Today, I was able to lose myself a bit more than usual in teaching my kids.  I know this was God's hand bringing me the peace I have been praying for.  I feel all the prayers that are surrounding me - all of those who are praying for me and I thank God for my friends right now.

Today with Bryce was wonderful!  He is doing so well.  His spelling is already getting much, much better and today we really enjoyed our History lesson.  We learned about Ancient Egyptians, heiroglyphics, and we did it in a really fun and exciting way.  :)  Yay!  Bryce also really loves Science.  I am going to start beefing up some Science experiments because he really does like it so much.  I am just really proud of his attitude and the way he is willing to work for me and do what I ask.  It has already made so many positive changes in our relationship with one another.  :)  And we even dealt with a crying issue this afternoon with little to no remificaitons.  He started to get very obviously frustrated with this spelling power.  I told him to get up and walk away.  Take a break.  He did and within a few minutes, he was back at the desk working hard and doing a great job.  What teacher would ever let him do that in ps??? 

Scotty had kind of a rough start to his morning.  We did a collage - 2 of them actually and that was fun.  We read some books and that was fun too, but when it came to doing our ETC, Scotty balked on me and started to cry.  I bargained with him and had him do just one page and that was good.  I told him we compromised. 

Calvert is now doing letter sounds.  Blah.  More stuff we have to skip.  I really like all the stories and supplemental stuff we are doing, but I am really having to add in stuff to do during this time of review for Scotty.  We skipped ahead in math and I guess we could do the same with Kindergarten, but I would hate to miss all the great literature they bring in and such.  There is lots of stuff he doesn't know that we are discussing...and Science is going in a logical order, so I hate to mess with all of it.  I will keep using ETC and Bob Books.  Right now, he is really enjoying using the Bob Books, so we will do 3 days a week of those and 2 days a week of ETC.  We may even start doing more like 5 days a week with both - one page in ETC and one Bob Book.  Not sure yet.  I should get my ETC online on Friday and that may be better for him sometimes than using the book.  We will see. 

Tomorrow, school will be postponed until I return from the doctor.  I am PRAYING that when I return, the news will be good and I will feel like doing school.  I am hoping beyond hope that they go in there and everything is normal and this is just my body changing my cycles or something. 

I want to thank all of my fellow homeschooling momma friends who are praying for me.  I feel your prayers and they are much appreciated. 

Friday was a good day here at our little school.  Bryce had a review day which went really well and he was done an hour earlier than usual and Scotty had a light day as well.  He finished up his alphabet writing and the part of Calvert that we had been omitting thus far and we are now beginning the new work in Calvert - beyond letters.  I am sure that now they are going to focus on letter sounds and we will soon be skipping that too!  LOL  But I haven't read that far yet.  WE plan to continue our Bob Book and ETC every other day work, though.  He likes it and I do too!

Today we had a fun family day.  This is the first time we have been to the movies as a family since Scotty was born.  Scotty and I have been, Bryce has been, Dan and Bryce have been...just not ALL of us at once.  We saw Clone Wars and to my surprise, it was actually interesting.  Thank God there was a plot!  I was so afraid there wouldn't be.  LOL  The only downside to going to the theatre is that it costs a small fortune!!!  We spent $50 on a matinee show!  :(  That is insane.  Why, I remember when mom would give me $5 and I could see a movie AND have a popcorn and drink.  LOL  Showing my age there, I guess!

Now, for the fear.  My tests are on Tuesday.  I just can't get the C word out of my head and can't seem to find comfort in what the drs say for very long before I am right back at worrying again.  Oddly enough, when I started this thing, I went in to make sure I didn't have any cysts on my ovaries because I was having pain on my left side.  Turns out that was back/hip related (I have a horrible spine) and my ovaries were fine.  I wasn't even thinking "uterus."  As a matter of fact, I had only had strange bleeding that one month before I went.  Normally, I would have never even gone. 

