no more TV at this house for a while

This could get just downright scary............

At some point this evening, one of our kids (we still don't know which one) decided to pick up something hard and whack our tv screen with it. Now if you've seen our living room, you know that we love television. We have a nice LCD HDTV that we got on a Black Friday sale dirt cheap (compared to the original price). It has a 32" widescreen and TONS of input ports in the back for all sorts of stuff to hook up (even a computer can hook up to it because it has one of those ports on it). We also have a dish hooked to it and the smaller version of this tv that is in our bedroom. My 2 year old knows how to work the remote and what buttons to push to watch her favorite channels. Yes, television is a favorite pastime in this house.

Sooooooo................

On of the kids broke the tv tonight. Scott threw a fit over it, I threw a fit over it, and the oldest kids tried to demand that we go out right this second and buy a new one. Yeah, right. I'm not a magician; I can not make money appear out of thin air. So, that means no more tv in the living room. And since they aren't allowed anywhere NEAR the one in our bedroom (its not even 6 months old yet, we'd like to keep it in good shape thank you) this means there is no more television for them until we save up the money to buy a new one.

Now there is the interesting thing. See, we live in an older home (built in the early 1950's) and it needs a lot of work still. We need to replace the water heater at some point in the near future (we've rigged it so that the problem is fixed for now but it has to be dealt with) and that is going to cost us a pretty penny. We also have to replace all the flooring, paint inside and out, and do some window replacements (to name a few repairs). Obviously, replacing a tv is not very high on our priority list as homeowners. The kids are going to hate us for this one....................

We're looking at a year or more without a tv in the living room right now, and quite honestly the thought of this THRILLS me. I don't want a tv out here, it is constantly on and it messes with my ADHD something fierce when I'm trying to do chores and other stuff. In fact, I've been trying to convince Scott to take the tv out of this room period so that we don't have to deal with it droning on and on all the time when the kids are awake. Looks like I got my way tonight, what a way for it to happen though.

And already I noticed a major change in my home. Melissa sat down and was reading a book to Kimmy and Jordan (Jordan fell asleep listening to the story in fact) and Lydia sat down and was looking through her new bible that she got today at vacation bible school. The only noises that weren't Melissa's reading out loud were from Scott and I clicking away on computers, the washer and dryer, and our air conditioning. The phone wasn't ringing, the tv wasn't blasting away, and nobody was fighting (which as you probably already know, the fighting is a pretty common thing here, I'm breaking up fights several times a day) Yep, I think we can do this. I'll allow them an hour a day that they can watch shows on Scott's computer since he has the best screen of any of the 4 that we regularly run, and on Saturday mornings they can pile on our bed to watch cartoons while we try to get a little more sleep.

But it is rather strange to look around my living room and NOT see a tv in here. I now have to move around a few things and get the tv cabinet out of this house (it will go into the garage while we decide what to do about the tv situation once we deal with the house issues that are left). Pretty soon, I am going to have reclaimed my girls and their minds. We are hopefully going to start being more creative and get more into books and playing games. And hey, no tv means more time that they can spend doing their chores...............

Yes, this could get interesting around here for a while as the girls adjust to not having free tv access any more.

Melissa's interesting learning style

Well, this summer I had decided to just relax and work on reading and math with the kids, and Scott is going to do an astronomy study with the girls. So, we got the books and I got things set up and cut out to do the lapbooks for the astronomy study, and we have some readers from the library. Well, I wasn't really too sure how its been going with reading and Melissa until today.

Today, the kids were watching a Donald Duck short on Disney, and Melissa read the label of a bottle in the cartoon. It said "rubber cement" and she didn't hesitate on it. So, I had her go get one of the readers that we haven't worked with yet from the library. She read the entire thing with only a handful of "mom what is this word" and not too many missed words either. It was a beginner's chapter book, around a 2nd grade level (I'm guessing mid 2nd grade, which is slightly above grade level for her as she's going to start 2nd grade in August but is only in 1st grade phonics). She enjoyed reading the entire book to me, and admitted to sneaking books into their bedroom at night to read after everyone is asleep (she has been hiding in the closet with her books)

Now, this child learned to walk completely on her own by practicing in her crib at naptimes and bedtime every day until she had it down, and then she just stood up one day before Christmas at 8 months old and took off across the room. She does EVERYTHING like this, she hates people seeing her struggle and make mistakes while she's learning to do it. I really shouldn't be surprised by her doing this with her reading, considering that she's done this a lot with major developmental milestones. Heck she even did this in a way with learning to ride without training wheels. She would sneak outside to practice in the driveway in the mornings after Scott left for work before anyone else was up (and believe me, EVERY time I caught her doing it she got in a lot of trouble because that is just flat out dangerous) and then after a couple weeks she had it down and showed off happily what her new skill was.

