What to do

  Okay, so I quit the last job I had.  The woman was just not a nice person.  When I quit, she left me such a horrible voice mail full of profanity, that I can't believe she considers herself a good Christian.  Oh well.  I've had another interview for another stable.  It's a nice one.  There are a lot of clients, and some who are never around, so it would be nice to be able to work their horses.  I have a reception interview and have called a vet clinic about setting up an interview.  A lot of interviews.  I feel very, very stressed out.  I had thought finding something a few days a week would be okay, but I feel pressured to find more.  I was working over full time at the last job I had, and it was so disrupting.  I just don't know what to do.  I feel like I need to put my family first.  Yet if I'm away from them, how do I do that?  The boys are thrown off.  They don't see their buddies.  I don't see my friends.  How would I homeschool?

Our weekly home school wrap up

  It was a good week.  I thought I'd share some photos of things we are doing.  If you check my home school page, it goes over a month in review, and some of the programs we are using.  As you know, we are using The Phonics Road to Spelling and Reading.  It's a fantastic program.  I really can't say enough about it.  We just wrapped up week 14.  We review daily the last 15 or so phonograms.  This past week we did sentence structure, how one starts and ends.  Here is a picture of some of my guys sentences.  Pretty good writing, I think, for an almost six year old.  These were done by dictation, and the only thing I had to explain in detail were the punctuation marks.

   For math, we are using Singapore 1.  We finished up the first half, and will be starting the second half shortly.  Until I get the workbook, we've been reviewing basic addition and doing flashcard work.  The photo shows the Singapore workbook for 1A, Spiderman, and in the binder, some of Math Mammoth, that we also use, for extra practice.

Singapore-creating math sentences. 

    For science we are using Elemental Science.  So far, I find it a nice program for elementary.  We are doing the, Biology part right now.  That covers animals for 20 weeks, body for 10 weeks and plants for 6 weeks.  the only problem I've had is the basic spine.  So we use various animal books.  This week we learned about whales, dolphins and walrus.  We also use some Planet Earth books and stickers.  We find the habitat of the animal, and then place it in the book and also on a wall map.  This way, it also incorporates some geography.

We covered a little mapping this week, which we'll continue into next week.  I found a few nice books at the library to use as a review of the United States.  Because Galloping the Globe includes some animals that live on each continent, we can combine our science and history, when it comes to animals.  By accident, after finding the Nat Geo book, I found a Toot and Puddle series.  One of the pigs is adventurous, and travels to different countries.  They make a nice story, and we can pull a lesson or project out of the book too.

Lastly, we finally started reading some Bible stories.  I have not been able to find a children's bible that wasn't too detailed, or sided more on one religion.  So far, the one I found seems to be working.  We read one or two stories at bed time.  Also, out of all the many, many books we check out from the library, we finally read, "Ferdinand".  

Until next week...

This and That

 Okay, so what am I writing about? What am I sharing?
   It's only the beginning of December, yet I am asking myself that already.  I have a bit of pain and loss I am yet dealing with, and have friends dealing with the same, with whom I can share in understanding.
   As a home school  mom, finding my way, I find that I have things I want to share about our days. Just as a stay at home mom in general, I find that there is a lot to talk about.
   But I also find myself immersed in epigenetics, vaccines and medicines.
 All of those are me. I thought about trying to separate them, into different blogs, and I do have separate topic pages, but for daily thoughts, I can't really separate them. You see, everything is connected, and is our family.  Dealing with the loss of an infant, brings about our emotional health.  Not only as a family, but how it effects a marriage directly.  What we eat and what we surround ourselves with-epigenetics-can have a direct impact on our physical health, as well as our emotional health. Which leads to choices we make as a family, like vaccines, medicine and home schooling. What do we want our children surrounded by? What can we give them, or not give them? What is safe and healthy for all of us? And can we help others in the process?
  So, I suppose at this point, my blog is a mixture of things. I imagine a week will be filled with both journalism, as well as general thoughts about our family life, unless there is nothing particularly newsworthy.