Happy New Year!

Yup, just getting to that "New Year" now. We got sick the first week of the month and before I know it, February is almost here. The first half of the homeschool year had been great and the second half is even better. We're still really into Bob Books,have branched out into Level One Avenger books, Dr. Suess and Berernstein Bears. I'm re-reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at bedtime, hoping F will get into it (L is as into it this time around as the first time). We have The Scret Garden playing in the car whenever we're out and about. Math is Geometric shapes, 2d and 3d, counting money and endless scenarios using (+ - x \) to figure out how many skylanders I can buy if I make this much allowance over this period of time. We write everyday. I've turned into the homeschooling mom who requires 2 pages of worksheet writing everyday. (Yikes!) But we're both happy with it. He gets the needed practice making letters, words and sentences. We touch on science, history and sometimes geography everyday. Sometimes planned, sometimes spur of the moment topics. Where earlier in the year, Story of the World was our main history book, we're now incorporating interesting videos about historical figures, the Usborne illustrated world history, The Children's Book of America in addition to the endless resources on the web. I'm trying to get better about record keeping. I'm now using iCal to summarize what we do everyday/or week. The youngest is in the middle of that wonderful "3" year. He's challenging x10! I'm happy to report a huge difference between 3 & 3.5, however, with the latter being much more affectionate, happy and communicative. We're definitely doing more talking about our feeling before simply acting on them. So, things are good, and I'm clearly horrible at keeping up a blog. Maybe when the kids are grown....