CM/Classical November! - Page 2

[*Jessica*]

Originally Posted by crunchy_mama

Jessica- I enjoyed reading about your day. It is always interesting for me to read about what others are doing, sometimes it gives me ideas of things to add or things to consider. I love the focus on crafts and nature, those things are huge around here. Another thing I have figured out ds love to color, adores it, so I think I might start w/ some coloring, work it in one way or another. We have a little Nature area as well, although I didn't really plan it, we needed something to put all the cool things we found on hikes.

The Noble Knights of Knowledge sounds very interesting as well. We do have fun w/ our games.

I love hearing about other's days, as well. Noble Knights isn't a game, it's actually a full curriculum. However, it's in the Waldorf-style so the teacher has to create many of the problems based on the model that they provide. It overwhelmed me at first, but after reading a ton of Waldorf blogs and just letting it all soak in I'm finally comfortable with it. Today we did a review of Roman numerals, using rocks I made based on the ones I saw at Ancient Hearth blog. Here is a pic from the blog. I want to make sure Nik has a good grasp of the concepts we've covered so far before we concentrate on time and money and then move on to multiplication.

Originally Posted by crunchy_mama

My mom now says she likely won't be over as my nephew they think has strep, typical.

Aggravating as she has the flat sheet for our quilt blocks, hopefully we can get it soon though. I will have to think of some other artsy project for today.

Bummer! I hope your nephew is feeling better, and that you get to start quilting soon!

Originally Posted by Mama Rana

Sadly, I don't really know what a nature study is. : Nor a nature table, really [and sadly, I don't really have a place to put one at the minute since my toddler is into EVERYTHING]. I need to make a commitment to look into those. DS1 is really interested in a lot of science things. I had originally planned to basically unschool that and follow his lead, but I felt like we weren't getting much actually done, so I thought I'd follow a curriculum to get a more consistent coverage and sequence.
I liked the idea in the Classic Science by Mr. Q of doing lots of experiments, but so far there have been "activities" but no actual investigations with questions, controls, experimentals, etc. :/ And there are so many typos in the text. Argh! Drives me bonkers. I'm glad I'm reading it aloud so I can correct them as I go along rather than having him reading incorrect language. Frankly the REAL Science Odyssey looks better, but I'm loathe to switch again.

We switched to REAL Science Odyssey from Classical Science by Mr. Q for the same reasons you mentioned. We liked RSO a lot better. Of course, now I'm mostly unschooling science. Sort of backwards from what you did.

Originally Posted by MissRubyandKen

I've been off for awhile, but I finally caught up reading old posts to October's thread and now this new one. We took a week off school as Halloween and ds' birthday are in the same week. We had company and other fun things to do. We harvested the last of our veggies, dp broke up and turned under the plants, and we all helped top mulch the garden spots with leaves. My older dd (10) did some crafts with my younger dd (2). We cut out shapes of pumpkins and various facial features to choose from and glue on. Also some handprint spiders with google eyes, lol. Too cute. Eldest dd carved her first pumpkin using a pattern for a haunted house. It turned out quite excellently! I carved a cat for younger dd and she was pleased. I made gf cupcakes and Nana made ds (newly 9) a cool guitar cake to celebrate his birthday.

That sounds like so much fun! Happy belated b-day to your son.

Originally Posted by MissRubyandKen

I'd also lucked into an Ancient Egypt kit and the game senet at the thrift store. They decoded a message with a hieroglyph decoder wheel and made a simple paperstock model of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid at Giza.

We made our own senet game and had a lot of fun playing it last year! Making papyrus sounds awesome. Please let us know how it turns out!

Originally Posted by MissRubyandKen

I'm very happy with where we're at though. I've seen a dramatic improvement in both children's handwriting this year. My dd is also really grasping Math concepts that seemed difficult to her in the past. Best of all to me, they are both finally really enjoying reading quality chapter books themselves! Yah for that!

