Thursday, March 29, 2007

Appointments & Shopping

and not a bit of schoolwork. That's all we did today. Randy had an eye appt. this morning, so we all rode along to shop while he was getting his contacts. The eye dr. is in Target. So I made a list really quick before we left. We have a cool book (Mythbusters: Don't Try This at Home) from the guys at Mythbusters and I wanted to get our "Mythbusters Box" ready for when we start reading it. I needed some cheapy measuring cups & spoons for the experiments, so i didn't need to use my cooking ones. I was looking for a cheapy stopwatch, but the cheapest was $10.. and I truly didn't want to spend that on something we won't use often. I also needed some string, so find a nice sized spool of twine that will work nicely. Only thing I wanted but couldn't find were some corks. I know I saw these somewhere before, just can't recall what store. Might have been Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Then the kids each got some new shorts and a few shirts. Then of course during check-out my stupid card wouldn't work. The girl had to call for verifictaion. Then when I spoke to the women at the cc company, she said my card was never activated. Um.. yeah it was! I called as soon as it came. I remember because I was on the phone for about 15 minutes listening to their garbage spiel about the credit insurance junk.. which I declined TWICE!

So.. after that we come back home for lunch, freshening up, and then back out for the kids' dentist appts. They just needed cleanings today. Amanda has a cavity, Jake didn't. Surprised me.. as Amanda is very good about brushing and not eating tons of junk. Jake on the other hand.. I think he'd rather have a tooth pulled than *waste time* brushing.

So that was it for our day. We have Happy Feet we're going to watch tonight. I think I am going to make a Shepard's Pie. Never made one before, so this should be interesting. :)

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Our Schedule is going..

fairly well so far. We aren't getting quite everything finished, but at least we are making progress. I check off what we complete each day. I am also keeping track of our work with the Homeschool Tracker download I had gotten months ago. It is a pretty neat little program. I have just the free/Basic version. If you haven't already, you should check it out.

I had wanted to get an early start today.. but that's not gonna happen. The kids have been up for almost 2 hours now, but neither has even had breakfast yet. Amanda wanted smoothies (yogurt, frozen strawberries and bananas - YUM) again, but I need to clean the blender first. LOL And that'd mean I'd have to do dishes, but I can't do dishes because I am doing laundry. So I have to move the wet laundry from the washer, into the dryer... but I can't do that yet, because I am bloggin!! So she's just gonna have to eat some cereal. ;)

I can just hear Ron from Harry Potter now, "She needs to get her priorities straight" (when Hermione had said they might get hurt .. or was it killed.. or worse, EXPELLED! from Hogwarts. Can't recall which movie it was from, Sorcerer's Stone I belive. I know it wasn't in the book though.) Anyways, I'm rambling now. Better go take care of that laundry.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

This week at Homeschool EStore

Their freebie this week is Easter Notebooking Pages by Amanda Bennett. Be sure to get your copy!

Saturday, March 24, 2007

My Review: Amy Knapp's Homeschooling Organizer

OK, I am not the greatest at doing reviews, so I will try to do my best. ;)

I really wasn't sure at first how I'd like this. I use Amy Knapp's Family Organizer, and have for about 3 years now. I love it.. so wanted to give the Homeschooling Organizer a chance. I had also never personally seen the book, just saw it on Amazon, so I had added it to my Christmas list.

At first glance, I thought "Eh, nothing fantastic." Throughout January & February, I'd write in some things here and there. But it was until recently I decided we need a "plan". So I opened up my Homeschooling Organizer and got to it. The spaces are enough room for me to write in just about every subject I need to. On any given day, I can plan out for math, science, history, reading; all on the Lesson Planning side (left) of the book. Also on this side is a Grocery shopping list. Then you still have the days of the week side (right) to fill in for appointments, etc. and a To Do/To Call section, PLUS meal planning area. This all folds our into a 2 page spread, so you can easily see what is going on for the entire week.

The rest of the book is nice as well. In the front it has small "at-a-glance" calendars for August (of starting year, mine is 2006) until December of the following year (mine is 2007). Then the calendar and lesson planning, etc. pages begin with the starting year, August. You have a large 2-page spread of the months calendar. Then it goes into the planning pages & weekly calendars. Planning pages continue through August of the following year. Then you just have large 2-page calendars for the remaining months through December.

