The Day the UPS Man Came

I ordered a bunch of things for next year and it came today. I love getting new stuff...

I ordered a couple math books for Cohen...who has been asking, no begging, for me to get him a math book for months and months. He was so excited.

I went ahead and ordered the manipulative kit that went along with it....it came with a lot of things, like these fraction tiles. And a bunch of counters and blocks and such.

Once I ordered all the books- history, handwriting and math. I went shopping. For random stuff to bump my total up to the free shipping minimum.

So I got books


And 12 sided dice

And some art supplies....

Other than now I can happily plan, the great thing about getting a package is this:

When they opened the box, Cale and Rylan played with pattern blocks for long time. Cohen worked with the fraction tiles, Lakin counted bears and then they asked if they could do their books. At 7pm during summer vacation. Rylan and Cale did their handwriting books and Cohen did about 4 pages in his math book. Then I had to force them to take a bath....

10

Nearly 14 years ago, I met a boy...

About 11 years ago, I got engaged....

And 10 years ago today, I married him.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

1 month. Give or take. That is our summer vacation around here. July 5th marks the start of our new school year, so my summer vacation is in full swing. What does that mean? Planning.

It means a zillion word documents constantly on my desktopStacks of library books to go though

An ever growing list of bookmarked websites do revisit, like Lesson Pathways.

And as much as I love my computer- I love my binder too. With all my schedules and unit plans. It's where I keep samples of their work and keep track of just about everything.

Like my (constantly evolving) book list for each kid. Books I might want them to read. Ones they might enjoy reading. And a list of all that they did read. My boys are somewhat reluctant readers. They have yet to find those books that they can't put down, that they read for fun, or that they will read at times other than when I tell them too.

I've got the basic outline of the year down. We are doing true history for the first time, instead of random books, projects and units. And we are focusing on Earth Sciences this year since we've spent a lot of time with physical and biological over the years. Now I've just got to get the actual lessons planned out.