Our vacation is finished

Today was our first day back at formal seat work. I think Trevor was kind of happy. We reviewed his sight words and he remembered everything. We talked about Betsy Ross and the American Flag, and did math. I am adding three subjects a day onto our lessons, so we'll do science tomorrow. I am about to take a look at the cool dinosaur kit from grandma and we'll see if we can do that tomorrow for science and talk about what we know about dinosaurs.

I ordered a bunch of stuff from Rainbow Resources- my splurge purchase being a cool Grade 1-3 focused Chemistry curriculum. It looks very neat and I am eagerly awaiting its arrival, probably not for at least another week. *sigh*. i also grabbed the Singapore science books because they are inexpensive, Developmental math because it's basically what we're doing now, it's inexpensive and it follows a format (unlike what I follow now). My main purchase was Story of the World, which will be our new history curriculum. I'd like to start with ancient history and move our way to the present and SOTW gets good reviews. I hope it lives up to it's reviews. It's story based, so it will appeal to my children who love listening to me read.

Rachael has decided she wants to take piano, soccer and ballet on top of her gymnastics. I just laughed and told her she could pick one more class. Ariel piped up she wanted to take soccer (this was a conversation at the park today as we kicked the soccer ball around in the 50 degree December temps). Rachael will take gymnastics and ballet- at her request. I just need to find a decent ballet class. Trevor was signed up for this really cool sounding homeschool science class that was once a week for an hour and a half at a regional park. Alas, like many homeschool events in my immediate area, despite being advertised, Trevor is the only person signed up. They called me and warned me his class would probably be cancelled. This happened to the last class I signed him up for. It's hugely frustrating to me. My biggest issue is the lack of classes for HOMESCHOOLERS in my area. Most classes at a reasonable price (through the parks and rec) are not homeschool classes and are offered at 'after school times". This wouldn't be such a problem if they weren't in places like Alexandria or Arlington or even near Tyson's corner. These areas have huge amounts of rushhour that I would hit coming home. I'm not willing to sit in over an hour of traffic just to get him home from an hour long class. So the search to find closeby classes for Trevor is still on. He's kind of at an in between age, too, and many classes are for 8 yr olds, or 3rd grade level. Or for preschoolers. So this won't last forever, just for now. At least we have a small network of people we see now, but I so wish I could get him in some classes in subjects/sports that interest him.

We did buy a season pass to Port Discovery this year. It's always worth it. And the kids have gotten old enough that I feel more comfortable driving out to Baltimore during the weekdays now, and hitting PD when it won't be so crowded. We went this Sunday and had a blast. They have an exhibit on Japanese life for kids and had a school room, houses, kids stuff set up everywhere. It was realy interesting. Of course they have the huge climbing area the older two love, the Oasis full of books, etc for all of us. All in all, lots of fun.

We finally got Rachael's Webkinz working this morning and spent a while playing on that and answering science questions. Rachael earned herself 200 webkinz dollars. Go Rachie! We've started The BFG by Dahl and, as with the other books we've read by him, it's a big hit so far. We'll start the Spiderwick Chronicals (maybe) next since I saw the trailer and it makes me want to read the books! Trevor continues with his obsession over Mario Galaxy and we played it tonight. Including a nap, time at the park, running errands at Target, school stuff this morning, we had a pretty busy day! I think I will go join Ray downstairs now.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!