July 16, 2009

Jingle Bells...Jingle Bells

Am I the only one out there that has Autumn fever and has started singing Christmas carols in the shower? They just come out of nowhere, I promise. One minute I'm shampooing my hair and the next I'm belting out "oH the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful..". I think I must be crazy. It has got to be this GA humidity. Seriously, there have been days when I thought I was melting, just like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. I am known for being a holiday nut in my family. I love it all but the Autumn/Winter holidays which include for me, Halloween, my birthday, and Christmas, are the very best of the year. My Christmas "itch" usually starts in late August, and yet it has come sooner this year. I don't know why I rush things like this. This autumn my Princess Poodle turns eight, I am horrified and still not over my baby boy turning five on me. But the carols and visions of colored lights are flooding my mind and today as I watched 10 pine trees being cut down and chopped into mulch, the smell nearly sent me into fits of joy inside! We have much school to accomplish. My big goals for the kids this year. ..For PP I hope to see her math facts solidified and her writing progress. For Triple H, I want to see him come to love reading and move beyond, Al has a fast cat. I would also like to see some improvement in their chores around the house and in my own as well. (gotta be honest) Mostly I want to see us find a rhythm to our schooling and our days. I hear others talk of such a rhythm but we have yet to find it and I feel that is my own fault. As for school, we are studying Great Britian and next week I introduce Princess Poodle to Shakespeare for the first time. We will be reading childrens versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet. Triple H is loving memorizing poetry which suprises me a bit. Princess Poodle is working on The Violet. Math is new to us and so we are working on a level that is a bit easy in order to transisition into the new program. WWE level 2 has introduced dictation. This is somewhat new, especially in the length of the passage dictated. For spelling I think I am going to go for a combined approach of a workbook and real life application. PPoodle writes all the time. She is working on an infomational "book" about space. I think we will work through Spelling workout and also add words to our list that I find her misspelling in her fun writing. I won't make her correct her fun writing, I'll just put these words down in some type of list/folder/etc. Triple H is working in the Kinder part of SIng spell read and write. I would love to finish the Kinder portion this year but I will move at his pace. He won't officially be a Kinder until the 2010/2011 school year. We will do some ETC pages along with this. He also enjoys much of our math and sits in on our countries and cultures lessons most of the time.

I'm off to check on dinner and maybe sing a little Silent Night as I finish it up.
Christmas Morning 2007 Kids still love the boxes more than anything!

1 comment:

Ali said...

I always love hearing about what you are doing. I'm considering updating my homeschool blog soon...we'll see! I'm very excited about school starting. We'll start next week and our co-op starts August 25...I've never done a co-op before and I'm excited. My kids will be in 1st, pre-K and Ella will be 3 years old in Oct. Anyway...we've been out of town and I'm just catching up on my blog reading...you were one of my first stops! :)