The Busyness

In this day and age everyone is just so busy. Some days it feels like you wake, fly through the day and count down the time until you get to go back to bed. Well at least that's what it has felt like in this house lately. The girls and I have been super busy getting back into the swing of things and finding a good pattern to our days. We haven't got it mastered yet, it still needs a little tweaking here and there, but overall I would say it's pretty consistent.

The Schoolroom - 3 weeks in!

7:00am - 8:00am - the girls wake up, climb into my bed and pester me until I finally get up...this usually takes at least an hour

8:00am - 9:00am - we scrounge around for breakfast, usually ending up with a bowl of cereal, although for the past three days we have been on a pancake binge and I have made regular pancakes, buttermilk pancakes and blueberry pancakes to the delight of the whole family (even the dog)

9:00am - 10:30am - now depending on what day of the week it is we either start our school day at home or at Grandma's while mom heads off to work for an hour

10:30am - 12:00 - by this time, one of us has had at least one meltdown (I wish I could say that it was only the children and never me) and we are in desperate need of lunch. Thankfully though by this time of the day we have usually managed to cover most of our core subjects: math, grammar, reading, spelling and Bible work.

The girls 'LOVE' toad in hole for lunch

12:00pm - 1:00pm - lunch, dishes, a good cry, laundry, sweeping, a bit of tidying up and then comes my favourite part of the day..............







1:00pm - 2:00pm - QUIET TIME! Except for Wednesdays when I work again for an hour in the afternoon, everyone in the house has an hour of quiet time in their rooms. I took this idea from 'The Well-Trained Mind' by Susan Wise Bauer and it has truly been amazing. The girls usually end up in one room listening to an audiobook, (currently they are working their way through the Chronicles of Narnia) while quietly playing lego or dolls. I usually start dinner, sit on Facebook catch up on some reading, or do some much needed chores, like washing the floor or giving the basement a good vacuum after the kids have been in the sensory bin.

2:00pm - 3:00pm - The girls come out of quiet time really revitalized and we are usually able to hit 2 more subjects. We cycle through science, geography, history and memory work or more intensive reading.

The makings of a volcano

Our volcano erupting!

Emerson proudly showing off the necklace she made

None of this is perfect...my schoolroom currently has more acrylic paint on the floor from a lapse in supervision (also known as a bathroom break), yellow peas (current sensory bin) are everywhere, as well as thousands of beads since the girls have been making bracelets and necklaces like crazy.

More acrylic paint on my carpet!

Just Another Manic Monday...except it's Tuesday

Based on last nights sick and crying children, today our 'schooling' looked like this:

'Watching' books on a Read-Along DVD

Looking through this old book of birds and writing down our favourite ones

We also baked this delicious dessert!



Plus we somehow managed to fit in a Bible story, do our devotions and each girl had a math lesson. Some days are better than others...not quite sure where this one falls.

The blueberry crumb cake recipe can be found at:

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/07/blueberry-crumb-cake/

Camping

The girls and I went camping on Friday night with some other lovely families from the homeschooling group we belong to. What a wonderful, crazy, difficult thing it is to camp with three young children for one night. Josh was quite busy working and umping a baseball tournament and despite my better judgement I decided to go ahead and camp without him.

One night worth of camping gear: minus the fishing rods and tackle box

We were sooo loaded up the girls could hardly move!

I really love the idea of camping. Setting up the tent, roasting hot dogs and marshmellows, singing campfire songs and visiting with friends. The reality is that I don't know anything about camping so I was very thankful for a dear friend helping me set up the tent, another friend who lent me the sticks for roasting, another friend who brought a much needed coffee on Saturday morning etc., etc....the list could go on and on of all the ways that I was thankful. However, even with all these fabulous people I have decided that camping really isn't for me. At all. Ever. Never again. End of Story.......I might change my mind in a year from now and only if Josh is available but I hope no one is holding their breath. (Because I'm not)

On a side note the girls had a GREAT time catching all sorts of critters; frogs, toads and snakes. In the end that made it worth all the effort...heartache...back pain...sleepless night...ok I'm done complaining (as McKayla reminds me of Phil. 2:14-15)

Back to School

So it's back to school again here in the Wall house. If you didn't already know, we are one of those 'weird' homeschooling families...okay so I don't really think we're 'weird' but for a lot of people homeschooling is a little out of the ordinary. On Monday Josh and I managed to clean up and reorganize the schoolroom/basement and get everything pretty much in order for the week.

School area - still have to empty the basket of books

 
Our first couple days getting back to the grindstone have been surprisingly fantastic. The two older girls have been working really hard and have been quite enthusiastic about getting back into a routine. Em, has proven to be a little bit of a challenge (no real surprise there) since she is very interested in doing exactly what the other girls are doing. However, we have come up with some fun ideas to keep her entertained and busy while we work on our core subjects. 




This salt sensory box has been a real lifesaver. Em has loved to mix and pour and generally make a gigantic mess all over the floor! We used coarse salt to fill it which has made it really easy to vacuum up at the end of the day.