Originally Posted by MyLittleWonders

I think I'm going to model my WWE 3 lessons around either Mr. Popper's Penguins or Farmer Boy. That way we can read the book together and also use it for narration and dictation. We'll continue to do narration/dictation or copywork from his oral dictation for history and science.

That sounds like a good plan to me!

Originally Posted by MyLittleWonders

He's also just restarting his first cycle of history with the Ancients. I've decided that starting history in 1st grade was too fast for us, mostly because the content gets really "heavy" in SOTW 3 and 4 (in my opinion). So, ds#1 has already done Ancients and Medieval, but in the middle of last year I decided to restart Ancients again and we are finishing it this year. He'll only end up with 2 full cycles of world history, but I figure that's probably two cycles more than he would get in school. Ds#2 is doing Ancients this year with ds#1 and will continue on the same cycle, so he'll end up with a bit more history than his older brother. But, I've also decided that ds#3 and Little Bean will start world history some time around 3rd grade. So, I supposed on all that I am working behind most other classical hs'ers too.

I worry about this. We started ancients in kindergarten because Nik couldn't wait any longer. That puts him in 2nd grade for the heavy stuff if we stay on schedule. I think we'll just go r e a l l y slowly and let him soak up all of the medieval history that he wants (it's his main historical interest, so that should work out perfectly) and get to more modern hsitory when we get to it. As long as he has a full cycle through in high school he'll have a much better history education than I did!

Originally Posted by MyLittleWonders

Today we did some school work. I'm still not feeling great, but am in a slightly better mood than yesterday (which is funny because I slept horribly last night).

I'm happy to hear that you're feeling better!

We had another fabulous day! Since so many people seem interested in what we're doing, I thought I would take a few minutes to write about some of the things we're switching up and/or Waldorf-ifying.

We covered copywork differently than we used to, and it was a great success! I asked Nik to give me an idea for a story. The plan was to create copywork sentences around an idea of his. He went one further and started telling me his own story! (Marc makes up stories to tell them all of the time, and they often help out with details. I think that has helped make him confident in his ability to "write" a story, providing he doesn't have to do the physical writing of the story at the same time he is creating the tale.) He chose to tell one about a gnome that wanted to be a knight. So I wrote the title and first sentence on a piece of paper and he used a ruler to create straight lines in his main lesson book and then copied it down. He then created an illustration to go with it. I told him that we could scan all of the pages into the computer and print them out for him when his story is all told so that he has it all in one place instead of scattered throughout his main lesson book.

We also changed up spelling. We use AAS, but I saw an idea on a blog to write the spelling words on paper leaves or other seasonal shapes. So instead of our usual AAS lesson I read him a word and he spelled it to me. We tossed a beanbag back and forth while he spelled words, which seemed to make the lesson extra fun for him. Now the leaves are in a bowl, along with a few circles that I cut out with common words such as "I", "we", "the", "a", "and", etc. We took a couple of minutes to make up funny sentences using the spelling words plus these common words. We were both laughing by the time the lesson was done.

I think those were our only new changes today. We did some memory work with out opening and closing verses, some history reading, read-alouds, and math as described earlier in this post. Nik also tried to teach me how to play chess. He's still learning himself, so it was comical. He had some questions about geysers that I couldn't answer, so we did some Googling and found the answers. That led to questions about Yellowstone, Mount St Helens, volcanoes in general, etc, etc, etc.

Eventually we had to quit searching so we could go visit my parents, who just returned from a long vacation out west and had many treasures for us. They brought back so many great things! We have geodes to crack, sandstone and volcanic rock to study, a North American animal matching game, a stuffed mountain lion and skunk to snuggle, a small animal skull to study, and a Cherokee language dictionary! We also have maps and a list of the states and major cities that they visited so we can do a geography lesson on it all tomorrow. Nik is also really into the Cherokee dictionary, so we may take a short break from Latin and learn some Cherokee. My great grandfather was 1/2 Cherokee, and I find myself incredibly interested in learning some of the language myself.

This post took me an hour to finish with all of the breaks I had to take for various chores. I wonder how many people have posted since I started writing.

