Life on Planet Caddick

My homeschooling friends are pretty much in the same boat as me. We are all homeschooling boys, and at least one in each house is a teenager. I know we all love our boys very much, but I know we all need time with other moms, to talk about mom things. You've all been there - you get what I'm saying. So, as an ode to my family's love of all things tie-dye, I planned a tie-dye party. Yep, all boys, all thinking "lame" and other assorted things. And dang it, I don't know if they had fun, but the moms had a blast chatting and enjoying one of our last perfect days here in SC. Many colors were chosen. Most of the 'girly' colors are left! It was about 70* and not humid. Perfect day. Not looking very thrilled but playing along anyway. What good boys! He's enjoying himself at least!! My completed shirt The shirt I made for hubby Zach's completed shirt (our first attempt at a swirl)

Today we had a good time doing school. I know I should be able to say that every day - but the fact is, that's not always the case. Recent events have made me try to be a little more fun and a little less witchy (with a b) during school though. We've been lucky enough to have some beautiful weather lately so today we ventured out to do a science lab on predator and prey. I thought this was going to be super lame and almost skipped it - but Zach ended up enjoying it very much. The object: to catch as much (uncooked) pasta you could in 30 seconds using different tools as the predator. We used chopsticks, bamboo tongs, a fork, a knife, a spoon, tweezers, and a small cookie scoop. He didn't even mind writing his hypothesis and analysis. Always a plus for us. I can't get my pictures to upload though - so sorry. Too bad, my shadow was super skinny and looked pretty darn good!  Today we also talked a little about King Cyrus of Persia. When I said King Cyrus my son says "L...

Now that the boy is 13 we've opened a teen checking account for him. Before this he had a prepaid card and I just put his scant allowance on it each month and pressed forward. The problem was, he still wasn't figuring out what to do with his money. Since we are getting our house in financial order I figured it was a great time to teach him too. We don't have a curriculum. For things like this all you need is perseverance, patience, and something else that starts with a 'P'! I kid - just some common sense helps. He has a savings account already, so when he was old enough we made our way to the bank to get that checking account started.  When we got home I made a separate budget for him in our budgeting program, taught him how to make categories for things he wants/needs (ok just wants at this point - we take care of the needs, he is still a kid after all), and how to check how much money he had before he spent it. When the statement came we reconciled. We opened the ...

Well, the end of 7th grade is almost here. We have about 15 days left in our school year and we've been pushing forward with our state studies and some side trips. I wrote a quick post about our May trips on my other blog. Just good family fun. Something we definitely don't do enough. I think our year has been a success. History is always a struggle, but once we started focusing solely on states things went much better. We've also finished (completely finished) our math for 7th. Today we started working on our 8th grade math. If I can keep not so little man focused we should be working on Algebra in no time! We still struggle with writing. I know it's a skill he desperately needs but I'm at a loss when it comes to teaching it. We've been working paragraphs only for a while, but he needs to be writing papers at this point. Sadly, he's like me - his mind jumps from one subject to the next - so while he starts off great he gets the wandering off topic bug by t...

The first time I ventured into homeschooling my little man was in second grade. I was really good about pictures then. *sigh* now I'm just lame about pictures, even though I always have my phone close by and pictures should be easier to take. Today I was looking for a picture for Throw Back Thursday (which I love - you never know what you're going to see!) and I chose this winner It's from second grade - when we were studying Ancient Greece (or maybe Rome - I don't remember now). Dang, we really use to have a lot of fun. I need to fix that.....

We have been doing school - I swear! I'm just being uber-lame about my blogs these days. I guess because we aren't doing super fantastic wonderful things I figure "why write about it?". But I'm going to anyway :) We've made our way through Early Explorers and are now working on Colonial Times and the beginnings of the American Revolution. Zach's math is getting more complicated, so I've been reading up on some of that so I can help when there are questions (and there are always  questions!). But I've been losing him. So I decided to write my own unit study. Was it about the American Revolution? The Incan Empire? Taking a trip on the Mayflower? Nope - it wasn't about any of those things at all. When the eyes glaze over you know it's time to do something else - so I chose one of his favorite interests - Pokemon! I took about a week and made up some math, science, geography, and history questions all related to Pokemon. We learned how to make ...

Today I'm linking up with the Hip Homeschool Hop . This week we tried our hand at making soap. I've been wanting to try making soap for a while, but while reading our latest book about Ben Franklin they have soap and candle making activities. Doing a "requirement" for school is definitely a reason to make it happen! We are going to tackle candle making later this week - but for now it's soap making. I know young Ben didn't make soap with a melt and pour goats milk base, and I know they didn't add color (or probably fragrance), but that's how we did ours. Bonus points - I'm counting it as this week's art project too. Little man did all the coloring and swirling so he gets credit for that. He really did all of it - I just supervised and gave him direction. That's the good thing about melt and pour instead of cold process - no lye. Poor young Ben, what a nasty job that must have been! Putting colors in the molds He made them very colorful All ...

