Stuff

Well it's been an eventful week. Shawn was gone to Maryland for a business trip from Sunday to Friday. The vacuum belt broke, the printer stopped working, the fridge looked leaky, the kids made tons of messes in the family room which I was itching to vacuum up, Kimball was not really wanting to do school, Trent "forgot" he had homework, Cameron decided he was entitled to play the computer whenever, and Sam was just bugging everyone. At least the dogs were getting along! ( but NOT with the cat! she needs someone to keep her on her toes, so I don't have any sympathy for her.) I figured out how to do school without tons of printouts--we just read a lot. ---I--- read a lot to Kimball. He doesn't like doing the Barton reading system-he calls it "baby work." It is just practicing recognizing sounds-which of course he already knows. And so of course his spelling and handwriting are perfect. (NOT AT ALL!)
We are working on times tables-and he has finally finshed them! I think he still has to do 12's but he has gotten through the rest of the numbers. Now we are working on timing them. I'm giving him 5 minutes to get through 50 problems. Then we are going to work down to 3 minutes. It could take awhile. I did tell him a strategy of doing what you know first then working on the harder ones. We moved onto division. That's a little harder. At first I had him using plates and m&m's to divide out. Then I had him drawing and circling objects. Then I showed him the actual problem in numbers. It seems to be paying off. We are going to finish measurement and finish up Singapore 2A and then move on to 2B. He'll definitely be at 4th grade level in math come June. He might even be a little ahead there. Kimball loves being read to and learning new things.
We have gone over weather--and hurricanes. He couldn't believe the winds could get that powerful and do so much damage. I checked out a "hurricane katrina" book from the library and showed him pictures. It's a shocker. Although his comment was, "How could they be so dumb to build their city almost in the water?" We have also gone over Native American History. It's pretty cool to learn about the old people who lived here. I keep telling Kimball --when the books say they just up and left or deserted their lands--I put in Nephite history and tell him it could be the Gadianton robbers forcing them to gather together so the good guys could fight the bad guys-or that they were wicked and the more wicked people came and destroyed them. We don't really know for sure-but to see what these people accomplishd is amazing. This week I'm going to be having Kimball doing some weaving to get a taste of the Native Americans who did that.
And I'm really excited to get to the Solar System. I'm looking for fun projects to do based on the universe--I'm not really crafty so this takes some effort on my part. I found a mobile online to make with styrofoam balls. I'm going to give that a try. I'm going to concentrate on doing only two or so planets a week (by the way, --I-- still count Pluto as a planet-despite what the "experts" say--they will change their minds in the next 25 years anyway). I'm trying to incorporate more activities into our days to make it more hands on learning. And when the solar system unit is over(or halfway through-haven't quite decided yet) we will be visiting the planetarium. That is a big huge enormous sacrifice on my part because I think it's boring. If Kimball likes it though (and we'll be taking the whole family) then it's worth it. Then in March I'm planning on doing the human body. Homeschooling is a lot of work -- spending the time reading to Kimball, preparing, testing him and so on--but it's been really fun. Kimball is a great student with a healthy desire to learn. (It helps to have the computer usage as reward for doing his work too.) It's great to be able to spend this time with Kimball. (Sam is indirectly getting educated too--he brought over the globe and wanted to know where we lived).
My weeks are filled-and my weekends are for getting the house semi-clean and catching up on chores. And relaxing. If you didn't hear, we got another dog named Bear. He is a Lab Retriever-all black, and still a puppy. Albeit a full grown 1 1/2 year old puppy. He is an AWESOME dog. Fun to play with, funny to watch (he dives into the snow) and he isn't too much energy. He is sleeping in Kimball's room - Kimball reads him a story every night and makes sure he's comfortable. Kimball also takes him out to use the outdoor potty. The other dogs are getting used to him being around. Kia is the top dog and doesn't have a problem with him at all. Penny doesn't like to share anything so she's a little aggressive if there are bones or bowls of food lying around. We simply don't let those lie around. Bear is still young-but intelligent and wants to learn, and is thankfully very treat motivated. He knows how to sit, shake, down, and crawl so far. We are trying to get him to fetch and bring it back to us but that only happens occasionally. He loves every dog and pretty much everyone. Definitely NOT a guard dog. He hangs around with us too out front and doesn't try to take off like Penny. So while some might term our house a zoo, I think we made a good choice to bring him into our family. The kids do too, and really, this is for Kimball. And just for fun, I like to say "Bear, left." when we are out on walks. Did I tell you the joke about the two hunters? (hee hee)
Since this is now mostly updated, I think I can go and get ready for bed. I'll have to devote an entire post to Kia--she has been having leg problems. But that could be really really long and I'm sure you don't want to sit here all day reading when you could be watching TV and eating chocolate. So go get your chocolate...just kidding. Have a great day and I'll keep the posts coming.