Tuesday, November 17, 2009

No Time, Bullets

-Hannah woke up with a fever Monday morning. It broke this morning but is now back. Poor baby. She won't let me put her down.
-Busy week. I am organising our churches free chili/hot dog meal for the community during the Medina Candlelight Walk on Saturday, also making 2 huge pots of chili for the event. Went and bought 33 packages of hot dog buns today, can officially check that off my list of things to do before I die. Sunday we are having our church family Thanksgiving celebration at the Lohnes's home. I'm cook up a whole slew of yummies for that.
-I need some homeschool thoughts from you Mama's. Our curriculum is WAY WAY under Joshua's level. I thought we'd just push thru it anyway for a structure but seriously. It is a waste of our time, and I don't like wasting time. Leah gets most of this stuff and she's 3. What to do. We had purchased more advanced phonics and maths and so he's really pushing thru those now, but should I look for something else? Anyone? This totally reaffirms to me that Joshua couldn't got to public school. He's almost on a second grade public school level at 5. If we put him in "K" next year, he'd get diagnosed with ADHD and put on meds. Seriously.
-Robert is now in an indoor soccer league for the winter. It's fun but I don't like splitting my attention between the kids and his game. I'm a sports fan and just want to watch all of the action, lol.
-We leave for Texas in NINE days! YIPPEE!!!!!!!!
-I made some awesome chicken and dumplings. Actually, I feel like I'm coming into my own on this whole soup making adventure. I consider myself a good if not great cook. I've been doing it since I was 9 (my Mom worked second shift, so cooking was up to me) but living in the South, I never really had a reason to learn soups and so have always been awful at them. But now, I think I've figured them trick out......shhhhh, don't tell anyone, it is a blender! Yup! I use an immersion, but a regular would work too, just more work. I boil up a million veggies in some chicken broth, doesn't seem to matter what kind, and then blend them up, TA DA! Delicious soup. Really, we are loving it. My chicken and dumplings I boiled the chicken with onion and garlic and carrots and kale, celery, then pulled out the chicken to dice, blended up the veggies, add a little more broth to thin it some, then threw in the chicken and dumplings and let them cook. It was DIVINE and alot healthier than most recipes. So there ya go Kel, try it, you'll love it!

7 comments:

Vicki said...

Let me know what you find out. I'm counting on you to be my resource. I bought way too much stuff last summer and most of it wasn't a good fit. The 2nd/3rd grade spelling was too easy and so was the language arts, but I liked the abeka math because it was a mix of review and new stuff, but I thought maybe it was just the kids personalities.

KelMel said...

You finally posted. YAY!! I've been stalking your blog, my friend. LOL!!

Hope Hannah is feeling better today. Please update when you can.

I definitely need to try my hand at chicken and dumplings. YUM!! Here is a recipe another friend recommended - just in case you're interested - http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/chickendumplings.htm

Hope y'all have a great day!

Karen Deborah said...

I found when I home schooled the girls that canned curriculum of any kind just didn't work for us. I read some books to educate myself, when they were little about how children learn. I liked Ruth Beechick and Charlotte Mason, and many others that talk about how kids thrive best. We didn't used to teach with the methods we use now. I used a lot of "living books" and nature experiences. I also really liked the Amish readers from Pathway- they are very cheap and wholesome, mostly about farm and family life. I loved the illustrations too. Materials from them are very cheap!! I mean like $2 for a workbook and $6 for a hardback reader--check it out.
Kids don't have to be sitting at a table working on workbooks to learn. They are always learning. Providing a rich environment with a lot of educational choices was our answer. I had computer programs from the Learning company. I had a children's word processing program that the girls could chose illustrations from and make up stories. It also had story starter suggestions. Sometimes they would work for 6 hours at a time on something. You cannot force a kid to do that, they wanted to do it. They are both accomplished artists and are very articulate now as young adults.

When I discovered "Timberdoodle" a catalog,I really got excited. Now there is so much out there!!! In my day curriculum choices were few, now it is an overwhelming market. Smart kids tend to thrive better with less structure and more activites, some do well with the unit study approach. Finding things they can go through at their own pace is really great. Then you can see how much they retain by asking them about it. When the girls were young like your son, they made me a "book" after they learned something and drew pictures and wrote about what they learned. Those were priceless treasures! If you have a child who sounds a lot like me as far as reading goes, just take him to library every week and fill up a tote bag!! Let him go!!

Really shop and evaluate those dollars and what will benefit your kids the most. Young kids love hands on items too.

Karen Deborah said...

http://www.timberdoodle.com/

check this out.

Kacie said...

Hey Christi, you might want to try Ambleside Online. http://www.amblesideonline.org/index.shtml

I have a few friends that have used this. It sounds like with a few good books from the library, your phonics and math programs will be a very well-rounded Kindergarten curriculum.

I did not purchase the Sonlight readers this year, but I have been using the list to check books out of the library. That might work as well. You could also look at their list of read-alouds and just go from there.

If you're interested, I'm looking to sell my Sonlight K science curriculum from last year. It's the 2007 edition.

Good luck!

Trudy said...

I'm pretty impressed with your organized junk drawer. I just have everything thrown in together.

Trudy said...

Christy, we have always done what Karen Deborah was explaining. We pretty much follow the methods we have learned from Ruth Beechick and Charlotte Mason. With those methods, the children are never bored, are always challenged and are not wasting their time on stuff they already know. If we had used workbooks and textbooks, it would have held them back and we wouldn't have had time for real learning because we would have been too busy doing all of their little assignments. We've had a lot more more fun, too. I encourage you to look into it. Read For The Children's Sake, A Charlotte Mason Companion. And then I recommend that you read these books by Ruth Beechick: "The Three R's, You Can Teach Your Child Successfully, and The Language Wars and Other Writings for Homeschoolers. We use Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons for our phonics program. The only subject we have a curriculum for is math. Then in junior high we add an English Grammar curriculum. And in high school we add a science curriculum (Apologia). It has worked beautifully. As you know, Sarah got a full ride to college. She is now a junior in college and is almost straight A's with a B here and there. She did a ton of reading and narrating. That was where she gained most of her knowledge. And I don't mean reading from textbooks. We did many hands-on activities and nature study as well. As a side note, I really like the Sequential Spelling workbooks for spelling.

I you need a packaged curriculum and want one that uses living books, I would recommend looking into My Father's World. I personally like following my own plan and not someone else's, but everyone is different.