Hectic Week Behind and Ahead!

This past week has been a crazy one. We have been settling into a new schedule (which seems to be working out quite nicely) along with house/apartment hunting. We finally found us a two bedroom apartment that is right across from the beach in our price range! So hopefully if everything works out we will be moving around the 15th of October. School went great this week. Noah is really grasping the parts of speech, he is also writing better. Not his handwriting but his actually writing content. He's starting to build stories instead of just writing a bunch of sentences together. Abigail on the other hand is driving me nuts with her lack of paying attention. I know that it is difficult to focus when everyone is in the same room as you and the little ones are going crazy, but its not always quite out in the world so it is something I feel that she needs to learn how to deal with. Also her handwriting is horrible still. Its legible as compared to when she finished kindergarten, she couldn't even read her handwriting. But she just writes so sloppy because she isn't paying attention. Her excuse for everything is "oops I forgot" and I know the child doesn't have any memory problems, she remembers everything that is important to her. Its the non-important to her things that she conveniently forgets LOL Like not touching things in the grocery store or focusing on her handwriting.
Next week we are taking the week off from school. Its our FALL BREAK!!! With us having to leave out Wednesday afternoon to drive the five hours back to our home town, then all the meetings and seeing family that we have to do between Thursday and Friday on top of court Friday morning for the judge to finalize Scott adopting Noah and Abigail and then the drive back to the home Saturday morning, it is just going to be easy to take the week off. And it wouldn't do any good to try to do any type of school work next week, even if it was just simple worksheets, because the kids are so excited about court that it would be hard for them to focus.
When we do get back and calmed down from our trip, school is going to get kicked right back into session. Noah is wanting to learn geometry so I am trying to figure out how to teach a 3rd grader something I didn't learn til 8th grade lol But he already knows multiplication, so it might not be too hard once I explain the concept and formulas to him.
Abigail is getting ready to move up in math also, I just haven't figured out which direction I want to take her. This trip back to our hometown is going to be helpful, because that is where our storage building of stuff is, which has all my lesson plans in it. So I will be able to start with those once we get back too. Which will help with figuring out what to teach Abigail in math now lol
I think that's it for the update at the moment.

Weekly Wrap Up!

I know, I know, I am slack on posting. This past week has been an adventure. I started a new job, so we are having to readjust our schedules again. Luckily the kids are resilient and can adjust to almost anything. But then, just as we get use to the new schedule, we are going to be leaving for a few days, to go back to our hometown of Gaffney, to finalize Scott adopting Noah and Abigail. The closer it gets the more excited the kids get. They are so excited to go to court and finally become Largents!
Other than that, school has been going pretty good. I have learned more about the kids and what they know and what they don't know.
Abigail is still having problems with ABC order and her handwriting is still horrible. She has moments when it is beautiful, I know she has to potential, but I haven't been able to get her to keep it up. So I am trying to encourage her by telling her that she can learn cursive once she gets her handwriting to legible status lol Her math skills are exceptional, she is very good at math, which is great, because I'm not.
Noah is the master of handwriting though, he taught himself how to write in cursive in three days last year lol He is doing great at math. He has mastered multiplication. We are introducing basic geometry this week, because he wanted to do something more challenging. He is also learning parts of speech. This week it is adverbs. He is catching on pretty quickly to them. (And Daddy is learning with him, which is a cool benefit of all of this)
They are also learning the flower, flag, bird and capitals of all the state. We will put it all into a notebook as soon as we get a bigger place and have room to spread out. Science is our subject that we are having issues with, because we don't have the space to do experiments or anything, but we have been able to do some cool things like observe alligators in their natural habitats, watch sea turtles leave the nest and go to the ocean, and watch what happens as the tide comes in and out and the effects it has on the beach.
Things are coming along wonderfully with school. The kids are enjoying school and absorbing everything like little sponges. Even Jade and Braeden are learning things. Its a beautiful thing to be able to watch.

Just a quick post!

I just wanted to share my newest found website. We are utilizing worksheets to the fullest right now until we can get a bigger place and set up our classroom. I was busy searching around on Google today and found www.worksheetworks.com
So far I love them! Go check them out!

