Back to school

We did start back to doing some school so far this week, but with me being sick it hasn’t gotten very far.

We are getting snow again today so that is a big distraction. He’s been complaining all morning that he wishes we were already moved so that he could just go in the yard and enjoy the snow with Hershey. In some ways I wish we were moved already as well, so I could kick him outside when he starts whining about these things and then I could enjoy the quiet with a cup of tea. Oh, the daydreams….

I’m really not happy with being sick again. This time it is in my jaws area. They are swollen and sore which makes it hard to talk. My throat hurts and I have some laryngitis. I know this should all mean something. Oh, I have a book on things like this from the library. “Your Body Speaks Your Mind” by Deb Shapiro. Here’s what it says about laryngitis: losing your voice means nothing can be said, so you are emotionally safe; or it implies that you have lost touch with your inner strength, your ability to speak up. So I guess I have some soul searching to be doing and figuring out why it would be coming up now. Off to get some more rest!

Games on the computer

SO yesterday I did show Tyler how to find out about his Rescue Heros on the Fisher Price website. We found some of the names, but there are still 2 that we don’t know. One is a robot and the other is in camoflauge.

Actually, I showed Tyler how to type in the words he wants to search for in the google search bar at the top of our Internet Explorer. I installed this thinking it would be easier for him to search than telling him he had to either go to google’s website or to the comcast homepage in order to do searches. The we talked about the search results and how to go where you need to go. I have McAfee’s Site advisor installed so it ranks the sites – green check marks are OK sites to visit, any other color you need to ask mommy or daddy first. Then we did some basic navigator around the websites so he could see how to click on things and use the back button. I have pop-ups blocked for the most part, but what to do if one pops up, etc.

Later in the day he wanted to look at the website again, so I showed him how google search is set to remember things he’s searched for before so he doesn’t have to re-type everything (and so I can keep track of things he’s been doing.) He was all excited that he did everything else himself.

This morning he watched a Rescue Hero movie and it finished up before I got out of the shower. So while I was still in the shower, he went to the computer and went out to the Rescue Hero site again. I don’t have a problem with this because he needs to get comfortable doing these things. Then all of a sudden I heard all these noises. I came out and realized that he had found the games section of the website. There are 5 games out there for him to play. He’s played all of them. Some of them require the use of the mouse and some require him to use the arrows, so he’s practicing those skills.

I guess I’m going to have to start thinking about parental controls software at some point. I don’t think he would go places he shouldn’t intentionally, but there have been plenty of times I’ve somehow ended up at sites that I didn’t want to be at without much warning.

New skills

Still not doing the curriculum again yet. However, he taught himself a new skill today. Yes, this one was ALL BY HIMSELF. He figured out how to send Hallmark’s e-cards to more than one person at the same time by checking more than one name. He is very proud of himself. This is a BIG deal to him.

He is now addicted to Hoops & Yoyo. He doesn’t really care what the card is for (i.e. he was looking at holiday cards today for Cinco de Mayo, Thanksgiving and Christmas) as long as the animation is something that makes him laugh. He also like interactive cards. He spent hours yesterday catching a leprechan in a net for a St Patrick’s Day card.

Now we have to go find a site that shows pictures of Rescue Heros with their names so that he can identify a couple Rescue Heros that he has that he can’t remember the names. They are robot looking ones so not the standard Billy Blazes or Wendy Waters. I’m hoping it will be easy and they will just be at rescueheros.com.

But first the puppy needs his afternoon walk and we need fresh air and sunshine. So out we go. I’m enjoying this warmer weather and sun! Though they are saying that we have snow in the forecast for Saturday again. This has been a nice little break. Most of the snow is gone so it has been replaced with mud and that lead to giving the puppy a bath this last weekend, but at least we can be outside and have the window open part of the day for fresh air in the apartment.

Taking a break

Well, it seems as though we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled curriculum. Right now we are only 3 days behind (if you count today) so not by much.

In the mean time, there is lots of learning going on. As you know he’s been typing and emailing – LOTS!!! He’s also found a new hobby online. His Aunt Sandy sent him a e-card from hallmark.com for the Chinese New Year. At first he played it over and over and over and over and over again. Then he discovered the links to other cards. Now he knows he can click on the link for the card from Aunt Sandy and he can get to all those other wonderful Hallmark cards. His favorites are the interactive ones. He will sit and play the cards for hours a day. He’s learned that St Patrick’s Day is Mar 17th and April Fool’s Day is Apr 1st. Now he is begging me to teach him how to actually send the cards to people. I’ve put it off while we talk about how some people don’t have sound on their computers so sending them ones that tell instructions are not going to work, but ones that just have background music are OK. So he’s now figuring out the difference between the 2. Of course, every time he plays a new card, he has to show it to me so I’ve seen my share of Hallmark cards lately.