I am just so crazy sometimes - especially when it comes to worries.  I see everything as a "sign."  A friend called today to let me know she was thinking of me and would pray for me come Tuesday.  I hung up the phone and thought "that was a sign it is going to be something bad...or that she thinks it is something bad."  WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME!!!???  Why can't I trust doctors?  Why?  Gosh, like I don't know the answer to that question.  Pappy...Mannie.  Watching my grandparents whom I loved so dearly die in hospitals - with doctors caring for them...telling us they were going to get to come home.  Doctors who told us that Pappy was a healthy man..."clean bill of health" and 10 months later, he was dead at the age of 65.  Watching my grandmother die - the day she was to come home from the hospital.  Instead, my great-aunt comes to my school to tell me Mannie is dead.  Why don't I trust doctors?  Hell, I don't know...

Bryce's attitude is getting better and better about our homeschool day.  Today we started at 8am and he was so excited to be finished by noon!  :)  And HE MADE 100 ON HIS SPELLING TEST TODAY!!!!!  :)  He also only missed one word on his spelling power test.  I saw big improvements in his thought process today too as he was talking his spelling power test!  A couple of words, he looked at then after he wrote them and self corrected by looking at the rule and using his own logic.  I was just so proud!  Spelling is definitely a challenge for him.

Tomorrow is a review day for him - he is going to work on a couple of compositions, review his History lessons thus far, the scientific methods, Robinson Crusoe, and so on.  Hopefully it will be a short and sweet day.  We have review days every 2 weeks with Calvert!  Bryce will LOVE that...and I think it is a pretty good idea myself. 

I also found a cool software today that was recommended by Calvert - Kidspiration by Inspiration Software.  It is geared toward kids and very easy to use.  Calvert uses a lot of web planners in 4th grade (I actually did one with Scotty last week too!) and this software makes it easy for a child to make his own and then fill it in.  Once you have the web planner done, you can click on "outline" and it will show you the web in outline format.  It also does bar graphs, venn diagrams, and other math related stuff.  Pretty neat ancillary program, IMO.

Scotty had a good little day today too.  We read a wordless story book and he was able to interpret the pictures much better than the first wordless story we did a few weeks back.  He also did a great job making his W and working in ETC.  For Science, we sampled some foods and talked about the sense of taste and the sense of smell and how the two are related.  He enjoyed the eating part better than the talking part.  LOL 

In math, Bryce did a neat little page about Egyptian numerals.  That was too cool.  He had to use them to write numbers and it was really neat. I love the way that Calvert ties things in together - he is starting to study Egypt in his History book and was using the Egyptian numerals in his math book.  :)  He also did his first cumulative review today and tomorrow is a review day in Math just like in the other subjects.

Scotty's math was also review.   We reviewed the 2-d and 3-d shapes - Scotty thinks it is pretty neat (and so does BRYCE) that he knows what polygon, trapezoid, rectangular prisim, cylinder, cube, and cone are!  I wish Calvert math moved a little faster in regard to actual numbers.  Right now, we are having to supplement with daily counting and such because I don't want Scotty to forget the numbers to 100 and beyond just because he is not using them in Calvert Math.  As a matter of fact, I think this book only really goes to number 30 by the end of the year!  Hmmm...part of me thinks maybe we will have to speed up with math a bit and move on to 1st grade math sooner than we move on to 1st grade.  Definitely something to think about. 

I am really proud of my kids right now.  Bryce has made such a great effort to embrace this homeschooling "thing" and he is doing so well in his school work.  He is taking it more seriously than I had ever expected and I can see his work really changing already.  He is making a conscience effort to work hard and write in complete sentences and so forth.  :)  Today we did some art.  At first, he was reluctant, but then he really got into it - especially his picture from the chapters he read today in Robinson Crusoe. 

This is very involved, to hear him tell it, but here is the jist...  This is the boat in the water, the little one they got on after their big one sank.  Robinson Cruson is up there on the island.  You can still see the storm clouds even though the sun is peeking from behind them.  There are volcanos on the island and a neat coconut tree.  The other men fell in the ocean and drown (and here is where he gets totally BOY on me) and there are sharks eating them all...see the blood?  :(  *ugh*

This was a neato art thing we did too.  Bryce attempted to draw the same animal using the following...

All Zig Zag lines...

All curvy lines...

'

And finally, all straight lines...

My "non-artsy" child really does have an artsy side to him afterall! 

As for my little munchkin, we did some painting first thing to finish up our weekly discussion which was about cities.  Here is Scotty's finger paint city...and be sure to read the description...I am particularly fond of the helicopters with hands, myself.  ;)  I love this kid!