[crunchy_mama]

MamaRana- first you need to check out www.handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com Nature Study can be so simple, start with just taking the kids outside and seeing what they can find that is interesting. What can they hear? See? Smell? With it being Autumn there are so many easy things to observe- migrating geese, fall leaves, dying plants. Go outside see what piques there interest and then maybe google around about it or check out some library books on the subject. Let them draw a picture. Find a shelf or other safe place for them to collect things. Dd1 likes to collect wild flowers, grasses and such so I generally have a little vase(old tin can) for her to keep her collections. The important thing is to get outside!!!

MLW- sorry to hear you are still feeling bad Are you feeling like you are going to explode yet? I think you are doing great for how pregnant you are!!!

It seems to from reading on WTM that a fair amt do wait on the An. Hist for the reasons you said and others. I am thinking we will start it next year but I am not certain, as much as I like to plan I have to wait and see.

I think that is awesome as well that you are backing up on the Writing for ds1. I think that is one of the biggest challenges and joys of hs'ing is making sure you are tailoring everything to each individual kid. I think as hs'ers it can be at times easy to get in the mind of going to fast because it is so much put on us as to what they learn.

craft-media-hero- Well, a more happy and co-operative daughter is priceless. I don't think anyone would argue that is not time well spent. I hope the evaluation goes well and you get some needed information.

MissRubyKen- The Ancient Egypt studies sound so cool. I wouldn't worry about what other hs'ers - you have to do what works for your kids. I have 2 friends w/ kids 1-2 yrs younger than my son who are reading many levels above him. You'll have to give your reviews of your read-alouds when you are done- we haven't read those yet.

Jessica- Sounds like another great day, you can hear the enthusiasm in your voice. I will have to keep the thoughts and ideas for Math in mind. My son loves telling stories as well, sounds like a great way to encourage ideas. My only problem w/ such things is Luke can read very little and doesn't even recognize all the letters(although he has made great strides) it seems pointless to have him copywork things he cannot read.

I like the AAS ideas I think that we are going to wait until next term to start it but whatever I can glean about how to apply it is wonderful.

We had a good day here as well. We started w/ our singing and such, this week I decided to start them on memorizing the Pledge of Allegiance. He has really blossomed w/ his memory work before it was just impossible. He now has the Lord's Prayer memorized, which is fairly long- he just got that down in the last day or two. I am trying to decide next if we will do a bible verse or another prayer in that area.

We took another morning walk, I have found the perfect spot to walk to- it doesn't take us overly long (we can go to and fro in 30 min) and at the end there is a grapevine for them to swing on- which is always fun.

We finally back up to speed in reading, we had to spend a couple of weeks review but he just did his review on his book again and it was much, much better this time. I think we will start making our fall weather observations today, I meant to do that yesterday but forgot.

It is looking very windy and chilly today

[Mama Rana]

Thanks, Crunchy-Mama, I'll check that out. And Jessica, thanks for letting me know it's not just me about Mr. Q's program.

I think my problem with science is 2-fold: I don't enjoy doing it. I don't enjoy redoing experiments that have been done a cajillion times before, and I could just google the answers to. I know it's not for me, but it's hard for me to be enthusiastic about it and plan for it, etc., when I'm feeling that way.
And as for nature studies I don't really like being outside And again, it's not for me, and the fresh air and sun does us all good... I just don't enjoy it, so I have to really force myself. Esp. now that the weather is getting yucky. :/

Ok, so now that I've gotten that out of my system, hopefully I can get over it, and do something about it.


Today is wet and dreary. It's 8:30 and it is practically pitch dark. blah But DS has a playdate to look forward to this afternoon with one of his PS friends, and we need to swing by the library. And I've got a fun art project to do: we're studying the Minoans, and I thought we'd try to do a "fresco" by using water colors on wet air-dry clay. I hope it works, cuz I don't have any plaster of Paris.

