Some Snippets From Our Homeschooling

First I have to share two links. BOTH are new to me today.

La Paz Home Learning is an AWESOME AWESOME site that you just must see! She has it going on! This is our dream goal - to reach this way of homeschooling. I used to be SO tense about homescholing and doing this and that that there was no time to ENJOY my children! I am almost there, but not quite yet.
HT: Homeschooling Is Life!

Which leads me to another article that is a MUST READ. A must print out and put it by the computer (or wherever you do you research for schooling).
Thoughts on Unschooling. For the highlights, check out the highlights and reassurance.

We are a VERY relaxed home schooling family.

We are working through Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. So EE was doing her lesson while cuddling with me on the couch. Part of the lesson has the child read a "story." They follow the line and sound out the words and read the word. Well JJ came over and started pointing and following the lines and "reading." You could hear JJ babbling as his finger followed the line. It was adorably cute.

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The Missing 13

I am not sure why but all (yes ALL) of my children have skipped the number 13 when counting to 20. The older two now can count properly to 20 (and higher), but our little MM (4 1/2) STILL misses 13.

So today I vowed to change that. She we started counting up to twelve. YEAH! We got there with no problems. Ok MM, the next number after twelve is THIRTEEN. What number? THIRTEEN! GOOD!

OK, let's count. 1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...10...11...12...13

And then I pounced on her with lots of tickles (something about her love language, she LOVES to be tickled, oh and she has the BEST laugh!). Then I held her in a tight bear hug and told her if she wanted to get out, she had to count to thirteen.

This went between tickling and her escaping for a few rounds. Sometimes she went from 12 to 14, but by the end of the "lesson," she was always counting to thirteen!! YIPPEE!!! I just LOVE homeschooling! We discovered a FUN way to remember thirteen!

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While waiting in the doctor's office, MM (4 1/2yr) was playing with a quarter that I had given her. Where she got the other two quarters to play with, I have no idea. So with a total of three quarters and 45 minutes to kill (yes, our doctor likes to take her time), I decided it was a perfect time to teach MM about money.

I held out the quarter in front of me. "This is a quarter. A what?"
She giggled. "A quarter."

"It is worth twenty-five cents. How much is it worth?"
"Twenty-five cents."

I then put the quarter on my nose and she got to grab it off. Giggling like mad the whole time.

I repeated it for each quarter. After removing each quarter from my nose, she placed it in her little basket purse she had brought. I then would take the quarters from her basket and repeat the whole thing over and over and over again. She now knows what a quarter looks like and it's value.

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SO even though AA has only 5 more lessons to complete the 100 Easy Lessons book, I am trying SO HARD not to force her to finish it. Right now she LOVES to read. And I just need to get it out of my head that she HAS to complete the lesson book. She is reading wonderfully well (although we could work a little bit on tonal inflection). :) There is FREEDOM in homeschooling the way YOU feel led to. And sometimes that means the the child reading a book counts as the reading lesson. :)