Just the Bare Minimum

Well, it's been about a month since my last post and I've been doing school. The basic read, write, math school.  But we've made plenty of time for field trips. In fact, every day we try to have an "adventure" of some sort.

It's educational to go to muddy hot springs, right?

We were in Victoria. Dustin felt that to be there is an inspiration, but it sure isn't stress free. We were trying to find a rental. At first we didn't know how long we even wanted the rental. We finally bit the bullet and rented out our house in Cardston. That made us very committed. Then we really had to find a place. Haha. Good luck. Renting anything in Victoria is a miracle. Eventually, we found our miracle, but it was a miracle that was not available for a couple of weeks at least.

Great. Ugh. We are a big family. A big loud messy crazy family. We had exhausted our stay among Victoria family. What now? MOMMY! :)

Yep, we went home to my mom and dad in Utah. My mom said "Oh, it is so wonderful to have you. Before you came our house was quiet and dead, but now it is full of life and love. I love these little kids."

What a blessing. I love my mom and dad so much. Their love for my family is like a warm cozy blanket that just envelopes all of us. Blessed blessed. yep yep.

My life is made easier by being here.  This is what I've needed. If you couldn't tell, I've been a bit messed up these last few months. I've needed simplicity. Here I can get that better than other places.

Really, all we've done for school is one-on-one time. For the past couple of months we have been doing one-on-one on my bed. I thought it would create better feelings and be comfy, but it just made us sleepy and lazy, so goodbye bed-school.

So, math:

Daniel has mastered what two numbers make ten. One fun way Rightstart has us do this is by playing "Go To The Dump" aka "Go fish." Instead of having a match with finding the same number, you have a match when two cards add up to ten. Daniel Loves this.

and it works:

With Hyrum, slowly but surely he's learning the real names of numbers. We are continuing with where we left off (ie counting by fives, learning time, learning place value etc.)

And Maxwell is learning long multiplication and how to find the area of things. We are having to redo his multiplication timed tests because, even though he has mastered the concepts behind multiplication better than ever, he's gotten slow.

And just because I haven't instigated any crafts, doesn't mean that crafts have stopped. They made such things as clay snakes:

Valentines:

Hyrum dragon books

And Maxwell Dragon books, and dragon books, and dragon books.

My homeschool creative juices haven't totally stopped flowing either. Check out my newest sight-word drawing. Want to know how to spell "month?" well, "The month of January is FROZEN!"

I must say I'm quite proud of this one. ;)

Who knows, maybe I'll get around to history crafts this week. Stay tuned.