Additional pages in the back of the book include: Book Log; Chore Assignment Log; Personal Development; Grading; Field Trip Log Ideas; Completed Field Trips; Budget Planning (for the family homeschooling - includes materials for all children); Individual Budget Planning (for each child). These pages are reproducible.

I will be ordering my Homeschooling Organizer for next year as well. I think this is a great tool to help keep us on track. While I don't think I'd use it as a "regular" planner/datebook, as it is larger that my other one... I will continue to use it for homeschooling.

So, hopefully my review doesn't sound too jumbled. :) Enjoy!!

A schedule of sorts..

Well I decided that we needed to have a weekly "plan/schedule" of what was needed to be completed before we end our seat work for the summer. So I've been jotting down in my Homeschooling Organizer (This is the one for next year, mine runns from 8-06 thru 12-07) what I would like to have finished each day. This is not somethign I normally do, because I am just not great at schedule following. But so far, so good. Of course, this was only our first week of scheduling. LOL We did every day but Friday. And that was with running every single day of the week, including Friday (we actually went out 3 differnet times yesterday! ACK!!). I might try to talk the kids into doing some work today.. I know they'll refuse though. But maybe we can at least start our Egyptology book finally.

Thursday we went to the MD Science Center in Baltimore. We had a nice time, spent about 3.5 hours exploring the center. The Grossology tour was there, and I wasn't expecting to pay extra.. but we had to pay $26 for the 4 of us to go in. Well.. we were pretty dissapointed. There wasn't as much set up as I thought there'd be. And half of the games didn't work or weren't working very well. I had wanted to go back for the Animal Grossology tour, but I think we'll pass that one up. But all in all, the Science Center was fun. We had watched a really cool demonstratiion with Mr. Joe about liquid nitrogen. At the end he made fog and let the kids all feel how cool the fog felt. He was very careful about reminding them to NOT touch the pan he was holding. He stressed safety throughout the demonstration as well.

After we finished up at the Science Center we walked around the harbor to go eat at the Cheesecake Factory. The kids LOVE this place. We brought home 2 slices of cheesecake. YUM!! This time we tried the Godiva Chocolate and Jake picked out another chocolate, something like Chocolate Tuxedo or something.. can't recall the name. But it was yum as well.

So that was our week. It went pretty nicely, glad it is the weekend, even though it is going to be yucky. But we're going to get started Spring Cleaning!! Today we are doing the kids' clothes. Time to find out what fits and what they need new. Hope everyone has a great weekend!!

Monday, March 12, 2007

I am so bad about posting often!

I don't mean to neglect my blog, I just an VERY absentminded at times. And the past few weeks with everyone being sick, then the cats with their issues (1 being hospitalized for a week, then coming home with a cold & giving it to the other cat), and going away for a few days.. things just got away from me.

We are *trying* hard to get back on schedule. I wanted to be finished the MUS Epsilon and working on Zeta to be finished by the beginning of June.. but its not looking like that's what will happen. But I am hoping we'll be able to finish Epsilon the first week of April, then start on Zeta next and finish it up by the first week or so of June.. just a week or 2 later than I planned. I think the kids will fly through Zeta with no problems.

We'll be finishing up this week with our History (Ancient Egypt) and next week we are starting Ancient Greece. Jake is happy as he's been waiting for this study to come up. Our Charlie and the Chocolate Factory book study was put on hold, so we'll be picking that up soon as well. It is just hard to get back into the rhythm.. *sigh*

Jake and I are on Book 2 of Harry Potter (Chamber of Secrets). Our plan is to read/listen to the book, then watch the movie. We are looking & listening hard for ANY clues to the final book.. but I am not picking up on anything. Supposedly there were several clues in book 1 as to what will happen in book 7. Amanda says she doesn't want to listen or watch the movies, but for the most part she does. LOL Dh thinks we are goofy for listening to the books on Cd's but that's just mainly because he can't here that well to listen along.

We are SO ready for Spring here. The past 2 days were such beautiful days, although a little windy. But anything is better than single digits. Tomorrow and Wed. are *supposed* to be in the 70's so I think we might head out and go hike on one of the nearby mountain trails. That is if DH's knee is better. Then we are to have some rain, so when the rain comes, I will start my spring cleaning indoors.. that way when it turns nice again, I can spring clean outside. :)

New Homeschoolestore.com Freebie of the week!

This week it is "Positive Teaching Positive Students" by Home Based English. Be sure to get your copy this week!! Just click
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