We're done!

The school year ended today! Yippppeeeee! I officially have a 2nd, 1st, K, and preschooler now. I definitely know that we are going to do our own thing next year instead of Connections Academy. While it's a great online charter school, it's hard having such a strict schedule. It's also hard to teach multiple grades when everyone is more interested in what you are reading to the other child all of the time, lol. So, next year we'll be doing Mammoth Math for math. It's a disk of math curriculum that covers grades 1-5. I can print off what pages I want them to do, or print off a whole book of pages and put them into a binder. This will work great since they each finished 2 grades of math this year. I got it for a great price on Homeschool Buyers Coop a few weeks ago. Then for everything else I think we are going to do unit studies. That is when you pick a subject and do many different areas on that same subject. For example, you could pick horses, and read about them, do art projects about them, study their anatomy for science, and learn the history of them for social studies or history. We can also go and visit a farm and see some. That way you are focusing on things that the kids are interested in and they are more than happy to learn about it. My kids are SO into learning that we'll have no problem finding subjects to learn. Most of the time I'll just have A & W learning the same things. That way I can teach them together and nobody will be upset because they're doing something boring while the other one is reading a cool story with Mommy :o)
P will be in Kindergarten next year for 2 days per week. We'll see how that goes for her. She enjoys school, and everyone there just adores her - how could you not :o) She has some very good IEP goals and it will be nice to see if she progresses towards them with the change in schedule and also a change in people working with her.
J will be going to ECSE again, 2 mornings per week. He really enjoys preschool and hopefully will continue to enjoy it.

I'm SO looking forward to a Summer of having fun with our friends. We've have SO many awesome friends in our area and we are definitely going to have some fun this Summer. Now that my Mom is helping me with the younger two, we can go to the beach or wherever we want and I won't have my hands too full :o) Tomorrow we are going to the Como Zoo in the morning and then we are invited to our friends' house for homeschool playgroup in the afternoon. It's supposed to be beautiful out tomorrow so it should be a great day!
P got her Toughbook the other day and I got her Boardmaker with Speaking Dynamically Pro loaded up on it. I've made quite a few boards for her so now she's learning how to use it for communication and entertainment. She just loves it! I love that it's so functional for her and the software is very user friendly. We are still anxiously awaiting her new stroller. It will be nice to have now that we don't use her wheelchair. Right now we have a special needs stroller that we are borrowing, but it's a little small for her and she keeps putting her feet on the front wheels.

We had Homeschool Mom's night out last week and it was a blast. I went and got my hair chopped off beforehand. I tried to get a pic of it but I just hate pics of myself so it'll have to wait. Just picture me with short bangs and the rest just below my ears :o) I got 10" cut off so I can donate it. It's a little short for me. I'll be glad with it grows out a couple of inches :o)

On a sad note. We have decided to put one of our dogs down. Winnie is 13 years old, and that's 91 years old in people years! She's been a great dog. She's gotten some really bad cancer in the last few years and is barely able to move anymore. I'm just afraid she'll break a hip, or leg, or something and end up in pain. We'll probably do it this weekend if we can bring ourselves to it. Ms. Winnie and I have been through many years together :o( I just hope that Bailey does ok. She's so attached to Winnie that she's just like her mother. Bailey is 10 years old so she's getting up there too.