We are almost finished with the Calvert study of the letters of the alphabet and then it starts right into phonics and reading.  I am not sure if we will continue to do ETC2 after this week or not.  I think we probably will - if not in the book, then definitely online occasionally.  I just don't want to burn him out, so we will have to see how that goes.

In an effort to NOT make this post about ME tonight, I am gonig to leave off the struggles I have had today with my own fears.  This is about my kids and I just thank God for them. 

School wise, today was a good day. We started using a timer with Bryce's work so we could keep better track of how long we are spening on each subject.  We started a bit late, ran a little long on Math, and then ran a little long on his break.  We realized that ate up 40 extra minutes!  EEK!  I think the best thing to do is to start early in the morning if we want to be finished by noon.  An 8am start time would really help out and Bryce is always up by then anyway.  It is ME that has the tough time getting out of bed. 

Bryce also didn't sit and gaze longingly at the school today watching all the parents drop off their kids...however, he did just come in the school room and see the cars parked over at the school for open house night.  He asked what they were doing and I told him.  He said, "darn - I liked back to school night."  Ummm...he went to that school for 4 years.  Back to School night was sooooo something we wouldn't have been doing this year!  LOL  I have known his would-have-been teacher for two of those four years and worked in her classroom at one time.  So, I told him that we would have a back to school night.  "Hi, I am mom...your teacher.  This is Scotty, your classmate, and this is your classroom.  Now, let's go tour the playground (yard), swimming pool (creek), and bathroom facilities."  He looked at me like I was nutty and smiled. 

Another really nice thing that happened today was that the kids and I went to the park after their lessons were over.  It was so peaceful because there wasn't another kid in sight!!!  The boys had the playground all to themselves and I have the bench and the wonderful cool shade all to MYself!  LOL  It was pleasant and even though I originally didn't want to go (housework piling up by the minute), I am very glad I did.  I can already tell a difference in the boys behavior when we are out in public.  They have started to behave much better for me and they have gotten compliments on how well behaved they are for about the first time in their lives!

Scotty's little day hit a snag when we had to "write a story."  He was to tell me a story using descriptive words and sound words and he totally blanked on me.  I wasn't sure whether to push it, help him to the point of telling it myself, or just drop it.  We ended up dropping it for a few minutes and then I started telling it to him.  He filled in the sound word noises and the descriptive words (like big, small, red, and so on) and we called it good.  The we practiced jumping rope and hopping on one foot. 

He did ETC today in lieu of a Bob Book and he did really well.  I told him to work on the page by himeself today and he did GREAT.  Previously, I had been sitting beside him the whole time helping him if he got stuck.  I noticed that when I was not sitting right beside him, he self-corrected.  :)  I was so proud of him.  He also wrote his V's and did an excellent job with those.  Tomorrow we are going to experiment with moving things with water and in water without touching them with our hands.  :)  Fun times.

Now for the "shadowed by fear" part.  :(  A week from today, I go back for my tests on my uterus.  I am starting to get very nervous and scared despite my best efforts not to .  I jsut pray with all of my might that the doctors are right and it is NOT cancer and I can go on homeschooling my kids and try my best to enjoy life for a bit...something that I have had a hard time doing through the years of depression, obsessions, and fears.  :(  If you pray, please say a prayer for me.  I want to not be afraid and spend this next week in fear.  I don't want to waste a week of my life worrying about something that probably isn't even the worst case scenario anyway. 

All of the kids going to public school this year started back today.  My poor Bryce stood at the window staring at the school all morning until we started our day.  Bless his heart.  :(  I know this is really hard on him right now, but this is just the way it is going to be this year.  I hope that, at time goes on, he can start to see the good points of being homeschooled. 

I have discovered a few things (with Bryce) in the last two or three days.  1.  We are going to have to really beef up spelling.  The poor child just does not spell well at all and it is getting in the way of all the other things he needs to do.  2.  He does not sound out his words when he reads.  He makes up the ones he doesn't know and therefore loses the entire context of the story. 

