First off let me say WOOOHOOO to Z ( and mom) for completing the LA lessons!!!  That brings to mind a question about the LA section.  Are the extensions a part of the LA curriculum or are they just “extensions or extra practice” ?  ( Is that proper punctuation…the ” followed by the ? …  I think mom needs more grammar….aaahhhh) Also, has anyone come across the need for using the writing tool ?  I am wanting my children to do weekly writing assignments but have not seen where the writer is used?   

As you know we are new to homeschooling.  We have had the usual objections from parents…they are supporting but reluctantly. On Tuesday my son will go and take a academic assessment test given at our local university, ( the girls already took it last week during the appendix issue) ….so the girls will spend the morning with my mom.  Thanks again to T4L I will not have to worry about their school work.  Hopefully seeing how great this program is and how much fun the kids have with it my mom will be less reluctant…..   I will keep you posted!!

Hi everyone! :o) I hope this finds everyone doing well. Our family is STILL coughing and sniffling, but I suppose with the weather changes in our area (warm, cold, warm, cold), that is to be expected.

I was wondering, with the holidays approaching (and approaching so fast…I just put away my Christmas decorations from last year, didn’t I?!?), what kind of schedule does everyone keep? Homeschoolers - do you take the same breaks as the school system in your area? What about the public schoolers - do your children do their supplemental T4L even though school is out?

In the past, when we used a different curriculum, we would literally take from Thanksgiving to New Years off. There was just too much to do between family visits and shopping, cub scout stuff and Christmas caroling at a nursing home with our homeschool group… and more shopping… :o) Not to mention how intensive the preperations were for the other curriculum, it was just SO much. I am really looking forward to this Holiday season. Having Time4Learning in our lives, I don’t really see any schedule conflicts, which is such a relief. Not only do I not have to feel guilty about Bailey not doing any school work over the holidays, we won’t have to make up so much time during the summer. :o)

Also…I would LOVE some recommendations for some good Holiday (we celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas, but we are interested in teaching about the other holidays that occur in this time of year as well) activity type lessons. The last couple of years, I just Googled information and printed some worksheets and stories. That worked out, but I noticed last year that a lot of the stuff I was finding we had already done, or it wasn’t age appropriate.

Thanks and I hope everyone is having a great week! :o)

I knew it would happen.  I predicted it back in August.  I said that Zachary would burn through any English that I threw at him.  Thankfully because of Time4Learning it came without pressures and without stress.  He set his own goals and this morning he read the line to me that he was so excited about “You have completed all the lessons in the second grade, please hit your back button and start in level three” or something like that.

Inside I was bursting with pride.  Scott is home today and asked what that means.  When I explained that he finished the second grade work in LA extensions  he said “Oh really?  Well that figures, should we start looking into colleges now?” and laughed.  We had a little celebratory family “dance” and Zachary in his nonchalant way about him said “Can I finish my school work now?”

YAY for us!  Now it is time to “push” the older one a bit more….  I was the older sibling to a younger one that surpassed me, the age difference between my brother and I and my two boys is about the same.  I hated when my little brother was  compared to me but I don’t know what to do about what is going to happen between my oldest and my youngest when that time comes.  Any suggestions would be great.  I know all the normal stuff, “everyone is different, everyone learns differently, etc etc…  blabla…”  What do you really say to an older sibling when the younger one is passing them by?  Of course then you have the little one trying to “pump up the older one” with comments like “Your really good at reading Q..”  Yea, I loved that when my brother would say something to me like that…….

Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions you might have.

You know that moment?  That one single second when your child gets so animated about something and you just know that the excitement he is feeling that very second is the best feeling of the world?  As I parent I love to see that animation and excitement, knowing that as they grow they happen less and less.  My husband and I are always in awe of watching our children at those times where we plan and the boys just “let it go” and we surprise them with something.  It does not happen very often because both boys are “need to know” children and it is sometimes easier to tell them what is going on than deal with the constant questions over and over……

The Boys God Father gave them a stack of little books called “Pocket Classics”.  He read them as a young boy and it helped open the door to the truly great classics in reading.  My boys have been burning through them as most of them are around 70-100 pages and have pictures as well as an abbreviated story.

Quentin just had that animated moment and it had nothing to do with a video game, a field trip, a new toy or game…  It had to do with the lesson that he was doing!  I wish that I had gotten the moment on film.  It went something like this:

“MOM!!!  Oh my Gosh!!! ” (today of all days..being Halloween, he turned in his chair and about fell on the floor…) He proceeded to read to me about what happened in 1938 when Orson Welles read about the Alien invasion.  Then he said… “Mom!  it was out of the book War of the Worlds!  I read that!!!”  Arms flinging, smile from ear to ear, READING everything on the page!

Ok, two points here….  No more than 9 months ago we were giving up everything to get him reading the way he should.  The only word that he pronounced incorrectly on the whole lesson was “Hoax”  which I corrected and he then read correctly.  Second point was that he actually was excited about school work.  (of course it helps that the lesson was on aliens and something he had read but still)

Seriously, Never did I think that we would have this in schoolwork.  How could I describe my household to make you understand how much different our world is now than last June when we were trying our best to get through a page at a time of boring, mundane school work.  No matter what I did to make it interesting and exciting we were all stressed out and not having fun.  The conversations now flow easy and are fun!  The world has opened up to us and learning is now so easy!

As for the Odd part?  How odd that the lesson of that Orson Welles book fell today????  Spooky…..

Well the stomach bug has been visiting my house this week…gotta love that !!! But through all of the sickness we still managed to log on and complete our lessons.  My third grader has been pretty behind in math in several areas, and I have been struggling with finding the right curriculum for her.  She does great on several topics but still counts on her fingers all the time and has trouble with place value.  She has been doing the second grade math as a review but a week or so ago began the third grade section.  T4L has been such a blessing. ( she is the one that announced in the bathroom about the lines of symmetry)  All week last week she was running around announcing that she “got them all right…I got 100″  This has been such a big boost to her.  She still needs work with addition and subtraction facts but I found these video’s …my 7th grader says they are “lame” called Can Do Kids, they are this family of kids doing exercises to the math facts.  There is one for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.   Hey…Math and PE too, you can not beat that.  I think that we will use those several times a week for practice….  My only question is why they have to wait to do the sit ups until the 12 fact family, when you are already tired ???  The kids got a big kick out of Old mom trying to do sit ups….