Saturday, August 30, 2008

Book Adventure

I found this nifty new website. Your children register for free, and then they read books, go to the site, and take a quiz on the book. The quizes are really short and not too tough. They receive points for how well they do on the quizes and then they can redeem the points for cool reading paraphernalia. Right now they are running a contest for a free trip to space camp, including airfare, for 2! Yeah baby! We are all reading and quizzing our hearts out to get a chance at space camp!

www.BookAdventure.org

Where has the month gone?

I haven't posted anything in a long long time, and I wanted to post like 5 different posts just so I could neatly tag and file these updates away and find them later shoudl I want to find them, but then i decided that was way too much work. So one update it is!

First the Garden... We moved the garden to the side of the house, luckily it was all in pots!! Unfortunately with it being out of eye sight, we slacked a bit on the watering, but I don't think it mattered. We had mushrooms growing in a few pots. Our tomatoes did not really produce at all and I don't know if it is because there was not enough drainage, or if the soil wasn't good. Basically we got no produce from our big ole garden. It was sad. This winter we are going to build raised beds, and I am going to get the book square foot gardening and see if I can do better next year.

Daycare - I have opened a home daycare. It took a while to get everything together and I still feel slightly under prepared, but I am open and 3 children in my care. 2 are only before and after school care and one is all day. They are all 3 really nice children and fit in well with my three. The only downside is waking up at the butt crack of the morning every day. I am now seriously dragging arse!

School - We are homeschooling the kidlets this year. We are using www.amblesideonline.com for our curriculum. This is a literature based curriculum with "living books". This plan appeals to me because i love to read, and really love classics. I like the idea that our children will know all those stories that our culture is built upon and that are alluded to frequently. I am so thankful that an atmosphere of great reading and learning was fostered in my home as a child. I was given books of classic literature many times as a child and now i already own many of the books on our school book list. Unfortunately we are po' and can't afford many of the other books, but luckily many are now public domain and I have been able to print off their readings for the first term already. I also found Paper Back Swap
I was able to post 35 of my fluff books and have gotten many books for our school years present and future. Ambleside online is great also in that there are many support groups and they are super active. Any questions I have are quickly answered in a very friendly way.

We are currently reading the Bible, An Island Story, This Country of Ours, The Discovery of New Worlds, The Awakening of Europe, Fifty Famous Stories, Retold, Parables from Nature, Aesop's Fables, Burgess Bird Book, Paddle-to-the-Sea, Robert Louis Stephenson's poems, Trial and Triumph, Assorted Fairy Tales, James Herriot's Treasury for Children, Just So Stories, Benjamin Franklin, Tales from Shakespeare, Da Vinvi, Marco Polo, The Story of Inventions, William Blake poetry, American Tall Tales, The Heros, The Princess and the Goblin. And that's only for the first term!!

I decided not to start LK this year, and she will start next year when she is 6.

Business endeavors - I have been renewed in making DD a business that actually makes a profit. I can already see a difference. I decided that I just don't have time to devote to 2 businesses at once. I can't do it. I believe this is why i have failed to show large profits with my businesses. I told ArmyMan that I can't continue PP because I just don't have the time for it, and he professed a desire to do it himself, so I told him if he made all the paper, I would do the decorating into cards, and he could take pics, and then I would put them on the website. So far, he hasn't made any paper LOL. We shall see if that works out. I just have to find time to finish the website.. Maybe next month LOL.

Anyway that's the update for the month. Hopefully, in the next couple of days I will post my 101 things in 1001 days list and get going on that again.