Things Are Never Dull At Our House!

Okay, As I stated in the title - Things are never dull at our house.
Sometimes that isn't a good thing!!!!!
The day started off great, My daughter had been waiting for the horse trainer to be able to come over again to help her with Chance - Well she called and was coming over at 10:30am., They went off for a ride.
Then my son came back with my car and said the transmission was acting up.... I had just got the car back from being repaired a few weeks ago. It turned out that it just needed transmission fluid. My husband added the fluid in and then relized he has put the transmission fluid in the oil area! Now if I had done that it would have been heck to pay....
My daughter and the horse trainer had made plans to meet up with two other horse and go for a ride, My daughter was smiling from ear to ear. That has been her dream to be able to ride around our area and just ride. They were gone for a long time, Finally at around 4:00pm I got in the car with my son and we went looking for them. Well we found them, the trainer was walking Chance and Kelly was walking.... Which of course wasn't a good thing. We pulled up and Kelly was crying, It seems that Chance didn't want to leave the other horses and kinda bucked a bit when they left which scared Kelly. She didn't want to get back on the horse and walked all the way home. I felt so bad for her, Her life revolves around horses and to have the day turn out like this just broke my heart.
After getting back to our house, The trainer suggested we might think of selling Chance and buy an older horse who had seen it all and wasn't spooked by anything. Yikes! I will have to talk it over with Kelly and see what she really thinks - When dealing with an animal well over a thousand pounds you can not be afraid of it.... I know it will brake her heart to sell him.
Well we will see what will go on with that.

Rolex 24 Hour Race

I think we are going to go down to Daytona tonight to watch the Rolex 24 hour race http://www.daytona500.com/ Every year we enjoy it. We go after 6pm on Sat. night because they have a discount price of $10.00 a person (12 years old and under is free). It's funny how when we first moved down here to Florida we thought we would be going over to the race track all the time because we are big Nascar fans, but to tell you the truth it is just too expensive to go! We were there a week or so ago to watch testing and I was surprised that we were still able to go into the grandstand area and watch them for free. It seems lately they are charging for everthing down there...... Anyway if the rain holds off we will shoot down there.

2 Months & 17 days......

We are still chugging away..... We have been doing homeschooling now for 2 months & 17 days. We are still really trying to search for what works best for Kelly! The only time I see her have any recall of what we have learned is when she watches the information for example a Documentary. When we do book work, It seems to just breeze right in & out of her brain, I have been finding it a bit frustrating....! On one of the yahoo groups I am on a gal suggested a certain workbook: http://www.evan-moor.com/index.asp in looking them over I went out and bought the 5th grade level spelling - Kelly seemed a bit interested in it but the words are a bit too hard for her. I am going to order a few more of their workbooks as they look like they might spark Kelly's interest but some will have to be in the 4th grade level which I know she will not like. I really am amazed at how poorly Kelly spells (I have always had a problem with spelling myself). Her teachers in public school let her write stories and reports and never corrected her spelling errors, She feels it is okay to just keep writting like that without any regard to spelling the words correctly which I feel is not right and I really want to work on her getting some of the core words down.
The public school sent a letter today to invite Kelly to take the FCAT test, I don't think it is a good idea for her to take it as we have not been teaching/learning to the test as they do in the public school and she would be a t a disadvantage.
Even though we have switched over from being classified as a "Homeschooler" to an umbrella school http://www.yorkchristianacademy.org/ so we do not have to worry about portfolio's and end of year check-up's ect. I still want to have her evaluated at the end of our school year just to see where we are at.

"You don't want her too far behind other kids...."

We had my in-laws over today....
My mother-in-law kept asking how Kelly was doing with being homeschooled, and not in a good way. She said " You don't want her to get so far behind others of her age".... I felt so deflated! She kept saying "Are you teaching her enough to pass onto the next grade"? Things like that. I kept trying to re-direct her questions onto something else but she kept bringing it back up : (
Oh well.....

