Autumn

So the last update was May I think?  A lot has happened since then!  Of course, we moved to Orlando.  We miss our Iowa peeps dearly.  I think we had gotten so used to the way life is so different there, that it is hard to get back into a Southern state of mind!  Not that Orlando is slow paced by any means, just the plain talk in Iowa was a breath of fresh air, and now we are back to the niceities of the South.  Blech!

Miles is doing phenomenal, I can't believe how well he is growing up!  Too fast if you ask me.  He'll be 23 months today.  Our eight month battle with yeast finally ended when we moved down here, perhaps because of the humidity, perhaps because our new diet was such a shock to the system, who knows?  We were in the hotel for six weeks, eating out all the time.  Anyway, he is talking in four word sentences and his fine motor skills are unbelievable, he can catch baby lizards!  Just picks them up like it's nothing.

Justin on the other hand has had a really, really hard time adjusting.  I think with all the different places we were eating it was hard to get a handle on just how much gluten he was exposed to, we tried very hard, but sometimes it is just plain impossible to monitor every little thing, especially in a hotel.  He regressed for a while, was having potty accidents, also at night, biting his fingers and tongue while he ate, spacing out, freaking out from overstimulation, etc.  The sensory stuff seems to have settled down, finally, now that he's back to a normal diet.

Elle is doing wonderfully after a rough start homeschooling.  Thriving really.  I found out she loves to draw pictures, it is how she makes sense of life, as well as writing, so we have her art all over the house.  Homeschooling seemed very daunting in the beginning, scary even.  I think part of it is just getting used to spending gobs and gobs of time together.  The old patterns and parental behaviors don't work when you're with your kids all day long.  I had to re-learn all that stuff, and stop waffling and being wishy-washy about what I wanted.  Once the kids understood that I expected respect and demanded they listen to me, everything started to smooth out.

The thing about homeschooling is the sheer amount of material out there to use.  All you need to do in FL is file with the school district, that you are going to homeschool.  All they require is an evaluation by a trained teacher at the end of the year, and you only have to show progress, and that the student is working to the best of her ability.  Not grade level, ability.  Which would be nice except it left this big void to fill, figuring out what exactly it was going to look like for us.  Curriculum is super-expensive, and there's no guarantee that it is going to work for your kid anyway.  So we do mostly workbooks, and attend a co-op once a week, plus a field trip, and they do unit studies.  Basically we come up with topics to teach, and I supplement the stuff we learn at co-op with books and activities at home.

But mostly we go with the flow.  So much time is taken up just in daily living, that I usually don't have to do much more than read a book, or write out spelling words for Elle to do, or open to a page in a workbook, and she just does it on her own.  There are so many cool things that just present themselves to us as learning experiences, from just living our lives.  Dead frogs, lizards, ants, acorns, pool care, the cat, you name it, there is science behind it we can talk about, or read about, or write about, or find math to relate it to...

Homeschooling is easy.  It is much like breastfeeding, the first few weeks are excruciatingly painful, but once you get the hang of it, everything starts to flow.  I went back and forth and finally decided not to put Justin in preschool, because I felt like we were just about to get into a routine, and we needed to get to that point so that he would be comfortable and start to enjoy the new way things are.  It was very hard moving, and starting a whole new way of schooling at the same time.  Too many changes at once.  Now we're on the other side and I am still learning about him and how he learns.

He would just prefer to cut and take things apart all day.  He's a visual, spacial, kinesthetic learner and I still don't know the best way to help him learn.  He loves to be read to, he will also sit and look at books.  I would not be surprised if he taught himself to read.  He and Elle love the phonics games on the computer, and we're finding new sites all the time. I am also finding new curriculum all the time.  There is such a thing as TOO much choice!  I could spend $500 on curriculum if I wanted to.

I did find a few that I might get, the Bob Books, Draw Write Now for handwriting, and Five in A Row.  I'm still figuring out Math, haven't found anything I like yet.  I saw free curriculum from the Bank of San Francisco for elementary kids about money, counting, and applied math, and that seems interesting.  Once I open one thing, it leads to 12 other things, and I wish it was much more simple than that.  There are about 8 types of homeschoolers too, school at home, classical, religious, unit studies, unschoolers, online learners, charlotte mason, and eclectic, which is a combination.  I think we're unschoolers leaning toward eclectic doing unit studies, who knows!  All I know is that it is fun, and we are learning, and I get to be a kid again!  There are just so many things online now that I could spend weeks doing lesson plans.

The other daunting thing was the lack of schedule.  No running to school, and preschool, and back again, four plus trips a day, five days a week.  That leaves a lot of time, and they spend much of it playing.  It also allows them to actually see Eric when he gets home at 9 pm after a 16 hour shift, because they can sleep in the next morning.  We finally have a weekly schedule, which takes a lot of the guesswork out, and fills up some of the time.  The rest I am still figuring out, I need to add more science documentaries, because Justin's in love with those, and more crafts for Elle.  We'll get there.

Other than that we're missing the Fall leaves, although the weather here last week was beautiful, high 70s and sunny.  Eric started making soups anyway.  Still in the seasonal frame of mind.  I have to tell you, I long for snow when it is 100 degrees outside, even after being in the pool.  Snow is such a wonderful way to break from the heat of summer.  It is so pretty too.  I really hope the kids will be able to see some this year!

My Kodak site is going away as of 2015.  I will need to figure out a new system, I hate sending out the emails from the Gallery, but I don't see much point in doing it another way.  I can't publish albums to the site anymore.  

We do have a homeschool blog- a lot of what we do doesn't get in there, it is a rough outline: HomeschoolingAllOver.blogspot.com.