I was chatting on a workboxes homeschooling group, having one of those conversations where a mom asks if we all think she may be overloading her exasperated kids with “too much work” (the answer is invariably “yes” in these conversations, in case you’re curious). A lot of times, I find those conversations very exhausting, because they’re about the mom wanting strategies to be able to force her kid to do a lot more boring, tedious stuff, and then doing a lot of flailing because no one gives her any and instead tells her to relax and consider chucking, like, everything. Fortunately, in this case, it wasn’t like that, but had been initiated by a very well-meaning and thoughtful mom whose 7yo was getting frustrated despite the mom’s very best efforts, and she was looking to make the day more enjoyable for the family, a good goal to have imho . During the conversation, she said their school day was lasting over 6 hours, and I said:

Just so you can see a different perspective: That’s over an hour longer than my son’s average workbox day – and he’s in the SIXTH GRADE, and he studies 2 foreign languages, practices 2 musical instruments, reads poetry, Shakespeare, Hymns, logic, Bible devotional, art history, music theory, medieval history, united states geography, literature and astronomy.

Another mom then asked me some questions about how it’s possible to organize my son’s time with the boxes (we don’t call them workboxes, just boxes) in such a way that it takes “so little time.” I think four hours is a lot of time! I thought I would repost my detailed response here. Italics were her questions, the rest is my response. It’s been a good talk, with the other mom asking a lot of good questions that made me think a lot and helped me clarify my own values some more, so hopefully this is helpful to someone. This is an ongoing dialogue, so there will be follow-ups with people’s questions in future posts, but feel free to ask your own! (Some of you longtime readers may notice we’ve changed a lot since starting this school year and are no longer using Ambleside Online’s recommendations. My son is still really interested in the Middle Ages, though, so he asked me to buy a few of the WinterPromise resources to learn more about the Middle Ages. More on this change at a later date!) A few of my answers have been proofread and/or expanded upon from the conversation where it was necessary for greater clarity.

My 6th grader does three subjects at a co-op (one is no homework), plus French, flute, history, and science at home, and it’s really hard for me to schedule all her subjects. Would you mind sharing a sample weekly schedule?

I don’t mind at all

The last few months, we have settled into a comfortable, flexible routine, where we get a much earlier start in the day than we used to. But we are both early morning lallygaggers and I work nights, so we get started later than most families. Typically my son starts his boxes between 10AM and 11AM, we break half an hour for lunch somewhere in there, and we’re done with the boxes by 2:30 or 3:30, depending on what we are doing. We then go out and do errands, or go to the park for a playdate, or other outings or sometimes we just chill out and goof off on the Internet, watch TV, play video games, build robots, or whatever else he’ll feel like doing. I try to schedule all doctor’s appointments for this time, too.

I will say that we don’t do any co-ops (my kid hates them) and I try to keep our field trip type outings for the weekend. We don’t do more than 2 field trips with our local homeschooling groups per month and it’s ONLY if my son seems excited about it, for example, the trip to see a Norman Rockwell exhibit next month. We have a lot of cool weekend and night time outings, but I’m a single mom and have to work, and there are only so many hours in the day! He has a park date weekly and a youth group twice a week at night, and sometimes a playdate with a friend, and that’s about it during the weekdays.

These are things which are not in the boxes, that he either does of his own free will and doesn’t want me to organize for him, or we do together as a family every day:

• Computer programming/Internet surfing/ video game design
• TV. We both like TV a lot and I won’t apologize for that. I’ve written several posts about why I love it and think it’s awesome. I don’t restrict TV in any way, but I do watch things with Shorty and talk about things we watch. Shorty is currently really into marathons of Everybody Hates Chris reruns
• Afternoon walk, weather permitting, approx a mile and a half a day, for exercise and fresh air and chatting and sometimes Shorty likes to take our digital camera and take pictures of our walks and post them on his Facebook (he’s got a great eye for photography!!);
• Instrument practice (guitar and piano) 10-15 min each, though he sometimes will spend hours in the afternoon practicing on his own;
• Morning Bible devotionals and daily Bible reading, which Shorty has requested we do before anything else;
• Bedtime literature. He says he’s too old to call it a bedtime story. *g* Sometimes he reads it out loud, sometimes I do, sometimes we switch off. Currently reading The King’s Fifth by Scott O’Dell, in concurrence with our study of the middle ages. It’s pretty awesome!!

