whatcha doing?

It's mid-June and the (infrequent) sunshine is distracting my kids.
It's summer and that makes it challenging to hold my kids' attention...any of you have that issue? The sunnier it is, the shorter that attention span.....

While I am talking and teaching about the finer points of multiplcation, they're just thinking "How long until I can go ride my bike?" I just know it....

So in my class, I try to use tools that will engage them. Make them WANT to learn.
Which is why we turn to http://www.time4learning.com/ as one of our online tools and it serves us well...

For Adam, who is 2 grade levels above his age range, he is very 7 and all about Science and Math, he enjoys all of the lessons in Science. There was some silly song he learned about logging that he sang for WEEKS. Drove me batty, but hey, he's learnin'.....I like that T4L doesn't hold him back, it sets him free to learn what HE wants to.

For Micaela, who is 8 and very much the girly-girl, she struggles still with reading. She has special needs (has fragile x syndrome, to learn more about that, click on the link below....)

Symptoms of Fragile X Syndrome

Micaela poses my bigger challenge. I can turn Adam loose and let him run. But Micaela is easily overwhelmed and when she doesn't immediately succeed, she's crushed.... For her, T4L is a confidence builder. It's non-threatening and fun and at a pace that she can tolerate. She's such an amazing kid and I have seen her gain skills while we've been homeschooling. It's not as scary to her as public school was.

So what are we doing this hot, sticky summer? Well, The Summer of Science, of course!
(Here's the Mom-trick that I didn't reveal to them: it also involves lots of Math, Reading and Writing...but Summer of Science sounds so fun, they eat it up!) We're going to have weekly lessons, vocabulary, spelling tests, experiements and public speaking: all under the umbrella of The Summer of Science!

I'll be posting here from time to time. I promise the blog will be more active! But if you can't wait and need a fix of homeschooling wit and money-savings tops, you can catch me at my personal blog....send in a comment, a suggestion, we want to hear from you!!

Just a bunch of nothin'