Longer post coming later I promise

Alligator Pictures!

I promised I would post some pictures of the alligator that we saw the other day. Well it turns out that while we were at the state park this evening, we saw another one (and this one was HUGE) Scott said about 7 - 8 feet long. Noah decided he wanted a closer looks and started making duck call sounds. Well I guess the gator likes ducks because he started swimming closer and closer to us, until he was about 10 feet away. There was land and some water between us, but he was really big and a little too close for my comfort, so I got my little group peoples together and we left. lol
But here are some pictures. The first two are of the little gator that we saw earlier in the week and the other ones are of the gator in the water. You kind of have to look carefully to see it, but you can see it I promise :-)

***Okay for some reason I am having issues putting pictures into the post. Its more likely me, than Blogger itself lol But the pictures on the bottom are of the little gator and the pictures on top are of the big gator! Enjoy!!!!***

Alligators!!!

Alligators... I never ever thought that I would just be walking along a path and look out to my left and see a 5 foot 'gator... Guess what people?! I did just that Monday afternoon! The days and nights are getting cooler around here and its almost too cold in the water at the beach or the pool (especially for my cold natured self lol) So instead of doing our usual beach outing we rode up the beach to Barefoot Landing. It is an awesome place where there are a lot of shops, different vendors for delicious food and its all situated on lake, with several piers connecting you to each side of the lake. So we are busy walking along one side of the lake looking at the ducks very innocently when all of a sudden Noah and Abigail and spazzing, I mean seriously freaking out over something way cool. Leave it to my silly kids to have a coronary over an alligator. Yes you have read that right, 10-12 feet away from me and my little crew of kids was an alligator. It was a small one, probably 5 feet or so. Noah kept wanting to go pet it. I kept telling him that he could go pet it, but if he came back missing a hand or a foot, I wasn't going to help him LOL And if that wasn't exciting enough, as we were walking on one of the piers there was another alligator in the lake, floating along. All you could see was his eyes and nose and top of his head. Scott said he looked to be about 7 or so feet long. That was enough for me to keep a closer eye on the older kids and tighter grip on the younger kids.
BUT.... as not cool as it was for me, it did turn into a great learning lesson. They got to 'gators in their natural environment (as compared to a zoo). We had an awesome discussion on the way home from there, which involved the other animals we saw there. Those were turtles, fish (carp, koi, and brim), seagulls and pelicans.
Then later on that night, Scott and I were sitting outside and we saw a mama raccoon and her two babies sneak up and attack our trash can. Needless to say even though we are in a big ole city, we feel like we are in the backwoods with all the animals around us. I do enjoy every minute of it, because I am a huge animal lover (although I prefer furry ones to scaley ones lol) and the kids love animals to, so it is always fun to watch them as they see these different animals.
As for the alligator, yes I did get pictures, I just have to get them uploaded. I am hoping to do that this weekend, but things have been so crazy around here the past couple of days that I haven't had the time to focus on the blog. Which I really need to get back into the habit of doing!!!

Sorry for not updating!

This week has been a week for the books. Sunday night I had everything planned and ready to go for Tuesday morning (we took Monday off for the holiday). And then Wednesday came and I was told that I was being let go from my job, because the summer season had ended and they had to cut back on people and I was the one who had to go. Luckily, the guy is willing to keep Scott on to work, so not all is loss. So with that, school kind of got pushed to the side. They did worksheets just to keep going with stuff, but I have been busy looking for another job. The hard part of that, is that it is the end of the season at the beach and well jobs are hard to come by. A lot of the places close for the winter, other places have already hired winter staff, etc. So I'm not sure what is going to happen at the moment. We have been discussing Knoxville again, but I am not sure of the job market there. Chattanooga has come up in conversation. The R.V. conversation is back on the table too. So there are a lot of talks going on between Scott and I and the kids. What we are going to do, I am not exactly sure, but whatever we do will be an awesome learning experience like always.

And I promise to update more next week, because I have to get back to our routine next week!