My effort in include art and PE this year has been hit or miss. That, sadly, is nothing unusual in this house! PE especially has taken the back burner ~ it usually does. I know I'm not teaching my son good, healthy habits by not doing something everyday. I hope that we can start making changes in that area. On the other hand art has been going much better. We've completed a few projects (which is a few more than last year). I get our ideas from pintrest or this book We've had this book since 2nd grade - it only took us 5 years to use it... It has lots of good ideas and we decided on Squares with Concentric Circles by Vassily Kandinsky. It was one of the easier projects :) That's how we roll around here! What the original looked like Our circles Completed project Zach enjoyed working on it, choosing his own colors and and how dark he wanted to paint each section. I had him make all the choices, did it need another coat of watercolor? How dark did he want the wax circles ...

I'm trying to make a concerted effort to include art this year in our homeschool. I'm not very artsy and I find teaching art - well, boring. But doing art, well even making bad art is fun! My son feels the same way, so we're going to do some fly by the seat of our pants painting and other projects this year. I pulled our first project off Pinterest (of course!). I'm not as addicted to that site as a lot of my friends, actually I rarely use it - but sometimes I find cool stuff I'd like to try and this idea was one of them The idea seemed super simple and I thought, why not - some cool artwork on the wall will be nice when we're done. So I drug the boy to Michaels, had him pick out some colors (along with the rest of the supplies), and we dove right in. He picked shades of blue and purple (which matches nothing in my house!) but again - it's more about the doing here... Hubby didn't paint - he was our photographer Hi Honey! All dry and waiting for our sw...

Today I'm linking up with the Hip Homeschool Hop! We have started our second week of 7th grade - woo hoo! So far things are going well. I'm using my new scheduling system and homemade planner, four days in I can say I'm enjoying using them both. Here's how I'm using my new system right now (we all know how us homeschoolers tweak everything as we go ~ at least I do!): This is what our week looks like scheduled out. I do my scheduling over the weekend - and yes, we only work four days a week. I use one sticky for each assignment, that's why there are so many! All our LA is on the green squares - so one says spelling, one says reading, and so on. It looks like a ton of work, but really, it's doable! Once the work is done I either write it in my book right away OR I stick the stickies into my book and write it in later. This usually happens at the end of the day when we are going full steam!  Eventually everything gets written in the book and my record keeping i...

I'm not a writer "Thanks Captain Obvious" but I do have to teach writing. I'm so bad at teaching writing skills that I sent my son back into the public school system to have them teach him the basics for me. Do I need to say it? You know it was an utter fail. As a matter of fact all his teachers knew how bad he was, but because he was so advanced in everything else we couldn't get him remedial help. Just let me point out that his teachers were exceptional and tried to help as much as they could within  the system. 'Nuff said, right? So I've tried all kinds of writing programs. And I mean at least a whole school year of curriculum money on writing alone. It's out of control. But he has to be able to write. He's a great speaker - the boy can talk about something and we're great. Putting it on paper - well, not so much. So last week I assigned him a 500 word essay. "What?"  Why would I do that to a non-writer? I let him use the computer ...

Goodness, I can't believe it's almost Christmas! Our year has been going pretty good though. Some things we're having problems with though: Getting my boy to remember anything about history. I don't know if we need something more hands on, more heavily invested in writing, or just some books to reinforce. Granted, the Middle Ages is sooo long ago for an 11 year old. To him, the 1980's is more like the middle ages. No computers? No video games? *gasp* how did we even survive he often wonders! One day he asked if we even had cars. Um yeah, no sweetie, we rode dinosaurs everywhere. Or Fred Flinstone cars. pshh We are backtracking through some missed, or not learned, math concepts from grade 5. He's still struggling with some of them, so I think that is right where we need to be. The middle of the year also starts the look to the next year. What's working for us? What isn't? What are we willing to change for the next year. After all, he will be in 7th grade ...

I follow Hip Homeschool Moms, both in blog form and on Facebook. I love them. A group of homeschoolers helping out other homeschoolers. Let's face it, we all need that sometimes! If you don't follow them you should! I love how on their FB page they will throw out random questions that make you think, laugh, or whatever. I also love that people message them (I'm just guessing here) and ask questions which get put out there for all the other page fans to see and hopefully help the stressed out, stumped homeschooling parent. I wish I had a chance to follow all the updates, but if I get on FB then lets face it - my schoolwork doesn't get done! My son's always gets done (um well, usually always). So when I saw an update the other day that said something to the effect of "play nice" it made me upset. I don't usually offer any tips if I have no experience. Sometimes I say 'we tried such and such, but it wasn't a good fit for our family' or whateve...

