Popcorn Show and Sell

Although our registration with the new pack is not yet official, the Transformer got to participate in a pack activity on Saturday. You can see him here working the exit door at Lowe's with fellow Wolf Scout (pictured wearing his old Tiger colors). Although he did all right with the door solicitations, the Transformer much preferred logging the sales, pitching the product on display, and handling the money. We were so glad for the canopied shade over us as it was dang hot.

Week 2 Wrap-Up

Another week flew by! The second week went much better than the first week. Most of our scheduling conflicts have been resolved, and we are getting into a rhythm. We took Thursday off from school so that we could join other homeschool families in Buda for a game of kickball. It was hot, but it was fun! I didn't play this time so that the Kitty Cat could play in the playground with my supervision. The Transformer did really well.
(The plant above has lettuce edging but very rough, barbed edges.)

On Saturday morning, we had our second nature walk, during which I took pictures of too many plants to identify! I also got a picture of a skull. To expose my ignorance of most things nature, I can't claim to know any names of the items I took pictures of. I am hoping to revisit this post as I discover what their proper names are and update the picture captions to reflect that.
(The skull measured about 4 inches in depth, 2.5 inches wide.)





We are looking into beginning our third week of school tomorrow. This Wednesday, the Transformer will have his final kickball class through the YMCA. Last week's class was cancelled due to rain and no adequate indoor space available to use. Additionally, on Thursday, we will attend the local Cub Scout Pack's Ice-Cream Social to see if we might transfer from our current pack. Then on Friday or Saturday, we will go to a garage sale that is supposed to have lots of nice clothes my daughter's size to update her wardrobe.
(I love how the tree's leaves above are so droopy. My husband thought it might be a ficus. The pictures of the flowers on the right came out so blue--hard to get true purple on computer, I guess.)

Lastly, I am now in the planning stages of a Princesses & Knights Birthday Tea Party for the Kitty Cat, who will be turning five years old in two weeks! The party itself will not be until the week after that to avoid Labor Day weekend and potential guests being out of town.












(I love how the leaves on the tree to the left were so strictly horizontal! It was really hard to see any of the leaves from the side. This tree was just next to the tree above with the droopy leaves and made such a wonderful contrast to it. The fuzzy flowers on the right reminded me of the Who characters' hair from Dr. Seuss! The flowers are so soft and feel like they must be related to cotton.)

Our first week ended well. Yesterday we went on a nature walk first thing in the morning and collected some leaves to paint on Tuesday. Friday is more of an "odds and ends" day, in which we don't have anything from the regular science curriculum, for example, and catch up instead on web links that we had opened over the course of the week. Additionally, the kids have a longer piano instruction time.

I think I have worked out a lot of the time issues with our schedule now, so next week should go more smoothly--that is, if my computer and our internet access behave themselves. And the Rosetta Stone Student Management System software. It's so nice to have a multimedia homeschool, but it certainly has its risks too when the system goes down.

Anyway, the pictures you are seeing on this post are from the Austin Sumobot Tournament that we went to today as spectators. (You can see my son wearing the striped shirt in the photo on the right.) The Transformer is so interested in robots and wants so badly to participate in a Lego Robotics club. However, I don't really know the first thing about robots or how to get him involved. And it appears that most clubs require a minimum age of 8.

Anyway, I had joined the Austin Robotics Yahoo! group and found out about this Sumobot competition. It was really cool and a lot of fun. There is a class that is being offered in the spring for beginners in my son's age group; however, it is all the way up in Round Rock. I'm just not that excited about driving up that far every week. I am considering it, but I am also hoping desperately that something closer to us is available and affordable.

Details, Details

Okay, so I know you want all the details as to what we're going to attempt to cover this year.

