Wednesday, March 4, 2009

We are an Ocean Grove family!!!

At long last, they finally found all the paperwork I sent in months ago and got their acts together and we signed our paperwork with them to officially enroll on Feb 27 and got confirmation of our funding being available today so we can start ordering curriculum. Since their school year is only 175 days and starts 2wks before CAVA, we will be wrapping up this school year just before Memorial Day or about 50 days from now.

So now we are busy trying to figure out what we need to order for next school year since by the time we get the materials it will be another couple of weeks which will leave us little time to do much this school year.

Since it's going to take a while to get funding in and it's very little this year, we've decided to just sort of cobble some of the LA2 stuff together for Jonathan w/o their literature piece and just do what looks interesting. I'm going to be slow to return their math book tho since we are 75% done with it and I don't want to waste the funds to buy it just so we can finish. Maybe they'll have that one at the resource lending library for OG in which case I'll borrow it from them but if not, CAVA can live for a month or so after they send me the return slips.

We will be continuing on as we have with Matthew, using the borrowed materials, leftovers from CAVA, and then whatever else looks interesting around the house. We have some Bright Minds and that is where the bulk of our funds are going this year so he'll have lots of that to do as well. I've been having him do research papers for the last couple of months but now we'll be wrapping those up and he and Jonathan will be doing unit studies. Our first one will be on the Vikings. I've just bought several books myself so we could get started and found some lesson plan ideas online for free so we'll be working on that starting tomorrow. I'll be sure to post pictures and updates of what they are doing tho a lot of it will be us reading myths and legends together. Always nice to curl up on the couch reading with my boys.

Kendra is now watching the three big boys on Wednesday mornings so I can take Nico to zoo class. I was letting them sit outside before but Jonathan tended to be disruptive and now with the weather being nasty and Mike working now, it was just easiest all the way around to ask her and thankfully she was willing. Now with being in OG, I suggested that if she wanted to be in charge of their art education, that would be wonderful and would mean they didn't need to bring other work over there and they could do whatever she wanted to do with them so long as I knew what they were doing so I can let the school know and provide work samples. Today was the first day and she found instructions for a heart broach that is just hammered and bent silver. So today they started learning how to hammer metal and about the properties of metal since she didn't have the right gauge wire to actually do the piece with. She's ordered the right stuff including an extra set of tools so both boys can work at once so they'll be all ready to go next week. I think it's wonderful that she's doing this since the boys will get a much better art education than I could do considering that's what she has her degree in, she used to teach it, she has a full studio for hands on projects that I can't come close to, and hey, it's fun time with Grandma! What could be better?

So now that things are settled with OG, I need to get things more settled here for the new system but updating this website will be a huge priority again. If nothing else, so I can keep track of what all we are doing. :)