These are the boxes we do daily:

• Latin, Shorty’s pet subject #1 – Getting Started With Latin has turned out to be a big hit;
• Math – typically two worksheets;
• Wordly Wise vocabulary, Book 5 – pet subject #2;
• Some kind of history reading. We have many books on the Middle Ages,  so sometimes we have more than one history reading – reading from the “spine” or main book (currently The Kingfisher’s Atlas of the Medieval World) and then a second book about the subject, usually very brief on each count. We’re talking no more than 2-3 pages, unless he wants to keep reading.
• Geography/ map drawing, pet subject #3.
• Poetry – we just read 1 poem a day from a Walter de la Mare poem book. We don’t discuss it too much or analyze it. We just read it for fun.

These are the boxes we do 2-3 times per week, as our schedule and his mood permits:

• Spanish – We are native speakers, and live in Little Havana, so our focus is vocabulary expansion so that Shorty can communicate with locals more easily;
• Astronomy: short reading, plus occasional notebooking/games – that would be a 2nd box;
• Some kind of history-related project, lapbook or activity – currently we are alternating between a project from The Days of Knights and Dames and lapbooking about knights and castles;
• Christian studies – we did a wonderful Advent study during Christmas that Shorty absolutely fell in love with, and he’s been reading A Little Pilgrim’s Progress;
• Tangrams, which my kid loves, but not too often or he gets tired of them!

These are the subjects we do once per week:

• Nature walks with nature studies,
• Guitar lesson;
• Piano lesson;
• Logic – having great fun with The Fallacy Detective;
• Hymn study with the book and CD, Then Sings My Soul;
• Shakespeare – usually a couple of pages from a “Tales from Shakespeare” book;
• Biography. Currently Diane Stanley’s Joan of Arc. Shorty really loves and gets into biographies and we are discussing organizing a study of inventors and industrial-revolution people (his other favorite historical era) when he finishes his current stuff;
• Grammar – one weekly exercise from Simply Grammar by Karen Andreola for my little budding wordsmith;
• Reading out loud from the McGuffey 3rd Eclectic Reader – he has great dramatic flair

These are the things we only do every other week:

• Juggling, a popular medieval pastime which he’s always wanted to learn anyway;
• Art History OR Composer studies – We alternate between the two. One week we do one, the other week, we do the other. Shorty really gets excited about these, though, so I’m looking to see about doing this more often. Currenttly we are listening to a lot of Edvard Grieg and Sibelius, and leafing through my huge Norman Rockwell book, whose realism in illustration Shorty admires and envies. Fortunately, there is a traveling exhibit of his work right in town!

I’d love to see how you approach scheduling so many topics.

I have my little weekly workbox grid that I made. Because I like to plan for the whole year vs. little-by-little planning, even if I inevitably end up changing a million things as we go along, I printed out 36 of those, one for each week of the “school year,” which is all I have to keep track of for record-keeping purposes, though we do cool stuff almost every day all year long. I put subject dividers between each 12 - twelve weeks in a term, which our private umbrella school requires us to track. 180 days.

I am not married to this schedule in any way.  It is a list of possibilities for the day and nothing more.

I then take each resource and divide it up. If it’s a book, I divide its pages by 180, if it’s something we want to take all year to do. For example, the Latin curriculum he wanted has only 120 lessons. So we figured out that he needs to do about 3-4 lessons per week to finish it by the end of the year. So I go through the 36 weeks and put “Latin lesson #whatever” 3 or 4 times per week all year, until I get to 120. If it’s a shorter book, for example, we are reading the book Medieval Medicine and the Plague which has only 12 chapters, each about 2 pages long, I put it once per week for one term. Or I could put it once every 3 weeks all year, or whatever else had suited us.

NOTE: You do NOT have to plan things out for a whole year. You can divide the resource this way above, or you can plan one or two weeks ahead and not pre-determine how much you’re going to do. Then you’d just write “Legos” or “art/craft” or “Read such and such book.”

I do not feel the need to tell my son what to do all day long. My son has explicitly asked for help organizing his time and attention between his many interests, so I divide it up for him, but of course, if he wants to work ahead or postpone something one day, we do.

Sometimes I have a set amount to cover in a set amount of time. For The King’s Fifth, the novel we are reading right now, which has 31 chapters, I did not want to take months to read it, because we both lose interest and start to find it tedious when that happens, so I decided we’d read one chapter per day, which was 6 weeks if we read one chapter on a weekend. So I put in the “notes” section of my planner for week 1: “The King’s Fifth, Ch 1-5″. And then I put a checkmark as we read them, so I can at least tell where we are if I lose the bookmark. LOL!

