Homeschooling Lite

It was in "The Plan" to take off a few weeks when Amber arrived.  However, it was not in the plan that we would start that time off two weeks before because I injured my back or that we would have family visiting three weeks after she was born.  Thus a few weeks has turned into more than a few.  However, I am calming myself by reminding myself we live in a state where the only standard is that my children "show progress", not that we finish every page of their curricula by year end.  

That said here is what we've been managing to do:

• Classical Conversation Video Review - I have the boys watch the most recent week and two other weeks each day.  Creating those videos has been a life saver, not sure they'd know any of their memory work otherwise.
• Christian Liberty Press Nature Readers - I have the boys read to me each day from these readers and then I have them narrate back to me what they read.  They don't even realize its school work they are both so excited about reading these books and they are retaining all they learn.  I have Jared (Age 6) reading from Book 1 and Lance (Age 8) I started with Book 2.
• Piano - After over a year of trying I have finally found the way to motivate my children to practice on their own....."Peer Pressure/Competition".  My children started out their piano lessons about four months before their two best friends started joining us for lessons on Thursdays.  However, their friends are practicing daily and are starting to catch-up with them in their books because my children were not practicing.  When I pointed this out last week, bingo they've practiced five days this week :-)
• Logic - The i pads are serving their purpose of educational entertainment.  The "games" provide both CC geography review and logic/problem solving practice.  I try to limit their use to an hour or so a day.
• Typing - When I asked my friend who is teaching CC Essentials this year, "If you could do anything to prepare your son for Essentials next year, what would it be?" she said "Teach him to type."  I had tried to do this before but neither of us were very motivated, this was the motivation I needed.  I am using two online programs.  The first is a traditional approach, the same way those of us who learned on type writers were taught.  I like this approach because I think it best ingrains the muscle memory.  After three lessons, Lance was at 21wpm on the home keys.  Here's that link:  http://www.powertyping.com/qwerty/lessonsq.html  The second program Brandy from Half-Hundred Acres mentioned she was using "Dance Mat Typing": http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/  This is a fun site.  I let Lance do this site after finishing a lesson on the "traditional" site, I think its a great reinforcement and motivation to practice.
• Various Reading and Art projects - A friend gave us an old set of Children's Encyclopedias that Lance has been devouring.  Both boys have enjoyed gathering up books with Daddy on Saturday at the library too.  My plans to start formal art program have fallen by the wayside (again) sort of like my continual attempts to start daily devotions (we never make it past Monday with my "new plan" each week).

Next week I hope to add two more things:

• Calculadder and AlphaBetter - 2 min. Math Mastery Drills and 4 min. Alphabetizing Drills, its amazing though how hard it is to find 6 min in my day. 
• Penmanship/Bible Memory Work - For Lance I have "Pentime 3" to practice his cursive.  For Jared I will probably mirror Lance's lessons but make the worksheets myself, because I want to use the D'Nealian Script with him till he's ready for cursive.