First Year Cubbie
Second Year Sparky
Third Year TNT
Three Blue-Haired Beauties
10/27/11
Awana Color Night
Every year our Awana Club has a color night. Our family's tradition is to spray their hair their team color. Thankfully, all three of my Awana girls needed blue.
First Year Cubbie
Second Year Sparky
Third Year TNT
Three Blue-Haired Beauties
First Year Cubbie
Second Year Sparky
Third Year TNT
Three Blue-Haired Beauties
New Piano Diva
Today was Princess L's first day of piano lessons. To say that she was excited is not enough. She is so happy to finally be like her big sisters.
10/24/11
TOG Year 1 Unit One End
We have finished the first unit of year one! I will do a separate post on the Seder meal that had with our friends. The last two weeks we have accomplished the following:
Princess M - PreTOGGler
We finished up the letter U. Here are our U crafts - an umbrella bird puppet and an umbrella.
She also decided to build "a machine" this week - her words.
Princess L - 1st Grade - LG
This little princess is rolling along with IEW PAL reading. We just finished up lesson 63. She is beginning the Discovery portion, which involves decoding ten words on her own and then reading them to me. When she completes all 30 Discovery packs, she will move on to the library. I checked out a whole bunch of books that she can start reading as soon as she moves through Discovery. She really wants to start them, so I have to keep them under wraps for now. She has passed level three in her math drills, and is working on level four. We will be starting back up with Math-U-See in another week. She is almost done with ETC Book 3 as well. With All About Spelling, she has just finished step 15 of level one. But, she is most excited about the fact that she will be starting piano lessons on Thursday.
Princess S - 5th Grade - UG
Princess S is working on lesson 17 in Delta, and is anxious to begin long division. Well, not really, but I'm hoping she is. She has also finished lesson five in Latin, which is the first review chapter. She aced her test to boot. She is halfway through the second unit in science which has her learning about birds. In extra curricular news, she is moving right along in her Ultimate Challange Awana book. She is also excited to have a solo in her worship dance group's performance coming up in November. All the fifth graders got a section of the song to choreograph a solo to.
Princess E - 7th Grade - D
Princess E is enjoying her online class through Tapestry's Lampstand Learning Center. She finished up lesson 15 in Epsilon, though I'm not yet confident she totally understands the concept of reducing fractions. She will do well through much of the worksheet, then suddenly miss a bunch of obvious ones. She has finished lesson 9 in Latin and is beginning the second review. She is beginning module 5 in General Science. On the music front, she is preparing for a piano exam on November 12th. She almost has all four songs memorized. She is also going to be sharing her testimony at youth group coming up in November.
Princess M - PreTOGGler
We finished up the letter U. Here are our U crafts - an umbrella bird puppet and an umbrella.
She also decided to build "a machine" this week - her words.
Princess L - 1st Grade - LG
This little princess is rolling along with IEW PAL reading. We just finished up lesson 63. She is beginning the Discovery portion, which involves decoding ten words on her own and then reading them to me. When she completes all 30 Discovery packs, she will move on to the library. I checked out a whole bunch of books that she can start reading as soon as she moves through Discovery. She really wants to start them, so I have to keep them under wraps for now. She has passed level three in her math drills, and is working on level four. We will be starting back up with Math-U-See in another week. She is almost done with ETC Book 3 as well. With All About Spelling, she has just finished step 15 of level one. But, she is most excited about the fact that she will be starting piano lessons on Thursday.
Princess S - 5th Grade - UG
Princess S is working on lesson 17 in Delta, and is anxious to begin long division. Well, not really, but I'm hoping she is. She has also finished lesson five in Latin, which is the first review chapter. She aced her test to boot. She is halfway through the second unit in science which has her learning about birds. In extra curricular news, she is moving right along in her Ultimate Challange Awana book. She is also excited to have a solo in her worship dance group's performance coming up in November. All the fifth graders got a section of the song to choreograph a solo to.
Princess E - 7th Grade - D
Princess E is enjoying her online class through Tapestry's Lampstand Learning Center. She finished up lesson 15 in Epsilon, though I'm not yet confident she totally understands the concept of reducing fractions. She will do well through much of the worksheet, then suddenly miss a bunch of obvious ones. She has finished lesson 9 in Latin and is beginning the second review. She is beginning module 5 in General Science. On the music front, she is preparing for a piano exam on November 12th. She almost has all four songs memorized. She is also going to be sharing her testimony at youth group coming up in November.
10/18/11
Keep Unions Out of Childcare
I added a button to my sidebar. But I'm going to post about it because if it is happening in my state, it could be happening in yours. Unions like AFSCME and SEIU are going door to door duping home child care workers into signing petitions saying they want to be unionized. They are lying about who they are, their purpose for their visit, and are using thug tactics to scare these home day care providers. The unions are trying to force our governor into signing an executive order declaring all home day care providers as union members, thereby requiring them to pay union dues, which would then raise the cost of day care to everyone. These thugs are going so far as to enter people's homes without knocking during the lunch hour. Here is a video (13 minutes of a 3 hour state senate hearing) which reveals the hideous tactics.
If you live in Minnesota, or if you have friends in any state who are home day care providers, please pass this information along to them. Then check out this website where you can add your name to the petitions against this kind of behavior.
If you live in Minnesota, or if you have friends in any state who are home day care providers, please pass this information along to them. Then check out this website where you can add your name to the petitions against this kind of behavior.