[MissRubyandKen]

MyLittleWonders- I bet Mr. Popper's Penguins would be great for WWE selections. I think I'll feel a lot more comfortable venturing into doing this on my own next year.

Jessica- Those Roman Numeral rocks are cool!

Mama Rana- How old is your student again? If they are reading competently I'd suggest buying some Science Kits and let them at it on their own. I have a bunch of the Young Scientist Club kits and they are quite doable for young kids and have pretty much everything needed provided. We are using them with Noeo Science. My only complaint so far with the combination is that the complexity of the Noeo's suggested reading materials doesn't mesh with the simplicity of some of the kit experiments. My children are older, 9 and 10, so the suggested reading in the Usborne books isn't too much for them and we've done most of the kit experiments, skipped a few, and substituted with others I've gotten elsewhere. However, if you were to just use the kits for a younger child, maybe 6-8?, the reading materials provided with the kits is much more simplistic and matches the experiments well.

gtg- My ds is wanting me to show him how to make scrambled eggs. His specialty is egg sandwiches, but apparently he feels like branching out this morning.

[Mama Rana]

Originally Posted by MissRubyandKen

MyLittleWonders- I bet Mr. Popper's Penguins would be great for WWE selections. I think I'll feel a lot more comfortable venturing into doing this on my own next year.

Jessica- Those Roman Numeral rocks are cool!

Mama Rana- How old is your student again? If they are reading competently I'd suggest buying some Science Kits and let them at it on their own. I have a bunch of the Young Scientist Club kits and they are quite doable for young kids and have pretty much everything needed provided. We are using them with Noeo Science. My only complaint so far with the combination is that the complexity of the Noeo's suggested reading materials doesn't mesh with the simplicity of some of the kit experiments. My children are older, 9 and 10, so the suggested reading in the Usborne books isn't too much for them and we've done most of the kit experiments, skipped a few, and substituted with others I've gotten elsewhere. However, if you were to just use the kits for a younger child, maybe 6-8?, the reading materials provided with the kits is much more simplistic and matches the experiments well.

gtg- My ds is wanting me to show him how to make scrambled eggs. His specialty is egg sandwiches, but apparently he feels like branching out this morning.

DS is 6. I have no idea how to quantify his reading level! Which is sad since I used to be a kindy teacher Anyway, I'll look at some of those kits; that might satisfy him without "annoying" me. Thanks.

[MyLittleWonders]

Originally Posted by crunchy_mama

MLW- sorry to hear you are still feeling bad Are you feeling like you are going to explode yet? I think you are doing great for how pregnant you are!!!

It seems to from reading on WTM that a fair amt do wait on the An. Hist for the reasons you said and others. I am thinking we will start it next year but I am not certain, as much as I like to plan I have to wait and see.

I think that is awesome as well that you are backing up on the Writing for ds1. I think that is one of the biggest challenges and joys of hs'ing is making sure you are tailoring everything to each individual kid. I think as hs'ers it can be at times easy to get in the mind of going to fast because it is so much put on us as to what they learn.

Thanks. It's starting to sink in that I'm only a few weeks away from carrying the baby in my arms rather than in my abdomen! Sometimes it makes me and other times it makes me . I'm excited though.

I'm glad ds#1 was happy about backing up - sometimes his desire to be the biggest brother outweighs his need to do things at level. But, he was even trying to tell ds#2 that backing up is a good thing if needed. He is definitely helping me see how to do better with his younger siblings; sometimes I feel badly that he's my guinea pig, but I think in the long run, it'll all work out.

Originally Posted by MissRubyandKen

MyLittleWonders- I bet Mr. Popper's Penguins would be great for WWE selections. I think I'll feel a lot more comfortable venturing into doing this on my own next year.

