Flying Solo and Sonlight

Well, the week has gone pretty well without DH here. It was harder emotionally than I expected, especially for the kids, with it being our first separation since the reconciliation. The kids know Daddy is coming home and this is just a business trip, but there is still that underlying unease...

So, there has been more fighting and whining than usual this week.

We started the week Monday with Daily Mass and that seemed to help everyone - we actually got through the whole 15 minute Mass with everyone behaving well - a Gift from God in and of itself!

The only really horrible time has been bedtime. Really we've done pretty well except bedtime. DH usually gets the toddler to sleep while I get the other four down [and Monkey4 3yo takes the longest to get to sleep - I still have to actively "parent" her to sleep].

Well, the toddler has refused to go to sleep with Daddy not home and it has been taking me 2-2.5 hours a night to get them all down [from the time I first put them in bed]. *sigh*!

Otherwise, it went better than I feared. We even got to do some silly things we wouldn't have done with Daddy home - like the night we had yogurt, blue berries, and watermelon for supper - and everyone was thrilled. LOL!

I also started our school year this week. We normally start school in July and school year round, taking June off. I decided to go ahead and start early [with a baby coming, it sure can't hurt]. It turned out to be a very good idea to start this week [I figured it would either be great or be a nightmare!]. It gave the kids something to focus on besides missing their Dad.



I was really scared about this year, because it is my first time schooling three children - this year I have a 4th grader, a 2nd grader, and a Kindergartener. But it went GREAT! My little Monkey3 has the best attitude about school and is so excited to be doing "real" school. She has done great - a highly motivated child! My son, Monkey2 6yo, always has a great attitude about school and has done very well this week too. My oldest, Monkey1 9yo often has a terrible attitude about school and she can make the whole thing into a nightmare - but she has been fantastic this week with a very positive, hard working attitude. For this I am extremely grateful!!!

We switched to Singapore Math this time for the first time ever, and I *really* like it. The kids like it too, which makes it soooo much easier - this is part of the reason Monkey1's attitude has been so good [math is a common point of contention with her because she hated MCP].

For the past 3 years we have been fully enrolled with Seton, but this year I did not do full enrollment. We are still using a majority of Seton materials, but we are also using Sonlight as well this time.

Sonlight has been interesting. It is literature based learning and includes a vast amount of reading and read alouds. It is perfect for our family in that aspect - we are definite readers. The kids have been very happy and excited about it, and I have too. For the most part it has gone really very well for us this week!

With two caveats:

One, the Sonlight Instructor's Guide is just plain awful. Seton lesson plans are so complete, ready to use, and EASY. I guess I'm spoiled. The Sonlight Instructor's Guides come as a massive 3 inch pile of papers that you have to collate yourself, and then in order to teach you are constantly flipping back and forth from this section to that and looking for XYZ and then going to a completely different part for ABC... it is *extremely* annoying to me. And even some of the reference page numbers are wrong in the lesson plans. Anyway, I did NOT find the IG user friendly at all - to the point of pretty severe frustration. Sonlight advertises their IG's as "so easy, you don't have to think about how to teach or do any of the work - we've done it all for you". Which is bunk. LOL! Once you pay and GET the materials, they say you should expect to spend 10-20 hours PER CORE just learning *how* to use the IG to teach! And that's only after you spend an hour or so collating and organizing the IG yourself - which is so complicated they have an actual video you are supposed to watch in order to do it, and they have people that call you to try to see if you need help figuring it out! ARGH! [This is SO not my type of thing LOL! I *hate* doing that kind of stuff]. IMO, don't charge me money for something that is basically not done...and I don't appreciate lesson plans that are harder to figure out and use than it would be for me to make up my own - why am I paying for that?!!!

The other frustration I had was with one of the science books they sent - supposedly they try to offer a "balance" between evolution and creationism... well, the first book we are supposed to use this year is about Dinosaurs and the Bible. It is *WAY* out there - like talking about how Dinosaurs lived during the same time as people and there were dinosaurs on the Ark with Noah, Dinosaurs weren't really "mean" because Adam could pet them, etc. Very silly IMO. It is that "Young Earth" theory that some fundamentalists have that I just find ... odd. Being Catholic, we don't take a *literal* translation of the Bible - we basically believe in Intelligent Design and our beliefs don't contradict scientific evidence.

I was trying to read this book to the kids [who LOVE dinosaurs and were very excited about it] and I was having a very hard time - the ideas that are included are just so *ridiculous* IMO [no offense to anyone who believes in the Young Earth Theory - I totally respect your right to believe it! I just would have appreciated Sonlight being more up front about this book being such an item and giving me the option to NOT buy the thing!].

Anyway, we got about 5 pages into it and my children [who can already give you an amazing explanation of the difference in Creationism, Evolution, and Intelligent Design and who can defend their belief in Intelligent Design *very well* with science....] started ridiculing the book - "Mom, that is crazy! Does it really say that?" "Look at that picture of a guy petting a dinosaur! That isn't right!!!" etc. When we saw the Brontosauruses climbing onto the ark, that was the last straw for them - they asked me to stop reading. They said they wanted to send the author a "real" Bible so he could see the actual dimensions of the Ark - since God told Noah *exactly* what measurements to use and there just physically WAS NO ROOM for a bunch of huge dinosaurs on there...

But, those two things aside, I am in love with Sonlight. So are the kids - it has been fun and interesting already and we are really looking forward to the rest of the year!!! We are so excited about that huge box of books we get to read this year.... woohoo!!!! [I must admit to reading several of them already for fun this week while DH was gone and I had nothing to do after the kids were in bed! Right now I'm finishing "Caddie Woodlawn" and it is GREAT! I can't believe I never read it as a child!].

In other news, our chicks keep getting crippled and/or dying. We bought several sets of eggs from one eBay seller, and it appears her stock is very substandard. The chick eggs we bought from another eBay seller are doing *great* - very healthy and hardy birds. But all 3 breeds we bought from this one lady are experiencing severe leg problems and/or dying. I consulted a poultry expert online and she said that the eBay seller was probably giving her breeding stock a very poor diet, that this would cause the kind of physical unwellness and leg problems we are seeing in the chicks - severe nutritional deficiencies in the Mama Hens will cause this type stuff.

The kids are getting upset with the continual disabilities and death, and so am I. We discussed it and we decided it would be a good move for their egg business to just give away these pathetic chickens and stick with our healthy ones [the Ameraucanas and Marans] and our existing hens, rather than keep feeding these sickly chicks who may never grow up to be good layers and/or meat birds. I found a farmer about an hour from us who is interested in taking them [free of charge, and having had the whole explanation about their problems] and seeing if he can raise any of them to healthy adulthood. Hopefully we can hook up with him this weekend. Then we will be down to our 6 Ameraucanas, 4 Marans, and our 6 existing adult hens. That should be fine for now, though I'd like to get some Brown Leghorns next spring since they are "egg laying machines".

That is our week in an eggshell... LOL! Hope you had a great one too!