Tag Archives: curriculum

Folks, we have a 6-year-old in the house

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And she is very taken with the concept that yesterday she was 5, but today she is 6.  Mind-blowing.  She also had a fit today, stating that she is “the worst writer in the world” because she wrote something and her brother couldn’t read it.  Oh my…

Every year I e-mail the social worker that first handled her case and met her birthmother.  His birthday happens to be the same day as hers and had he been able to catch the birth certificate processing in time, our Girly’s first legal name would have been the female version of his.  So he and the social worker that handled the remainder of the case get an e-mail each year with a link to a photo album of pictures.  Occasionally, the first one responds.  I have no idea if either of them still work for the state, but I send it anyway. Continue reading Folks, we have a 6-year-old in the house →

En route to killing my printer

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I’ve finally sat down and figured out how to handle this stuff with BigGuy.  Tonight, I got his notebook set up and printed out the assignment pages that go with Tapestry of Grace (TOG).  Each week, we’ll sit down and go through what he actually needs to do and read from the curricula.  I also created a list of tasks outside of the curricula that he needs to do each week… math, science, foreign language, etc.  I did the first 5 “weeks” of the curricula and then 2 weeks of the “outside” work.  I printed out all of the resource pages he needs for the writing component of TOG.  We’ll see how that goes.

I also printed out the pages for ME to help with facilitating Socratic discussion; and managing the Accountability and Thinking Questions from TOG.

And the maps… I printed out the maps he needs for the first 5 weeks of TOG plus the teacher copies with the answers.

Holy moly…

Actually, I have to be honest that I really like the idea of sitting down with BigGuy twice each week to talk about his learning in a more mature manner.  Once to sit down and go through what he needs to do and plot it out on his planner with him; and another to talk about what he’s learned and have a solid discussion about what he’s learned.  Not just asking him to spew it back to me, but DISCUSSING it.

I’m kind of looking forward to it.

Now… to figure out Girly.  And to hope that this works for BigGuy (and me).

So unprepared… so much pain

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Yesterday I threw my back out in a way that I’m not sure I have ever thrown my back out.  It hasn’t responded to anything that has ever helped.  I honestly don’t know that I have ever had this much pain.  I can’t even walk standing upright.

Needless to say, I am in rare form today–and I’m really not liking myself at all right now.  At all.  At 11:01am.  I’m in tears as I’m typing this because I’m so disgusted with the things that have come out of my mouth this morning, in the tone and volume they have come out to people inside AND outside of my home.

I also tried to follow my Tapestry of Grace curriculum this morning (having forgotten to prepare this weekend) only to find myself clueless about his notebook (which was a central component since we are STILL attempting week 1 for the second week in a row–which is totally fine).  Apparently, all I needed to do was Google “Tapestry of Grace notebook setup” to find this neat little page called “First Steps to Set Up Tapestry“.   THAT would have been useful a week or two ago.   Ugh… on the up side, I think that between what I bought this weekend for BigGuy’s grammar & composition notebook plus what I already own (which is TOO. MUCH. CRAP) I should have what I need.

BigGuy and I did sit down and go over “how it’s gonna go down” in terms of the Tapestry of Grace stuff (heretofore referred to as TOG).  We agreed that we would do Critical Thinking Company’s Word Roots rather than vocabulary and we’re ditching the timeline thing.  So there’s that.  I sent him off to do his Math-U-See which resulted in trying to find his missing workbook which is still MIA.

Girly watched the LeapFrog video to learn her vowels.

This afternoon we’re going to watch a Netflix video about Ancient Egypt after we do a Character Building Day by Day story.  The first week was “kindness”, the second was “helpfulness” and I think this week we’ll do “cleanliness” since I am having a VERY hard time with my therapies and the cleanliness of the house is a huge PTSD trigger for me that we have been unable to really resolve.  This might be a good fit.