I am going to pick up a copy of Mr. Popper's Penguins at the library tomorrow. I thought we had it (we might - I still need to look in the garage in the book boxes), but I did pull a couple other books of the shelf to preview - Little House in the Big Woods and Henry & the Paper Route. I'm thinking I might do the same for ds#2 for the rest of the year - back up to the second half of WWE 1 suggestions for narration/copywork, but still keep the format of WWE 2 - the copywork from the first day becomes dictation on day three. Someone on WTM had a great idea of planning it out (typing out all copywork/dictation passages and even writing down page numbers/paragraphs for actual narration exercises) and then binding it into my own "book". So ... I think I'll work on that. If I can use the same book for both boys, but have the exercises aimed at their level, it'd help tremendously (that's what I do for history and science - I use the same books for both but tailor the copywork/dictation/narration for each of them.

[Jennifer3141]

Mr. Popper's Penguins is in my 1001 books so it's on my waiting list at the library!!

We did reading and a little science today. I'm having a hard time getting the kids to settle down. (It might have something to do with me letting them have some candy while I read this morning! )

We NEED to do our cell drawings because tomorrow. We're moving on in science. We're a little behind.

We read about one of the early fathers of paleontology (sp? that doesn't look right.) today - an artist by the name Waterhouse Dawkins. Did you all know that "Boss" Teed from NYC destroyed TWO years worth of dinosaur models Dawkins was making for Central Park?? I'm so mad I want to drive to NYC today and spit on Tweed's grave.

Mama, is there anyway you could tag team science with another homschooler? I swear, the science stuff is more fun in a little group. They feed off of each other's curiosity and excitement. We just finished the Minoans a couple of weeks ago!! We start the Babylonians and Hittites today.

My confession of the week is that we don't actually "do" spelling. I am a pretty good speller. I always was. I hated those dumb lists we had to do with "hat" and "cat" and "up" and such. So when we do science or history, I make up a list. We're finishing up dinosaurs so that's a word, then I'll add a couple of simpler dinosaur names and words like "plants" "lizards," etc.

Sometimes I'll print a list off the internet but spelling bored me so much as a kid. Maybe that will come later? Technically, neither child is reading on their own yet.

[MissRubyandKen]

Originally Posted by Jennifer3141

My confession of the week is that we don't actually "do" spelling. I am a pretty good speller. I always was. I hated those dumb lists we had to do with "hat" and "cat" and "up" and such. So when we do science or history, I make up a list. We're finishing up dinosaurs so that's a word, then I'll add a couple of simpler dinosaur names and words like "plants" "lizards," etc.

We didn't 'do' spelling until this year. I considered copywork enough for beginning grammar and spelling at younger ages, along with my answering how to spell words whenever asked. My kids are 9 and 10 and we are now starting Sequential Spelling. They both spell very well.

[MyLittleWonders]

I think I'm also leaning towards Mr. Popper's Penguins because I have Deconstructing Penguins and would love to use their model of discussion for M.P.P with the boys. I know the older two would both love it. I guess I need to shlep out to the garage today and see if it's in a box before using the excuse of not being able to find it to buy another copy!

Oh, and I have the 1001 Books book on hold at the library - I'm looking forward to reading it.

Ok, off to find mine somewhere in the house ... they are awfully quiet!!!

[crunchy_mama]

I think Mr. Popper's Penguins would be great as well. We really enjoyed this book and it has nice simple sentences to start for dictation.

I am going to have to find this 1,001 Books to Read to Your Children, that is a new one to me. I was just checking the library this past weekend trying to find the book Deconstructing Penguins but they don't have it. I meant to request that ILL Tues but I forgot. I am guessing you would recommend it MLW? We also have the book How to Read a Book by Adler and I have seen it recommended a lot but I haven't read it yet.

Mama Rana- sorry that you don't like it outside! I think just going out more and more really does help that though. It helps me to get dressed every day.

We had a good day today. Took a nice walk this am and found some great climbing trees. Observed the weather for Nature Study, played games outside for part of our Wampanoag study.

We did some coloring, we colored a US Flag today and a pic for All Saint's Day(yes I know I'm late). Since we are learning the Pledge of Allegiance I thought it would be fun to do a US flag. For Math we are working on equations so we played a game of war and I had him write out each time what he had, it was a good fun way to practice. I forgot we played Mad Libs last night, he wanted to play too so he got introduced to the concept of nouns, adjectives and verbs.

