Struggles of this Homeschooling Mom

Thank Goodness it's Saturday :-)

Well our first full week of school is complete!  I must say it was a super busy day.  With it being Saturday I had a ton to do....besides school! 

I let myself sleep in(8AM), made breakfast, got everyone dressed, did dishes, got the laundry started, started school...in between subjects I worked on laundry, got the floors swept and mopped, made lunch, finished school, finished laundry, made laundry soap, got 2 kids in the tub, did my workout, got 2 kids out of tub, put laundry away, got my shower, started, dinner, finished eating, 1 girl now in the shower, and I am taking a break before I do the dinner dishes!  WHEW!!!

Hopefully we will not need to do school on Saturday's too often ;-)

I did get my clay ordered...supposed to be here on the 6th.  I am hoping to start the clay stuff next week with the clay I have.  I am sure we will get some done before all the other clay comes ;-)

I have to say this week went a lot better than I was expecting.  We were all a tad tired from the routine change( I am sure I was affected the most...COULDN'T be my age) LOL!!!   I am hoping tomorrow will be a true Sabbath!  I am sure we ALL could use a total day of rest ;-)  Although I have trouble just resting...so we will see!

We are also going to be having some new friends over Monday evening for a cookout!  I am super excited!  They were at the home school group picnic...a whole family of adorable red heads :-)  The one little boy took a liking to Logan and she has been asking for 2 days for Joshua to come over to play.  So I finally got their number, called, and invited them all over.  I know how I am so I ASSUMED they would not just drop their kid off at some stranger's house ;-)  So I figured it would be great to have everyone over and get to know them.  They have a daughter Hunter's age, the boy Logan's age, and I think 1 around 5ish...so Cuckles will definitely get along with her...I think they have a total of 5...it could just be 4!  I am super excited though...I LOVE having people over ;-)  So Monday we will have to hurry and get school done and start getting ready!  I am sure I will be posting about that later!

As for our first week....I am pretty pleased so far with my curriculum choices.  I am really not happy with the spelling program for Hunter, so I am going to adjust that.  I know it is one of her dyslexia issues, so she struggles more with spelling.  I also need to figure out some readers for Hunter...the 4th grade readers I got seem a bit too much for her.  Right now I have her reading one of her Candy Fairy books.  She loves them, but it is the last one of the series...so far :-)   I also have her doing some book reports this year, so I need to find extra books for her to read for those :-)

There were also a few odds and ends I didn't have....as I thought I was all prepared :-)  So I had to go out to Wally World and get those this week.  I am hoping Allan will help me later today or tomorrow to get it all put up :-) 

Besides the little stuff it was a VERY successful first week of school!  I am glad I don't have to do it tomorrow, but I am excited for next week...and the whole year!

OH...SUPER EXCITING!  As some of you know Hunter is considered Severe Dyslexic...she struggles a lot with reading, spelling and math.  All summer we worked SOOOO hard on all her math facts...addition, subtraction, and multiplication.  She was supposed to start division this year...but I decided to take her back to the beginning and get her really good on her math facts!  (after all summer of drilling her with flashcards (which I found is horrible for dyslexics) we didn't do them for 1 week and she forgot them ALL)  SOOOO frustrating for me and discouraging for her....she worked SO hard!  So I was going to do an accelerated course on addition, subtraction, and multiplication.  Using of course my math curriculum correctly (as I found I didn't use it correctly the first time).  Well I was a bit discouraged that it was not going as fast as I was hoping...I had it mapped out to do 3 lessons a day to get through all 3 books this school year...but I finally had to talk to myself (yes I do that sometimes) and realize that she really needs to get these math facts down  So I need to give her the time she needs....once it clicks it will go smoother...and if need be we will get through the other book over the summer :-) 

So anyways....she got up to the +2's pretty quickly, then we stalled...she just couldn't grasp it...so I had her watch the DVD of the guy talking, then we did it just like he did.  After 2 days of practicing, she knows her +2's!  SUPER excited...if you knew how much she has been struggling just with the +2's, then seeing her accomplish it and seeing the look of pride in her face...it was WONDERFUL!  I can see that she really gets it too...it clicked...it makes me SOOOO happy and just confirms that I am doing what God wants me to be doing....If you have a kid with a learning disability and have experienced this...I know you know how I am feeling...ON TOP OF THE WORLD!!!  Praise God!!!