Today he had to read a story about Thomas Edison.  He was excited to read it and I made sure that he did so on his own.  Once we went over the words he didn't know, he immediately started to pick up on the fact that he could break the big words down into smaller words and read them that way.  WHY WAS HE NEVER TAUGHT THIS BEFORE????????  This is a smart kid, but why did they not work with him in school??  That leads me to point #3 in my discoveries this last few days (see paragraph above) - 3.  The teachers dismissed him as one of the smarter kids in the class and because of this, he was overlooked too!

I would have never thought that my child would be overlooked and not worked with because he was smart...but it makes total sense now.  The teacher was overwhelmed with way too many kids in her classroom and he had to use her time to work with the kids that did not understand the concept, the kids who couldn't read at all, and so on.  She didn't focus on the kids like Bryce who did well most of the time.  This is why he could come home with straight A's after bringing home the weeks work with 70's and 80's as grades too.  If she graded on a curve, it didn't matter that he didn't do well...he did better than most of the other kids so he got the A.  :( 

And this year, I was talking to a teacher...the ONE teacher I dearly LOVE at that school and she told me that she will be teaching the other 4th grade class this year (not the one Bryce would have been in...I would have been SO MAD if he was at that school and didn't get to have her as his teacher!) and she also told me that because of budget cuts this year, there is one teacher, a 5th grade teacher that has over 30 kids in her class to manage this year!  :(  What a sad situation public school imposes. 

Well, the good news here is that we had no budget cuts and we will not be having 30 kids in my schoolroom!  LOL

Bryce did school this Saturday because he got to take Tuesday off for his birthday.  He was none too thrilled about this and told me that he didn't want any more one day vacations!  haha!  That is fine with me.  I can't stand breaking the flow to take one stinking day off.  I think, for us, as long as no one is sick or what-have-you, all of our breaks are going to be of the 1 week or more variety. 

So far, in Bryce's curriculum, we are LOVING History.  Bryce really looks forward to reading the stories everyday and learning about all the neat things that happened in the early times.  I am excited to get to the study of Egypt.  :)  I ordered the CD for him as well because he can play games and get more of an idea of what it was like back then.  I love using the interactive things with Bryce - it really seems to work for him.  Most likely, that is due to his ADHD and him liking when things move fast.  I don't know.

As far as spelling goes, we are going to keep plugging along with his Calvert, and also keep working with spelling power.  The thought has crossed my mind to also get the 3rd grade Calvert spelling CD and see if we can't work through that in a "fun" way (without tests or work, etc) and just let him have even more practice at spelling. 

Scotty's days are really enjoyable.  He is doing a GREAT job in his Kindergarten curriculum and really enjoying all of the reading and such that we are doing.  He still loves arts and crafts and Calvert has plenty of neat ideas for him to do.  Today we read "The Country Mouse and the City Mouse" and he drew a picture of the city, cut and glued things he would take with him on a trip to the city in a little book, and read a Bob Book to me.  :)  He also wrote his letter U.  In math, we started learning 3 dimensional shapes (???)  It is definitely interesting trying to teach a 4 year old what 3 dimensional means.  LOL  But he is doing well with remembering the names.  Bryce even looked at him once and said "mom, I can't believe he is learning that in Kindergarten...I didn't learn those until last year in 3rd grade!"  He is right.  I assume this is just a brief introduction and they will revisit it later, but wow.  LOL

Here are some fun pictures I wanted to share.  They are somewhat random LOL, but hey, that is what makes them more fun. 

Helping my dad change the upstairs toilet.  I SWEAR this is a clean, brand new, toilet seat!  LOL  "I am an Alien" is what he told us.  Boy, do I agree!

And then there is always....THE BOX that the new potty came in...

We found these sweet babies crossing our yard one morning this weekend.  I just love when the babies come out to play! 

And here is some of the kids' work.

SCOTTY:

His mirror made of aluminum foil and decorated by himself.  LOVE IT!

Scotty's City

Scotty's book about the things he would take with him on his trip to the City. 

Things to eat

Things to wear (we will have to go in the winter, huh?  LOL)

All of the toys he would take to play with.  LOL  Just a wee bit more stuff than the other pages! 

And things he would use

BRYCE'S STUFF

His much improved writing.  This was an assignment to write a silly story based on his spelling words for last week.

Another composition - the Life of a Cave Child.

And finally, a little bit of math.  We are really going to have to work on penmanship. 