10/13/11
Catching Up
So - it's been a while. I've been trying to get caught up in entering things into HST+, and figuring out why various programs aren't working. I've got everything back to normal except I can no longer access Pandora on my computer! This is a might bit distressing because I love having it on in the background while doing various tasks at my computer. I'm going to breeze through the last several weeks in an effort to get caught up. I'll start with this slide show of photos (mostly of the little two princesses) of school over the last few weeks.
As you can see, Princess M is moving along. We finished I, O and are about halfway through U. I am amazed at how well she is doing remembering the short sounds of the vowels. The little stories from IEW PAL, combined with the characters from the Leap Frog movie are really helping her a lot. She is having fun with the activities from Letter of the Week.
Princess L went in for vision therapy testing. She is a bit of a different case than what they've seen before. As such, they want her to try a pair of reading glasses for a few weeks to see if we see any difference. If there is a difference, then we will get a pair for her to wear for school and close work for a year and re-test. I haven't really determined if there is a difference yet.
With our TOG studies, we are just finishing up week 8 today. We have been enjoying listening to the Old Testament on audio for our Bible times. Princess S is just going to be starting lesson 17 in MUS Delta. This lesson sets her up to learn long division in the next several lessons. This was where Princess E slowed down, so I'm anticipating that to happen again. Princess E is slowly moving through lesson 15 in Epsilon. She has finished up Module 4 in General Science. I have offered her the chance to retake the first few tests. She did much better on the first one. But, the offer is only good for a week, and she will not be given the chance again. I also am taking away her option to schedule herself for this work. We gave it a quarter and she was not doing a good job. So now she has to follow MY schedule! The same with Latin. She was not making good use of her time and ended up doing a whole bunch of pages on one day. That meant that she kept making the same mistake over and over and getting horrible scores. No more! She will now follow my schedule.
I am really struggling with the lack of drive in my eldest two students. The road to excellence is one that requires a self-will to travel it. Princess E wants to walk the road of excellence with her music - but that is all. I cannot force my students to want to get good grades and do the best work that they possibly can. That has to be something they want for themselves. Apparently, this is not something they want - and it is driving me crazy! I cannot relate to the lack of motivation in that area. And as such, I have no idea how to bring it out of them. If we continue this path, Princess E will be repeating 7th grade. She has a summer birthday so it really will cause no problems to hold her back a year. But she will be madder than a wet hornet. A logical person would reason that this would be enough to motivate a person - but not my stronger-than-diamonds-willed child. Princess S has different, yet equally maddening, issues. Her inability to stay organized throughout the day; her losing of assignments, books and pencil; and her consistent wasting of time throughout the day leaving her to do school ALL.WAKING.HOURS.LONG is draining me of all my energy. But I will keep on keeping on - because that is all I know how to do. That and cling to the promise that God will sustain me.
As you can see, Princess M is moving along. We finished I, O and are about halfway through U. I am amazed at how well she is doing remembering the short sounds of the vowels. The little stories from IEW PAL, combined with the characters from the Leap Frog movie are really helping her a lot. She is having fun with the activities from Letter of the Week.
Princess L went in for vision therapy testing. She is a bit of a different case than what they've seen before. As such, they want her to try a pair of reading glasses for a few weeks to see if we see any difference. If there is a difference, then we will get a pair for her to wear for school and close work for a year and re-test. I haven't really determined if there is a difference yet.
With our TOG studies, we are just finishing up week 8 today. We have been enjoying listening to the Old Testament on audio for our Bible times. Princess S is just going to be starting lesson 17 in MUS Delta. This lesson sets her up to learn long division in the next several lessons. This was where Princess E slowed down, so I'm anticipating that to happen again. Princess E is slowly moving through lesson 15 in Epsilon. She has finished up Module 4 in General Science. I have offered her the chance to retake the first few tests. She did much better on the first one. But, the offer is only good for a week, and she will not be given the chance again. I also am taking away her option to schedule herself for this work. We gave it a quarter and she was not doing a good job. So now she has to follow MY schedule! The same with Latin. She was not making good use of her time and ended up doing a whole bunch of pages on one day. That meant that she kept making the same mistake over and over and getting horrible scores. No more! She will now follow my schedule.
I am really struggling with the lack of drive in my eldest two students. The road to excellence is one that requires a self-will to travel it. Princess E wants to walk the road of excellence with her music - but that is all. I cannot force my students to want to get good grades and do the best work that they possibly can. That has to be something they want for themselves. Apparently, this is not something they want - and it is driving me crazy! I cannot relate to the lack of motivation in that area. And as such, I have no idea how to bring it out of them. If we continue this path, Princess E will be repeating 7th grade. She has a summer birthday so it really will cause no problems to hold her back a year. But she will be madder than a wet hornet. A logical person would reason that this would be enough to motivate a person - but not my stronger-than-diamonds-willed child. Princess S has different, yet equally maddening, issues. Her inability to stay organized throughout the day; her losing of assignments, books and pencil; and her consistent wasting of time throughout the day leaving her to do school ALL.WAKING.HOURS.LONG is draining me of all my energy. But I will keep on keeping on - because that is all I know how to do. That and cling to the promise that God will sustain me.
10/5/11
Computer Repairs
I got my computer back from a three week visit to the computer repair shop. I'm still working on getting things loaded as they had to completely rebuild it. So I'm hoping to get a few posts up soon. I even have a few pictures. In the meantime, I've got three weeks worth of assignments to get entered into HST Plus which will keep me busy. And I need to go through and make a few changes for the second quarters worth of assignments that will be printed out next week. Busy, busy, busy.
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