Its been a while...

Life seems even more chaotic than usual lately and so I just haven't made time to pop in here to write anything.

We have found it very difficult to find out feet so far this year. It seems that the older two boys in particular have made it their personal goal to frustrate and exhaust me this year.

I started out the year with a variety of resources hoping to inspire a new level of diligence in he boys but unfortuntely they have fought me every step of the way. Add to this the wonderfully distracting toddler and it seems chaos reigns most days in our house.

So  after a rethink and some restructuring and a few emergency meetings of the heads of state I think we have found a way to make things work.

We start our days around 9am with a Bible reading and a daily devotion. After this I read aloud from any number of books relating to either out science studies or our Social studies theme. While I do this the children draw, cuddle up or play lego. The toddler usually sits with us and plays but gets bored after a few minutes so tends to wander around trying to engage one or other of us in some sort of rowdy play. LOL Hence the reason I have arranged for 1 grandmother to take him out on Tuesday mornings and the other to take him to music and movement on Wednesday mornings.

After our reading and discussion I usually hand out the days writing assignment. Most times this relates to our reading but sometimes I make it something totally seperate. The children work on their writing while I prepare morning tea. They eat their morning tea while they are writing and then usually take a short break.

After this it is up to them either they work on their individual research projects or they work on their math.

On the days that we have no outside activities I try to have some sort of hands on activity relating to our mornings work. Today we made popcorn for morning tea as this is one of the delicacies of the Inca people whom we are studying. However the thing I am finding the most frustrating is the state of the house. It is always so messy and I am constantly having to step over clutter and mess to get from one room to another. I just don't have the time or the energy to get it all done.

I have found that our days tend to stretch out without the use of workbooks because we get involved in our reading or projects and really we need the afternoons free to fully imerse ourselves in these. The boys still hate writing but I can see some gradual improvement in ds11's attitude this week after a disasterous Monday. He is doing a lot of oral narration which I write down and then he copies it out in his 'fancy' writing. We are working up to indipendent written narration but as writing is a weak area for him we aren't there yet.

Ds13 is driving me nutting with the lack of effort and enthusiasm he has for anything that doesn't directly involve him or that he doesn't directly benefit from. I feel at a bit of a los as to how to get him to move beyond this phase but apparently I am not alone in this struggle as many other mothers have shared about similar issues with their 13 year old sons.

We have our usual excess of activities happening each week, Athletics and basketball on Monday, Rugby and gymnastics on Tuesday, Choir on Wednesday, Basketball practice and keyboard lessons on Thursday and then every 2nd Friday we are involved in a HS boys group for boys aged between 11 and 15. We meet at various places and do fun activities. So far we have had a skating day, a swimming day and this week we have a Survivor type challenge at the beach. Next term I am cutting back a bit on activities and those we have will not be ntil after 3pm which will mean 5 afternoons at home and more time to get things done.

On the up side (lol) BabyR is no longer a baby and is now fully toilet trained including being dry most nights. He is fully weaned and sleeping through most nights although he does usually wake around 5am and come in with us and has been known to appear at odd hours of the night, climb into our bed with us remaining totally unaware until we find him there in the early hours of the morning. He is talking a lot now and says some very funny things often insisting on using words of his own for things even though he knows the correct word. Now if he would just get over his fear of sudden unexplained noises then perhaps he would fall asleep on his own again without worrying about every little unusal noise.

Miss8 is also doing really well this year. She has taken to writing like a pro and except for the numerous spelling mistakes she is writing 2- 3 paragraphs independently most days. She is also doing very well with her math and reading. Although she declares that she doesn't really like math and isn't very good at it. However I do beg to differ as she is doing things that I think are very complicated considering last year was her first proper year of doing 'school work' Although she reads well she has numerous other things she would rather be doing such as playing her keyboard or playing lego.

So as you can see life is as usual VERY BUSY!