Category Archives: Kids

Homeschooling Journal Week 36

In my life this week…

It is a bad sign when you have to read your last post to remember what happen last week as apposed to the week before. I was all ready to tell you all about Oliver again. It has been one of those weeks.

Our week started of with Relay for Life, which raises money for the cancer society. We were all to tired and stressed from the week before. That led to a cranky family. Add to that pouring rain for the night and we ended up sleeping in our tent most of the night instead of walking. If it had been any other event I think we would have gone home but it is important so we stayed. For me the highlight of the night is always the lighting of the luminaries. Throughout the night you can buy paper bags and decorate them in memory of those that didn’t make it. Philip as he has always done did one for his friend Connor. As night falls they line the track with them, weighed down and light candles in them.

Relay For Life Luminaries

We then do an almost silent walk around the track. The silence isn’t required but all the talking is in whispers as people stop at certain luminaries to pray and remember. My walk was weighted by thought of a little girl that I follow on CaringBridge that passed away days before the Relay. She was about Philip’s age and had been battling cancer for years. I know she is in heaven and there is no cancer there.

The rest of the week has been appointments. Nothing earth shattering just your normal everyday sort of appointments but they all hit this week and my schedule is a mess. So is the house. Next week should be much more sane.

Reading BabyCenter this week there was talk about kids being punished, expelled, and even arrested for bring anything shaped like a gun to school. When I was picking my daughter up from school there was a boy showing his friend the gun that he had made out of scrap wood and metal. He had obviously taken some time to get it right. It was clearly not real but it was obviously a gun. Listening in he had made it as a prop for a play. He wasn’t allowed to use it in the play. That was to be expected, we do have rules about not having toy guns on school property. The thing that struck me was that was as far as it went. He was not suspended or even had it taken away from him. Somebody made the judgement call that extreme measures were not needed. Hats off to them.

My Weekly Clean up task…

I call it my spice shelf but it has a lot more on it than that. Mostly it just needs to be organized but I am sure there are a few things that are not in their proper home or should be garbaged.

Messy Spice Rack

In our homeschool this week…

At the beginning of the week Philip was given the goal of moving his percent finished in Rosetta Stone from 75% to 85%. He managed to get to 83%. Given that we had some technical problems I chose to accept that. His reward was a field trip with Grandma that he really enjoyed.

The technical problem was that he is having trouble getting the speech recognition portion to work. We still have not solved that completely. It appears that part of the problem was with the newest version of flash, 11.7.700 seems to have problems with Rosetta Stone. Downgrading the flash made it work sort of again. I am left with a couple of possibilities.

  1. The rather old laptop is doing something funny.
  2. The headphones are faulty. We have gone through a number of them this year already.
  3. Rosetta Stone is having problems. It is an online service so who know what goes on in the background.
  4. That it is the last unit and it has just gotten harder.

I am going to set up an old computer with a clean install of windows and see if it works better there. If not I am not sure what we are going to do other than contact his teacher with our problems. The good news is that he is passed the ‘Minimum’ 80% and thus has passed the course. However if I do not resolve this problem I am reluctant to pay to continue the course next year.

I’m cooking…

This week cooking has been survival mode cooking. I did a big beef roast up on Sunday and that lasted for three meals. Beans and Wieners were in there somewhere. Ham steaks in brown sugar sauce was another. I will have to measure the ingredients for that one next time I make it and post the recipe. It is quite definitely not healthy but it is yummy.

I have been having fun joining recipe blog hops and viewing some of the recipes. One of those I am planning on making this week and have bought the ingredients for. It is a salad that comes with a history lesson. The recipe is Coronation Chicken and I will send you to the blog for the recipe and the history lesson.

My week’s recipe is a revisit on baking bread. I have long made my own bread for cost reason and that I know what goes in it. Over the years things have changed a little so I decided to redo the post with those changes.

I’m Praying for…

My kid’s Grandma worked in our church for many many years. One of the women that she worked with all those years just had her granddaughter diagnosed with AML, another childhood cancer. He granddaughter is a year older than Philip. So please pray for Savannah and her family. They are less than week in from diagnoses. This first bit is a whirlwind. It is tough to put into words the emotions and disbelief that occurs. It is the worst time from here you settle in to a new normal which again is tough to explain unless you have been through it.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share (silly, serious or both!)…

Ian (4y old) trying to confirm that the person we were talking about was our priest.

