Insipration

The kids had a fantastic time in Chicago with their Nana. Aiden bought a Venus flytrap plant, which he has been talking about nonstop since returning home. Unfortunately, the dog found it and wondered what it would taste like. Apparently, the answer is not very good, because we found the plant almost whole on the living room floor. I'm still not sure if it survived being in a dog's mouth, but we're trying desperately to nurse it back to health. Fortunately, Nana found a place to order more carnivorous plants and ordered some. So even if it doesn't live, we'll have some new ones to replace it with.

I spent Friday at the Home school expo. Though the curriculum available to look at and the seminar I went to were worthless for our family, it was still worth the $20 fee to feel some reassurance for the route we're taking. I seem to have stumbled upon the perfect curriculum for the kids on the first try, and I got the feeling that I'm WAY more prepared for educating the kids than some other families.

The other thing that has been fantastic is I've found another family in the area that's homeschooling for the same reasons. Heather and I were actually in Moms club together, but I haven't seen her for years. If it weren't for facebook and this blog, I don't think we would have even discovered we were taking the same route. We have some plans to do some lessons together and maybe even have the kids form their own equations team. Two of her children are virtually the same age as Zoë and Aiden, and they're both in JET as well. What's even better is that Heather is a former teacher, so she's full of fantastic ideas! Thanks, Marnie for calling her to let her know we were homeschooling too!

I've decided that next year I'm going to have the kids do the same curriculum for everything except math. Since they're only 16 months apart, there's no reason I should have to split them apart. Also, I need to have Aiden doing less math problems (or at least fewer of the same kind of problems). His ability to grasp the concepts happens so quickly, and he doesn't need the constant repetition. From now on I'm going to do about 5 problems per page. As long as he gets them all right, he can move on to the next concept. Hopefully, this will address some of his boredom.