Well, we've got the basics: Bible, language arts (Explode the Code, Primary Language Lessons, Sequential Spellling, Winterpromise LA/PreK-K), math (living math, Miquon, Ray's Arithmetic, MathTacular!). We are also incorporating a science curriculum this year. I had previously attempted to incorporate my own, but it just wasn't happening, so I decided to go with Sonlight's Science K program. We are also covering Korean (Rosetta Stone) and introductory French (Flip-Flop). Why French? Well, I have a free introductory curriculum that I thought we'd try. :)

In addition, we have a short period of physical education EVERY day! That's right. We are getting really ambitious this year! It's high time. We're in our fourth year of homeschooling, can you believe it?

Okay, we've also got history (both U.S. and world), geography, literature, and poetry. Most of the previous subjects are a mixture of the unofficial Ambleside Online Year 0.5 created by moms who live in states that require Kindergarten and Sonlight's Core K. We've incorporated a regular schedule for folksongs, picture study, composer study, handicrafts, computer time, creative arts, AND piano! Whew! Piano instruction is actually taking place on a keyboard. We are using the Phonics 4 Piano books (also known as Pianimals). So far the kids love it!

We will also have weekly nature walks with brief nature studies on the other four days of the week. We will also spend time once per week (on a different day than the nature walks) working on our nature notebooks.

I am combining the kids for all subjects except for language arts and math, although there is overlap there as well (the Transformer participates in some of his sister's work as reinforcement--mostly in math). The Transformer gets to narrate most of the readings, while his sister has that as an option (I just ask her to tell me one thing about whatever I read just to check whether she was actually listening or not).

The Kitty Cat is not doing the Rosetta Stone (too advanced for her) and has free time when her brother is working on subjects that she is not included on. The Transformer is also having minor supplementation to his science studies. He also gets a little bit more computer time, but more by default since the topics are too advanced for his sister.

We are covering a LOT of ground in just over 4 hours of school. However, I think the pace is just right to keep the kids from groaning about getting bored. I am also an overachiever so things may fall by the wayside as the year goes on. I hope not entire subjects, however. Just random books and other resources.

Well, there you have it. The details.

Above is a picture of our schoolroom, aka the Discovery Schoolhouse. It would have been great to get a picture with the kids, but my hands are usually full during school hours. I will try, however, to get another picture at some point of an active schoolroom.

Easin' into a new schedule

has been going well today. We finished school within 20 minutes of our scheduled ending time--which was great, of course! We got to do some watercolor painting and science as well. Traditionally, I had not been very good at continuing to expose the children to both creative arts and science on a consistent basis for school, so I am making a concerted effort to do that this year. We are keeping to very short CM-type lessons and getting a whole lot covered in a very short time! We start at 8:40am and end around 1pm. That includes P.E.! Aren't you proud of me? ;p

First Day of School! First Day of School!

We officially began our 2009/10 school year. The Transformer has been promoted to 2nd grade--whoo hoo! and the Kitty Cat is now a Kindergartener!

Unfortunately, our first day did not go so well. I keep many files on my computer, and have software that I use for certain subjects on another computer. I made the mistake of not restarting my laptop to be ready for today, and the loading speed was just horrendous. Too late, I realized that I needed to restart it. That took up a bit of our morning time. Also, I had neglected to account for taking school pics in the morning before classes, so that got us starting out about ten minutes late. Then when it was time for the Transformer to work on his Korean, I had difficulty with the software that we are using and had to uninstall and re-install the whole thing. argh.

Then, when I thought we were getting back on track and were only about thirty minutes behind schedule, our internet service started to go down. Along with my daily plan. ACK! Well, Kirk worked on that and got it back up and running. After that, the rest of the day went relatively normally. Including the bickering and complaining that happens on one of our less popular days.

Tomorrow will be a better day, for sure.

Also, tonight was the American Heritage Girls Parent Orientation and Girl Registration Night. I finally met my Assistant Leader in person, along with all of the girls we have so far in Pathfinders. We had a total of five girls tonight, and I hope that we will have more as people will continue to register during the course of the week. Even so, I think we have a good group of girls.

As for me relaxing. . . I think I get to do that on Wednesday. or Thursday. :)