First day of Homeschool for the 2009-2010 Year...

August 3, 2009

This is going to be my journey for the next year. With 4 kids and 2 of them diagnosed with special needs and our 3rd showing symptoms of the same disorder. Needless to say life is extremely choatic in our house and never a dull moment. Our 9 year old Joey (he's the oldest) is an Aspie kid with an additional diagnosis of OCD and ADHD. Our 7 year old Brayden has a diagnosis of Autism. Our 4 year old Lydia is the one showing symptoms similar to her brothers. But she could just be picking up on their habits too. Anyway when she is tired, she is very mean and destructive. She will throw books off a shelf just because she wants to. Our 19 month old Caty is a sweetie, but destructively explores everything. If we make it over the next 20 years without our house burning down, well I will be surprised due to the amount of daily destruction we clean up.

The kids fought alot today, which is not out of the ordinary. Joey and Brayden both kept getting on each others last nerve. Then Lydia got in the mix. I could try and blame it all on the excitement of last night's trip to the fair..but we all know that isn't the reason. I mean yes, it was a stressful experience with all the lights and noise and excitement of the rides. But we did get in at a decent time. Joey for some reason didn't sleep as well. I wish Brayden would have slept a little later too, but he was up by 7. Life is rough in our house and emotions always run really high. And tempers flare very high at any minute. I have to say the swords that Dad bought the kids last night haven't helped today.

Well it was our first day of school for the year. I decided to start earlier than usual due to the short attention span and many doctors appointments that Joey must go to throughout the year. My hope is that we will not fall behind in our required hours at any point then.

Since Brayden and Lydia still haven't officially started school, I had to keep them busy and keep Caty out of trouble too. Wow am I tired. I included Brayden in our science lesson on dinosaurs. We discussed the differences between the meat eaters/plant eaters and why the dinosaurs no longer exist. Then we invited Bryce and Blake out to make paper machie dinosaur eggs. I hid mini-erasers in the balloons that we used as support for our eggs. I didn't expect for all the kids to hate the sliminess of the paper machie glue. I expected it out of Joey and Brayden. But wow, they all were grossed out by it. I tried to help them to do it all together but then realized that we were better off doing the activity one at a time. So I helped make 5 eggs. We layered them wrong, but oh well we will just have to wait an extra day for them to dry so we can paint them. I think they will have a good time.

But throughout it all Caty kept herself busy, destructively investigating along the way. First she loved the texture of the paper machie glue, and decided to paint her whole body with it. She was a mess. She kept exploring the house and doing all kinds of things. But then there was a diaper accident and well, the carpet was baptized in nastiness. Fortunately Daddy was home, so he was able to save me there by running her to the bathroom while I cleaned the carpet so the kids did not get into the mess.

The kids kept playing and went in the pool when Aunt Lisa came out to get Bryce and Blake. Caty finally fell asleep for a nap about 2:45. I was so happy that she fell asleep on her own. But Lydia, although I have done stuff with her today, decided to continually create a mess. I have spent so much time cleaning today....I just feel exhausted from it all.

Finally after dinner, I have really been wanted a dish of fried ice cream. So instead of giving the boys haircuts that they really needed..decided to try and make fried ice cream. Without all the proper freezer time, it was a gloppy mess of goodness. So not a complete failure..guess that means I need to keep trying until it's perfect. Hope we don't gain too much weight from all the experimenting.

After ice cream for everyone, I had an English lesson with Joey. We are working on Grammar and parts of the sentences such as nouns, verbs and adjectives. He has a hard time remembering what is what. I am using Outburst Junior to draw him out. We discuss whether we are listing adjectives, nouns or verbs. Or we add adjectives to the nouns. There are many ways to play and make the game work for us. It's almost 9 now, so too late for haircuts. The girls and Joe are watching Mulan. I think I can run a third load of dishes tonight. I just can't seem to keep up with the dishes.

Tomorrow is another day and we are going to go to the park and get supplies for our dinosaur excavation. Should be fun. Then Agility Angels in the evening. May even get Bug some new school shoes tomorrow.

Off to play Farm Town now....