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My mind is all a jumble these days. It is hard to keep up with everything now that we have started out home schooling school year. I want to take this opportunity on this Thursday free afternoon to make some lists and un-do the jumble. (Some of this jumble is also so to taking allergy medication. UGH!)
Things to do on future Thursdays:
sewing
tidy/ organize/ purge
make a checklist of materials we have
make a checklist of goals and ways to meet them for various school subjects
search for age appropriate story problems online.
read Charlotte Mason books
assemble last Ikea cabinet and organize contents.
Get all homeschool materials together in one place.
Compile a list of nature study locations and invite people to meet us there.
Prep craft and lesson for CBS

Order some things on Amazon or find free equivalents:
Spanish CD ROM or spanish apps to help us keep on top of learning Spanish.
Hymn CD that all of us can enjoy.
School house rock Math cd?
Poetry CD/book combo
Drop stuff off at the thrift store
exercize

Penmanship:
Goals:
1. be able to correctly form capital letters A-Z
2. be able to correctly form small letters a-z
3. be able to correctly form numerals 0-9
4. be able to copy any sentence with spaces between words and punctuation.

methods:
1. tracing with dry erase markers and books.
2. writing letters to family and friends
3. copy a sentence from poetry or scripture
4. increase pencil control by tracing pictures
5. Make a picture using only diagonal lines
6. Rainbow name
7. sand tray writing
8. tape a paper to the wall or easel for writing.

Tips to myself: 1. Have children help cook they can harvest veggies from the garden, cut soft veggies with plastic knives, put things in the pot etc. 2. Spend some one on one time with each child having them help with a few cleaning tasks. 3. Learn good habits on e at a time and teach good habits focusing on one at a time. It is never too late to improve. 4. take time out to swing, play and read to children frequently throughout the day... especially when you thing you are doing something "important" 5. Spend some time doing things that require concentration ....organizing and sorting and tidying while children are sleeping... a little each evening. 6. Form an after breakfast routine... This is my worst time of day (Second only to the 3:30-7:30 block.) I am fuzzy headed and if I have a set list of things that I do everyday and that the kids so everyday things will go more smoothly...I guess I should make up a late afternoon routine/pre-bedtime routine too. We have our bedtime routine in place we need to know what is supposed to habitually happen before that. Some days we are away at class or playgroup till 6 or 6:30 so I haven't developed much of a routine for when we are here.

what you can do

It's amazing what you can do on a Saturday Morning when circumstances allow... 1. Made coffee and drank 2 cups 2. put dinner in the crock pot-- pork ribs with vegetables 3. filled and ran the dishwasher 4. washed the stove with Emily 5. Emily helped wash the sink 6. Scrubbed hard water deposits off sink 7. Scrubbed grease stains off toaster oven 8. Emily helped sweep and mop laundry room. 9. Stripped Emily's bed and washed her bed linens and some other dirty laundry 10. used the weed whacker and shrub trimmer in the front yard 11. did easel painting (tempera cakes) with Emily 12. played doctor and pretend face painting with Emily 13. read 30 mins to both girls from Golden Name Day 14. colored my hair 15. took a shower 16. read a few pages of P.G. Wodehouse 17. made noodle salad for lunch thanks to Mark who took Claire to run errands and then took both girls across the street to play with neighbor kids and made Indian princes crowns and arm bands and planted sunflowers.

more poetry from the girls

A car Cars, cars, cars Cars, cars So many cars too many cars to count enough cars By Emily Bees Buzzing Buzz buzz buzz Bees buzz and buzz and buzz and buzz when they want some honey By Claire

Claire tells about her new garden hut

My hut has a chair in it. My mom started my hut on Saturday. I like to do school in the hut. Emily likes to have cookies in the hut. The door is made of bamboo sticks.

Emily's Poem

Your Face
 February January
 blink, blink, blink
Nose, nose, nose, nose Cheek, cheek, cheek
Teeth teeth, nose nose, everything, everything
 Hair, hair, lovely, lovely
Row your boat across the sea.

 (Jen added the title)

busy little lion

Emily said she was a princess in this costume but I think she is a colorful Lion!

Still taming the mess. I am actually sorting through some of the chaos in the entryway and filing and or categorizing things in useful ways. Should be able to find supplies for creative projects easier after this.
The girls have been having fun working in their art journals (and mine) with stencils, oil pastels, crayons and colored pencils.

tremenduos mess

I have a tremendous mess spreading from dining room to living room. The girls and  I have done multiple art projects including art journals and we have art supplies, magazine scraps etc. scattered over two tables and spilling onto the floor also the girls have also pursued other interests while I've been editing photos on the computer and reading blogs.YIKES! Today we left it all behind and went to the zoo. Tomorrow we will have to tame the beast.

fort

On this still wet but not quite rainy morning the girls have built a fort in the kitchen and are playing very sweetly together. They even made a bed for me and we pretended to tuck each other in and go to sleep.

About shadows by Claire

SHADOW
At the beginning of the day
my shadow is very long
and your shadow is long too.
They jump when you jump.
They stand still when you stand still.
A big shadow can swallow up a little shadow.
CLAIRE

Quote of the day

"I have a woodpecker hole in my nose."--Emily
Claire says, "Could you write something about me?"
Claire currently knows about 60 sight words and her reading is really taking off. So much fun to watch! Claire loves being quized on sight words from some Dolch word lists I printed off the internet.
The girls slept till 8:00 this morning! Wowie!
Emily is working on night time potty training.

progress with the house

We have been taking up cracked vinyl tiles from our living room and dining room floors. Almost done. I have a 3x4 foot area left. Saturday Mark scraped loose paint and plaster from the living room ceiling and patched. The girls and I have been working on removing wallpaper from this room. This is a project the girls started and initiated when I was napping a month ago. half a wall to go. It feels so good to see progress.

sprouted bread

I've been buying sprouted cinnamon raisin bread for the kids. The course dry texture takes some getting used to. Emily wanted me to take a picture of her eating this sandwich :)

Clothespins poem

Claire made up this poem in November. I don't think I ever posted it.

Clothespins
Clothespins, clothespins
on my pants
on my wrants and dance
Clothespins, clothespins
in my dish, in my fish
how many clothespins do you wish?