Oh! Forget It!!!

Ok, I give up!!! I can't do the blog-thing! I have too much "homework" already. Let's see there is the first grader work, the preschooler work, the train the cat to use the toilet work, the take care of the old lady dog work, the laundry work, the shopping work, the clean the house work, the pay the bills work, the tortoise work, the new puppy work and dog school homework, piano recital work, the volunteer for the big end-of-the-school-year work, the mother work, the wife work, gee....did I leave something out????

Kid Art

by Karley...."lion", mama and baby kitties, butterfly, "fly" by Karley..."Nemo fish family". Mama fish is swimming at you, Daddy at the top, two baby fish.

by Karley....Queen standing outside her pink castle. I think that is a flag or flagpole on the castle.

by Julia. This was created with soft pastels (very smudgy and hard to use in my opinion).

Spring Is in the Air

And apparently that means puppy love...BIG TIME. Our six year old is "in love" with Dennis, a boy in her music class. She first told me about him last week. She was all flustered and excited to tell me about this boy in her class and how he is not like other boys that bug her. She said that they sat near each other and talked and that she was a bit annoyed that another boy was trying to occupy some of Dennis' time. She was saying things like, "Can you believe I have a boyfriend?" Of course I thought that she had most of this made up in her mind and that Dennis probably thought she was just another girl in the class, but today when I picked Julia up from class she was flushed and excited with BIG NEWS. She said to me,"Do you know what Dennis said to me?" I told her I had no idea but I'm beginning to wonder if I really want to know by the look on her face. She told me that he leaned in and whispered in her ear "you're beautiful." She almost had tears in her eyes as she was telling me this. I asked her how she responded to that. She said she whispered back "thank you." When I asked later how she felt about him she said she thought that he was a "handsome prince" and that she plans to go out to dinner with him when she is 16 and he is 17. Are we seriously already planning future dates????

Fruits of Labor

Yesterday we had our meeting with our academic advisor. Because of the craziness this year with the school moving, Julia had not had a reading assessment done since the end of Kindergarten. Yesterday we had some time at the end of our meeting so Karley and I stepped out of the office and Julia had her first reading assessment of the year. When they finished her advisor came out and told me that she gave Julia a total of 5 tests and was doing well but decided to end on a high note and that she had had enough "tests" for one sitting. Julia tested at or possibly above (since she didn't get to a point where the words were too hard for her) 4th grade level (she is in Grade 1) and she tested also in the 4th grade level for reading comprehension. These results were great to hear, but not unexpected since I'm with her all the time and I kind of already knew she would test somewhere in there. BUT, the cool part for me was that the advisor said during the reading comprehension testing Julia gave all her answers in complete sentences. The advisor was really surprised and pleased by that. THAT was great news for me because it is something we have been working on a lot this year and I feel like I am constantly reminding her to use complete sentences. It's nice to know that it is paying off!!!

So, my challenge now, pull some of my time and energy out of working with Julia on her language arts lessons and put MORE time into Karley's. This may be tricky since I don't really see Karley particularly WANTING to know how to read.

But for now, I'm going to enjoy these successes, knowing that it is probably only a matter of days or weeks that my frustration level will peak yet again!

What have we been doing?????

Ummmm......well, trying to catch up from our bad weeks. We are only a day or so behind, really, but of course it is not one calendar day on my nice little weekly planner. It is a lesson here, a lesson there, half a lesson here, etc. At least we have the next two Mondays off, so that should come in handy. We are also trying to decide if we are going to enter a project in the science fair. I gave Julia two choices and she won't choose. She says she wants to do both. Other than that things are about the same. This week we are studying echinoderms and finishing up the Roman Empire. If I remember I'll try to post photos of the clay bowls we made this evening.

It's Official

Karley is signed up for Kindergarten....and she couldn't be happier (unless she were starting tomorrow!). I'm not quite sure how I'm going to homeschool both, but I do think Karley will be a lot easier in many ways (and probably harder in other ways). But at least my pile of Kindergarten forms is gone off my desk!

It's a New Semester

It's a new year and a new semester. Too bad we are having the same 'ol problems! All of last week and much of this week (although it seems to be getting slightly better). Julia has had the attitude of a 15 year old girl who pretty much hates the world around her (yes, she is only six). She has been difficult to teach, difficult to mother, and sometimes flatout difficult to LOVE. I'm sure this is one of her "phases" and that she will come out of it and we will all look back at this time and say, "Remember when...", but for now things are pretty tough. You ask what kinds of lovely words come out of this dear child's mouth? Oh, things like "you Poo Poo Head" (referring to me) or "you ugly BEAST!" (me again). She has tried to come at me with a sharp, pointed toothpick in order to hurt me (I think she got the idea from reading about a character (girl) who enjoys fencing). She has carried on again and again about our terrible home and her terrible life and "That's it! This time I'm leaving for real!" She only made it as far as the mailbox. She hates the food I cook, doesn't see the point in picking up things after herself and she is fed up with the idea that SHE WILL HAVE TO DO MATH FOR A VERY LONG TIME. Is it possible that she is as exhausted as I am with all of her drama????