Christmas Recap

Well, another Christmas quickly surpassed. Unfortunately, Albus spent most of it in his room. Not because he was in trouble, but because he was sick! Pokemon King (formerly Pokemon Master: he'd rather be known as king instead!) had it on Sunday and Monday. He had the worst headache. He even asked to be taken to the doctor! You know when your child asks you to take him to the doctor, there must be something wrong! I was getting ready to take him, but Rocket (who went home from church Sunday with a fever!) fell asleep on me, so Bond ended up taking him. Pokemon King just had a virus, so he got some medicine to stop the pain and we got him some Delsym to take for his cough. Fortunately, Bond didn't get it. I have a bit of a cough, but I'm doing my best to not cough!

The boys got some wonderful gifts this year.

Albus got an mp3 player, a Harry Potter collector's pen, some clothes, and a few other things.
Pokemon King got some legos, Pokemon and some other things.
Dinodude got Star Wars figures, Spiderman figures, Nightmare Before Christmas figures, and some other things.
Rocket got the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Mickey Mouse & Little Einstein figures, clothes, and some other things.

Bond got some pajama pants and Spiderman 3. He actually had to return Spiderman 3, since unbeknownst to us, the boys had already gotten him Spiderman 3 on blue-ray! I was wondering why they were pushing for me to get him Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer! Next time, I'll know better!
I got a nice church dress, Pirates of the Caribbean chocolate bar (which surprisingly is still wrapped!) and Bond sent me on a treasure hunt! He had recently taken Pokemon King to see National Treasure 2, so I'm sure that was his inspiration! It was very creative and quite difficult! I did need a few hints, but it was fun. At the end, the treasure was an Olive Garden gift card, a home fragrance thing, some candles, and a bunch of balloons with tiny pieces of paper in them. On the papers were written things like: 1 week no bathrooms; 1 week no laundry; 1 week no sweeping and mopping; 1 week no cooking, etc. How awesome is he! What an amazing man I'm married to! Although I did have to ask him if he's going to do them, or if I'm just allowed to let the chores go for a week, in which case, they would all pile up! Come to think of it, he never really answered me! ;)

4 More Days

Our shopping is done, the wrapping is almost done, the decorations have been done for weeks, school is out (although today is the last day for Albus). Christmas is rapidly approaching.

Rocket was up early this morning: 5:45. Lately, he's been sleeping until 6:15-6:30. He watched Blue's Clues-Blue's Big Holiday and A Snowy Day about 3 times each! For a while he was only watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Little Einsteins, but now he's branched off to Blue's Clues and Toy Story!

As I went upstairs to his room to get him some clean clothes, I walked past Pokemon Master & Dinodude's room. I happened to notice a sign on the door that said:

Poke-diaper-dino-wizards club meeting-DO NOT DISTURB!!!

I don't know what they were meeting about, but it must've been very important! Then they moved their meeting to the basement. What are those sneaky boys up to???

So, here's my to do list for today:

• Go to JoAnn's for some supplies
• laundry (as usual)
• finish candy molds
• make the cutout cookies
• drop off 11 bags....yup 11 bags....of donatable (is that a word?) stuff
• file school papers
  

We went through the toys and the boys' clothes. They were very charitable this year. We got rid of quite a bit of toys and clothes. So, the day isn't too jam packed. I'm sure there's lots of other things that need to get done, but we'll stick with that for now!

Christmas Countdown

Christmas is only a week away! It seems like only yesterday it was Thanksgiving! Time sure does fly! Well, we're trying to get through this week. We did well yesterday. We did our English and Math. Today, Albus spent the morning getting braces. What fun! Not according to him! While he was there, I took Pokemon Master, Dinodude and Rocket shopping for Bond's Christmas presents. I can't tell you where I went since Bond reads these blogs. But I can tell you that 8:00 in the morning is the BEST time to shop. Even a week before Christmas. There was hardly anyone out. Didn't have to wait in a long line. It was awesome! And since Rocket struggles in the cart nowadays, it was a blessing! So, what else are we doing today? Here's what the boys are doing:

Make a Flake

Here's my list:

• grade papers
  
• clean up schoolroom (we put another computer in here, so I need to reoganize!)
• laundry (isn't this always on my lists?)
• file Pokemon Master's & Dinodude's papers
• clean off my desk (although it's actually not too bad)
• finish gifts
• wrap gifts
• laundry
• go through Rocket's toys
• go through Pokemon Master's & Dinodude's clothes
• take stuff to goodwill
• bake some cookies
• make cookie dough for Albus (he's going caroling to someone's house tonight)
• did I mention laundry?

