First Day of Fall Quarter

First day trying to get back into a routine and it worked great! Well, ok, my grandiose plans about trying to work a cleaning schedule back into our lives hasn't quite manifested itself yet but I'm working on it. We did get school done though.

Cameron read a Pixar Little Golden Book, Mater and the Ghost Light and then Cassia read Road to Reading's Cat Hat. It was a bit above her (I really, really HATE how "level 1" books are never really appropriate for beginning readers) but she pushed her way through, with my help, and was able to actually read at least half of the words. At one point I even offered to read the rest for her but she declined, wanting to do it all by herself. I like that. :)

Next we did Grammar/Language/Writing. I decided to finally take on the FLL lesson on dictation with Cameron, so first I set up Cassia with a copywork sentence from the book she had just read. Ralph was a happy cat hat. She did great with it. Her only flaw was writing all of her "a"s in capital. She attempted the lower case ones several times, but finally gave up and went with the capitals. So she knows the right way to do it, she just found it too hard this time and I'm totally cool with that. For Cameron, I dictated the sentence, "March is a windy month." We discussed how a sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark. We discussed how you determine which punctuation mark to use. He was sure he wouldn't be able to do it at first, but we sounded the words out together and he did great. I had to help a lot with the spelling of "month" but other than that he did perfectly.

Math was next and Cameron did several pages on comparing fractions. He is a natural with them and had no problem conceptualizing the fact that the fraction with the bigger number on the bottom is actually the smaller fraction. It totally made sense to him. Cassia did several pages on visualizing the subtraction process by crossing out balloons or vases to be "taken away." She did great too, except for writing a lot of her numbers backwards. I think it's a left-handed thing for her.

That was the end of our official school day because then it was gymnastics time. Nothing special went on there except a few temper tantrums from the napless one and lots of mothers ooohing and aaaahing over Linus. I did have a moment or two when, with a babe in arms, a child in class, and two in the play area, I wondered how I had ever thought three kids was a lot. LOL, I remember when one kid seemed like a lot to manage! Funny how we adapt.

Anyway, schooling with a newborn is not so tough. That two-year old is getting more and more challenging by the day but in not too long he will be a three year old and then he will be four and I'll have a different two year old to deal with! And then one day they will be gone and I know I will be longing for those quirky little temperaments again. I met a mother of four/grandmother of eight a few months back who said that she found that four children were plenty... and then she paused and said, "but once they are grown, you never had enough of them." I can totally see that being true. I'm already having those pangs, knowing this is our last. So I am cherishing every moment with my sweet young newborn and trying to appreciate every moment I have with all of my little miracles because I know they are only mine to borrow and time will move too fast...