Cindy's Life as She Knows It

This morning we met with another homeschooling family at Downs Park in Lake Shore.  Of course we chose the chilliest day of March, but the boys didn't care.  The three of them, all very physical, rolled and leaped and jumped and wrestled their way through the first hour.  Then we walked through the paths near the water and Dakota begged me to let him take off his shoes and socks to play in the sand.  I thought it was a bad idea, but the other boys did so I agreed, knowing it wouldn't end well.  Fifteen minutes later Dakota was crying because his hands and feet were cold, sandy and numb.  I had to bite my tongue not to say "I told you so!" Fast food for lunch, pjs by 1:30 and a night spent at home reading, watching tv and doing a whole lot of nothing. I am pathetic because I am way too excited about the prospect!

I take pride in the fact that my family loves to be together.  I know some families grow up and go their own way, but mine is close and we really enjoy each other.  I got to spend the afternoon with my younger daughter and she and my granddaughter, who don't get to spend too much time together, really had fun playing.  It also gave me the opportunity to work a little.  She had to leave around 5, but then my oldest daughter was there and she and the baby had dinner with us.  Afterward we all left the dinner mess on the table, grabbed the dogs, the kids, the teen and the baseball stuff and headed over to the park to play.  We were up there for a couple of hours and we got dirty, got silly and had fun.  Afterward we all headed to the snowball stand for a nice treat. Yesterday, early in the day, we had our spring celebration at our co-op.  For many years I ran parties and it was so much work.  I have finally figured out, as my friend said yesterday, that "many hands make light w

Last week was a chaotic one, but I am hoping for much calmer seas this week.  Today was a normal homeschooling day with story starters, spelling and language arts to begin, followed by the finish of our MTH book, Dragon of the Red Dawn.  We practiced writing Haiku poems to wrap up our brief acquaintance with ancient Japan and then moved on to regular math, finishing our unit.  I ordered Abeka grade 2 test and drills book, even though we will only be using it for a few months.  I am sure I can resell it, but I was given the drills book and liked what I saw.  I like Saxon, but it is plain, with no pictures.  Dakota likes math books with lots of color and fun, but our Harcourt Grade 2, in my opinion, is too flimsy.  If I like the Abeka grade 2 I think I will buy the grade 3 for the fall, along with their Language 3 and Spelling and Poetry 2.  I do want to continue with Harcourt Science, however, and will be getting their Grade 3 book and workbook from Amazon. Anyway, who can believe it&

Standing to the side of the cafeteria at my son's high school today, a teacher gave the opening statements to approximately 300 students who were preparing to enjoy their Senior Breakfast.  Her words struck me as incredibly true...."this is the beginning of the end of your senior year".  Yes, today's breakfast begins the flurry of activities that will culminate my son's high school career.  I am glad it's almost over for him because he hasn't been happy at the school.  He loved his old high school with a passion, but the Archdiocese of Baltimore decided to shut it down and this is where he transferred.  He feels he doesn't fit in here and I can understand why.  Although some people have been extremely kind to me, a number of parents and students seem to be "out of our league".  We have different backgrounds, different living arrangements, different circumstances.  It leaves my son and I feeling...different.  I couldn't help but wonder how

T oday, the first day of spring, was a bit cool with cloud cover and a bit of drizzle.  It was the perfect day to be at home.  We took advantage of the day inside and did lots of reading.  Dakota started the day with the new Play and View from the library.  It's a small handheld device that plays movies adapted from children's books.  He watched The Mouse and the Motorcycle, a book I haven't been able to get him to read, and seemed to really enjoy it.  Afterward, we got his warmest fuzzy blanket from his room, cuddled in the chair and read three chapters of our Magic Tree House book, Dragon of the Red Dawn. After a slow start, these chapters were exciting and had many references to things we could talk about.  We answered our comprehension questions, looked up Mount Fuji, colored pictures of Japanese people in traditional dress and then did some s uminagashi, which is an ancient Japanese technique for decorating paper with inks.  Instead of using ink, however, we took an id

Today I will consider my homeschooling a success.  We got started early, covered most topics by noon and Dakota and I got along all day!  We are about half way through our newest Magic Tree House book. Dragon of the Red Dawn and after we read that today and answered our comprehension questions we made a Japanese Koi fish paper bag puppet.  We read about Susan B. Anthony for Women's History Month and finished our Character Education series, finally!!  We are learning how to pull information from a story and put it into a graphic organizer, a pre-cursor to writing a report and learning about different animals in the process.  We did sea otters a few days ago and today it was polar bears.  After we read the story from National Geographic for Kids magazine, we fill out as much of the form as we can.  Then we get onto the computer and he is learning how to Google for information to fill in the remainder of the topics.  We are learning about endangered status, as well, so I feel that thi

After much waiting and many phone calls, we finally got the long awaited letter from Towson University last week confirming my son's acceptance to the school.  My boy will be a Towson Tiger, heading there with our neighbor (his best friend) and several classmates past and present.  He wants to live on campus and experience all there is to learn about the life of a college student.  Our family is so proud of him and not one of us can believe that our "little" Brian is all grown up!  He's been everyone's "baby" for what seems like forever and now this "baby" has a mustache, goatee, muscles, a deep voice and an acceptance letter to college! It's going to be a very difficult transition for this mom and dad, who have built the last nineteen years around our son, but we know that it's time for him to fly and, thank the good Lord, he's only flying 20 minutes away.  He will always be our Brian and I know that we have given him roots that

Today is Dr. Seuss's 108th birthday and we are having fun!  We started by getting out all our Dr. Seuss books and setting them up on the table.  Some are Natalie's and brand new and some are Kris and Keri's and are around 25 years old!  You can tell which is which!  We put up streamers, made a Happy Birthday poster and hung up our posters and papers too.  I put on my crown and Cat in the Hat socks, Koda put on his Cat in the Hat tall striped hat and his How the Grinch Stole Christmas shirt and we were ready!  Breakfast first with, of course, green eggs, green pancakes and ham.  We added a little science in there, talking about our current unit on reversible and irreversible changes.  We then took a reading break, me reading the Dr. Seuss autobiography for kids to him and he was reading his favorite, Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now!  We did some fun word games and a cloze activity, read Green Eggs and Ham and In A People House and painted Thing 1 and Thing 2 using