For lunch we watched the Netflix streaming movie about Mammals:Marsupials, it was a nice change of pace. We haven't read as much the past few days as we read and read and read all weekend. I am undecided as to our next chapter book. I did get The Reluctant Dragon from the library but it is pretty short- I was thinking of that and perhaps a Holling book for now.

Jennifer- I think that is a great idea about tagging up w/ Science, I wish I had someone to do that with- although I have too much of an opinion about how I want to do it likely. Your lucky to have such cool stuff around to visit.

I think we will be heading to the library soon, the Science guy has been rescheduled for today.

OH and very excited I won a family four-pack of tickets for the Nutcracker Ballet!!!! It is a week from Sat!

[MyLittleWonders]

Ok, so not only did I find Mr. Popper's Penguins, but I also found Charlotte's Web and The Mouse & the Motorcycle. So, I think we have some good read alouds for a while. I think I might buy the Literature Guide from Memoria Press to go with Mr. Popper's Penguins, more as a resource for me rather than something for them to fill out, at least for all the chapters. I'm excited now to start making my own WWE curriculum, at least for the rest of this school year. I need to figure out how far I can stretch M.P.P. without losing the story because we are taking too long to read it. Maybe we can have a "morning session" that is WWE geared and read a small part of a chapter. Then, in the evening, we could read some more just for pleasure, without the narration/copywork/dictation attached.

Today I had ds#1 do dictation from his narration, all from WWE 2. He did really well. I slowed down the dictation similar to how SWB does on her YouTube video (though instead of making him remember/memorize both sentences of his dictation, I gave him one at a time). I think I'm going to do that 1x a week with him - helping him make the bridge between the narration he gives me and the writing he's doing on the paper.

[Bluegoat]

We have had a fairly good week. I decided to drop our gym class on Wednesday - dd just wasn't getting anything out of it, and it made the week seem really busy. I feel slightly guilty, though there is no reason to - some kind of chemical brain thing I guess.

Dd is really kicking at the traces with writing for some reason. We started Cursive first, and she's forming her letters well, but she really doesn't want to do it. She seems difficult in general this week, so it may just be part of that.

She's going great guns with her music though, and is even doing piano practice on her own. She's having a play-date on Saturday with the other little girl in her class.

We've started a new book, called "Naughty Little Sister Stories" which she seems to appreciate. It's about beginning chapter book level, and very old-school British. I think she identifies with the big sister.

Not much else going on here. Art class tomorrow morning, and I have to take my vacuum cleaner into the shop, because it won't turn on. Not good in a house with three dogs.

[MyLittleWonders]

BG - what a bummer on the vacuum! I hope it's something that is quickly fixed. Ds#1 fought writing (printing/cursive - just doing the practice books) for a long time. It was hard for him, I think, and since he couldn't do it easily, he didn't want to do it. He did HWOT K and 1st grade, but it was spotty, and he really didn't get good at printing until 2nd grade. Then when we started cursive in 3rd grade, it was back to the tears and fighting until he worked through most of the book. All that to say ... taking it easy when he was younger wasn't a bad thing, at least in terms of printing/writing. (Now reading is another story with him, but I digress.)

I need to tweak our weekly schedule - I have a few things I want to add in on a consistent schedule, but don't know when to do them (I want to do one homophone set a week from All About Homophones, plus I want to keep doing the "Writing Station" from All About Spelling 2x a week; I also want to figure out how to keep doing WWE during the weeks we are doing IEW).

I'm also realizing that too much unstructured time, especially in the morning, is not a good thing with my boys. I've been letting myself sleep as much as possible in the morning (usually I like to get up an hour or so before the boys to shower and have some down-time before they wake), and then I'm moving so slowly that we don't tend to eat breakfast and start school until almost 11am. But, I've been seeing more behavior issues too. So, I need to come up with some structure for them while I'm still working on getting with the program. (Is it bad that part of me hopes this baby is an early bird so I'm forced to be up early?!)

