It's a beautiful day

I think I could get used to this early morning blogging routine. The dark silence of this hour is thought provoking and peaceful. I typically will get up with John for work and make him lunch after which I wait for a text telling me that he got there safely before I lay back down for a couple more hours of sleep. The boys will generally start stirring around 9 am or so but last night they got to bed late because of our meeting. Most likely they will sleep in till 10 or after so I may even get to sleep in a little while if I'm lucky. It's supposed to be a beautiful day so I'd like to take a walk, maybe go to the park with them. I charged my camera battery so I will be spending a lot of time this weekend trying to get some nice pictures of them. Sunday will hopefully be a nice family day spent with each other at the pumpkin farm. I am excited to share pumpkin carving with them again this year if I can get them to reach down in and scoop out the gross goo and seeds. Last year neither one of them seem too interested in touching any of it so hopefully they will be more enthusiastic this year. Heather and I ended up carving almost all of the pumpkins for the boys because they bailed on us at the last minute. They turned out nice none the less and we had a good time.

Our school routine has been kind of sporadic over these past few weeks because of the move. We have been doing a lot of online learning. I paid for a subscription for More Starfall last year so that they could spend some time learning math and reading on the computer. After that I found another program that I love that is so much nicer. It tracks their progress and makes learning more individualized. It's called Reading eggs. They have a math section called Math Seeds and they boys really like the material. Ian's reading is coming a long wonderfully. He's progressing in his word formation and pronunciation. He likes to read and will ask questions if he's unsure of a word. Aevan also is reading a lot though his is more by memorization at this point. I'm proud of their progress. I know that Ian is above average in most area's and Aevan, although he hasn't been evaluated is also further ahead than most kindergarten students. I'm guessing he's at the 1st or 2nd grade level in most categories as well. Ian is mostly in the end of 2nd or 3rd grade. By the end of this school year I'm anticipating that they will both be testing even further ahead of their age group.

On average most home schooled children learn quickly and adapt more rapidly to changes in learning routines. It's nice to sometimes do things differently or think outside the box. When it's nice outside I enjoy just taking the day to spend at the park reading or allowing the boys time to play with other kids and socialize. They attend Awana's on Wednesday's and enjoy it though we missed the last couple of weeks due to Aevan misplacing his shoes after the move and then Ian having a fever this week and pink eye. He's doing much better now that he's had antibiotic but I'm praying that we don't fight flu all winter like last year. The boys are hardly (if ever) sick but I will say, last year was nightmarish when it comes to the flu. Ian had the stomach bug and was vomiting a lot from it. Aevan even got sick with the vomiting and he never did prior to last year. In fact last year was the 1st time ever since he was a baby that he got physically sick with the exception of needing breathing treatments a couple of times during the winter. I'm anticipating this year won't be as bad because this house is better, it's not nearly as dusty because there aren't so many allergens without carpet.

Well I'm off to nap before I run out of time. I need to get more beauty sleep. Enjoy your day!