a morning in my life~

Let's see if I can get through this without getting sidetracked - ha ha (wait, after I get Noah cheese)....

**call my great aunt and find out (again) just exactly how it is that she makes this amazing roast that is always delicious, regardless of the cut of meat, and hope i haven't waited too late for it to be done tonight

(noah asking for cheese again...crying because he can't have any more cheese...)

**fold last load of clothes out of dryer (close dryer...see previous post)

(noah stll crying for cheese...hold noah, nurse noah...finally distract him with paper clips from the desk drawer)

**just remembered, i want to make a list of things to put in these "school time boxes" i want to create. I want a different box for each day that I can use for Noah and sometimes Moriah to play with during school time.

**empty dishwasher, load dishwasher

**teach anna math lesson

**read some in The Mission of Motherhood. I felt like the Lord was telling me I should go through some of that to use next week when I am going to my friend's Bible study

**figure out what I am going to do for dinner if my aunt doesn't call me back soon

(helping Caleb with his review again....)

**think about taking a break in Caleb's math to do some review. he's a half year ahead, but I'm beginning to wonder if we need to take a break from "going through the book" to stop and just get some things down more solidly as he often needs help with things he's supposed to have already learned. I'm still liking the Singapore math a lot as it obviously was effective for Anna, and it does seem to be a good fit for him as well, we may just need to stop plodding through it and spend some time reviewing what he's learned so he doesn't always have to be reminded of how to do things. I spend a lot of time thinking about things and adding to my to do list...namely, re-evaluating.

(noah is back, ,slightly fussy, currently distracted with my ipod earphones, haven might possibly be awake, going to start thinking about lunch. ethan is finished with school, he's talking to caleb who is working on math, now noah is there)

(teaching anna her math, see caleb come in from outside, (when did he go outside?), and why is he not doing his math? okay, he is doing his math, he went outside (it's only 35 degrees!), with a blanket so he can sit under the table and cover the table with the blanket to keep the wind away. now he's coming back in because he forgot his pencil. now ethan wants to go out...now noah wants to go out...ahhh! now caleb is upset because he's trying to "get away from everyone" thankfully, anna's lesson is easy today, so it only took me a minute to explain it to her)

what i plan on doing during nap time~

**go through the wordly wise books i have and decide where to start anna. she just finished her last explode the code book and is ready to start something else. I am planning on starting her in the wordly wise b book, but she may be a little beyond that. her spelling is not that great though, so I may decided to go ahead and do it hoping it helps improve her spelling.

**go through daily grams books I got and decide if I want to add in a grammer page for her to do every day

**go through new spelling books (1st and 2cnd grade) and decide if I want to add that in for anyone (so far none of our kids are naturally born good spellers) or if that should be a later focus.

**spend detailed time going over anna's math from the last few lessons and see what she has gotton down well, and what still needs work. she's doing really well in her new math, but i've been having her do an entire saxon lesson every day so i can get a feel of what needs more focus. an entire saxon lesson is a lot. when i did saxon, we often just did even/odd problems, and now that i'm ready to possibly add in the above mentioned things, i need to reduce the math load.

(pausing to put in letter factory video for moriah and noah)

**in the above three decisions, factor in my newly realized/accepted/revealed priority that character training is more foundational at young ages, academics should come second, and go from there. I would like to spend some time writing about this in the near future. It is making for a significant change in my thinking and priorities and some concrete changes around here in the present, and for our schooling next year. I am very excited about it!

(checking ethan's math, realize i either wrote down anna's work for the next two weeks in the wrong notebook, now realize i didn't write down her work yet as i'm still deciding whether to add in the above mentioned things, thankfully, she can get started on her math on her own and do her reading on her own. finished checking ethan's work, helped him make a few corrections, now caleb is standing here needing help on his math review....hold on a minute...)

**make above decisions and plan out Anna's work for the next two weeks

**decide how i'm going to handle a situation I became aware of yesterday. I hate to go upstairs, but I've realized I am going to have to start going up there to check jobs consistently. I went up yesterday to do some heavy cleaning/organizing and realized my lovely, responsible children have been major job slackers. Think: how fast can I do my job, not how well can I do my job. I can't even begin to elaborate, but it really is confirmation (break up car fight between ethan and moriah, realize I really need to come up with a little more of a constructive plan for when ethan finishes his school early and what Moriah should be doing after the letter factory video...thinking about some quote having something to do with idle hands...??? or something like that. see..more re-evaluating) we need a change in focus/priorities around here. So I really need to spend some time deciding on jobs/quality factor/ consistency/consequences for not doing something properly when one is perfectly capable of it.

**i have got to spend some time writing out the order my kids need to do their various school subjects in. up until this point i've pretty much let them go in the order they want, but as you can see, i sometimes have a line of people waiting to ask me things. i need to plan it out so that i am helping one of them while the others are working on more independant work and/or having a scheduled play time with a smaller kid. this has been on my to do radar for months, i have got to do it!



Well, that's about all I have time for posting for now. Maybe if I actually drag myself away from writing about what I need to do, I'll actually be able to accomplish some of it :o)