Feeling Bloggish

Wednesdays are my NEW favorite Day of the week. Wednesday is FARMERS MARKET DAY! It's a nice bike ride and one of my boys usually goes. Ki or Gavin. Never have both gone at the same time, oddly. But it makes it like a little date. Today Ki came with me. He was tired on the way back, so we stopped at Coffee Diem and split a Mango Ice drink. It was the special of the day. $1. It's nice to be able to just ride and talk with one of them and get a little treat. It was too warm out for Churros today. I wonder if I can talk Connor into coming with me next time. I can bribe him with a churro.


The pluots were very soft. Like they should have been eaten yesterday. The farmer had me try a Friar Pear. WOW! It's very much like a pluot, only better!


It is similar to a pluot in it's looks, but green and almost pear shaped. The inside is orange colored! So I bought 3 of those along with gapes from his stand. $2 a pound.


And the berry farmer had yellow colored raspberries today, along with the strawberries and red raspberries. So I bought a 3 pack (one of each) for $8


I bought grape tomatoes for Gavin. Sometimes I get the cherry tomatoes for him. Grape Tomatoes are his favorite. They are 50 cents more a pound. not a big deal at all. But he'll choose the cherry if he's with me because they cost less. (so I spend $1.50 instead of $2- not a big deal, LOL)


I bought veggies for making my own tabouli to go with the avocado hummus and flat bread that I like to buy there.


The tabouli is made. Gavin is already having it, before it's chilled. I added parsley, a touch of cilantro, tomatoes, onions, a bit of green bell pepper, sea salt, lemon juice and a touch of oil. (to the couscous)


~The berries are washed and bagged. separate bags for my frozen berries for my fruit smoothies.
~Gavin's tomatoes are washed, bagged, half eaten.
~We ate a Friar Pear already.
~I need to wash the grapes and other friar pears.



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In Other news:

Gavin did his first science experiment today, took great notes, and did more calculations then was required. He also took 4 other pages of good notes.



Connor is 87% finished with his math program and so far has had 100% retention at the assessments.



Ki is enjoying his Missions studies and his science project. And he did all his reading yesterday. He is normally a slow reader, so I split his stories up into 3 days. He read his whole story in 1 day.

SCHOOL DAY PICS

GAVIN Checking his morning email. Some from friends, some from his teacher (me) about his assignements.

Connor reading his Rocks Magazine and doing some of the questions- as he sits in the workshop and pauses to work on a model.

Ki is working on his OceanBox for his Zoology Study.

The Ocean Box activity from his Aplogia book. He was excited about it! Every lesson he is to add a couple animals (from that lesson) to his Ocean Box.

HOMESCHOOL ROUTINES ( hsba theme)

hsba- HomeSchool Blogger Awards- My good friend, Stacie, does these HSBA themes. I thought I'd try one from time to time. Today's themes is ROUTINES. This is right up my alley, so I figured it'd be a good theme to start my HSBA journey.

Now the debate. Shall I post daily routines? Or weekly Routines? Maybe both. Daily routines are pretty easy to post.

Our Daily is pretty relaxed I guess.

It goes something like this:

• The boys wake up when they want- as long as they are up by about 8:45
• If they have their morning chores done by 8, they can have 'free time' on the computer until I call them to breakfast
• 9:00-9:30 is breakfast
• I read from Story of the World during Breakfast
• Sometimes after Breakfast/clean-up We have a GEO MIND BUILDER question. The one who gets it right, first, gets a quarter.
• Then when the whole breakfast routine is over, the boys start school and I do some housecleaning and help with school as needed
• Ki (almost 12) has a daily school list. A list of everything he needs to do that day. He does it in any order he wants to and often there are choices. He usually chooses what he wants to do for math, science, social studies. Sometimes he has other choices. So it is a daily list, which he likes and needs) but also the freedom to choose and steer his own ship, which he needs
• Connor(13) has a weekly list. The things he needs to have done by 3PM Friday. He can do them in any order or amount. So he can do all 3 Science Sessions in 1 day if he wants. BUT Reading and Math need to be done daily. I give him more choices than what he needs usually, so I will give him a choice of 4 science activities even though he only has to do 3. stuff like that.
• Gavin (15)has reading and math daily. Reading is to be at least 50 minutes. Math is any amount as long as he has 3.5 hours done by the end of the week. ( www.aleks.com is what C&G use for math). His science and social studies and some specific reading needs to be done by Jan 1. I decided to once a month do a notebook check, as he seems to be having some minor problems in that area and if he doesn;t get his stuff done by Jan 1, Brian will insist he goes to 'done at the end of the week'- or even Daily Lists. I don't think that's be good, so I'll do the occasional checks to make sure he is on the right path.
• NOON- sometime close to noon (11:30-12:30) we have lunch. If lunch is not had by 1, they have to wait till 3 for a healthy snack.
• 3PM- this is when their daily chores and school need to be done if they want 'After School Computer' of 45 minutes
  

ACE

The 2 that Ki are doing are fine. partly because I am reading it with him and we do the questions together.

The ones that Gavin and Connor are doing are awful. I'm sorry, They are just awful. It's like useless memorization of exact words. It's just rote memory. And very, very wordy. Very much unnecessarily so- to the point it bores and confuses.

But it did show me a weakness in Gavin's reading. He hasn't read outloud forever. He does fine with 'reading for fun' books, but has always struggled with 'reading to retain information' stuff. I thought breaking into smaller pieces would work. I tell him to just read one page at a time and see what questions he can answer after just reading the one page.

I had him read outloud. He gets to a big word, sees the first 3 letters and makes a wild guess- STILL, at 15 yrs old. And then he has no idea what they are talking about. it's something you can get away with when reading Science Fiction. If I have him read it again and read the entire word- he gets 2/3 the way through the big word and takes another guess. Then I tell him to read that word, look at each letter and finally he'll read it with all the letters and get what the word is.

But, I really do no like their ACE books. I do, however, plan on doing these PACS we have. Though they are boring and wordy, they all wanted to try something 'curriculum like' and all planned out and there for them to do. And I think that it'll be good for them. Half the stuff in adult life is boring and wordy and they'll need to know how to deal with it.

A New Outlook

Brian was talking about moving. He thinks he wants to buy a house. Yes, we just moved here less than 2 months ago. I asked when he thinks this would happen. His answer:
6 months to 3 yrs.

TO which I respond: "6 months?? Why am I bothering to unpack or make a garden??"

It will be more like at least 1-2 yrs I bet. Still not long enough to get full benefits from my
garden. And we will most likely NOT find a place with this big a back yard and fruit trees already mature or getting there.

it was sad at first. I really want a garden. I decided I will plant a nice vegetable garden simply because I want to plant a garden and it will be fun. I may be here long enough to enjoy the garden or I may be here just long enough to enjoy planning and planting a garden.

We will be getting a cutting from the neighbor's cactus. Ideally, cacti cuttings should be in the spring. But the seasons here are almost all the same and the cactus is a Prickly Pear- the easiest of all to propagate through cuttings. I do want to get a cactus soil mixture down before we do it.