It kind of ranks up there with the time I got out the 100El and Scotty cried and I forced him through the lesson...only it was much worse.  :( 

This morning started with me getting up in a mood where school was kind of the last thing I really wanted to do, but I truged forth and decided to go ahead and get with it. I went upstairs where I found the boys on the couch watching cartoons on video.  Scotty had obviously just gotten up, and Bryce was quite obviously finished with is breakfast and laying on the couch.  I said, "hey Bryce, let's start school."  And I was met with a "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" in a voice and with a face that was very similar to the NOOOO he used to give me when I told him he was going to get a spanking (yes, we are evil and primitave and have been known to spank our kids, oh my! )  Anyway, I gave that a quick nip and told him this was not the tone he would take with me at all when I say, "time for school."  I told him that if he was back in his ps, he would not whine "noooooo" when his teacher came in for the day and said, "let's get started."  I also reminded him that by 9am (which was the time I said, "Let's do school") the ps kids would have been over an hour into their day. 

So then we start school and it was like pulling teeth from the very beginning.  He started math okay, then got to some problems where he had to fill in a blank.  The problem was something like 5 tens - __ ones.  He says, "hey mom, do I need to write '50 ones' or can I just write 50."  Not thinking more than 2 seconds, I just said, "go ahead and write 50 ONES."  OMG.  He immediately started to cry.  WTF????  So I corrected him and asked him if he cried when his teacher in ps had told him to write something and he told me that she had just let him hand in whatever he wanted to write.  So that got me started on how this is part of the problem and for me, doing his best will be what is good enough for me...not just handing in whatever he felt like writing.  Then I told him that he could do what he felt like doing as long as he realized that would mean he had to do it over my way later.  He wrote the words without complaint after that.

Then we got to spelling.  Calvert spelling, at least lesson 1, is really hard for him.  He is a struggling speller and has not typed much on the computer, so the TIMED typing spelling test made him cry.  Then missing the words made him cry.  Then we did Spelling Power and he missed 4 of those words and cried again. 

He recovered from that and we got through phonics with ease.  He did well in phonics (thank God) and may or may not really have to do much more of it.  I just wanted to make sure before I ditched it...but Calvert says it is optional.  Anyway, got through that and then on to History.  4 pages we had to read and what did he do?  He asked me to read the first page.  I did.  He is very interested in this particular history and loves to listen to the story.  I actually ordered the CD for him so he can do some lessons where he won't be the one reading (and I can use the time myself to do something else!).  So I read the first page and then noticed he was up and down out of his seat, getting stuff out of the floor and so on.  I decided to then have him read.  What do you think he did?  You guessed it, he cried!  :(  As if it was a punishment to have him read his own history work! 

So we slugged through his vocabularly work which he did well on and did NOT cry and then we did some cave art painting that included Scotty.  That was pretty fun, but I will tell you that I think we were ALL glad to see this school day come to an end.  My school room is destroyed right now.  I just left it and walked off for awhile to clear my head.

Partially, it is me.  I am not in a great mood.  Still worrying about my uterus and such as well as a bit hormonal as AF comes in less than a week now.  But this crying thing...I just don't get it.  I was not being mean to him when he cried...there was no screaming or yelling or punishing.  It was just weird.  Almost like he is lazy and doesn't want to put in the effort to do well because he has been allowed to turn in "whatever" at school and still get high marks.  Not here!  And I am sure that doesn't thrill him.

Crying when he misses spelling words also baffles me.  The only thing I can figure is that he knows if he doesn't miss any, he gets to move on to the next subject.  If he does miss some, he has to do the study methods and write sentences with them before he can move on.  Big whoop.  It takes him 15 minutes TOTAL to do spelling power.  Calvert, that wasn't even the test I will use for grading.  It was just a practice test for him.  I told him it didn't matter one bit and he still cried.

Crying because he doesn't want to read is laziness.  He reads well enough - just slower than me, but heck, I am an adult.  He reads fine for his age.  It is not lack of ability, it is laziness.

As for Scotty, school was somewhat ruined for him too.  I was already in a sour mood dealing with Bryce and the he pulled some "I don't know" type stunts - when I KNOW he KNEW and we had some words over that.  Otherwise, his day just went kind of fast and I really felt like I didn't give him the time and attention he needed today because I was dealing with Bryce's bad attitude at every turn. 

