Week 8, going great ;)

I had to have a cheesy title, sorry! :)

So far, so good... we're on week 8 of homeschooling and we're still enjoying it. DD begs to do workboxes daily (even weekends) and I have to come up with activities to keep her busy, even when she should just be playing!

We've completed lesson 41 in "The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading" and she's doing very, very well. She has read through SEVERAL of her phonics readers (including the 3 books of 4 stories each that our library had...we're returning the last book tomorrow!) and is trying to read everything. I have to keep introducing new concepts and rules to her so she can have a more fluent reading capability, but she is retaining a TON of the information! I was shocked at how much she learned from playing on starfall.com the other day in regards to the silent E! It's amazing how excited and willing to learn she is!

I am a day away from being 36 weeks pregnant and the sluggish, achy, tired, blahness is starting to creep in and I'm having to pretty much force myself to fill up DD's workbox each night and to seem excited during the day when she's doing the work. :) It isn't always easy, but somehow we are getting by (despite my grumpiness in the morning and fatigue in the afternoons!) and chugging along.

I've pondered how we're going to take breaks this schoolyear.... I've always imagined that we'll school year-round, but I cannot imagine going without taking some breaks. Obviously we'll take some time off when the new baby arrives, but I'm trying to decide how we can incorporate that somehow into a schedule of sorts. I'm afraid if we just "go with the flow", it'll be difficult to get right back into routine and that DD will be going crazy (and driving me crazy!) wanting to do her workbox.... I particularly do not want to slow down too much in her reading instruction. I'm thinking that we might take anywhere from 1-3 weeks off of a full school load once the baby arrives (assuming things are fairly settled down by then...if not, we can take more as needed!), but throw in at least 2-3 reading lessons and 1-2 Explode the Code worksheets within each "off" week just to keep things fresh and give DD something to do because I know she'll be asking!!!

Anyway, I just wanted to give an update on where we are and what we are up to! I'm very much enjoying the school year so far and am LOVING watching my daughter absorb all of this information and just run with it! I just wish I had a fraction of the energy to keep up! haha