I was teaching Monday morning when suddenly it hurt to turn my head to the left.  Within minutes I was in so much pain that I went right to the chiropractor to get adjusted.  I went home to lay in bed as sitting or standing was too painful to hold my head up!  Needless to say beyond math we did no other school last week.  We are doubling up lessons some days in math to finish in early July as usual.  Can’t really explain why math is always so behind but it is again this year.  Since our program is spiral it is easy to double up lessons since often 3 or more sections are exactly the same skills as the previous lesson.  I wish there were some chart for me to only teach the newest skills and have a weekly review come springtime as it would speed up our lessons.  However, there is not that I know of, and so we are pushing through to finished before the next year starts, lol.

But something very exciting did happen last week:  Our next year’s books arrived!  The poor Fed-ex guy was scared out of his mind when Daddy and the kids went running full force at him screaming, “Books! Books!”.  We spent an hour looking over everything and are really gung ho to get moving in World History so we can start American History soon.  I need more bookcases to hold the books.  After entering them into the computer library software it was over a hundred books we had added and that did not include anything consumable like math or history workbooks.   So we keep plodding on so we can get going on the next thing.  World History has been fun, but it’s been 2 years worth and we are ready for something new.  I can say we are in the late 1700′s, so we don’t have far kids.

Since my neck bothered me all week we did very little except play outside.  Well the kids played outside and I laid down a few days until I could sit in the chair for a bit.  I am not completely better but I am not complaining compared to last Monday.  They enjoyed the nice weather this week.  Both kids learned how to ride a Rip-stick.  I can’t explain it.  Just look it up on Google or Amazon.  It’s hard to ride.  They both got it in a few days.  Always impressive they are

We also finished planting our garden this weekend.  I will take photos tomorrow I promise!  You can tell we are new gardeners since only one of three plots for carrots & radishes are growing.  We nixed the idea of letting the peas grow up tomato stakes and handmade some that I already know are too short.  Only half the potatos are growing…do we cover up only half the box?  So many questions and honestly, there are no answers.    We also took the time to plant a shade garden.  We have a patch of backyard that sees very little sunlight and it always moist year round(in otherwords, squishy ground) so we dug up grass, put in dirt, and planted Hostas, Ferns, and Trillium and Jack in the Pulpit.  We hope it will grow and enhance our backyard.  If we ever find the time (and money) to put in a patio it will be a nice sitting area.

Today after church I was able to clean the entire house with very little pain.  Then I joined the family outside to play.  We have 5 families outside just hanging out, playing games, talking.  We hope to plan a cook out together very soon.  Other than the gnats the weather was nice and the kids fell asleep instantly!  Yay for summer weather.

Our week isn’t too crazy but will be steady.  We have a full school week planned…including Art!  They have gymnastics and music classes this week.  Our P.E. group is also doing soccer and somehow I ended up in charge of this event.  So I am to teach the kids the basics and get them playing each other.  Oh goodness!

Have a Blessed Week!

We had another fantastic week in school!  We are in a great place right now.  Very little complaining, lots of fun learning, tons of great field trips.  I can only hope we keep this rhythm going a long time.

Math is progressing for both kids.  Bugaboo is into division, Cutiepatootie is into multiplication.

History has us in the Reformation and history of Elizabeth I of England.

Science has us learning about the periodic table.  One deadly element we learned about used in wars was easily recalled when we saw a movie showing gas being used in war.  Always nice to have them remember and apply the lessons learned!

In Language Arts they continue copywork and dictation and spelling lessons.  Cutiepatootie is also still working through Explode the Code.

We finished up some things already this year so our schedule isn’t completely full but we get about 3 hours a day in.

Music lessons are going great!  They are still eager to practice and next week we plunk down another chunk of money for more lessons.  As long as they enjoy it we will continue music lessons into the fall.

Gymnastics has been fun, but the group as a whole tends to get too silly and end up doing push ups and less fun stuff.  This is our temporary physical activity but at least they are having fun.  We do attend our homeschool group PE every week at the park but attendance has been low and volunteers absent.  A group is only as good as the parents who help and it’s possible the group will fall apart…we hope it gets better in April with warmer weather.

Obviously our garden is teaching us all new lessons.  Chickity Poo stinks.  Dirt is heavy.  Seeds are fun to watch germinating.  We hope everyone will have new favorite veggies after tasting fresh!

We have more math and spelling to do tomorrow but then we are off to go ice skating with some homeschool friends.  This weekend we are going to visit another homeschool family for lunch.  The kids are looking forward to playing with them.

That is our week, have a nice weekend!

Many of you know that last year some teens went through our neighborhood cutting down trees one night close to the high school graduation.  Our tree was cut in half by an ax.  We had no hope of saving it.  Many others had the same situation but some were able to save their trees as they were much larger than ours.  We never did anything to the area in the front yard.  Literally it was still a small mulched space with no tree.

We have a new tree.  A flowering apricot tree.  And it smells delish!  We already have several people asking to have some apricots, lol.  We also got a small flowering bush to go with it as well as some bulbs of the strangest kind of daffodil I have ever seen.  We hope this year our tree will not be part of the teenage destruction.

We also have our garden bed in and hope to plant soon.  Normally we would have planted but it’s been so cold this year we are delaying planting just in case of frost.  Here are some pics of the tree area as well as the new garden bed.

We like the changes in the yard and will be getting the mulch tonight to finish up.  Spring is coming and we are enjoying it!

Our family snowboarding trip was amazing.  I admit I had a lot of hesitation about the trip just before leaving.  Would I be able to learn?  Would I break every bone in my body trying?  Would the kids get seriously injured flying down the mountain into a tree?

My fears were strong.  However, I promised I would listen carefully to Daddy over and over again about how to balance and give it my best shot.  Day one was painful.  I fell a lot.  However, I also got some basic turns!  The kids had about the same success as I did, but their falling was from a much lower height…

Day 2 and 3 were amazing.  I did it.  I am a snowboarder.  And I want to go do it again!

After coming home though it was time to focus on our garden efforts this year.  We have garden plans.  We built the bed, the potato box and the compost box.  The dirt was delivered.  All 5 cubic yards of it.  I can assure you that it was a LOT of dirt.  Three days later it was moved and given away so we could park in the driveway again.  I think I saved money but I am thinking bags of mulch will be EASIER to handle.

We have an extremely busy week with play dates and activities.  We also are going full force in school.  It makes for long days.  I hope next week I don’t get so eager in planning social things.