April 17, 2009

Believe it or not, I am sick again. This is so frustrating. I have some sort of virus that started off as a bad tummy thing on Wednesday evening and, that night, also moved to a very sore throat. My stomach is now better but my throat is still very sore and I hardly have any voice left, plus all of the sinus stuff, head ache from the sinus stuff and very low energy level. I feel sorry for my kids right now because I know this has not been very much fun for them the past couple of days.

Additionally, because I am sick again, our trip to Kansas City has once again been delayed. I am bummed because I was looking forward to attending at least one day of their homeschooling convention. But, oh well, it was not meant to be and I still have plenty of time.

The good news is that the dad is on vacation all next week, so that will be very nice. He has to give about 4 months notice before taking vacation time. Fortunately he gets a lot of vacation time so we normally just pick some months and he schedules some time and then we decide later what we are going to do. This time, we will likely have some very relaxing family time around here and we will hopefully make it to KC for a couple of days at some point.

I have been researching various home school paths and products. There are some really great products out there for homeschooling these days.

Currently I am planning to use My Father's World for kindergarten, although could change. It has a very good, age appropriate Bible study and character development study which will be good for all three of us:). I am also planning to use Right Start Math, possibly supplementing with Singapore Math, and I am still working on what else we will be doing. Of course, we still have a ways to go, since the boys are only three and a half years old:). I do enjoy planning ahead though.

One of the things I love about homeschooling is that we can tailor it specifically to their learning style and pace. Of course, one of the very best things about it is that we can also provide our sons with a great Christian education, a classical Christian education no less, and we can do it all relatively inexpensive. There is just so much freedom with it. I am so thankful that we have the freedom to do this and that it is an option for our family.

We are still planning on going with the classical education approach. I am currently going back through parts of The Well Trained Mind book with a fine tooth comb, taking notes. I am also researching Tapestry of Grace and My Father's World in detail, among various other products, and looking up books at our library's web site to get a feel for how much we will be able to rely on them. So far, it is looking pretty good. I am very impressed with both TOG and MFW and am enjoying researching their products and others.

We have decided it is time to give up naps. The boys did not take a nap on Wednesday and they really did very well. They took one on Thursday, mostly because I was feeling so sick and needed the break, but they did not take one today. I'm thinking this will be a good week to go nap-free, since the dad will be around to help out.

The boys have had a blast playing outside this week, which has been nice. I have started working towards planting the seed of "when we don't take naps, we have a quiet time" and explaining what that means. We had a short quiet time today but I really need to work on figuring what our new daily schedule will look like with no naps.

Our potty training had been going so well until just the past couple of days. Nick had two accidents yesterday and three today. The only thing I can think of is that I have been sick those days, I had not been reminding him as much and I have not been much fun. I hope this is just a fluke and he will be back to using the potty tomorrow. I was just so surprised that he did this because he had really been doing very well.

Well, I was only going to write a couple of quick sentences but I guess I should know better. I am not a person of few words, as you know:). Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.