Just another homeschool day

I realized that I rarely blog about normal everyday homeschool kinda days. I'm pretty sure I used too, maybe it started to feel monotonous. Today was pretty typical. Most days have a certain flow to them which is something like: younger kid seat work, followed by "other stuff", usually for all 4 kids together and then older kid seat work. The reasoning is that the younger kids wake earlier and the older kids either like to ease into the day (Hayley) or have started to sleep in a little bit in that teenage growth spurt thing (Trevor, although he's generally up by 9:00 the younger guys are up by 7:30).

The first thing I usually do upon waking is feed Flower the cat. He protests loudly if I don't. Then I turn on my laptop and/or the morning news. A little later I feed the other pets, except for the ones some of the kids take care of themselves (gerbils, hamsters, frogs).

Sometimes I make breakfast for all and sometimes everyone gets what they want by themselves. Today we made toast on a rack on the woodstove. We do this a lot with everyone spreading on whichever topping they desire- such as cinnamon, marmite, peanut butter, jam or cheese. It's easy and saves electricity. Colin and Tristan decided to turn their toast into toasted cheese sandwiches today. After making his toast on the woodstove Colin decided to make another cheese sandwich in a pan on the stove top. He did this completely independently for the first time (even washing a frying pan first!) and even made extras to share.

Today Colin was first for book work. He read a book for me, something about SpongeBob (yes I must admit that we are not 100% twaddle free anymore, how did that happen???). Then he did his CLE math and only needed me for a couple sections. Finally Colin worked on his spelling/advanced phonics with Explode the code. These seem to work well for him so I figured we'll stick with it all the way through book 8. Usually we alternate the CLE language arts with ETC spelling/phonics.

Next up was Tristan. He had a reading lesson with CLE's learn to read, he learned more sight words and some phonetic words that start with T. He's reading so well now and I can tell he's happy about that! After reading Tristan worked on his CLE math. He loves math and does it almost independently which is nice. I never intended him to but he likes to do his math independently and only asks for help if he comes to something new. A story in Tristans reading lesson was about a turtle so I had a read aloud about a turtle ready. I read this to the younger three.

Next was the mix it up part of the day where we typically do any or all of these: history, science, art, music, living math, current events....Today we talked about Groundhog Day, groundhogs in general, the weather and seasons. Then had a drawing movie, which I'd picked up at the library, called Squiggles, Dots and Lines by Ed Emberly. It was not the best movie I've ever seen but the kids seemed to like it. The premise was that you can draw anything with Ed's art alphabet of squares, worms, ants, beetles, circles, etc. After the movie the kids tried drawing some things. I paused the art alphabet on the screen so the kids could refer to it. This took up a good hour since eventually some people decided to make cards for Grammy using the art alphabet in their drawings.

After art we had snacks and then it was Hayley's turn for some math and LA. There was a new concept in her math which not only took a lot of time to go through but also upset her (and so that did not go too well, we'll try again tomorrow). She ended up going to her room for some quiet time. I rarely have to do this with the kids anymore but I was at a loss and she clearly needed to calm down. I think she even napped for a little while. Hope this isn't a sign of impending doom...err... illness! That kinda threw the day off since it was now time to start dinner, we have our main meal at 1:00 or so due to Bobby's 2nd shift work schedule. Trevor got off lightly with only math today since I was now pressed for time.

Trevor, Colin and Tristan went off to play a medieval computer game, Hayley rested in her room and I started dinner. Dinner was a little late but not too bad. The kids played with the ferrets for awhile and I cleaned the ferrets icky litter boxes. Other pet care and pet supper time was done, the wood stove tended to as needed and supper of leftover dinner for the people. That is the good part of cooking the big meal early, I can make extra for supper later. The bad part is not having much time to actually prepare dinner if our homeschooling runs long!

It had seriously warmed up today into the high 30's and right after supper this resulted in more chaos, a burst pipe in the kitchen area, or under the kitchen in the cellar, I really couldn't quite tell since it got wet both on the kitchen floor and in the cellar but I found the shut off dial for that part of the plumbing fairly easy. This has been a terrible winter for the plumbing! I AM learning where all the shut off valves are, is that a positive thing??

I cleaned up from the day, piled some wood near the wood stove for the evening and got the homeschool stuff ready for tomorrow.

At the moment, 6:30 pm, I hear giggling and a little shouting, the three boys are playing at being knights I believe. Hayley felt better after a rest and I let her quickly check her online pets such as webkinz, in case there was anything special for Groundhog day. I was not going to let her have any computer time due to the math tantrum but it is Groundhog Day and I am a reasonable Mom, LOL. She just got a new copy of Spider magazine in the mail today, which a relative gives her a subscription, so she is now reading that. I have a movie from the library the kids can watch in a little while and then it will be bedtime.