I think I need to try and figure out a way to embrace this interesting way she learns to help her with her money skills and telling time. If you've got any ideas to help encourage this organic way she learns, please let me know so I can work with it better.

set up for summer!

Well, here it is 2:30am and I'm wide awake with Jordan. She woke up about two hours ago with a bad dream or something, so I'm sitting up with her until she falls back to sleep. After an hour awake, I decided to go through and get my file box set up for summer with the kids. (background if you don't know it: we use k12 through a virtual academy and I keep all our papers to do in a hanging file box, one hanging folder for each kid and then a file folder in that folder for each subject, within the subject folders I keep the current unit we're in for that subject so that we can go 100% their pace without worrying about pulling more materials in the middle of a lesson) So here's what I have going on.

Melissa and Lydia both will continue to work on math this summer, as well as phonics. Melissa just has a couple units from phonics K that I want to go over one last time before she starts phonics 1 (and the grammer parts of lang arts 1) and we need to work on a few skills in math over the summer with her, while Lydia will continue to do phonics K to finish it and will continue forward with math 1. That alone is the bulk of my formal work with the girls. I'm adding in Explode The Code for some extra practice this summer, and we'll also add some math workbooks for Melissa to work on her struggling skills (time and money) and both girls will start Spanish if they are interested in it.

For science, this summer we are going to do something really fun. I found a lapbook for the song "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" over at Homeschool Share in the preschool stuff, and after looking it over I decided to beef it up a little for my oldest two girls and turn it into a study to introduce some astronomy. So, Jordan and Kimmy will do the unit pretty much as written, modified slightly for their abilities, while Melissa and Lydia are going to do every piece of it along with some other stuff that I'm creating to make a nice fun astronomy study. The local library is putting together some books for me to use, and I have a list of several books to add that they may not pull but I know I'd like. We are going to learn the planets in order, talk about the different kinds of stars and their life cycle, learn some of the common constellations in the sky (along with the zodiac ones), and talk about other things like nebulas, black holes, meteors, and the different galaxies (among other things, we're just going to see where this takes us over the summer). Our theme for this summer is "shoot for the stars!" and we will be decorating our living/dining/school area with stars, the planets, and other things that we'll make. I ordered a free DVD about the life cycle of stars that I found through my homeschool group, I think it was made by Discovery with NASA or something like that. Oh yeah, and we will talk about space exploration including telescopes, satellites, astronauts, and space shuttles. I have a full blueprint of the Challenger straight from NASA that a relative got me as a kid, and I plan to dig it out to show the girls all the stuff it takes to make one shuttle. Maybe I'll even see if I can get hold of some of that freeze-dried "astronaut food" for the kids to try out, I know Rainbow Resource sells it and I'm sure there's a store in Columbus (or 20 LOL) that does also. I've even seen some at the gift shop at the Columbus Zoo if I remember correctly.

And as always, we will incorporate lots of creative play, crafts, and other activities to our homeschool. I'm still finishing off the details on my astronomy study for this summer, but once I get it all done I will be sure to put up my plans for you all to see, and as we do the unit I'll get lots of pictures as well as making a few videos to show off the girls' completed lapbooks. I just have to remember to go to the library on Saturday morning so that I can pick up the books that the children's librarians are gathering for me.............

how do they come up with this stuff?

I'm sitting here in bed with my laptop as 2 year old Jordan sleeps next to me. She woke up a bit ago and climbed into my bed with me. I don't mind it really, she's a cuddly little thing and snores so cutely (although it won't be so cute when she's a teenager and snoring louder than her daddy) So anyway, we were cuddled up and I felt something funny on her back. I asked her about it, and she told me real sleepy "Missy and Liddy glued my clothes on me." So I double-checked this one to be sure its not a half-asleep rambling. Well, her outfit from yesterday does indeed have glue all over inside it, I have an empty glue stick on the floor in their bedroom, and she's got patches of glue all over her little body.

I guess they got tired of her stripping naked and streaking through the house.......... *snicker*