FIRST, I do this with what he wants do every day. I fill in all the workboxes all year for those – labor intensive up-front, but saves me tons of time over the year.

THEN, I do this with the things he only wants do a few times a week.

FINALLY I plug in the ones he only does once a week or every other week. I just stick them wherever there’s an empty box!

I try to leave at least one empty box per day for spontaneous projects or for things he didn’t get to the day before or whatever. But it’s not necessary because the stuff we’re doing IS fun for him. If it’s not something he’s enjoying, I chuck it and we try something else or drop it. We have very few “schooly” things in there. I am constantly introducing new and interesting things, and I try to pay very close attention to what my son responds well to and what he doesn’t. I feel the materials should serve the child, not vice versa. I don’t understand why I see so many moms try a curriculum, notice it tanks with the kid, and conclude there’s something wrong with the KID! And then post, “How can I make my kid want to do this thing he hates that I think he should do anyway?” To me this is a backwards approach to education.

I’m guessing you don’t do everything, every day, but how do you decide what you don’t really need to do on a daily basis when so many things like music and foreign language need constant practice?

Some of it, as you saw above, decides itself. It is very obvious that Simply Grammar, with its 39 in-depth lessons, cannot be done every day and fits better as a weekly visitation. A lot of my notions, I got from Charlotte Mason, who really believed in child-gentle interest-whetting vs. a proscribed set of information delivered in a prescribed manner. This is also why we study hymns and Shakespeare, and only once a week. That was her recommendation and we tried it and it seems to work for Shorty. The rest, I take my cue from my son. I don’t think anyone NEEDS to do geography five times a week (or ever, really), but since my kid is endlessly fascinated by maps and state trivia, and thinks it’s great fun, we do.

Also, *I* don’t decide this. We decide it together. If he wanted to read Shakespeare every day, we would. And we only read it once a week because he asks me to read it. I think for him it’s like a little radio play. LOL, as in, ”This week on SHAKESPEARE’S DRAMATIC SOAP OPERA…”

And I realize this goes against conventional wisdom, but I don’t think a foreign language needs daily practice to master, and music practice is something my son is expected to do on his own. We are both musicians, so this isn’t really something he needs a reminder about; it’s just his great passion that he’s currently pursuing. We listen to, talk about and play music all day. I don’t think a child should be forced to play an instrument if s/he doesn’t want to. If s/he wants to play one, I would just be very frank about what’s required. “People who don’t practice the piano every day stink at piano. If you do practice every day, in a very short amount of time, you will be totally awesome at it. It’s up to you what you wanna be!” My son knows I’m honest and that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to music, so I only had to tell him this once!

I think when a child trusts you to respect his comfort zones, they trust your opinions a lot more, instead of finding them suspect and wondering if you’re trying to con him into doing something you think he should be doing, whether he hates it or not.

Do you do homework after dinner or some other trick to be done for the afternoon more quickly?

Nooooo. We do no homework. We are anti-homework! LOL! Once the boxes are done, either just before or just after lunch, his time is totally unscheduled, except that it is convenient for both of us if he showers while I’m making dinner. Otherwise, he does whatever he wants with his time. Basically, the workboxes are just a way for me to help him structure his time. He finds this helpful and encouraging. I am by nature a very UNSTRUCTURED person with a good internal clock, but he’s the opposite, he likes to plot out every minute of his time and has asked me to help him do this, so while it’s more controlling of his time than I would prefer, I need to acknowledge that his preferences are  not my preferences and I use the workboxes to help him in this way.

My son has a large workspace he likes very much because it is a very business-y roll top desk that he says “makes him feel like an executive.” LOL.  I sit next to him and let him do his thing while I work on mylaptop, unless he needs me for something, but if I see he’s taking forever on one box, I will use humor to check in with him (“EARTH TO ELI, DO YOU COPY?!” ) Sometimes this is enough to get him back on task. Sometimes he’ll then say he’s struggling and needs help. Sometimes he’ll say “Mom, I reeeeeeeally don’t feel like doing this today” and that is okay because I also am not always in the mood to do something every day. The homeschool police will not arrest us if we chuck a worksheet… or a whole workbook!

