Parties and More

This was the weekend for Parties I guess. I went to a Christmas Tea that 22 ladies were invited to and only 5 of us came to. I'm beginning to think that smaller parties work better and are more fun. It's just hard to plan a big party to only have a few show up. Kind of dissappointing! Oh, well. We did have a lot of fun eating each other's goodies and drinking tea. NO KIDS ALLOWED made it even more fun! Mom's need a chance to own their life and be themselves, not MOOOOOMMMMM! I'm especially fond of going out to stuff with just ladies! I feel like a real person again and no one is calling me Mom, or screaming or yelling, or bickering (Ladies do that in a civilized way, I think), I'm not responsible for all the cleanup or cooking (unless it's at my house), and I can laugh and enjoy myself without having to explain in detail what is so funny! (It's called social laughing! you know where you laugh at things even if they aren't funny!) After I got home from the Christmas Tea the family went to a 50th Birthday Party. That was fun as well. I'm beginning to get to know this family and they are so neat. I think they will turn out to be some pretty good friends. Dr. O did his famous little old man cow-a-socky joke. It was great! At least he didn't dive for the ankles when people came in the door! He did that to my mother when she came to visit! She was pretty cautious when she open the door from then on out! Last evening I had to sit down and do lesson plans for Mystery Girl for the month of Dec. I'm afraid that we are just slightly behind in a couple of subjects. She is doing well and "getting it" but we will have to pick up the pace again. Actually, the hardest part of homeschool is getting all the subjects in. Like PE, Art, and Music. Art we are doing okay on for now. MG is doing embroidered pillowcases. She will soon be doing a paint-by-number and finishing a plastic canvas project. PE is a little harder. It's more than just playing outside. Plus, I have to participate! PHEFT. Yuck! Music is Dr. O's area and well, he needs to get to it! I have to record SOMETHING! Someone once told be that homeschool is just sooo easy. What planet were they from? It's okay most of the time. But it takes time to set up the lessons and make sure that you don't miss anything. It takes a lot of effort to get the kid to do the work, and planning field trips on a no-dollar budget is frustrating. Same with sports or art or music. I sometimes think that you've got to be rich in order to make this thing work. But, in spite of the drawbacks. She is excelling academically. And she is doing ALL the work in those books that we paid so much for. AND she is learning what I want her to learn, not all the crap that they get in Public School. My sister Amy posted on her blog about the Everyday Math and I finally got the YouTube downloaded after 3 hours so I could watch the video about Everyday Math. It is really very quite sickening that kids are sooo uneducated because of programs like this. I had a lot of problems deschooling my daughter from this unorganized thinking. It took almost 18 months to get her to understand that there is a better, more standard way of doing math. I'm not a math whiz, but this EM is just for idiots creating idiots. In any case, I've spent a lot of time reteaching basic math. For instance, what is your opinion on elementary kids being taught how to use calculators and being expected to use them for most of the assignments? What a way to develop thinking skills! Problem solving skills? RIGHT! Ain't happenin'! Want the kids to go to college? Better tutor math all summer in the standard way to do it then. Unless, you want them to waste your tuition money in remedial math classes. OK, OK off the soap box now. Time to go find out what I need to do today. Cleaning, cooking, baking, sewing, reading, and of course teaching.