Ever get that feeling that something has got to give?  I'm there.  About a month into the school year and I'm not sure we'll make it with our sanity intact.

Of course, both kids are homeschooled, so that requires planning, teaching, grading etc.  Lots of time.  both kids added athletics; golf and football.  My hubby is the football coach.  Both are Monday through Thursday with Football games on Saturday. There is also Girl Scouts for Callie and myself (a leader, not to my daughter's troop and SU Manager).  Callie attends the local Middle School for two art classes and violin, this is Monday through Friday for 6 hours daily.  And to top it off, we've started attending church 60 miles away.   All this means the next day of doing nothing is very far away.

What is truly amazing is we are pulling it all off with only one vehicle.

My son had 41 spelling words last week.

I teach my kids spelling and grammar rules, but we do things in a way that feels natural to us.  Reading is core to our literature based education, so I have no concerns about them not having a diverse vocabulary.  As I review their work, any misspelled words are added to a list.  This list becomes next weeks spelling list.  If I see them struggling with a specific rule, I will add words that will help them understand it.  I use Spelling City to create lists and worksheets for them to work on that week.

Theoretically, they could have no spelling, but this has yet to happen. Usually they hover around 10 to 20 words, but my son had a epic week.  Most were errors because he didn't want to take the time to look up the word, but 41 is a lot of spelling words!

Books are the core of not only my children's education, but my own continued education.  I'm currently reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and How to Rule the World From Your Couch by Laura Day.  Brent is reading James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling. Callie is reading The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare and numerous other books.

This is my first time participating in the Homeschool Hop.  I love seeing all the different blogs out there.  There is such a wonderful community of homeschoolers.

For those of you stopping by, our homeschool is quite eclectic.  We use a thematic approach, it has been the only thing to keep my kids interested.  I homeschool a 4th and 8th grader.  This is our 3rd year of homeschooling.

Welcome!

I'm looking forward to a normal week.  If there is such a thing.  While this week wasn't a bad week, it wasn't normal either.  Callie was sick two days last week and really struggled getting the extra work done on top of her regular weekly assignments.  This was due to planning problems.  By Wednesday we sat down to go over her schedule and plan out her remaining assignments.

Our cats seem determined to undermine the kids attempts at learning.  The big gray one, Delilah, swats at the pencils when they try to write.