New Year, not off to a great start!

   I haven't even made my resolutions yet, and I am already breaking them!  For starters I was hoping to get to the gym every week day starting this week.  So far I went on Tuesday, but didn't find time Monday, and haven't gone yet today.  Secondly, I was going to really make an effort at keeping up with my correspondences, but not only are thank you notes not written yet, I haven't even started on my Christmas cards.  At this rate I'm hoping to get them out by Easter.  Another major thing on my mental list of potential resolutions is to be more on time and on task.  How is that going you ask?  HAHAHAHAHAHA!  Well, yesterday we skipped Math and Grammar, and this morning is our first away from home Bible class since before the break (that means we had over 3 weeks to do one lesson) and no one in our family has done our homework. Also I think I made a huge mistake in letting the kids sleep in over the break.  We did still do school, but we didn't start until like 7:30 or 8am during vacation.  So now the kids are sleeping in until almost 7!  I feel like we will never get back on track!  So I guess this would be a good week to make my resolutions for realzies and start keeping them. 

Currently Uther (The Camulod Chronicles, Book 7) By Jack Whyte see related

Winding up the week one day early! Yay!

Easy kind of a half day.  The kids finished their English project, and I am so proud of them!  It turned out soooo well; way beyond my expectations, and even more creative than I was picturing from their outlines.  Yay!  Homeschooling rules!  They also did an early piano lesson and took their Friday Math quizzes today since tomorrow will only involve eating junk food and switching channels back and forth between the parade and the Twilight Zone ( I will allow for possible breaks for games or movies).

I did not go into work today, since none of my clients had a full day and we had no deliveries today.  I worked from home and not even much of that, one small project and very minor computer work.

In addition to that, and school with the kids I pretty much did nothing!  This morning I cleaned one of the fish bowls, paid bills, had severe anxiety, and did laundry.  After that I gave the kids a snack and went to the gym to run for 35 min., ran to the bank to make a deposit, to the market for Root Beer and hamster shavings, Trader Joes for groceries and Starbucks for a latte.  This afternoon I did more laundry, drank more coffee and made turkey meatballs for hubby's dinner.

I'm going to go vacuum and clean rodent habitats, and maybe clean another fish bowl or two during the commercials of the Twilight Zone marathon.

I am liking this day off stuff!  I feel like a total bum like I am playing hookey or something.  No teaching most of our subjects and very little working or cleaning.  I even bought store bought cookies because they were on sale!  I guess guilt will keep me from living like this regularly, but I can see how a person could get used to this.  Maybe I'll take a 20 min nap before dinner.  Heeeheeheehee! 

Currently The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 4) By Rick Riordan see related

Christmas "Vacation" School Time!

   I love vacations, because I feel free to branch out and assign things that are not in the cope of my regular lesson plans for the year (I live and die by the highlighter).  We have so much fun taking a break from Grammar and Spelling, Vocab, Science, Languages and even our regular reading books for a week or two.  Not that we don't love those things, but it is nice to take a little mental vacation from them for a bit.

   So, what have we been doing for school the last week and a half?  Glad you asked!  Well, we have been keeping up with Math, and we finally caught up on our time line, but mostly we have been doing a literature unit on "A Christmas Carol" which is super fun! 

   As you guys know from previous years blogs, every year we read "A Christmas Carol".  My mom always did with me, I always have with my kids.  And each year I try to find different activities to go along with the book and make it our English work for the vacation period.  This year we read the book, and then watched three different versions of the movie to compare and contrast them with each other and with the book.  That was last week.  This week the kids are making a newspaper called "The Dickens Times" all about the book.  Each child is doing four things to contribute to the paper.

   Blue (3rd grade) wrote an obituary for Jacob Marley (dead as a door nail you know), weather report for London in December, an editorial on a grumpy miser named Scrooge, and reported on the breaking news of Marley's ghost being sighted at his old partners home.

   Red (5th grade) is doing separate interviews with each of the three ghosts- finding out their purpose and a little of what they will be showing Scrooge when they visit him.  She also created an "I Spy" for the comic section with things to search for that relate to the story such as ghosts, door to the poorhouse, money bags, chains, coal and crutches.

   Yellow (2nd grade) made a maze which takes the reader from "Humbug" to "Merry Christmas".  She constructed a word search with names and key words from the story.  Her big story for the paper is a report on the amazing change in a Mr. Scrooge of London, who is said to be a completely new man since last Christmas Eve.    She is also drawing the picture for the front page.

  This is the main thing that we have been doing for our school time over the holiday break.  As I'd hoped, it is turning out to be really fun!  

Currently The Titan's Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 3) By Rick Riordan see related

Can't get enough of the Percy Jackson series!

Currently Inkdeath (Inkheart Trilogy) By Cornelia Funke see related

INKDEATH...

Finally reading it.  LOVING it!  I am just as enthralled as I was with the first one.  It is darker and more intense than I anticipated, like the original fairy tales.  Can't recommend this highly enough.  This is the only series, besides HP of course, to make it to my "special shelf" which only holds the Tolkien books and the Chronicles of Narnia.

I do not how ever recommend reading this book with my 10 year old in the house, as she has already read it, and can not resist a constant stream of "Have you got to the part where....?" comments which are adorable, but tend to ruin the twists in the plot!