we survived week 2!

(this was written well over a week ago...but i never finished it. whoops. i'm continuing it now...)
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see? i'm alive. so are the kids. (i have picture evidence)
phew. this isn't so bad.

i have discovered that it is kind of a lot of work to homeschool and play at the park and look after an infant and  clean the house and put the laundry away and let the dog outside and make food and keep up with not only this blog but my other one too (www.hayeandzao.blogspot.com), but that is life so i'm slowly forcing myself to adjust. i even made a fancy schedule! well, not really. it's on the back of a scrap piece of paper and it's written in pencil, but i made it! i just need to implement following it now. i think we're doing pretty good. life is getting into a sort-of routine. we still usually aren't starting school until around 10am but i think i'm pretty okay with that (even though my schedule says 8:30 is the start time. whoops.) and so is haye. and derek is super awesome at helping with school any chance he gets. he has done art with haye and taken over and done spelling when i am frustrated and has done science and math when i am busy or need a break. *ahem* and he doesn't even complain!

so here's a recap of what we did this past week:

LANGUAGE ARTS

psh. spelling is getting easier. i think it is still a little boring sometimes but depending on how i sneakily get it in (aka, after playing at the park while the right music is playing and the best snack ever is being eaten) haye does really well. AND! he has successfully learned how to spell 40 words over the past 2 weeks! holla! this is exciting to me. he couldn't care less. oh, also i learned a secret. i have this good friend, her name is beks. beks recently came over bearing an armful of presents to a wide-eyed little boy i know pretty well. amongst these presents was a black puffle and a 1-month membership card to club penguin. "black guy", or "blackie" (uh...i'm working on convincing haye of naming him something else, trust me) has now joined the purple and red puffles to make a cute little puffle family that follows us everywhere. this includes hanging out with us during schooltime (see, homeschool is way better than public school! i was never allowed to bring my stuff to hang out with me in public school!) and eating with us during lunch (they ate 4 plums each the other day). and the membership? ooooh. the membership. best bribe ever. i told haye he could play on club penguin the other day after he wrote out his spelling words twice, and he readily agreed. now, generally speaking, this takes up to an hour and a half depending on how focused he is. 99% of the time he HAS TO PEE OR HE WILL DIE / HAS TO WASH HIS HANDS RIGHT NOW / IS SO SUPER HUNGRY OH MY GOSH / IS THIRSTIER THAN HE HAS EVER BEEN BEFORE / JUST REALLY NEEDS TO STRETCH RIGHT NOW. but this time? this one glorious day? man. i sat down to nurse the baby, and no joke, less than 10 minutes later haye said OKAY I AM DONE NOW CAN  PLAY? i scoffed. no really, i did. and i asked him to bring me his workbook. and i was floored. like jaw hit the floor, floored. it was perfect! every word was beautiful! what the heck! i am amazed.

haye's printing is steadily improving over the past couple of weeks, there is definitely a noticeable difference in the effort he puts into his lower-case letters and has been sounding out a lot of words to spell. we've been working on short vowel sounds and he's doing really good!

MATH


we decided to stop doing the transition lessons and go ahead with the grade 2 curriculum because we thought haye could handle it and we could always change our minds and go back if we needed to. (ahh, the beauty of homeschool!)


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(in continuation...) 


SCIENCE

we are working through the grade 1 "a reason for science" curriculum. i think it's okay. it's almost too much writing and not enough experimenting. haye hates that we have to write so much. i'm trying to make it funner. the experiments are pretty lame so far, but haye seems to enjoy them. they don't take very long to accomplish, unfortunately. i don't think i'll ever buy this curriculum again but it is nice that it is all laid out and simple to follow. i'm hoping the ants for our ant farm get here soon! they are in the mail, i hope. also, beks got haye a worm farm so that's pretty awesome. we are going to collect soil and worms when the rain calms down a bit. oh, we also have planted some babydolls, sunflowers, and cacti and have an avocado seed sprouting in the kitchen window. we are learning a lot about life and environments, currently. actually, we went to the calgary zoo this weekend but that is a whole different post.

GYM


we haven't officially started anything yet. hopefully we will be in gymnastics lessons and swimming lessons soon. until then there is a lot of park playing, soccer, walking, bikes, and hockey. we've also gone swimming and to the energyplex. we are looking forward to taking advantage of $10 friday nights at big white soon.

SOCIALS and HEALTH AND CAREER


um. we have done nothing official for socials or health and career. >_> we're working on things like rules for our house and responsibilities. we've also looked at different jobs in the community etc but haven't actually picked up a curriculum yet. we're focusing on science and math right now. we'll pick up our official socials curriculum at the end of october.

BIBLE


we are doing hands-on bible curriculum and reading the jesus storybook bible. as well as going to sunday school and king's kids every week.

so yeah. we're figuring out a routine, i suppose. zao just woke up so i'll write more later.