So busy - wondering where the blog will go

The girls practicing writing the letter N

We're busy here beyond our belief. Well, I guess I can believe it because I'm living it. :)

The boy started college on Monday. He's commuting so he'll be here some evenings, but the flow of days will be very different without him around.

Another change - and probably the biggest change - is that the big girl wants to do schoolwork. Since we're unschooling my job as her educational facilitator is to search out curricula and assist her. We're working on phonics and handwriting right now and will soon add in some mathematics. I'm more comfortable not working with curricula, but when a child asks it's pretty important to support their educational exploration.

I already have in the house Hooked on Phonics and another 1970's era phonics curriculum, but they weren't working as well for her. The one we're using right now takes a more focused approach and we work on one sound daily. It's free and you can find it at ReadingLessons.com.

Yesterday was the "n" sound and today is the "a" sound. What I prefer about this approach is that parts of it are very age appropriate for the baby girl. She's loving it as much as the big girl. We can also do a theme day and that's kinda fun. It reminds me a lot of the old Sesame Street. Today is brought to you by the letter A!

Today is also the big girl's birthday. Six years ago today I was laboring at home and around 8pm she entered this world.

Here's a look at what a fairly typical day now looks like:

Yesterday morning consisted of me getting up with the girls and helping the baby girl get a clean diaper and clean clothes. The big girl dresses herself. I made pancakes for breakfast and washed up the dishes. I changed a poopy diaper. I threw in a load of dirty clothes into the washing machine, moved another load into the dryer, and folded the clothes that had been in the dryer. Then I went ahead and baked up two loaves of bread - from scratch. While the dough was rising and while the bread was baking I researched phonics curricula and decided on ReadingLessons.com. I downloaded and printed out the lessons for this week. I put the pureed tomatoes on the stovetop to simmer down into tomato sauce. The girls and I worked through the lesson on "n". Then I cooked lunch and we ate. After that I finally got in a shower. After the shower I changed the baby girl's diaper. Next it was time to nurse the baby girl and rock her to sleep. While she slept in my arms I watched a few episodes of the BBC version of Vanity Fair. The Hubster and the boy came home. The baby girl woke up. I passed her off to the Hubster and I canned up the tomato sauce. Then I cooked our dinner. While dinner was cooking I also washed up some of the prep dishes and the lunch dishes. We ate; we rinsed the dinner dishes and stacked them in the dishwasher. I left the pots and pans for the next day. After dinner we went grocery shopping (remember we're a one-car family so that happens in the evenings or on Saturdays). Then back home and I downloaded some phonics books from EdHelper.com. Then I threw in another load of laundry, folded the dried clothes, and we went upstairs. Upstairs we put away the clean clothes, helped the girls get dressed for bed, brushed teeth, etc. and then nursed the baby girl to sleep. I slept.

Rinse, repeat. ;)

Add into that helping the baby girl with preschool type stuff like shapes, colors, letter and number identification, etc. and I'm keeping pretty darn busy.

So the blog is getting knocked down a peg or two. I'll write up posts and tutorials when I can squeeze them in, but it probably won't be daily. Okay, I can pretty much guarantee the posts won't be daily. I just won't have the time for a daily post.


The big girl "reading" some Mother Goose rhymes to us (she really has them memorized)