Teacher Supply Store

Yikes! My daughter and I went into a new Teacher Suppy Store in our area yesterday, "Teach 'em a Lesson" http://www.teachemalesson.com/
I could go crazy in there!!!!! I LOVE workbooks and they have every one I want. My daughter picked up Writting Prompt Cards, not something I was thinking of getting but she seemed excited about it and I want to go with anything that will get her interested in school work. I picked up "Building Spelling Skills" workbook, It looks great. I bought the 5th grade level, I really think I should have gone with the 4th grade level just because she has a bit of trouble with spelling. When I showed her the words she said if she studies she should be able to work with them. The store sent me home with a wonderful catalog - "Oh No"!

Watch What You Say!

Remember how I said I wanted to stop spending so much time surfing the net for new homeschool websites.... Well guess what my computer got a major virus and they had to wipe it our clean! All of my favorites were lost : (
I have been able to find the major ones like Oak Meadow, About.com. Enchanted Learning and a few others but lost some of the little goodies I had found. I am not going to try and fine them now, I think it was a sign I am spending too much time on the computer!

So Much To Go Over!!!!!!

My daughter went on a trip up north with my husband, they will be up in the PA. area for a few days.
During this time I thought I would go over my ideas for homeschooling..... Well I tell you I thought my brain was on overload!!!!! I just think there are just too many options out there and it is making me go no where with it. I spent the entire day looking a websites, reading reviews on what works for some families what doesn't ect., looking at unit study ideas... I even printed out a 58 page unit study that I found interesting which looking at it now I think it s a bit too over the top for my daughter and she will be bored with it : ( It just seems like I am frozen over what to teach her. Many websites and blogs ect. are parents who have little children who have either always homeschooled or have started at the K or 1st. grade level - I have been searching for homeschoolers who had children in the public school system for a number of years and then pulled them out like our situtation (My daughter is almost 12 and was in the middle of her 5th grade when we removed her). I think this has it's own set of problems because I am finding a number of issues with my daughter ex. She LOVES to write stories and has a wonderful imagination but the school system let her just go off and write with no regard for spelling the words correctly. I myself have always been a poor speller so I know the road blocks that can cause so I try and correct her but she get's all flabergasted and cranky. Other issues are, we will look at a topic to cover in the OM curriculm and she will say we covered that in school.... when I question her about what she remembers about it, She has very little recall of what was covered. I know in my mind I remember very little info. on the pilgrims, colonial times too.
Being the "teacher" now I worry about all of that : )
I have decided I am returning all of the "How to Homeschool" books and just keep a certain few fav. websites and just go with that for now, I am just spending way too much time "Looking" around and not enough time on schooling.....

The Wonderful World at the Library!

We took a quick trip over to the library after shopping at Walmart.
It is amazing how exciting I find the libaray since we started Homeschooling!
It really has such a wealth of information there, and the best part it's "FREE".
I have to admit I had a back over due book fine of - $27.80!!!!! I paid it but as things always go for me, they didn't file in into the computer the day I was there because their computer's were down. I didn't even get a recipt either : ( That was stupid of me..... I did take books out that day which I think shows I had paid the fine but today they gave me a hard time about taking books out.
I am still taking out all the books about how to "Homeschool", It really is just so much to digest.
We have found out that my daughter seems to learn a ton more ehn she watches the information. I have been using NETFLIX, I search for movies that cover the topics we are working on. She seems to be able to really have great recall of what is covered, alot more then we we read about it. NETFLIX has some really great documentary movies, also shows from the Discovery channel ect.
We bid on a few books at Ebay, they are okay but not really what we are looking for.
It's been hard getting back into the swing since the holiday's - We still have up our tree, I am enjoying it alot more now since all of the hubub of the holiday is over I can really look at the beauty of the lights. I told the kids, "Let's leave the tree up and just keep decorating it each month with the different holidays", they didn't think that would be a good idea : (