Extracurricular activities!

I need to get some photos, etc, up here. I suppose I will refine this blog more as I use it more.

So Trevor is home now and we are deschooling a bit. He's not used to being "home" since our weekends are usually pretty full and Ray is here. So now that he is alone with me and the girls again, he must relearn how to get along with us. He's been a bit of a challenge these couple days, mainly because we are not structured and he's getting bored with being at home. I am letting him chill and be bored for a week to help him become inspired to find things to do. Next week I will add a little structure so our routine will be a little more predictable. We'll find our way.

We've also picked up some extracurricular activities. I have never really done more than informal free playgroups (never joined a pay mom's group), I've never put my kids in art classes, music classes, etc. It just seemed like a waste of money when they were so young. But now I see more of a benefit. Trevor is also old enough for cub scouts now! So Trevor is in cub scouts and LOVING it. Ray takes him every Thursday. It's not a homeschooling specific pack, but there are kids he knows from his year at school there and he plays with them and has a lot of fun.

Then I was looking through the Parks and Rec classes and found a drama class for 6-9 year olds open! Now, Trevor can be way dramatic and is constantly acting out things. He runs around pretending to be a villian and a hero and has he runs around, having this battle with himself, he is singing his action packed theme music *and* narrating what he is doing as he does it. It's hilarious to watch him play sometimes. So he is very excited to be in a drama class. It starts next week. Then Rachael, she wanted gymnastics, but they were all full. So I signed her up for this dance class that's more freestyle type movement than learning formal ballet and tap. It looked like a fun class that would get her moving, so she is looking forward to that as well.

I can't wait to find our groove! :)

Curriculum

So I haven't posted here in a while so I guess I should! After much searching, I think I decided on a curriculm for Trevor. I am going to skip one for Rachael this year simply because the school I chose is kind of pricey and I don't want to pay twice for something that may not work.

We are going to give Clonlara school a try I am almost positive. It has a nice kind of eclectic/unschooling friendly approach which will allow for the flexibility I want to have. But it also sets up a curriculum for me so I won't have to struggle with finding things for Trevor to do in my first year. Clonlara is a private, accredited school so they will keep records. grade work, etc for me and I *think* they deal with the state, too (I need to double check that). Now, I don't know that we will use them permanently as I get more comfortable in what I am doing. Or maybe we will love them and I will use them every year. It's pricey, but cheaper than private school. It's going to probably end up costing around 1K for the year for Trevor. Which is a decent deal to me.

For Rachael I am just going to use Starfall.com and work with her on the same things Trevor is working on, only to a more elementary degree. She recognizes her letters and can give me what a word starts with. She just lacks the hand control to make the letters on paper, though that is getting better as she LOVES making letters when she colours on blank paper. Ariel I might do something formal with, as well. Well, not FORMAL education, but I will probably give her the tools to learn things. She knows more than I think and alwats surprises me. She astounded me by singing her ABC's about a month ago. Just out of the blue she sang them! I also think she can count to ten, though she hasn't for me yet, she will count sequencial numbers just not all the way to ten. She does them in chunks here and there (7,8,9! 1, 2, 3!). She knows colours, too, unless I ask her directly then she won't answer me. heh. She's absorbing everything her older siblings say and do.

We also are thinking of joining this website called brainpop (I think! It's bookmarked upstairs where Rachael is playing Starfall). It has flash videos and lessons, etc for kids Trevor's age. We signed up for a trial and he LOVED it.

On another note, we went to the bookstore yesterday to look for a book on space since Trevor is fascinated by it right now. We found a DK book linked to google. So we not only got to look through the book, we got to find the website on google and look up more information. It was pretty cool. We can't check out encyclopedia type books from our library so I hope to build up a good collection of books to refer to.

OK. That's it from this end, MIL is coming in today and I need to tear Rachael away from the computer and get a few minutes outside before we have to go pick her up! I promise to start updating this more, especially when Trevor gets out of school- June 18th.