I'm thinking of making a schedule where the older two start independent work (Explode the Code, Building Thinking Skills) at 9:30 while I'm working on trying to get any left over dishes done and breakfast made, then they can have a break while I get ready for the day, and then we start the rest of our regular routine. I'm not sure ... and of course, ds#3 is a total wildcard! But I definitely need to cut down on the unstructured time; it's just causing more problems that I like dealing with first thing in the morning.

Ultimately I'd love to start our day with a good walk - the older two want to start conditioning themselves to jog/run all the way around the block without stopping. I could walk fast enough to stay somewhat close to them, but ds#3 would have to be in the stroller or the bike trailer (converted to a stroller). But again, that takes actually getting up and being ready to go before 11am!

[LuxPerpetua]

*lurker here*

What does WWE stand for?

(I'm just beginning to dip my toes into Waldorfish Classical Homeschooling)

[Holiztic]

MamaRana:

The Baltimore Homeschool Community Center is just starting a science co-op for 6-11 year olds. Won't be nature study--but will be fun I'm sure!

We LOVE the BHCC by the way, if you haven't been yet--check it out!!

http://www.baltimorehomeschool.org/

http://www.facebook.com/baltimorehomeschool

[MyLittleWonders]

Originally Posted by LuxPerpetua

*lurker here*

What does WWE stand for?

(I'm just beginning to dip my toes into Waldorfish Classical Homeschooling)

WWE = Writing With Ease. It's a classical writing program based on narration and copywork, moving towards narration and dictation.

[MissRubyandKen]

crunchy mama- That's wonderful about the Nutcracker tickets! Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! This is something I've always wanted to do, but haven't yet.

Bluegoat- I second the hope that the vacuum is a quick fix. I couldn't go without one either, only my hair problem is cats instead of dogs.

MLW- I've noticed the same thing with my children. If they have any free time in the morning they're usually much more resistant and slow with school. I have started giving the couple things they can do mostly without me first, so that I have a bit of time to prepare myself and get whatever done I'd like to have done in the AM. First thing they are to take care of their hygiene and do their chores. They both have two chores to do every morning. Then they are both to do 10 minutes of basic math drill on freerice.com and generally they both are to read one chapter in their assigned book. I can't really count on this with ds though, because he likes to read ahead a lot, so he has often already read his chapter the night before. Who could complain about that though, right, lol?

[Bluegoat]

I've noticed the morning thing too. It's also much easier to get "serious" work done in the morning - in the afternoon it is much more difficult to motivate dd.

[Momma Aimee]

Originally Posted by MissRubyandKen

crunchy mama- That's wonderful about the Nutcracker tickets! Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! This is something I've always wanted to do, but haven't yet.

Bluegoat- I second the hope that the vacuum is a quick fix. I couldn't go without one either, only my hair problem is cats instead of dogs.

MLW- I've noticed the same thing with my children. If they have any free time in the morning they're usually much more resistant and slow with school. I have started giving the couple things they can do mostly without me first, so that I have a bit of time to prepare myself and get whatever done I'd like to have done in the AM. First thing they are to take care of their hygiene and do their chores. They both have two chores to do every morning. Then they are both to do 10 minutes of basic math drill on freerice.com and generally they both are to read one chapter in their assigned book. I can't really count on this with ds though, because he likes to read ahead a lot, so he has often already read his chapter the night before. Who could complain about that though, right, lol?

rather than assinging "read a chaper" (since he may have read that chaper the night before) could you do a time (read for 15 mintues) or a page requirment (read 20 pages)?

[MissRubyandKen]

Originally Posted by Momma Aimee

rather than assinging "read a chaper" (since he may have read that chaper the night before) could you do a time (read for 15 mintues) or a page requirment (read 20 pages)?

Thanks, this is a good idea and I may do so at some point in the future. I don't want to right now because he is enjoying 'being ahead' and saving himself work later. I don't want to take the appeal away, yk?