Writing Home: January 2011

The last few weeks off have been super refreshing. I'm rejoicing even to be able to say that as I think back on how I felt our first few months. At the beginning we actually came to dread time off school a little, even the weekends. Everything seemed so hard to do and the only thing that we could count on was the rain. It was hard to call a taxi, hard to give directions, hard to figure out what to buy at the grocery store, blah blah blah. But 4+ months later this kind of feels like home - God is very gracious!

Anyway, back to school tomorrow and we are definitely ready. Our schedule will be pretty different this trimester. Mark has been tutoring with a man throughout the break and will continue doing that every morning so no formal classes for him (which really suits his learning style much better). We have decided to homeschool Eli this tri so I'll get Mark and the other 3 out the door in the morning and then have about 3 hours with him. After that we'll meet Mark at the school and I'll have 2 hours of class with a small group and 1 hour with a tutor. Hannah started back today and has jumped into multiplication and cursive. She is definitely her Daddy's child - loves to get up around 4:30 or so and finish her homework and she really does think more clearly at that time. I think they're crazy!

Eli is super excited about homeschool. This has been a hard transition for him so I think the extra 1-on-1 time will be really good and Hannah has talked it up big time to him. For my homeschooling friends, we're using: A Child's Story Bible, Ordinary Parent's Guide to Reading, First Language Lessons, Horizons Math, Rosetta Stone for Spanish, Handwriting Without Tears, and several books on dinosaurs for some lapbooking. We'll start with that and then I'll probably throw in some geography and history with Story of the World cds and whatever internet resources I dig up. I'd like to say we'll do some formal art but it probably won't happen although crafty stuff is a part of his daily life. He can keep playing soccer through the school twice a week and they have a decent library we can use for readers and read alouds. Am I missing anything? How fun! I've got the next few weeks mapped out and am liking being back into the homeschool world - I missed it!

We did get in 1 more beach trip with 2 other families on our team last week. The beach we went to is amazing - I think one of my top favorite places in the world now. Here are a few pics and hopefully I'll get around to posting a video at some point.