“That man that stands up in church and reads God’s papers”

The Homily is written out that our priest carries to the pulpit.

Linking up at:

Summer-Edition

Hip Homeschool Hop Button

A Day in the Life Tuesday

Inspired by the Day in the Life post by Jesse over at Our Side of the Mountain I decided to try one myself.

6:30 AM Alarm goes off. Check email and my news sites on my phone. Correction: Sleep through alarm for the first time in months.

6:45 AM Wake up the kids. Still asleep

7:10 AM Coax them out of our bed. Feed them Breakfast. Prepare Lunch for Margeret and a snack for Ian. Make sure Margaret and Ian are ready to go. Nope I’m still asleep.

7:30 AM Do all the stuff that should have started at 7:10 AM. They all had frozen pancakes from Friday warmed up. We always make lots and freeze what we don’t eat for the rest of the week. I warm the up by sticking them in the toaster. My wife prefers the microwave. Go through the usual ‘I can’t find any pants’ routine.

Margeret making Pancakes

8:10 AM Tell Philip to get the last load of the kids laundry in so I can have the machine when I get back. When we moved in to this house it came with a front load washer that allowed to kids to reach. Thus they have long been responsible for their own laundry. They did 3-4 loads yesterday afternoon and evening but there was still one left. Give Philip instructions to work on his IXL math while I am gone. Take Margaret to school and Ian to preschool.

9:00 AM My breakfast English Muffins left over from this weekends and milk. Read my news sites and start writing this post. Help Philip with the math he is working on. He chose to do a section on long division and it is taking him too long to do the multiplication. We need to do more speed drills on multiplication.

9:45 AM Load and run the dishwasher. Go to start laundry. Philip had moved the loads and done everything except actually starting the machine. So I am behind by one load now and I am trying to catch up on everything from the long weekend away. Finish cleaning up from Breakfast.

10:15 AM More help with Math. We went through a couple of problem together. He knows how to do it but the multiplication step takes him a lot of time.

10:30 AM Shower and shave before I have to go out and face the world again. First thing in the morning it seems to be ok to have facial hair but by pick up time I had better be cleaned up for the day.

11:00 AM Get Philip going on some social studies, the geographic regions of BC. Give him instructions for while I am out picking up Ian and Going to my Tae Kwon Do class. Switch loads of laundry.

11:20 AM Drive to pick up Ian from preschool. I always spend sometime there playing with him. Then we sign out and head for my Tae Kwon Do class it starts at 12:15 but I like to get there a little early to get changed and do some stretching. Ian sits and plays on my phone. He started with Reading Eggs Sight words but by the theme music he switched to Angry Birds – Star Wars. It ends a 1 PM by the time I change and drive home it is 1:30pm. Philip worked on his social studies and then decided to switch to creative writing at some point.

Turkey Cranberry Stuffing Sandwich

1:30 PM Time to feed some hungry kids and a very hungry dad. Ian chose a peanut butter sandwich. Philip had grilled cheese and I had turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce sandwich. The first one was so good I went back and made myself a second one. Writing more of this post and checking email and stuff takes us to 2:20 PM.

Grilled Cheese

2:20 PM Drive to pickup Margaret. Went in and talked to her teacher. Margaret wants to try a day of homeschooling before making a decision so we were coming up with a day that works. Other that she would miss Margaret being at the school she doesn’t have any problems with it.

2:45 PM Snack Time. Easter Candy. What a surprise. Free time.

3:45 PM Drive Philip and Margaret to Irish Dance. Drop them off at 4 PM. Drive over to our local homeschooling store and browse through some curriculum in case my daughter decides to join us next year. Go for a walk with Ian. At 5 PM go and pick up mommy at work. Then go and pick up the kids a dance class. Drive home. 15 minutes at home to get their swim gear organized. Drive them all to swimming. Normally my wife takes them to swimming as that is an event that she can get to but tonight she had a craving for Turkey Tetrazzini. That is one of her recipes so she gets to cook it.

Turkey Tetrazzini

7:30 PM Arrive home Get the last load of laundry in and eat dinner. Kids play until their 8:30 bedtime. For some reason the puzzles came out tonight. Ian helped for a little bit but then decided to play on the computer.

Ian on the computer

Margaret Puzzle

Philip Puzzle

8:30 PM Bedtime (Signing off)