He has also been designing and making his own magazine along the lines of Ranger Rick. He has a 3-ring binder and hole punched paper. He’s drawing pictures and cartoons to go in it. He says it is supposed to be the February edition. Unfortunately all his workers quit and went to Florida so he is having to do all the work himself. I guess even in imagination land it is hard to find good, reliable workers.

Right now he is setting up to play Monopoly with Nea and Elan. It is very good that the cats don’t have to leave their good napping spots in order to play. It is amazing how well Elan moves her pieces from the safety of our closet while sleeping. They must have so special powers I don’t know about.

We are starting to see issues related to the move. It is just over a month away so right on schedule based on past experience. Things from here on in will be a rollercoaster. I’ll just make sure I hang on for the ride.

Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!!!!!!!!!!! No big plans here. We’ll be having dinner with some friends that are in town for a convention.

Now back to our schooling. Today has been a flurry of emails!! Grandpa Randy has a snow day today so there was a little frustration on Tyler’s part that he wouldn’t be responding to an email sent yesterday. But Grams is at work and they’ve been sending them back and forth every few minutes, so I think that is making up for it.

He started out wanting to change the color of the font today. So first I had to show him how to change the emails from Plain text to Rich text. In Plain text it just looks like a typewriter with no color, etc. Then I showed him how to highlight and change the color of the text. So off he went with different colors. We did have to talk about some colors not being so easy to see on the screen, but I think he understands that now.

Then Grams sent him things with wingdings and webdings. We could see the wingdings, but our security settings blocked the webdings (we got that worked out). Then Tyler wanted to reply with those, so I had to show him how to change the font and change the color and then change the font back to type his name. He picks up on these things so fast. Now there are lots of people getting hearts in their emails (hopefully they’ll be able to see them and not just a “Y”.)

We still haven’t gotten back to our normal subjects (math, reading, etc) yet, but man is he learning a lot of stuff right now. We supposedly (according to Tyler) are going to do a little school this afternoon. But he wants to finish getting his pups birthdays and various other events that he has on his calendar first.

I was concerned that with all this typing he would get tired and go back to the hunt and peck method, but he has been keeping his fingers on the right keys and typing the way he should. So this is a lot of very good practice.

Typing

*** This is the 2nd post of today so scroll down and read the other one first. It will help this one make more sense.

So I did what I said I was going to do. I set up Outlook on Tyler’s computer. It has his email set up to download only a copy so I can still keep track of things. I also set up a list of contacts for him. Then I let the contacts know so when they get an email from his address they would know it was his (also in case any of them needed to allow the email address onto their approved lists.)

He’s already received one email and responded. It took him about 45 minutes to type 4 short sentences, but he was loving every minute of it. My mom emailed me that she was excited about getting emails from him in the future. So I told her about his first one and told her how glad I was that he was doing this. I also told her “I think it is great!!! I figure the more practice he gets the better and what more practical way then to let him type things to others. If he was just typing in Word all the time, he would get bored. So for now all of you are part of my lesson plans to get my son to type better. Homeschooling rocks!!!”

So after he responded, I showed him a little about where the email went “Sent Items” and how when things got deleted they went to “Deleted Items”. I showed him where his contact are in “Contacts” and this afternoon he wants me to show him how to send without just replying to someone, so he wants me to show him how to put the contact in the “TO:” field.

But he got side tracked by the Calendar. I had things on there still from when I was using it. So I HAD to spend my lunch deleting all the appointments and birthdays that I still had on there. Then I showed him how to enter his birthday. Now he is going through and adding all his pups birthdays.

*For those not in the know, the “pups” are some of his stuffed animals. Awhile ago he was a wildlife rescuer and he rescued these wolf pups. He also did rehabilitation, I think. Anyways, all the pups have names (Otter is a wolf pup shaped like an otter, etc.) He also gave them all birthdays and for awhile was checking their weight with a calculator (how else would you check weights when they don’t register on the scale – yes, he did check the scale first.) The weight was an issue because with rehabilitation, they needed to be gaining weight to get better.

OK, he entered some of his pups birthdays and then remembered he wanted to email Grandpa Randy. So I showed him how to start a new email and put the contact in the “TO:” field and he is off typing again. He says he will come back to the birthdays after this.

At this rate, we’ll never get the rest of school done today. But I can’t complain because he is learning!!!!!