Obviously I’m a very laidback parent/ person/ homeschooler. When I say my son’s time is unscheduled except for the boxes, I mean it is totally unscheduled. I put no limits on any activity. He is allowed to watch TV, play video games, listen to music, chat with his friends/grandma on Facebook, or WHATEVER as much as he wants. I am right there actively engaging him in what he does, of course, but I am very much about not controlling every waking minute of a kid’s life. I think this is why workboxing and homeschooling is so low-stress for me and my kid. We just do whatever makes us happy, and don’t do whatever doesn’t. So far, so good!

I have so much going on that I’m just going to post the goings-on as a +/- list.

+ Tonight Shorty and I start an ages-8-and-up aikido class at the local rec center together. It’s only twice a week and it’s 5 minutes away and I actually get real exercise out of it, instead of me sitting around watching. I’ve never taken a martial arts class in my life, but I have convinced myself I will rock at it. Oh, yes.

- We tried to enroll in this class last week, but the rec center has some bizarre hardcore rule I didn’t know about, about how you have to bring a birth certificate for any kid wanting to take classes with an age requirement. Y’all, my kid is 5′4″ and his voice is changing. He is quite clearly not a 7-year-old, okay???? But because of my interrupting the registrar’s valuable Facebook browsing time “insurance liability”, they wouldn’t even let him sit in the class and watch. Rude!

+ Between this and the twice weekly at-home yoga, and the weekly nature walks on Friday or Saturday, I will now be getting physical activity 5 times a week. I am in pretty terrible shape health-wise – muscles are weak, stamina is nil, knees are starting to hurt from stiffness due to the sedentary nature of my job, etc. It isn’t so much about weight loss – I am okay with the size I am – I would just like to be able to, say, run a block without getting winded and not wake up all stiff and in pain.

- I just realized I owe my library something like $5 billion. I really need to stop checking 85 things out at once. Just because I can doesn’t mean I should. I always forget to renew and/or return stuff on time. Maybe I can go Make The Big Eyes at the librarian; she knows me and we talk all the time, so keep your fingers crossed that she’ll at least reduce that to a more manageable $2 billion or something.

+ In concert with this, I am determined that Shorty spend more time in the fresh air and sunshine than he currently is. As such, we have started a little veggie container garden he’s gotten really excited about. So far we have spinach, green beans, 2 kinds of lettuce, carrots, broccoli, and green and yellow peppers growing. I hope to add more soon. Shorty also asked me to get a lemon tree so he could make home-grown lemonade. Hee. Of course this is the ghetto, and our containers are decorated with spray paint and old car tires someone left behind our building. What? Urban chic? … no? Oh, well.

+ Yesterday I started the application process for financial aid, so that I could start working on my second Bachelor’s degree in the fall. I’m leaning strongly toward accounting/ business administration. I have a long-range plan that I’ll save for another post.

- I am wicked nervous about being a student again and worry I won’t be able to handle it, time-management wise.

+ Here, have some incredible pictures. Nick Brandt’s African Wildlife Portraits. They’re portraits, not documentative photographs like most wildlife photography, and I promise you they and this UK artist will blow your mind.

- The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act is the worst, most destructive, poorly thought-out piece of legislation I have EVER seen, and I’m including No Child Left Behind in that. Here is the lowdown on why this is pretty much the worst idea ever. But! There is a glimmer of light. I’ve written to my local Congressmen; have you?

+ Speaking of which, have any of you guys ever sold stuff or set up shop on Etsy? I am an artsy craftsy person, I crochet, do digital photography, and make jewelry, but my real, secret love is this weird… thing. I can’t even explain it. It’s… wall art, I guess you could call it? I take hats (mostly straw hats but I am considering moving to other mediums) and decorate them and then people hang them up on their walls as decoration.

Here is an example of one I just did for a neighbor.

I do all kinds of things on them, though. Birds and feathers and ribbons and silk flowers and stuff, depending on what the mood strikes me. They’re all different. I give them away as gifts and people keep telling me I should sell them. I don’t want to do eBay because I wouldn’t make any money, but I don’t know what I would charge for these, and I am not sure if Etsy is a good starting point before I think about anything as time-consuming as craft shows (of which there aren’t many – this is Miami, and nothing happens here, ever). But I don’t want to spend hours and hours working on it for nothing. Thoughts/ advice would be appreciated.

