORD!  So needless to say he has been fairly miserable for the past 12 days and not sleeping well at night...which means that I don't sleep well either, so that added to my tiredness a bit.  Then Katherine managed to share her cold with me that I think has turned into a full blown sinus infection.  Definitely not fun while pregnant since I cannot take anything!  :(  Bummer!!  Heating pads on my sinuses and salt water gargles are my best friends right now.  :)  I sure hope that we can get over these ailments for good this weekend and move forward with staying well!!  Christopher also discovered in the past 2 weeks that he is Gluten Intolerant.  I am SO thankful that he has finally figured out the cause of a lot of his digestive issues, but now comes the hard part of learning to cook with gluten!  My goodness is gluten in EVERYTHING!  I have become a fanatic label reader at the grocery store.  haha!  Luckily I have found some pretty good resources for gluten-free cooking and foods, so once I get the hang of it, I think it will be pretty simple.  I'm so excited to see how good we all feel once we are all healthy and running at full tilt again!  Just in time for little boy to arrive.  :) 

Home school:  Week 1

So since all of that was going on in the background, I was pretty tired starting out the week with home school.  But luckily God's grace is sufficient and He gave me just enough energy to get through the mornings and then veg in the afternoons.  :)  Monday, we went to our home school group orientation and Katherine met her tutor and all of the little kids in her class. She is so excited to actually start her Classical Conversations Memory Work next week with her classmates!!  We will go every Monday from 9-12.  The rest of the week we will work on the Memory work at home and add in our math and language arts lessons.  The Memory Work includes, history, science, Latin, English, Fine Arts, Math and Bible verses.  We then use our own curriculum at home for Language Arts and Math.  We are using "The Writing Road to Reading" or the Spalding Method for Language Arts, which includes, phonograms, reading, handwriting, writing, and spelling.  We are also using "Saxon Kindergarten Math."  So far we are about 2 lessons ahead in Language Arts and a full week ahead in Math.  Getting ahead was not intended, but as we were in the lessons I would follow along with questions Katherine asked and as we delved further into that information we ended up covering the next day's lesson by accident!  I have a feeling she is going to move through the curriculum at a rapid pace.  So far our Math and Lang. Arts lessons have taken about 60 - 75  minutes each day.  Caroline kind of comes and goes from the lessons and is actually picking up quite a bit from the lessons.  Next week the memory work will be added in after our Lang. Arts and Math.  That will take about an hour each day and we will also add in some Bible Study before our lessons begin, which will take about 30 minutes.  So in total without counting breaks our home school day will average about 3 hours.  This will vary as the math and language arts get tougher, but for now that's our plan.  Not too bad! 

I can definitely say that the week has gone much smoother than I anticipated.  We have had a few moments of testing from Katherine.  She did not want to listen and would rather be swimming or watching a movie or playing with her toys, but overall, she has done very well!  I am so proud of her!  And she is SO incredibly smart!  I knew she picked things up quickly, but she has really surprised me this week. 

Well I'm off to get a few things done around the house and then to sit with my heating pad on my sinuses for a while.  The girls are doing what they do best.  Katherine is watching He Man and Caroline is content to be playing all by herself with her baby dolls.  They are so sweet.  I am definitely one blessed Momma!! 

Until next time!