Ok, that about wraps it up for now. I don't think I'll accomplish it all today, so hopefully I can get it done by the end of the week. I did finally finish the basement. I have 6 bags of things to get rid of and 1 huge bag of trash. Not bad I must admit!

Christmas Crazy

Anyone else having troubles concentrating? We were going to be schooling into next week, but we are all just too antsy to even accomplish things this week! So, next week we'll just be doing English/Language Arts and Math. I figure that's an accomplish all in itself! In addition we'll try to read, bake and do some Christmas activities, hopefully! I also want to work on simplifying. We have too many toys...too many clothes...too many everything! We need to go through and get rid of things that are not being used or are broken. I might have to send the boys away otherwise nothing will be tossed. Even Bond and I have too many clothes that don't get worn. The problem is, I keep telling myself "I'll wear that again...someday!" But, in reality that rarely happens.

I also need to revamp our school. Pokemon Master just has way too much time on his hands after school. I've been way too lenient on him the past few months. Once the new year starts, he's going to be buckling down a bit more. Not sure how's he's going to take that, but we shall see.

Christmas Decorating

Oh my! I haven't posted in almost a week! What is wrong with me?

I keep saying I'll do a weekly report and I never do. It's not like we aren't doing any school. We are! I think I just get tired of scanning everything in. I think I'll just lay things out and take pictures. That'd be a lot easier!

So, until then, here's a pictureless report:

POKEMON MASTER:
MATH: Still prodding through Saxon Math 65. Each day he seems to be getting done sooner. Even better, he's not missing a lot of problems. The ones he does miss, he misses because of a silly mistake: reading the problem wrong, writing the problem down wrong, rushing so he can't read his handwriting, etc.
ENGLISH: We use Rod and Staff. We do the oral section...well...orally, of course! The written section gets done only if there is no worksheet. He would much rather do the worksheet over the book!
SPELLING: Spelling Workout. Nothing fancy here. Pretest, one page a day, test, done. Rarely does his miss alot.
READING: Pathway Readers. He enjoys these. I have him do the workbooks, but only the side that asks about the story.
HANDWRITING: A Reason for Handwriting. He does well here. Only problem we face is the way he holds his pencil. I've been trying to get him to hold it better. The way he holds it now is going to cause problems in the future.
FOREIGN LANGUAGE: We're using Rosetta Stone German. I'm actually learning as well. I have to do the lessons first to check for all the clowns! Pokemon Master hates clowns!

DINODUDE:
MATH: Saxon 2. He's very good in math and picks things up very quickly. We do the time tests, then one side of the page. If he's struggling with something, we'll do the other side, but that rarely happens.
ENGLISH: LLATL-The Red Book. Very easy, laid out plans. One lesson a week.
SPELLING: Spelling Workout. Again, nothing fancy.
READING: Pathway Readers. Nothing fancy here. Read the book, do the worksheet. His reading skills are quickly improving and we love these stories!
HANDWRITING: A Reason for Handwriting. He likes to rush these. One of these days, I really am going to make him redo some!

POKEMON MASTER & DINODUDE:
SCIENCE: Apologia-Botany. It's actually kind of boring, but there are some sections that catch our attention. Most of it we just talk about, although they do a notebook page here and there.
HISTORY: This is our struggle. We were using SOTW 4, but it just seemed way over their heads. So, we use the Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History. We read the section, narrate or outline, then do a map if there is one.
TYPING: Spongebob Typing. They absolutely love this! In fact, I love it as well! Of course, being the master typer I am, I just whiz right through!
MUSIC & ART: These are more a hit or miss. I schedule them on Fridays, but some Fridays I'm just burnt out from the week, we're lucky if we can do them. We are trying to study the Impressionists. We did Monet and Pisarro and next week I'm hoping to do Degas.

ROCKET:
He just complete the Letter of the Week Curriculum for 2 year olds. We just started the 3 year old one today. He's about 4 weeks shy of being 3, but he's so bright, I thought we'd go ahead and start! (Proud Mom Alert!) We talked about the letter A, and a few words that start with A. We read a poem called The Apple Tree, which has hand movements. We actually read it 5 times because he loves it so much. We also talked about Adam and Eve and we read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World. I don't think he liked that as much as I did. I told him how they had a recipe for Apple Pie in the back. He says to me, "We tan mate apple pie in titchen?" (Translation: We can make apple pie in the kitchen?) I told him we could, but not until later in the week!

Ok, so there's our weekly report. Not much of a weekly report, but very long reading! My apologies! Hopefully as Christmas unfolds some more, we'll have some projects and activities I can actually post. Until then, it's the same ol', same ol'!