Holy Crap its Ocotber 8th!

I am a bad bad blogger. I think about you dear blog, I really do. Then my world crowds in around me and silly things like actually homeschooling my children take precedence. Seriously we have been busy. We have fought illnesses, braved making new friends, watched Gabe at his attempts with dating (which Hello he isnt allowed to date!) We have been grounded, gone on job interviews for jobs we dont want, lost a tooth, gotten haircuts... I wont promise to write more often cause I hate breaking promises. I will try to be a bit more consistent though.

Fifi:
In the past two weeks, Fifi my darling Fifi has master Addition with gummy bears, skittles, Care Bears and is now.. completely out of order, working with money. She gets it. She hasnt really ever worked with subtraction but to her money makes sense (cents LOL I am so tired I am slap happy)
Fifi is also working with more three letter spelling words. She insists on doing the same things Coco does so she is trying to write sentences, put them in ABC order and do a crossword puzzle. Umm, yeah, shes 4. She cant write sentences, ABC order requires ALOT of help and I can't make crossword puzzles with 3 lettered words. If anyone knows a site that will let me, tell me.
All three of my girls are also going to be in a play next month. Lola got one of the leads and Coco got a decent part and Fifi is grouped with all the other preschoolers in the play. We have rehearsals three to 5 days a week for the next month. I will youtube the play for those that want to see it.

Coco:
Coco is in the process of learning fractions. We have completed the math facts through the 12's table and are working on moving on to the wonderful world of fractions. My mom bought this great kit a few weeks ago and Coco was so excited to break it out. Its called Five Fun Ways to Learn Fractions and Decimals. I think she got it at the Christmas Tree Shop.
Since Mimi has stopped coming here, Coco has done so much better with her spelling and language arts. We are working with punctuation in Language Arts but in three days she was though periods and such. She is working on semi colons, commas, and quotation marks now. I am using the CC for most of it. I love our Comprehensive Curriculum guides. I bought new ones for next year and the year after for Coco and Fifi. Lola wants to go to public school next year.
In Science we are revisiting the formations of the planet. Apparently, Coco was distracted the first time. We are doing it over again as we start our chapter on lithospheres. We started working with matter but she knew it as well as I did so we went backwards for a bit.
We are finally on Delaware. The girls insisted we actually study Connecticut. They liked the easy week LOL. We made art projects of historical moments in CT history. We looked up all of our friends and family on the maps. We talked about the land forms that we had been too, the state parks, the beaches, the mountains... Now we are on Delaware.
Both of the older girls are now taking ASL as an independent study. I have provided them the books and videos and they are learning with each other. Once a week, they show me what they have learned.
Coco is also taking a new creative writing class at the library. She loves it!
Lola:
Lola has started fractions again too. We are reviewing adding and subtracting fractions from last year before we start the tough stuff.
Her spelling is damned near perfect as always. They are all still using http://www.aaaspell.com/ and http://www.theteacherscorner.net/ for most of our spelling needs. I love that aaaspell puts all of my work together for me and theteacherscorner lets me make crossword puzzles, word scrambles, word searches, math sheets and more...
We are working on the nervous system in Science now. It is not as easy as I thought it would be. I have been searching online for a body systems workbook. There are very little printable work for certain systems so we are just reading and talking about it. I have had to read the work first and make my own worksheets for her. A few of our sites have some printables like http://www.enchantedlearning.com/ and even theteacherscorner. Todd also went online and found some National Geographic specials on the human body. If anyone has any ideas on how to teach specific systems please let me know. Later this month we are starting the skeletal system, I plan to use the Hannah Montana Bone Dance song lol.
All four kids have been working with poetry this month. We worked on legends last month. The girls each wrote 2 legends and this month they have written a million poems. I have everything from
M-Makes me breakfast
O-Outstanding reader
M-Makes me lunch
M-makes me dinner
Y-Why because she love us.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Lola stinks
Just like poo

We are now reading Shel Silverstien with Fifi and Coco and Emily Dickenson with Lola. Nacho is reading Poe but not saying much about what he is reading. I would hate to ruin poetry for him but quizzing him.

Lola is also learning Spanish, ASL and Creative Writing independently. I get some great stuff from her when I don't tell her what to do. I wish that worked with all of them but alas, I have Nacho...

Nachos entire homeschooled day comes from the text books we bought online. Every Sunday I sit down and review the work he did do independently and write out his next weeks schedule. He also spends about three hours every Sunday catching up and finishing the work he didn't do. This system, as much as it drives the controlling neat freak in me crazy, works for him. He understands the work. He asks questions and is actually doing quite well. It drives me nutty that he does it all in one day but hey... whatever works right?
I know he is working on quadratic expressions, properties of matter, Vikings, Norse mythology, building an herbal remedy for eczema (which he has) and poetry. He isn't writing any but he is reading them and I honestly think that is more important.
He working on 6 to 8 Spanish verbs a week in three tenses and making sentences that make sense on weekends. He is using some of the http://www.livemocha.com/ stuff and some Rosetta Stone but not much, he doesn't like them.

All in all, we are finally making some friends here. We have been able to get out and go on a homeschool field trip with them. Nacho has a sudeo girlfriend who is also not allowed to date. Lola loves the whole play thing and being the center of attention. Coco loves her creative writing class and roller skating. When asked what her favorite part of the writing class she replied, no one else from our family is there... And Fifi loves her art projects and roller skating. She is also loving the fact that we got for her all of the Disney classics on DVD so she can watch movies that seem like old hat to us but sadly they are all new to her. She loves Robin Hood and Cinderella. Who knew she had never seen them?