Catching Up

We caught up on Thurs & Fri of last week’s work yesterday. I wasn’t feeling well and I was short on patience so there was no school on those days. He did good with it all. He had 2 computer lessons. The first one was on Excel (spreadsheets). He learned what rows, columns and cell addresses are. He also learned about entering information in cells and then using tab or enter to move to different cells. His second lesson was his very first typing/keyboarding lesson. He learned about finger placement and home row. So he got to practice the keys: A, S, D, F, J, K, L, ; with his thumbs on the space bar. He also practiced G & H so that he knows his fingers have to move off the home keys to get to other letters. He did really good. His ring fingers, like most people, are the weakest. So I told him that practice would help him get better.

He spent more time last evening and this morning doing more practice on his own. Of course, there aren’t many words you can spell with those letters so he kept asking which fingers did which keys and how do you spell “________”. But he is getting the hang of it. I had spelling and grammar check set to check while you are typing, but the green underlines (which is grammar) were getting distracting for him. So I turned the grammar check off unless you use spell check. Hopefully, that works better for him the next time he types.

He told me he wants to start typing emails now. I told him it’s just like typing in Word (which I pinned to the Start menu so he could get to it easily.) He told me that what he really wants me to teach him is how to open Outlook and get it ready to type. So I’m going to have to go set up Outlook on his computer. It used to be the computer that I used so all our email addresses are still stored over there and I don’t want the emails to download over there. We do have an email address set up for him. I just have to get it set up over there and have it save copies of the emails to the server so that they still download on my computer and I can keep track of what he’s doing over on his. I’ll also make sure I have the correct email addresses for the people who he would want to email to: like family and friends.

He is so impressed with himself that he knows about computer stuff age-wise before I knew about it. I tried to explain that regular people didn’t have computers in their homes when I was his age, but he doesn’t believe it. Ah, the joys of youth – when everything that you do is being done for THE FIRST TIME EVER.

Ice Skating

We did go ice skating last night and had lots of fun. I am going to have to admit that I forgot the camera so there will be no pictures. Now in my defense, I did have a lot to do and remember before heading out the door. I had to make sure the dog had gotten enough exercise to be wore out, get his treats ready so he would be distracted from chewing up anything of ours, get our library books around, get extra clothes for warmth for skating and get out the door. Then we headed to the library, to the ATM to get cash for the ice skating, to get the truck washed (the poor thing hadn’t been washed since before all the snow started flying over 7 weeks ago and we could barely see the white color – it was dirty brown, not to mention all the de-icer stuff that was coated on it), pick up Trent from work, decide where to eat dinner, eat dinner and then get to ice skating. That’s a big list.

OK, back to ice skating. Tyler ended up going around a total of 5 times in an hour. The open skate only gets 1/2 the rink because there are lessons on the other half. So the first time around he hung onto the wall and held Trent’s hand to go across the middle section. The 2nd & 3rd times, he used this sled thing that they had there. I thought it would be good because then his weight is more centered as opposed to off center from holding the wall. He was getting pretty comfortable doing that because he was starting to go faster and even do some glides. Then the 4th time around he chose to use the wall again. During this time I was the one that stayed with him and protected him – some of the kids and adults don’t really watch where they are going while skating so we had to protect him from people coming up behind him and hitting him. Then I was done. He went around 1 more time holding the wall with Trent and then they were done as well. We were all tired and sore.

While on the ice, about 1/2 way through, Tyler decided that he wants to skate again here and that he wants to take lessons when we move. I told him I would look into it. I know there is the Ice Box in South Bend, but I know they are big into hockey so I don’t know about their lessons. However, during the car ride home, he stated that maybe when he’s 10 he will be ready to let go of the wall. So maybe lessons are not in the mix. Not that I would mind if they are out because I am not too big of a cold sport person. I can do cross-country skiing but you are working so hard that you are usually sweating and you are outside where there is probably the sun. Inside and cold is not fun for me.

Independence

It is amazing what a little thing like being able to read does for school time. Now that Tyler can read things like directions and the questions, things are getting easier for me. I don’t have to stand over him and read everything and explain everything to him. Now I get to tell him what pages and then he asks questions when he doesn’t understand a word. I do still have to teach, but the worksheet portion of school has become more independent. I’m excited about it and I know he is as well. If I look at him while he is doing his work, he reminds me “I can read it myself so just leave me alone.” So I go do something else until I hear, “What’s this word?”

Tonight we are going ice skating. I’m taking the camera so hopefully I will be able to post some pictures tomorrow.

