Friday, January 9, 2009

New Year, Back to Work

Thought I would just give a quick update. We are moving on to learn about the Sons of Liberty and just finished up George Washington. I never realized how patriotic I am, but I feel even more so after learning about the founding of our country and sacrifices these men gave to build our country.

So far, this week has been pretty good as far as schooling goes. Curtis has been helping out a lot more with school lately, mostly because he's trying to give up computer gaming, but also, he's really interested in the stuff we are learning about. I have to say that there is something really refreshing about hearing him teach the kids. This week we learned about surveying land. Tomorrow the kids and Curtis are having me drop them off on a corner in town and they have to figure out how to get home by a map. Part of me wants to do it with them, but a bigger part of me doesn't like to get cold, even just a little bit. We've been discussing as a family how to build up our food storage, prepare for emergencies and learn some survival skills. Still not to keen on the hunting thing. I don't know if I could ever do that, but I suppose if I ever got hungry enough, I would.

Reading:
As a family: Prince Caspian (only two more chapters to go!)
Me: Ginny, the dog who rescues cats. 2 Lewis and Clark books. Volcanoes and Earthquakes. George Washington biography.

Isaac: Huckleberry Finn

Jesse: Lion, the witch and the wardrobe

Hannah: Barbie

Simeon: 60th Anniversary of Thomas the Train collection. He's nuts about it.

Curtis: The Federalist papers part 1.

I should also mention we are getting back to our chore lists. I had the kids assigned to a 3 part rotation. We called them the ABC chores. Every day they switched, except for the kid they were partnered with. Each day had about 7 chores they needed to keep up with for the day. The nice thing is that it only took them about 30 minutes to do all their chores. It's so nice when one is in a habit, but why is it so hard to get back into the habit after one fall's out of it?

1 comment:

Pirate Princess said...

I'm not crazy about hunting either.  We have a lot of hunters around us that give us meat, and I can't bring myself to cook it - how nuts is that?  So Redbeard does it.  lol...Glad to hear your new year started off so well!