January

At the beginning of January I took Isaac out to breakfast where we discussed everything he wanted to learn about in January.  There was a long list, and we only made it part way through.  We covered a ton about Alligator, Crocodiles, and Snakes.  So much so that for the past two weeks I have been dreaming of being torn apart in a death roll with a Croc.  I am glad the month is over.

Our studies of Crocodiles inevitably caused us to study about Australia.  A friend of a friend was so kind to mail us a postcard from Australia.  He was so excited to get mail.  Especially with crocs on it all the way from Australia.  Now he desperately wants to go to the Australia Zoo.  We are constantly looking at pictures from there.

The past week has been a bit slow on the homeschool front.  A lot has been going on that has kept us busy.  One thing that we have been working on is eating more "real" food.  I have been busy learning how to can.  Isaac has helped me make a lot of soups out of the scraps we have left over from meals.  Then we can it.

This month we ended up with 4 jars of Turkey/Rice Soup, 8 jars of veggie stock (there was more, but we used it), and 10 jars of chicken/veggie soup.  I am happy with what I have so far.  I still have 2 bushels that I need to make applesauce with.  I just keep forgetting to get it out of the car before Derek leaves for work.

We also decided to give Isaac a book allowance.  It was a recommendation from the Read Aloud Revival Podcast to encourage a love of books.  The way we have decided to give it to him is that every time he finishes a unit he will get 5 book bucks.  In each unity is a weeks worth of work.  He can choose to finish it in less than a week, or more than a week.  We put each unit in a folder, and check off the work he has done with stickers.  It has been a pretty good system.

Then once a month has gone by we will take him to Half Price Books (or any book store) to get his books.  He can choose any books that he wants.  We like Half Price Books because they are cheaper, and they give a homeschool discount.  He was able to get 6 books for $10 on our first trip.  He kept choosing books that were more expensive, and he didn't want to use most of his money on one book.

Anyway, tomorrow I will take Isaac out for breakfast and see what fun stuff he wants to learn about in February.

What's been gong on

I have been a slacker about blogging.  I have just had so much going on emotionally that it just fell by the wayside.  You see, I struggle with severe depression and anxiety.  I have had multiple stints of being hospitalized in the past year.  I still struggle every day, but I have given myself permission to not be a perfect homeschooling mother.

There have been many weeks where all I could do was stay in bed, and only get out to feed my kids frozen pizza's and peanut butter sandwiches.  My goal was to just make it through the day.  Miraculously, my kids still learned.

My son decided that when I was crying it was his job to bring in a big stack of books for me to read to him.  So I would.  I wouldn't read it enthusiastically, but I would.  This helped me bond with him more (again?).

Once I felt okay with reading all the time we started adding in math.  We do Math U See.  My husband tried filling in when I couldn't, but I decided that it was my job.  I bought a little travel lap desk, and my son started bringing that in to me when it was time to do math.  Then he decided he wanted to write letters to family and friends, so we started focusing on writing.

Now things have come together somewhat.  We read books on any subject, and my son has started to be a little bookworm.  Not only him, but his sister too!

This was taken out one of the metropark lodges during an activity my son attended. 

I have made it a goal to have the car at least twice a week, and do outings with others.  It's extremely stressful and anxiety provoking to me, but it helps me at the same time.  We try to go to an activity at a metropark once a week, and then we have our homeschool coop once a week too.

This was an activity at a metropark on snow and ice. 

Today we went to Highbanks Metropark to take part in a homeschool activity about Water Science.  It was lots of fun.  They talked a bit about chemistry, and did lots of fun things.

 One of the experiments they started took too long to complete, so we decided to do it at home.  I asked my son to make a hypothesis about what would happen.  Hypothesis:  The water will turn purple because blue and red make purple.  (he's gotten too smart)

I hope to be a more consistent blogger because I need to get in the habit.  This is how I want to keep track of what we do (since we primarily unschool) for our portfolio at the end of the year.