Journey to Excellence

We pulled out of here on Friday as soon as Dawson got out of school to spend the weekend in Oklahoma. When we moved, I had promised that we would spend his 16th birthday weekend "back home" so he could spend time with his friends. So I am just now getting to my Weekly Wrap-up from last week. And we had a good week! Maybe it was because I planned out all of our lessons first thing last Saturday morning instead of last thing Sunday night. Maybe it was because I went back to having a fun unit study planned. Maybe it was a combination of both, but our week was the type of homeschooling week I love. Fire Safety. A highlight of our week was doing one of Eli's cub scout requirements. He drew a map of our house with an escape route in case of a fire. Then we practiced our escapes, including exiting out their bedroom window should that be necessary. We chose a meeting place outside and spent a lot of time discussing all of the "shoulds" and "should nots...

I'll be posting my Weekly Wrap-up on Monday. We are headed to Oklahoma for the weekend and don't have internet there. Have a great weekend!

Probably you know this already, but perhaps you don't ... our Eli, age 8 1/2, is on the autism spectrum. Although we have never had him officially diagnosed (why, really?), he has all of the characteristics of Asperger's Syndrome. I would imagine it's a mild case, but it's there, alright. One area of stress for Eli has been reading. Give him a math problem, and he's done in a flash! Give him a book with more than one line on it and he can't hardly begin to read for being stressed about the number of words on the page. (He is actually much better about this than he used to be, but that is always the first thing he says about a book when he opens it to read it.) Enter the Eye Level Reading Ruler by Crossbow Education . What a marvelous tool! How I wish we would have had this tool when Eli was first starting to read! How does it work? It looks like a ruler with two separate guide lines: one for reading one sentence at a time and one for reading a pa...

Start your school day with a giggle (or a full-out belly chuckle laugh, in our case.) While eating breakfast, the kids will sometimes watch an episode of America's Funniest Videos on Netflix on the iPad. Sometimes they practically choke on their cereal because they are laughing so hard. This seems to get the crazies out, and they are ready to settle down and do some school work. (And, btw, sometimes they do the same thing at lunch.)

Our days are continuing to move along nicely. There haven't been too many bells and whistles, which I guess is a good thing, right? This week we have been starting with a "math problem of the day" , which is a math problem from the day before with which we have had difficulty. We do it on the white board together. Since math is Eli's strong suit, it seems to get him jump started. Speaking of math, our MEP lessons have gotten hard! We are about 1/3 of the way through the 2nd grade level, and they have spent this week doing double-digit math and subtraction problems in their heads with borrowing and carrying. There are definitely periods of frustration and exhaustion, but they are really getting it! (Can I say they are better at it than me??) Grammar, spelling, and reading are moving along nicely. We are reading aloud James and the Giant Peach and are enjoying it a lot! Our unit studies have seemed a little dry to me so far this year , and I realized after a...

(Attention Thursday Quick Tips readers: This tip is a little wordy. I was actually just writing this post as a regular rant-and-rave post, but then decided to link it up. The actual tip is at the end if you want to skip over the mumbo-jumbo.) Lately, our school just hasn't been fun. We are accompishing a lot on a daily basis with the necessaries. We do lots of reading, lots and lots of writing, grammar, spelling, and some pretty difficult math (our curriculum has the kids doing double digit math and subtraction in their heads ... HARD!). And we have managed to stick to our guns in making nature a priority, which has been a real joy in our week. But by the end of the day we are kind of worn out. We grab our unit study, but really just want to be done for the day so don't give it all we've got. We have done some seasonal studies and have supplemented with Five in a Row . But, I'm not too excited about it, and the kids aren't either. Sometimes I get annoyed whe...

Well, geez. This was an odd week. On Monday we took a Life Skills day because we had to go to "town" to get groceries, buy dog food, and go to recycling. It had to be done! So, that's how we spent our day. (Of course there was the on-and-off playing of educational games on the iPad.) On Tuesday morning, I had to get my hair colored in the morning. My sister is here two days a week and she is my FREE hairdresser, so it was necessary that I take the morning to do it. After eating lunch at my mom's (which we do every Tuesday because my sister and my aunt are in town for lunch), we came home and played for the rest of the afternoon. In the night Wednesday night I had the worst headache I have ever had! It was a sinus-like headache in my eyes and I was dying! At 5:00 a.m. I was in excruciating pain. I figured out a combination of over-the-counter medications to take to relieve some of the pressure. I slept in that morning, and was back in bed by 1:00 p.m. For the few ...