PRAYING FOR A BETTER DAY TOMORROW!!!

Bryce's Cave Art - done completely by himself.  Paper is crinkled to mimic writing on a cave wall.  :)  I thought this was pretty good!  Bryce is definitely not my artsy kid (in that he doesn't much LIKE art, but I think he did well with this).

And this is mine...er I mean, Scotty's.  I did most of the drawing because "help me" was the phrase of the day around here.  :(  He did make the eyes, nose, and mouth and he made the shapes below the "animal."  He loves art...just doesn't like to attempt to draw much.

Scotty:

We worked in Math on learning our trapezoids and which shapes are polygons.  :)  Then we read a story and learned some more about the 5 senses.  Scotty wrote his letter R's and did a fantastic job on his capital R particularly!  Then we did one page of ETC2 and he was so happy we were just doing one page.  I think he really likes the change I made with doing a Bob Book 2 days a week and ETC 3 days a week.  :)  We listened to some music in the middle of his lesson and while he sat there looking at me like I was silly for playing such songs, Bryce got up and danced to the music!  LOL  Bryce is such a ham and Scotty would much rather sit back and be a wallflower, espeically when it comes to singing and dancing. 

Bryce:

Bryce's day was about 3.5 hours with a short break for the aforementioned singing and dancing ;).  He did Math and learned about the numeric periods as well as more about place value into the millions.  (He keeps wanting to refer to it as the billions place??!)  The we did spelling power and when he missed 3 words out of about 12, he cried.  I told him this was just part of learning.  I am not sure why he is so hard on himself at times.  It comes off as laziness at times because he will tell me that he doesn't want to miss them so he doesn't have to write them in a sentence.  At other times, it seems a lot more like something that has been ingrained in him that he has to be the best at all times.  I am not sure where or why this came about, but I can't wait to break the habit.  :)  Then we went on to Calvert Spelling.  He did one page in the book and then got to use his Spelling CD.  When the activity for the day was over, he BEGGED me to do the next one on the CD.  What at hit it has been!  Seeing how much he is loving the interactive learning, I ordered the CHOW CD as well.  :)  He really enjoyed our History lesson with CHOW on Monday, so I am hoping the CD will enhance that for him as the others have. 

He finished up his spelling and we worked with his Vocabulary some.  We read a really neat story called "The Land of the Midnight Sun" all about how the Arctic circle stays dark for 6 mos out of the year and light for the other 6 months.  He had a hard time thinking of living that way (heck, SO DO I!)  Then we read about Jane Goodall in Science and her research with Chimps in Africa.  He thought that was pretty neat too - even though, for some reason or another, he can't say the word "Goodall."  Finally, he did some work with Grammar and Useage - today it was on finding and making complete sentences.  He needed this review badly as he often would write fragments himself.  The Grammar CD really helped by giving him some activities he could do on his own to learn more about Grammar while having fun. 

Tomorrow, we are going to do Cave Art (which I will let Scotty join in as well) and Bryce is going to go back and have some optional phonics review.  Won't he just LOVE that??!!  Maybe Scotty can help with that as well :(  It is insane, but there are times that I think Scotty does know more phonics than Bryce was ever taught.  Phonics is optional in the Calvert course because kids who have done Calvert up to 4th grade probably won't need it (neither will kids who do ETC!) but I swear, there are times I wonder what in the world that stupid public school taught him.  There are so many "holes" in his education.

My ex really made me angry today.  I think he thought that he would try and embrace this hs thing until he realized I was actually going to do it!  Now school is starting back here and I think he is having second thoughts.  Tough *&^% for him!  It angers me most because he makes so little effort to be a parent to his child.  He sees him 30 days a year!  He thinks just because he donated sperm and pays me a fraction of what he should, by law, be paying me for child support, that he has some say in how I raise my son!  The longer we are divorced, the more is dislike him as a person.  He started spewing about me being closed minded once again and I said, "Listen, idiot, you were married to me and you know me better than that!  You know I am not closed minded NOR am I ignorant.  I have done my research, I know what I am doing here and if you don't like it, then take me to court and do something about it.  Just realize I will be countersuing for more child support and bringing up the fact that you have made NO EFFORT to be a parent to him for the last 6 years other than that average of 180/2191 days you have seen him in that time!"  He didn't have much more to say about it. 

