Doing pretty good with school

I have to admit that even though the kids aren't perfect in their school work, they are cooperating and doing well now. Ds R is still struggling with some math concepts so I need to figure out what to do with that. He's doing Teaching Textbooks and supposedly it's the best out there so far, but apparently it also teaches a new concept every lesson and he's still trying to figure out the main stuff. So not sure what to do. I realize that not everyone can do math well(me included in that one) but I know that dh wants ds R to know this stuff. So ds R and I are going to have to come up with something.

So yesterday we get ourselves started around 9am. I had wanted to start our devotional around 8:30, but dh had to do some work at home which meant I couldn't do some of the before school stuff when I wanted. Well we finally started and our devotional went pretty smoothly and ended after 35 min rather than the 45 to 60 min it generally takes. Our devotionals can be pretty hectic at times depending on what is happening in announcements or just life in general. But because there's not much happening this week that part went by quickly thus the rest of the devotional did too.

I then showered while the kids went to work without much ado. Once I came down, dd N was ready to start her stuff. Ds R had the rest of his math lesson done from yesterday so I decided to check it real quick. What a mistake that was since dd N wanted to do her math right then. Right away most of his math was wrong. After speaking(and some yelling, unfortunately,) it turns out that ds R isn't completely reading the instructions on each problem there fore not getting them right. I told him to redo the whole lesson and then I would recheck it. In the meantime my dd's are wanting my attention and I'm not being real attentive since I'm frustrated with ds R. Finally I let him go and start helping dd N with her math. She's doing good and starting to get the idea of what we're doing, but still wants me to help with every problem.

Thankfully dd S is busy with some shapes she's playing with next to me so that's good.
After their math is done I have them each write a letter to grandma(my mom). She lives in Ut and we don't see her often, but they have seen her enough recently to know who she is and get to know her a bit. So I've started trying to have them write to her every other week. It hasn't gone well since the last time we actually wrote to her was in May. It's now Aug. The summer just was too busy and I kept forgetting. So I'm hoping now with us getting school schedule started that the letter writing will happen much more often. The girls did well, but ds R was not sure what to write. Now being the teenager that he is, he just didnt' want to write. I let him know that even though he thinks the things he is doing is boring(regardless of what it is) grandma wants to know and is interested. So after making this VERY clear to him that he was going to write her a letter, he did finish it. Not quite how I would have liked it to be, BUT he did do it. I told him thanks.

After lunch I told the kids that we needed to tear down the boxes that the swingset came in. They were huge and blocking most of the garage when the car was in there. So we all go out to tackle this job. Turns out that only ds R and I were able to handle this task, so I sent the 2 girls out to play on the swingset. At least that way they were outside getting excerise and not just inside watching tv. We did good.

Afterwards, we got laundry going. Desperate need of that. Thankfully the kids are doing better with this. Ds also wanted to talk about his computer business that he's really trying to figure out how to start. I think he's a bit scared to actually do something, but has lots of ideas on what he wants to do. He wants to provide blogs/ journals, forums, games and even websites to people. He's very good at this, but I told him he needs to do some surveys on some of this groups to find out what people want most before starting anything. Then work on that. We'll see what happens.

I'm in the kitchen trying to figure out what to fix. I had in mind something different but both kids convinced me that spaghetti was what we wanted. So I caved in and did so. Hoping maybe Fri I will just do what I had planned. Dh came home and the kids attacked him. He seemed glad to be home today. After greeting everyone he eventually went into the frontroom and dd S wanted to snuggle with him. Of course she really didn't snuggle she ended up trying to check out his face features with her binoculars. I finally rescued him and had her come to the table for dinner.

After dinner we headed outside to goof off and play. The girls ended up playing with the balls and goofing around on the swingset. A couple of times I had ds R come out and get exercise. He spends too much time online. Thankfully he stayed out for more than 30 min playing with dd S and she was thrilled. Eventually it was time to head inside. The temps are not as warm lately so I was even wearing a sweater. So after a quick bike around the block we came inside. Dd N wanted to watch the olympics but dd S didn't, so I sent dd N upstairs with strict instructions NOT to goof off since the tv was in my room. Dd S watched her videos with her snacks.

Eventually bedtime happened and it was almost an hr earlier than last night. That meant dh and I were able to head to bed just after 10. We needed that. We watched some of the olympics with the gymnastics and the American team won gold and silver with the Chinese winning bronze. Nice to see.

Karie
Kariesplace