Cold Medicine Is Making Me Sleepy

Ah, well.  Such is life.

Our homeschooling week was a good one.  Liza finished reading The Phantom Tollbooth and Alyosha finished The Witch of Blackbird Pond.  Misha added several rows to his scarf--he's really taking off with knitting! He got his cast off, although my husband and I are currently having a disagreement about whether or not he should be allowed to play hockey.

Alyosha's hockey started.  His gear makes him--a skinny nine year old--as big as I am.  Granted, I'm short, but I'm also fat.  I'm going to take him to the arena's free skate shortly so he can practice on his new hockey skates. At practice my mom had a bit of an anxiety attack, worried that hockey is too dangerous.  I said, "Mom, I put his gear on him.  It took me a half an hour.  That child could jump off a roof and he would bounce."  My anatomy and physiology professor is one of the hockey coaches so I sat with him and studied and he introduced me to a Russian family, which was very nice.

Adventure camp was fun.  The kids had a scavenger hunt and made corn husk dolls.

Seryozha started preschool, which is an adjustment for him.  He came home, nursed, and promptly fell asleep in my lap.

I've decided to supplement OM1 with Susan Wise Bauer's Story of the World.  OM1's suggestions (for the first quarter, at least) are to work on cycles (daily, monthly, yearly) and read fairy tales.  This is certainly not bad but I feel like Misha needs more.  I've gone through SOTW with the older kids so I'm quite familiar with it.  I don't think we'll do the activity guide (I have it somewhere...I think at the old house still) but I do have History Odyssey that I might use to flesh it out.  I'm not sure yet.  I don't want to overload Misha's homeschool day but I want to make sure he's getting enough.

Tomorrow afternoon I get to go to a banquet for my mom's work.  It's a big deal and I'm excited.  The next Saturday my friend and I are going to Washington, D.C. to the Rally to Restore Sanity.  I'm VERY excited about that.

Me

We're battling a cold at my house.  Seryozha was up all night long, feverish and wanting to nurse.  Although it is morning and I would normally have been up for a couple of hours I'm sitting, groggy, on my bed.

I'm hitting my stride at mid-semester.  Anatomy and physiology, while never easy, is fitting together and I've realized a good study strategy.  I just received a 104/100 on a math exam, which is a huge deal for me.  My others classes are also going well.  I have a psychology exam Tuesday and three papers due in my Exposition and Persuasion class Thursday so I need to remember to fit those in this week (because of the nature of a&p and because I have math twice a week it seems like those classes overshadow the other two).

In addition, the kids are getting into a groove of me being less "present".  This is hard for me because I've always been such a hands-on parent who strives to be present.  I've really had to learn to let go and to allow other people to take on larger roles in the kids' lives and that's okay.  I'm learning that, particularly perhaps in a large family, that I have to make decisions that are not only best for each individual person but best for us as a whole and that those changes can be fluid and flexible and I don't have to be tied down to any one choice that I made for one child even though something else would work better for a different child and whatnot.

In homeschool news, Liza and Alyosha still love Adventure Camp.  Misha may be taking a homeschool hybrid class at a local private Montessori school, which I think will be good for him.  He ends up getting left out of a lot of fieldtrips because of his attention issues and stuff.  Seryozha should be starting a three-day-a-week preschool here soon; it's only one hour and fifteen minutes three days a week but should give me a chance to have some one-on-one school time with the older kids.  He is just such a busy sort of boy that, as soon as I get Misha focused to do his work, I'm up to get him off the ceiling or something.  Then I've lost everything I've done with Misha.  I think this will be good for everyone.

We had a wonderful homeschooling week.  Lizavet' and Alyosha went to a nature group Tuesday through the local homeschool group.  They made campfire bread, played with other kids, and whittled things out of wood.  They absolutely loved it.

Russian class today went very well.  Saturday is their group Russian class and their head teacher, Vera, is a wonderfully strict Soviet woman.  To please her is somewhat difficult and to receive a compliment from her is very high praise so it was wonderful today when she repeatedly complimented Liza on her accent ("Your mother teaches you well," she said to Liza in her very thick accent, "You speak Russian like you live there.")

I keep thinking I'll venture downstairs and get out the OM binders and plan for next week but, alas, the stairs are many and my energy level is low.  I picked up The Legend of Sleepy Hollow at the library the other day, I think that will be a good October family read.  Misha and I finished the second book in the Tales from the Odyssey so I picked up the third one as well.  He received "Aragorn's Quest" on Wii for his birthday and now wants me to read him The Hobbit so I'll add that to his list.

Serioque says 'Hi'

We've had another busy week.  Liza has showed a lack of enthusiasm about Oak Meadow this week--she's learning about the Ancient Israelites.  This includes readings from the Bible and she is less than interested.  I told her that it's important to be familiar with the Bible--for cultural literacy's sake if for no other reason--which seemed to appease her but she's still ready to be finished with this section.

Misha turned seven years old.  We all went to a Chuck E. Cheese type restaurant for dinner on his birthday and he had so much fun.  

I'm still struggling to balance my homeschooling mother life with my full courseload life.  My initial thinking was that I would study while the kids studied--this worked well when I was doing my less complicated prerequisites.  Now that I've moved on to the more intense math and sciences it is more of a struggle.  For the first time I'm academically challenged and this in itself takes some getting used to.  It's not just about churning out a paper or memorizing information--I have to learn this material and be able to apply it.  How that fits into teaching 6th grade math has been a process.  

I do have to say that Oak Meadow has been wonderful, however.  The levels that Alyosha and Liza are doing (5th and 6th grade, respectively) are very much self-teaching.  I plug their week into Homeschool Tracker each week, print it out, put it in our homeschool binder, and for the most part they are able to complete their own work.  Misha's work (first grade) is still obviously reliant on me to facilitate but it is so gentle, which is perfect for both of us.  I do add to it somewhat--I have him do copywork every day to help with his occupational therapy, I add Russian for all three (they will begin their lessons with Larisa again today after a month off, plus they have Russian classes on Saturdays with several children), and I assign a lot of free reading.

Last month the older two kids took part in a paleontology class through the homeschool group, which they loved.  We visited the apple orchard, had a couple of family gatherings at the park, and played outside for hours.  Ballet started again for Liza after a few weeks' break and all three older kids have been a part of a character-building group a neighbor has put together for the kids on our block.  She and her family are of Baha'i faith and the class focuses on topics like cooperation, inclusiveness, and friendship.  It's funny--I thought that Misha would get bored (he's a flighty sort and it can be difficult to keep him on topic but he enjoys the class most of all.