I can't believe it - at 3:39pm, Bryce was 9 years old!  It is just too hard to believe that my baby is nine already!  Seems only yesterday, he was the size of Scotty or smaller.  :(  Time goes by much too quickly.  I never realized how very quickly until I had children.  Watching them grow is a constant reminder of the fleeting nature of time. 

We celebrated Bryce's birthday by having cake with his mamaw and papa last night.  He got $20 in a card from them and a PS2 Star Wars game from us that he has not stopped playing other than to go to Chuck E Cheese!  LOL

We took our annual birthday trip to CEC today too.  Dan got to come over on his lunch break and great fun was had by all.  Bryce won the "jackpot" on one game and the two of them ended up with over 900 tickets that they used to buy Dollar store type junk from the CEC ticket redemption counter.  :(  What a rip off that is!  But they enjoyed it immensely!

All in all , he racked up $123.00 for his birthday (he is at the "I want cash"age now LOL and other than the one ps2 game, and a few movies from his dad's side of the family, cash is all he got).  Here are a few pictures from his b-day.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRYCE!

His Harry Potter cake

Opening his PS2 game

The birthday boy playing a horse riding game (doesn't he look wayyy too big???  :()

Scotty playing the horse game

Our CEC Picture

Not the best of Bryce and I, but oh well!

Scotty did school today as usual, even though Bryce got the day off.  It didn't take long and we had a good morning.  He did lots of coloring for Math and he really enjoyed that.  I have also decided to switch up his schedule and let him do ETC 3 days a week and on the other two days a week, he is reading me a Bob book.  This thrilled him to no end!  LOL

Back to our regularly scheduled school tomorrow. 

Today was our first day doing school all together.  Scotty has been working for the last 3 weeks with his Calvert Kindergarten curriculum, but Bryce, having just come home from his dad's house yesterday, started day 1 of his Calvert 4th grade today!  I was very nervous and I am not sure Bryce was overly thrilled either.  He still hasn't taken to homeschooling the way I had hoped he would.  :(  I am hoping, as time goes on, that he will really begin to see the good side.  *prayers*

Today was a challenge, as I had thought it would be, but not nearly as much as I had assumed.  The most difficult part is having Bryce concentrate and do his work while I am working with Scotty.  Scotty is not independent just yet and can do very few things on his own (I say this, but today, I found that he could do a lot more on his own than I was giving him credit for!).  During Bryce's math, Scotty finished his entire curriculum.  Bryce went very slowly on math today, even though it was review of stuff he already knew.  I think he just was constantly distracted and not doing his work as diligently as he should.  It may be that I have to send him downstairs to work on math and give him a time limit, but I am not sure just yet.  We are going to keep trying it this way for a bit longer.

For Bryce today, we did a lot of "introductory" stuff.  We read the first chapter in SOTW and he really enjoyed that..  The he did a couple of pages in his Critical thinking and that totally threw him for a loop.  He did not enjoy that at all because he was very confused by the work and, to tell the truth, I found it confusing as well!  We ended up looking at the answer key and then talking about why it was what it was.  I hope that was a one time thing with that book!  We also did some writing webs and learned the 4 steps of the writing process (right up my alley, huh!).

Scotty worked with his shapes again today (review for him, but fun!) in Math.  Then we read the story "The Gingerbread Man."  He did some neat things in his "Practice" book - coloring the gingerbread men, decorating one of his own, and coloring the characters from the story.  Then we played a couple of games and as he finished, he went to watch "Come Read with Me" while I finished Spelling with Bryce.  Then we all took a break and went to the kitchen where we made GINGERBREAD DOUGH!!  :)  We had to chill it for 2 hours, so Bryce finished his work and shortly after that, the dough was ready.  We rolled it out and first made some small Gingerbread men...  we decorated them with fruitloops...

Our little fellas

The boys were still excited about them...even if they were small.

But we needed something BIGGER.  ;)   Careful boys...be ready to catch him when we open the oven door (Run Run as fast as you can.  You can't catch me.  I am the Gingerbread man).

But alas, he did no running.  After a short visit with a Gingerbread boy, we made like the fox and ate him all up!