Well after much research and prompting from the Lord, we have completely changed our homeschool philosophy. We have dumped the prepackaged Abeka curriclum we have been using for the last three years.
I have been researching Charlotte Mason's approach to education, Dr Raymond Moore and Carole Joy Seid. I am in the process of writing a curriculum that will work for our girls and our family. I have picked out math curriculums for both Em and Jori, Life of Fred for Em, which will take her through highschool and Making Math Meaningful and Math-it for Jori until she is ready for Life of Fred. Both girls will do Intermediate Language Lessons and Simply Grammar. Both will continue with our literature based history(we are doing North American history right now) and Apologia Science. Both will study Latin and French, art appreciation, music appreciation, Bible, and literature/poetry. We will also be doing sewing/crafts with Grandma and neighbor Shannon. Books are being picked out and lists made to get the purchasing done. Much can be done through the library, although there are some obscure titles we are having some trouble finding.
We are very excited about this change and cannot wait until we can get the books ordered. For now we continue to keep our local library busy finding us books, we have over 90 checked out right now, you would think there would be a limit, apparently not.
May God shine on your day.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Let the races begin.
Emmy and I had a plan. We were going to start running some 5k (3.1 miles) races together. This would be a good way for me to keep up on the exercise, it would be fun, and mostly it would create another cool dad/daughter time.
Once I got that marathon thing out of the way, we picked a race in Genoa, Il called Brett's Race. It's a cool event because it was started as a memorial to a son who had been killed in an accident years ago. The family raises money for a scholarship in Brett's name. This would have been the year he graduated high school.
So it's a worthy cause. We sign up and we are all excited as race day gets closer. Then poor Emmers gets sick. On Friday, about 12 hours before race time. What a bummer.
Originally I had asked both girls if they would like to run and Jori decided that she did not want to race. The night before the race I asked her again and this time she thought she might like to as long as she didn't have to run the whole distance. So we went to bed on Friday night not knowing who was racing in the morning.
When we got up Saturday Em felt better but kinda beat up from having a fever the day before and didn't think she should run, so Jori was in.
We drove out to Genoa and found the packet pick up area and grabbed our stuff. Jori was getting pretty excited. There were going to be about 600 people participating and everyone was milling around talking and warming up. We brought our goody bags back to the truck and I pinned Jori's race number (337) to her shirt and we headed for the starting line.
It was worth signing up for the race just to be around Jori for the 15 minutes around starting time. She was getting really cranked up, so that by the time we lined up in the last minute before the start-she was almost jumping straight up and down. The gun went off and she wanted to take off, but there was no where to go yet, too many runners. As we got through the first 200 meters or so, she found daylight and started to move out. All I could see was pink tie dye and a bouncy blonde pony tail up ahead.
She blasted by about 100 runners and I was beginning to resign myself to the fact that I wouldn't see her again until the finish line. Then I saw her stopped on the side of the street a huffin' and a puffin'. We hadn't talked about pacing. I guess she thought she would just sprint 3.1 miles. So we walked for about 45 seconds until she caught her breath and then she was off again. This was how it was gonna be....it was the dash and walk method.
When she roared into the first water station, she grabbed a cup from a volunteer and threw it over her head and then grabbed another one to drink. Just like an old pro.
The course went through a residential neighborhood and many of the houses had sprinklers on. Jori decided that if people were nice enough to put them out for us, she better hit every one. I bet she added another 1/3 of a mile to her run by zig zagging back and forth across the street to make sure she ran through every sprinkler.
Thirty six minutes of this brought us to the football stadium...home of the Cogs (really). We had one lap to go on the track to hit the finish line. Apparently my little flower decided that was when she was going to leave me in the dust. She blasted off tearing around the track. She would have clobbered me except that she took lane 6 and I was in lane 1, so that by pushing my old carcass hard, I was able to keep up.
At the finish, she beat my by a step. Here's her results...remember, she's listed as Emmy.
http://www.racetime.info/2010Results/BRETTR.HTM
She finished in 37:15:5. That was good enough for 15th in her age group (14 and under). That kinda stinks because she was lumped in with high school runners. If you look at 10 and under, she came in third place. That's awesome. Even more so since it was her first race.
So that was my pre Father's Day present. Now were looking at races to see when Em can get one in.
By the way...I was 19th in my age group....the kid got me by 6/10ths of a second.
Once I got that marathon thing out of the way, we picked a race in Genoa, Il called Brett's Race. It's a cool event because it was started as a memorial to a son who had been killed in an accident years ago. The family raises money for a scholarship in Brett's name. This would have been the year he graduated high school.
So it's a worthy cause. We sign up and we are all excited as race day gets closer. Then poor Emmers gets sick. On Friday, about 12 hours before race time. What a bummer.
Originally I had asked both girls if they would like to run and Jori decided that she did not want to race. The night before the race I asked her again and this time she thought she might like to as long as she didn't have to run the whole distance. So we went to bed on Friday night not knowing who was racing in the morning.
When we got up Saturday Em felt better but kinda beat up from having a fever the day before and didn't think she should run, so Jori was in.
We drove out to Genoa and found the packet pick up area and grabbed our stuff. Jori was getting pretty excited. There were going to be about 600 people participating and everyone was milling around talking and warming up. We brought our goody bags back to the truck and I pinned Jori's race number (337) to her shirt and we headed for the starting line.
It was worth signing up for the race just to be around Jori for the 15 minutes around starting time. She was getting really cranked up, so that by the time we lined up in the last minute before the start-she was almost jumping straight up and down. The gun went off and she wanted to take off, but there was no where to go yet, too many runners. As we got through the first 200 meters or so, she found daylight and started to move out. All I could see was pink tie dye and a bouncy blonde pony tail up ahead.
She blasted by about 100 runners and I was beginning to resign myself to the fact that I wouldn't see her again until the finish line. Then I saw her stopped on the side of the street a huffin' and a puffin'. We hadn't talked about pacing. I guess she thought she would just sprint 3.1 miles. So we walked for about 45 seconds until she caught her breath and then she was off again. This was how it was gonna be....it was the dash and walk method.
When she roared into the first water station, she grabbed a cup from a volunteer and threw it over her head and then grabbed another one to drink. Just like an old pro.
The course went through a residential neighborhood and many of the houses had sprinklers on. Jori decided that if people were nice enough to put them out for us, she better hit every one. I bet she added another 1/3 of a mile to her run by zig zagging back and forth across the street to make sure she ran through every sprinkler.
Thirty six minutes of this brought us to the football stadium...home of the Cogs (really). We had one lap to go on the track to hit the finish line. Apparently my little flower decided that was when she was going to leave me in the dust. She blasted off tearing around the track. She would have clobbered me except that she took lane 6 and I was in lane 1, so that by pushing my old carcass hard, I was able to keep up.
At the finish, she beat my by a step. Here's her results...remember, she's listed as Emmy.
http://www.racetime.info/2010Results/BRETTR.HTM
She finished in 37:15:5. That was good enough for 15th in her age group (14 and under). That kinda stinks because she was lumped in with high school runners. If you look at 10 and under, she came in third place. That's awesome. Even more so since it was her first race.
So that was my pre Father's Day present. Now were looking at races to see when Em can get one in.
By the way...I was 19th in my age group....the kid got me by 6/10ths of a second.
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