week in review : kids home, earthday, homeschool

The older kids are home! After a crazy 12 hour plane delay in TX due to two days of bad weather in he area. Poor kids! They made it home though. They had fun in Mexico and they came home with tans, stories, and a boat load of dirty clothes.

Earth day was yesterday. We spent it with good friends at the annual Earth Day celebration we go to in Rolla. The kids made pine cone bird feeders, and such. It wasn't as entertaining as last year (every year the booths dwindle to less & less), but it was good to see our friends and watch the kids play.

We found yet another early reader website! I swear I try them all. It's http://www.sightwordswithsamson.com/ I like it because it's focus is on sight words and not phonics. We found another site I'm thinking about buying the software of at http://www.readinghorizons.com/ . It teaches real reading rules in easy to understand format (and has games). One of their free movies is about why/when do words start with K/C; like why isn't Kitten spelled with a C? It's very interesting and I think it will help even older readers. I'm having fun learning too.

This week we tried a new homeschool "format" in the mornings after breakfast I have the little girls (age 2&4) do two letter of the day worksheets. The older three kids (age 9,9 & 12) do worksheets together. Monday they did a series of geography, latitude & longitude, map skills worksheets. On Tuesday they did a packet of about 6 worksheets on pollination (earth day related). The sheets were educational and also had mazes, word searches, Etc.

So now what to do today...

The dormant strawberry plants/roots we planted while the kids were gone are doing FANTASTIC! They have tripled in size! I hope I muster up the energy to garden today. I need to get a bunch of household stuff done first. I need to accomplish several things today since we'll be gone all day tomorrow again. I need to drop off the older kids to sleepover birthday parties back in Rolla again. So there goes our Friday. (Charlotte and the boys each have different parties to go to).

And people wonder how homeschoolers socialize. They should be wondering when homeschoolers have time for school work.