+++++I AM GOING TO DISNEYWORLD THIS WEEKEND. Three days and two nights camping with 4 other families from our homeschool group. We are renting a car, driving up to Orlando Saturday morning, going to the Magic Kingdom Sunday and coming back Monday night. And according to the national weather service, the weather is supposed to be PERFECT – no rain at all, and in the upper 70s all three days! Huzzah!

It’s been very quiet around here. I have a lot of work these days, which is good – it’ll be a decent Christmas, at least – and we’ve just had a lot going on family-wise.  Over the next few weeks, I intend to expand SPH significantly:

• I’m working on fixing the error that is making it impossible to log in to the forums – it’s pretty useless to have them if no one can use them;
• I’m almost done with the link directory. Instead of a list of links like the current one, it is going to be a Yahoo! style link directory that people can add to and vote on;
• I’m going to complete the main homeschooling page with links to some downloadable eBooks about getting started in homeschooling and links to the different methods.
• I’m working on two flow charts – the kind of work-from-home job(s) that work best for your needs, family situation and schedule, and the kind of homeschooling style(s) that may work best for you and your kids;
• My goal for 2009 is to write at least 5 blog posts per week;
• I’m going to add (rather, finish) a photo album of our lapbooks and homeschooling experiences;
• The bookstore will expand significantly, as well, and will be porting to a ChristianBook.com affiliate instead of Amazon.

In addition, I’m giving myself all of January to finish my book about single parent homeschooling, with the goal of editing and self-publishing it on Lulu.com in February/March.  I am also launching a web site right now which I’m really excited about.  And I’m working full-time now, and eBaying quite a lot, and in my spare time I am solving complex mathematical equations and curing cancer… no, I’m lying about those last 2.

We don’t do any schoolwork the week of Thanksgiving. For the first couple of years, I tried to squeeze in some schoolwork Monday through Wednesday, but it was always a bust because usually I had family coming in from out of town (Shorty’s dad usually comes to visit) so things always get a little crazy. Also, I cook the entire meal for everyone, about 5-8 people, each year, since my family is Cuban and clueless in the ways of Thanksgiving. I will transcribe a conversation I had via  IM with my friend IB, who is African-American, about ethnic Thanksgivings, to illustrate:

IB: I’m off to the grocery store in a few >.>
Me: ME TOO. Hold me, I’m scared.
IB: Stay strong, girl.
Me: I am going to a grocery store in Little Havana so you know it will be crazy because my people will be all, “And I totally have to freak out and buy enough rice and beans and green plantains to fry, enough to feed 29572352 people because those are totally traditional Thanksgiving side dishes.”
IB: The one in my neighborhood will be packed because “You know that 12 pounds of greens is not enough, child. Go over there and get me two more bunches…” *me watching as the little girl picks up 5 MORE*
Me: THE PILGRIMS HAD THOSE, YOU KNOW.
IB: OF COURSE.
Me: I tried to convince my family to let me make a goose one year and they looked at me like I had just suggested they have roast puppy for Christmas.
IB: Nah, that wouldn’t fly here either.  Of course, when I offered to make pumpkin pie one year my mom looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “What’s wrong with sweet potato?”
Me: When I made a pumpkin pie one year, my mom thought I had lost it, too. She was all, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? THEY’RE ON SALE AT PUBLIX! TWO FOR $6!

So what I’m doing is having Shorty do some fun Thanksgiving arts and crafts.  Here is a great free Thanksgiving activity pack with copywork, place cards (Shorty LOVED doing those – I printed them out on cardstock) and arts and crafts.  There are also tons of really cute Thanksgiving printables and activities here for a wide variety of ages. I’ve printed out a bunch, but who knows how much we’ll actually get done. Anyway, for those of you in areas that celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you have a wonderful and blessed one, and for everyone else, have a great rest-of-the-week! I’ll be back on Friday, with pictures, and hopefully a little progress on the above list. Hopefully.

This week I’ve been training on a new position (with earlier hours, urgh, but more of them and with slightly better pay) for my inbound customer service job, as well as finishing up Shorty’s two unit studies on the US Constitution and Mr. Popper’s Penguins/ Polar Animals this week to correspond with our WinterPromise units. We’ve been doing a lot of lapbooking and notebooking this year, the combination of which has seemed to really help Shorty with retaining the information, as opposed to the prior year’s format of me reading and him forgetting instantly.

