On the plus side, our school day is only a few hours long

01/15/2011 Nichole 5 Comments

home/school Most of the schoolchildren in our neck of the woods have been out of school all week. We did go out and sled and build some snowmen, but the snow didn’t mean any days off for my poor homeschooled kids. Here’s what we did this week:

Math
Poppy hasn’t been having a problem with the concepts in her new math program, but the all-worksheets, all-the-time format isn’t working so well for her. She’s bored with it, and that’s manifesting itself in the way we’re butting heads over it. We’ve been doing math first thing every day. I’m going to rearrange our schedule a bit and see if that helps matters.

Spanish
After an initial reluctance to start a new unit, Poppy’s back to doing just fine on her Spanish lessons. She’s doing lessons on Monday and Wednesday and tests on Tuesdays and Thursdays now, with a break from Spanish on Fridays.

Health
This week’s lesson was about Different Ways to Exercise. Which pretty much meant the kids went bonkers for about 20 minutes.

Physical education
In addition to the health-lesson shenanigans, Poppy had her regular ballet class.

Reading
Poppy read for at least 20 minutes on her own every day this week, and we’re still reading a chapter of “A Little Princess” every day. spoilers Miss Minchin’s ‘tude toward poor little Sara prompted Poppy to declare that she’s “so glad we do school at home.”

Geography
We studied Maine this week. If Poppy were the kind of girl who ate anything other than peanut butter, it would’ve been a great excuse to buy a lobster. Oh well. She loves geography thus far. I think we’re going to start our days with it next week.

Science
We only did one of the planned lessons this week. The second one was about weighing things, and I don’t have a small scale. So we’ve bumped that to next week. Poppy did enjoy the lesson we did do, though, which was about estimating measurements.

Bandwagons

Speak up!

01/14/2011 Nichole 4 Comments

It’s Delurking Day, which is a thing Chris at Rude Cactus started. The general idea is this: People read blogs but they don’t leave comments, and comments are what help bloggers grow big and strong. So! If you don’t usually leave a comment, I hope you’ll make an exception today. And if you do usually comment, I still want to hear from you.

Talk about whatever you’d like. But if you can’t think of anything to say, tell me this: What’s your favorite way to relax?

Flotsam / Jetsam

I’ve had enough winter now, thanks!

01/13/2011 Nichole 10 Comments

We made it out to Poppy’s ballet class yesterday afternoon. Shortly after we got home, our road magically transformed into a luge course. Rockford thought he might go out to the grocery store, but he fell on his tuchus when he walked up to check the road. It’s a very good thing that he can work from home.

In other news, my face hurts. This happens occasionally, and I’m sure it has something to do with my jaw and/or teeth. I should probably see a specialist, but then I would have to give them all of my dollars. So I’m just going to take some painkillers instead.

Update!

Brook has requested more information about the facehurt. So. Imagine that Paris Hilton’s face also hurts, in exactly the same manner as mine. The pain would radiate in a dull ache throughout her lower teeth and jaw, but the most hurtful of the hurting would be concentrated in the region where she might imagine her jaw attached to her skull. Like so:

Thank you for your assistance, Miss Hilton. I do hope that you really aren’t experiencing the same facehurt. Although if you are or have, please let me know what your specialist said to do about it.