This past weekend I realized we really haven’t been schooling much. Alice is still looking at school as doing worksheets. This coming weekend or next I am going to buy somethings so we have Montessori stations around. We actually probably have stuff we can use, but it isn’t designated for a particular station.

She is learning more addition, sounding out more words, learning to spell more words and we are going to get started on a family tree this week. I know I need to pay closer attention to what we are doing for the association we joined - we have five subjects we are supposed to be teaching from. This goes against the three r’s that I am mainly thinking about. I probably am teaching all five, just not realizing it.

Anyway, last week and over the weekend we were a very crafty family (see the posts at mebeingcrafty.com) - we painted t-shirts, made Halloween cards, made a birthday card for my neice, a birthday card for my SIL and finished up our Halloween notebooks I am sending my nephews.

So we haven’t been schooling. Rather, we haven’t been doing worksheets. We have had fun, I think Alice is learning - we talked about what paint is, we talked abou time because of having to wait for it to dry, we talked about color, etc.

I need to be better at keeping a daily (rather then weekly) report. I’m going to start this week and backdate it to last week while the info is still fresh in my mind. So we need to make some changes - completely okay to do since she stays home!

Alice sounded out “friend” today!

What an awesome first word to learn to read!

We have been working on phonics and the alphabet a lot, every day it seems. I found a cool website that has interactive games for kids and at first I let her play the letter games. Those are the very beginning ones - they tell you the letter sound and give you one word that goes with that letter.

The next step is learning to read ~ when you click on a word, it is sounded out letter by letter and you can click on every word in the sentence. The character also does something when you click on it. The are quite a few books to pick from on that site and we just started on the learn to read section this week.

Then today she spelled friend and said “Look Mom, friend!” I asked her how did she know it said friend and she said that she sounded out each letter! How cool is that!

Of course she knows other words and can spell them, but this is the first one that she said she sounded out.

I’m very excited. The other night Chris told her that she would soon be able to read Calvin and Hobbes on her own - that made her very happy.

I haven’t been reading blogs at all this week - but when I jumped back on this morning, I am finding a lot of people talking about their plans this year!

I think I need a better plan. We are basically unschooling. I haven’t bought a curriculum - not even looked to see if I would like anything! - and for book work we have a few workbooks. Alice likes doing the workbooks but not every day.

I had the advice that homeschooling a kindergartener was super easy because I could do what I did in kindergarten - play, color, glue stuff, cut stuff, nap, do worksheets here and there. And I agree - I think that we are lifelong learners and it doesn’t have to be all academic book learning.

Alice caught on to math quickly, she can add single digits and last week we started adding double digits. She’s doing great with reading and spelling - she sounds words out and can spell simple words like mom, dad and cat. We are supposed to be teaching her in five subject areas: reading, writing, math, science and social studies. I found a kindergarten curriculum guide online and Alice already knows/does about half of the list. I figure we will be sure to go over all of it and then move forward.

Chris is finally thinking homeschooling is a good idea. He said that Alice will probably learn more and faster just for the reason of not having to wait for other kids to catch up or finish. (Did I say that already? I guess I’m just so glad he is finally really on board.)

I need to be better about keeping my journal for my association. We can keep a plan or a journal and I tried both at first - and neither worked because it was too much. I stuck to a journal because it seemed that our plans changed so often. I just need to be better about it.

I’m actually not sure where Hurricane/Tropical Storm Ernesto is right now (is he still around?) but last week, he was headed our way.

We are in Summerville, SC, northwest of Charleston. Well, northwest about 20 miles, maybe 25. So basically we are very close to the water thus I worried when they said it was headed toward us.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday were days that I spent worrying and wondering. I also checked the weather report at least every hour. It slowed down and then over the ocean, gained strength.

Thursday morning, work called Chris to say he had to go to work and be prepared to stay there for 24 hours. That annoyed me because okay this was my first hurricane/tropical storm experience and I had to go through it alone! Thanks a lot.

So he left for work and I cleaned/organized the garage, did two loads of laundry, a load of dishes and put a roast in the crockpot. Considering our electricity goes out when we get a drizzle, I figured we would be safe should it go out for longer then a half hour. I got up so early that I was finished with everything by 7:30AM!

The electricity didn’t even blink. We got rain and wind, and not even hurricane force wind, just a little. Our neighbor across the street was home and he had a buddy over. Every once in a while they were sitting outside smoking.

Chris got to come home around midnight which ended making his weekend a four day.

And the lesson is be prepared! I’m not sure what will happen the next time a hurricane comes through - I am great at getting the house together, but I’ve never had to evacuate. But the laundry was done, the garage clean (we can actually park a car inside!), the dishes were done very eary and we had food. So Thursday was spent hanging out and not really doing a lot.

I admit I didn’t talk to the kids about the hurricane either. We’ve talked about weather and such because we get such loud thunder when it storms - talking both the science aspect (cold and warm air) and culture (it’s Thunder Beings). They have taken to repeating what we’ve told them when it does thunder, I think that helps to calm them down to have some sort of explanation.