Shorty’s polar animals lapbook (with notebooking), on which he’s been working for a month, has come out spectacularly – I’ll post pictures this weekend – and the US Constitution lapbook, while not as extensive, helped him learn a lot about civics, researching and fact-finding. We used Wikepedia, the White House for Kids site, and a few library books.  For the next two weeks, we’ll be taking a break from Animals and their World/ American Story 1 and be doing a unit study on the 2008 Presidential Elections with its corresponding lapbook, and a lighter, more fun one on the history and symbols of Halloween.  But it’s been a pretty intense week, academics-wise, as well as having judo twice this week.

Yesterday we had a field trip yesterday with our local homeschooling group to see the EXCELLENT production of the musical 1776 at the Actor’s Playhouse in Coral Gables. If you’re in the Miami area either this weekend or next, and you like musicals, you neeeeeeed to see this production. I’m a huge fan of the movie, and being a hopeless Trekkie, I love the original cast recording of the 1990s revival starring Brent Spiner, but this production far exceeded my expectations and is easily one of the best professional theater productions I’ve ever seen. There was not a weak link among the cast in terms of singing or acting; the costumes were spectacular; the staging was polished and visually arresting. Even the usually dramatic aspects of the show were pulled off seamlessly – the young man who sang “Mama, Look Sharp,” my least favorite song, had a gorgeous, mesmerizing tenor. I was just honestly blown away.

It’s a great show on its own – with a libretto written by a historian, it brings these historical figures to (larger than) life, wars and all, while illustrating the very human struggle that went into founding our nation, and how very self-aware the various characters were in how tenuous that founding was.  Even though we know how it ends, you can’t help feeling suspense at how they’re going to manage to get there against all odds. I am hard pressed to wonder how this musical fares outside of the US. As an American, it’s a show that makes you feel like history’s figures were fighting for you, even if they didn’t know it at the time.

Our group went to see it on a “school day,” meaning we were surrounded by public school elementary and high school kids, and they all loved it. The acting and singing and production values of this show were so good in this production that even usually jaded Miami teenagers could not contain their swelling applause and cheering by the time the delegates all signed at the end. A few kids even whooped righteously during the song, “The Egg,” in which Ben Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson sing: “And just as Tom here has written /Though the egg may belong to Great Britain / The eagle inside belongs to us!” It’s so cool to hear kids’ genuine enthusiasm inspired by a history lesson cleverly disguised as an engaging musical.

Anyway, if you can’t see the play, rent the movie – it’s on Netflix and it’s really terrific.

Today I work a few hours in the morning, then Shorty and I are going to go see High School Musical 3, about which I am easily much more excited than he is. I bought daytime tickets hoping to avoid the hoards of children that will inevitably congregate to the movie this weekend, but it backfired – turns out, today is a school holiday for Dade County public schools. OOPS. Then more judo (sparring match tonight!) Then possible eventual collapse at octogenarian hours later tonight.  Being an adult sure is tiring sometimes!

We’ve been very busy this week. On Monday, it was my Dad’s birthday, and we went to my parents’ house to celebrate. We took pictures but, honestly, we all came out horrible. So I’m not going to post them. My mom is a big fan of dim lighting in the dining area to create an “intimate feel” and needless to say we all came out like gargoyles. But we had a really great day there with the four generations – my parents, Shorty, my grandma and I. I also got to meet my step-aunt Anna-Elia, my Dad’s sister, who has recently moved to Miami, and she was really nice. She only moved here from Cuba a couple of years ago, so I had never met her before.

I’m a fan of giving practical, usable gifts for birthdays. I don’t like to give stuff. Maybe the years of FlyLady have sunk in because I’m kind of a minimalist. I have a lot of shelves covered in books, art supplies, etc., but I don’t have a lot of stuff. I hate knick-knacks or presents that are just intended to sit around and collect dust. Don’t get me wrong – as FlyLady likes to say, if it gives you joy to look at it, keep it. But I’m not a fan of enabling someone’s hoarding tendencies. I would rather just give them presents they can use and maybe even create a lasting, lovely memory from. I like to give people things like memberships to museums, movie tickets, or gift certificates to their favorite restaurants or stores.

So I gave my Dad some usable presents for his birthday:

• Some really, really incredible chocolate I’d ordered for him- well, hecomplaid that I had just ruined any and all attempts to diet, but the gleam in his eye told me differently Those people cater hardcore to my serious weakness for chocolate-covered fruit of any kind, and I have much love.
• A gift certificate to a great high-end Cuban restaurant from Restaurant.com which will pretty much let them have a very nice lunch for half price;
• Some movie tickets.

