Sickness, Household Projects and a Round-up

Blogging has been light lately as the kids have all been sick and we also undertook rearranging several rooms in our house and painting and so on. When it is done it will be worth it but it has taken up most of our "freetime".

I truly cherish the flexibility of homeschooling during times like these - when I can get a few brief lessons in each day and know that we have gotten "enough" done and we can just enjoy ourselves and focus on the tasks at hand as well.

Rhiannon and I have been readjusting things lately. As a consequence for some bad choices she recently made she has been forbidden from using any writing utensils for a brief period. Needless to say homeschooling has been interesting - did not realize how much she really was using worksheets before. In some ways it has been refreshing to try to find different ways to work on lessons. We decided to make an exception for chalk and so she has been doing everything on our chalkboard from math problems, to writing her poem she is memorizing to writing bible verses and her spelling. She has done very well and it has also led her to be more creative and she drew a Christmas tree and several other pictures.

She is really enjoying reading and chooses to read a book herself each day without any prodding or encouraging from me. She still resists phonics works a bit but she chooses to read several books instead of doing a phonics page so I am not arguing. She has taken to reading to Ciaran and Sirah and to me while I do household chores or other responsibilities. It is very sweet and helpful.

We have had a good week and are now moving into F week. We are approaching this week a bit different. Ciaran is highly obsessed with frogs so we are going to spend the whole week on frogs. I have over 50 books about frogs on reserve or in my possession already. I am going to do a mini spur of the moment unit study lesson plan based around frogs.

I am falling asleep so must be off to bed.
Peace,
Tenn