Monday morning

I left off with the testing last Wednesday. So Thursday, we did school quickly in the morning so that we could go to The Hangout Learning Center in the afternoon. Hangout Learning Center website I was supposed to have a meeting with the owner about how she set her center up because I’m thinking I might want to set one up after we move to Indiana. However, she had a family emergency so there was no meeting. Tyler got to play though so he was excited. He made some friends, made some art projects, and played in the gym. He had so much fun that he wants to go back again sometime (which shouldn’t be too hard since I still want to meet with the owner.) It, of course, started snowing while we were there so the drive home was not very pleasant. Then later that evening I had a phone meeting with one of the ladies that started the Homeschool HUB in Niles, MI. Homeschool HUB website She was very nice and answered a lot of my questions. Niles is only 45 minutes from where we are going to be living so it’s not too far. I’m not sure I’m really ready to open my own homeschool resource center, but I know I will talk with this lady more (maybe I could even apprentice with her for a year until I’m ready) and I might teach some classes at her facility.

As a side note, I’ve already started my own homeschool support group and I have members. So I’m excited!!! I’ve joined a couple other support groups (one being state-wide) so I’m making some contacts and friends. I’ve also started my own Roots & Shoots group and our first meeting will be in April. So I do have a lot going on to cement me into this new community that we are moving to. Trent & I have discussed the fact that this move is a long-term one. We will be staying in the area until Tyler is ready to graduate from our homeschool high school. Then who knows since that’s years away, I think I have plenty of time to plan it later.

On Friday, we only got about 1/2 of our school done. We were giving away a lot of our big furniture (couches, dressers and beds) on Sunday and I think that was stressing Tyler out. Not that he was so attached to the furniture, but the fact that it meant change. So he was very whiny and not focused. I got tired of battling with him about school and called it a day. He spent a great amount of time putting together a puzzle that we have of the United States and telling me which states go next to each other and which ones go on top (north), etc. So he was still learning, just in his own way.

Saturday morning had the boys going to Home Depot for the Kids Workshop. They built a race car. It was the #20 Tony Stewart car, but it does actually have working wheels so it does drive. Working wheels are an issue because he just doesn’t understand how you could have a toy car and not be able to drive it. The afternoon took Tyler to zoo class. The class title was “InvestiGATORS”. So he learned about crocodiles and alligators (similarities and differences.) Teeth are important and are different. Also he was telling me that alligators slide on their bellies more (I’m thinking because they have shorter legs) and have webbed feet so when they lay their eggs they create a mound, but crocodiles dig a hole to put their eggs in and cover the hole. Both have leathery eggs so that they don’t break when they fall against one another in the mound or hole. He also got to touch an alligator tail – they even gave the kids pictures of them doing it. While he was learning, Trent & I had a date – well, that’s what we call time without Tyler and it’s not much so it’s special. We took the puppy for a big walk at City Park (right next to the zoo.) The puppy was happy and wore out after it. Trent & I actually got to talk, uninterrupted, so that was nice.

Sunday morning was the final cleaning of the furniture going away and then it was picked up. We then rearranged some of the stuff that is staying so that I have a few staging areas for getting things boxed and ready to move. Trent talked with his brother, Todd, and his dad. We had pizza from Proto’s – everyone was too tired and wore out to cook and we had to eat before the Super Bowl. On the walk to pick up the pizza, I picked up some treats for Hershey. He basically ate a whole new bone while the game was on. It was rawhide wrapped around a bone thing that was beef flavored. He figured out how to get the middle piece out and that is gone. There is a little rawhide left. We were wishing for more impressive commercials during the game. The Career Builder ones were good, the beer commercials were great (rock, paper scissors one, I think was the best) and we noticed that the OCC (Orange County Choppers) boys got into 2 commercials this year – HP and GoDaddy. It bugs me to no end to see commercials during the Super Bowl (and this is not counting the local stuff) that I’ve seen already – like the Shick Quattro commercial. Hello – you spent all that money and then you do a rerun! Anyways, game-wise, I was glad to see Peyton get his ring. I think he is a good QB and that he is a good team leader. The game was interesting because you never knew when some turnover was going to happen – thank you rain – and the game was close during most of it.

This morning he has been doing the state puzzle again. He’s been bringing over states that we could drive through when we move – he’s brought me about 4 different routes. It started with “this is the route I think we will take” then “or we could go this way” then “if we took the southern route” then “if we took the northern route”. I offered to show him the atlas and where the roads were that we are going to take, but he’s too interested in the states right now (maybe another day.) I don’t think he’s going to get any new states to add to his list on this move because he’s been through them before.

Well, maybe I can convince him to eat some breakfast.