Well, I've been terrible about updating this blog - my other blog also sits on the sidelines waiting for me to update. We've had some setbacks in the last month. I finally realized my son was missing important math skills, so we've put our 6th grade math on hold and have moved back to 5th grade. We are moving through it pretty rapidly, focusing more on the things that he missed in public school. I'm not sure why this surprised me since I had to do this the first year we homeschooled too. I could just kick myself for being silly enough to put him into public school for those two years. I hope we can get on track and be at grade level by the end of the year. The bain of my college classes right now is Science. I've never been good at Science. This strikes me as odd since it is the one subject my son excels at. He took one of my pretests (not official, just in the book) and scored way better than I did. A college level test - one that sadly had me stumped. Plus I got t...

So, after getting rid of all my other blogs, here I am starting a new one. I must be crazy! This one is for all our homeschooling stuff. Not just the boys, but also my journey through WGU, where I'm enrolled to get my teaching degree. Parents can balance working at home, working outside of the home, and homeschooling - I figured I can learn and teach my little man at the same time! More to come....

I missed connecting with Hip Homeschool Moms this week on their Tuesday Hip Homeschool Hop. Boo! We are about six weeks into our school year and we've made some changes (who's surprised?), but that's how it goes around here. Remember this picture? Yeah, well the only thing left that we're using is actually the math. And little man is complaining about how it repeats, but we are staying the course with math. I know he needs the spiral approach with math, so he's just going to have to deal. So, what are we using know? Well, we are using Horizons Math. It works, and if he gets it, I don't assign every problem. That's helped calm him down a lot about the repetitiveness of it all. We really love Alpha Omega products. I know a lot of homeschoolers think they are not advanced enough, or whatever. The small sections work great for Zach, who is ADD, so I can't say enough good things about them. We switched from the AOP lifepacs in...

    I'm so jealous of the folks who homeschool without workbooks. On our homeschool journey we've spent  tried a lot of money on  curriculum. Sonlight, Abeka, Unit Studies, Monarch, and on and on. It really can be an expensive labor of love when you are trying to educate your own child. When I brought my son home again this year after two years in public school, all these missteps really came in handy though. I knew what would work for us, and what to stay away from. I wish I had been given the choice to learn a la Sonlight - I would have thrived, but I'm not the one doing the work. So, here is our curriculum for this year Yep, as you can see, all workbooks. Workbooks of all different kinds. Another lesson from all our previous mistakes! Sometimes I feel like we aren't doing it right because we are a workbook family. But in the end, it's all about making sure my son gets the best education. I've discovered that sometimes if you're not homescho...

Today I'm linking up with Hip Homeschool Hop hosted by Hip Homeschool Moms I started homeschooling again this year. My husband and I both felt it was the right move for Zach and even though it's been a couple years I still remember what needs to be done. Best of all I know what doesn't need to be done! Last time we homeschooled for two years (2nd and 3rd) and by 4th grade I had lost sight of the important things. I was so caught up in making it school at home , which honestly, I thought was what I supposed to do. Those parents who used every day experiences to teach their kids weren't doing it right! I wanted my son to be one of those homeschool kids who graduated when he was 16, scored perfect on his SAT/ACT, and got the awesome scholarship to Michigan State . I pushed until my son and I could barely be in the same room. I pushed until out of frustration I threw him into Public School and called it good. When we started this journey again, I started to ...

I try to keep my political ideas and ideals in my own house. Not because I don't feel like arguing with people (shoot I love to argue!), but because honestly, I don't fit into a category. Now though, some of my FB friends are starting to make their intentions clear about whom they're voting for in November, so I thought I'd give my 5 cents worth on the subject. 1. I believe in the right to keep and bear arms. I believe that I should be able to have guns in my house. I do have guns in my house -all bought legally. I think that if you make it harder to buy guns the only people that will have them are criminals. Which would then make me a criminal because I can tell you I'm not giving up my firearms. 2. I don't believe in abortion however I do believe that women who want to have abortions should be able to in a safe environment. Just because I choose not to doesn't mean other people should think like me. That's just dumb. 3. I believe marijuana shoul...

It's been a long time. There's been a ton of stuff going on. It's been a hard few months. Quick recap - My dad passed. Not ready to talk about that, moving on... I fell short of my required progress for last term. Now I'm on academic probation. I've never been on academic probation - ever. It's nerve wracking. It makes me feel like such a loser. But, at least the VA will cover this terms tuition but I've got to keep it together for sure now. No more crawling into bed for days at a time and just wanting to never get out again. After a terrible year at school for Zach, I struggled for months about homeschooling again. I decided to go ahead and do it. Surprisingly there was no argument from Erik. I just explained we needed to make him academically competitive with students outside of South Carolina. So far it's been working well. We sit across the table from each other and work on our schoolwork. Plus my science whiz has helped me with my Science clas...