So far, so good!

10:45 am
Determined to get more accomplished and get us into a schedule of sorts, I tried to get the day started quickly today. I got up around 7:30 with C&C (Greyson slept until 9:00!), made coffee, and read my email and message boards. That is usually my biggest time sucker in the mornings and I wanted to give it up but I just can't. I did manage to put off my blog reading though. Maybe that will be my afternoon reward for a hard day's work.

I made breakfast for everyone at the same time, for once, and they ate and watched Little Einsteins while I emptied the dishwasher and straightened up the kitchen a bit. Next I got dressed and made my bed and then I announced that it was time for schoolwork.

Cameron and I started a new math chapter on division and he did two workbook exercises. It was his idea to do two but I was thrilled. We're going to have to do two a day if we want to finish this book up by our end of year, June 30th. Not that it matters, but it's fun to start a new year with a new math book.

Next we did phonics. In order to make some progress there, I decided that he would only have to read the word lists and not the stories in each lesson. Just the gesture of me offering to read the stories for him - as long as he followed along and read the words in his head while I read them aloud - was enough to relax him enough to want to take turns reading the sentences. WooHoo! I don't know why I never really though of that before. I read a post recently about how some kids got into word lists but got overwhelmed by books and some kids were the opposite, but there's no need to do both if it isn't working. Duh. Should've figured that one out! Anyway, it worked and I'm glad.

Now we are taking a break and I am going to do a little more cleaning and a little more planning for next year while the kids do a lot of playing. Cameron earned one of his new Star Wars LEGO sets yesterday from his chore chart and he's having a blast with it. He promised we could do science later this afternoon and we might also do art and/or go to the library. I'll update this post later this evening with the rest of our day. :)

3:00 pm
Well, we spent the afternoon putzing around. I didn't exactly get a lot of housework done, like I had hoped, but I did put some laundry away and then picked a whole sink full of fava beans from our garden. We had lunch, mostly together, and watched the new Disney show, My Friends Tigger and Pooh. It's pretty cute.

Next I reminded Cameron that he had promised to do science later and he went right over and grabbed his science books. It is so nice to have a cooperative student! We read a chapter on how the characteristics of a living thing, plant or animal, are passed down through generations. He didn't *quite* get it entirely, but I have the feeling that this is going to be one of those things that keeps randomly coming up in conversation over the next few weeks. We did an accompanying workbook page and then he was off to play video games (for the first time in ages).

Cassia loves to listen in during science and was very upset to see that we had skipped over a flip book on the life cycle of a plant. Cameron didn't want to have anything to do with it but she begged me to let her do it. We had a great time coloring it in and cutting it out and arranging the pages in just the right order. The "flip" part of the flip book didn't work very well - my bad cutting to blame, I'm sure - so she just sat down and looked at the pages like a real book. After a few minutes she runs over to me and asks me to write words in it so that she could read the book. She told me that they had to be easy words though because she was just a little girl. :) So I filled it with words like "seed," "shoot," "root," and "plant" and she sat down and read it over and over. That solidifies my decision that she is going to start Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading next school year (a.k.a. July). She is definitely ready to learn to read.

So it appears that my more ordered day went well. Now I think I should spend this week noticing at what times we normally do different things so that I can write up an official schedule - just to keep me honest.