My parents work too hard and never do anything nice for themselves. Instead of giving them stuff that sits around getting ignored and creates even more work for them (stuff has to be cleaned, after all!) I like to give them the gift of leisure, enjoyment and free time.

Of course, it’s up to the receiver to go with the follow-through, because I gave them movie tickets last Christmas, and they used them in July. So knowing my Dad, these tickets won’t be used until February.

I’ve also been working a lot for ChaCha.com now that I’ve made Top Guide 2 weeks in a row and the pay is much better and it’s totally flexible. Y’all work-from-home types should check it out. (Put info(at)alrpros dot com as a referral if you sign up!!) It’s a human powered search engine, it’s a lot of fun, and they’re hiring in all 50 states! And I’ve been doing a little freelance writing, and Shorty and I have been working on two separate lapbooks, and we had Cub Scouts this week, and we’ve started plotting our fall garden (pictures at the link – it’s my new gardening blog!) and and and! There are just not enough hours in the day…

But it’s been a good week.

I think I’ll do a week-by-week wrap-up instead of a daily blog. It’s just too much for me to keep up with at this time.

After homeschooling a full day Monday and Tuesday, I received a phone call from the mom of DS9’s best friend.  We’ll call him R.  We have known R and R’s family for several years and his mom is someone I consider a close friend and mentor. She’s a really amazing lady and I admire her a lot.  She’s been a foster mother for many years and she’s just really sweet and giving.  We haven’t seen them in forever because they live in Fort Lauderdale and we live in South Miami; it is just difficult to set aside time to see them regularly since we moved from Northwest Dade County (Hialeah Gardens on the Miramar line).  R’s Mom said she’d be in Miami on Wednesday and thought it would be fun if R could stay over on Wednesday night.  DS9 was thrilled, of course – it was his first sleepover!

I can honestly say all went really well. R was a perfect angel and a great guest.  I tried to take them to Amelia Earhart park, but apparently to discourage truancy, now that school is in session, it is only open on the weekends. That was a huge let-down as R was very excited about seeing it, but they did play in the one open playground for an hour or so, then I took them to the Mall of the Americas to play in the video arcade for a bit and wander around and look at the pet store, then we went to see Underdog.  All I will say about that is that it wasn’t as bad as it looked like it was going to be.   I didn’t realize Peter Dinklage was in it – he’s fantastic and he really underplayed what could’ve been a total caricature character.  I love Jason Lee, the voice of Underdog, on his TV show, My Name Is Earl, but he sounded exactly the same in his voice-overs for the movie as he does on his voice-overs for the show, so that was a bit jarring. I kept expecting Underdog to start talking about Joy, Crabman and all the wacky hijinks in his trailer park.   

All in all, that half of the sleepover was a huge success. The boys had a really good time together and we watched the TMNT movie off pay-per-view after dinner.   They went to sleep at 10:30PM, which is early for DS9 since he normally tosses and turns until at least an hour later than that. 

The next day, Thursday I took them to Walmart to get their “school portraits” done.  I don’t have a digital camera because I just haven’t had the finances to purchase one yet. My mother has a beautiful one that she uses maybe 3 times a year, but she doesn’t let me borrow it often.  :-/ Anyway, I have very few pictures of DS9 from the last few years ever since my last digital camera broke down, and I don’t have any yearly Sears-type portraits since 2 years ago.  So we went and took some photos. They came out very nice; I’m sure I’ll have them to post soon.

When R’s mother came to pick him up, she suggested that DS9 go along and sleep over, too. I was leery because I could see that DS9 was way overstimulated and tired from the last 36 hours, but I didn’t want to deprive him of more rare one-on-one time with another kid that really likes him, so I agreed. Well, they got stuck in traffic on the way to Fort Lauderdale and the boys ended up being in the car nearly 2 hours; by the time they got to R’s house, DS9 was totally off the charts, wouldn’t eat anything, wouldn’t stop yelling at everyone, and was just climbing the walls. He gave poor R’s mom a really, really hard time. She said he cried 3 times – not to go home, just over minor things.  I feel so bad and now DS9 does too.  She was very kind to extend the invitation and now he is afraid that he won’t be invited back; I doubt that is the case, because she was very understanding and supportive, and she really likes us both (and R loves DS9 and vice versa), but still, the evening didn’t go so well.

Friday morning, I took the Tri-Rail up to Fort Lauderdale. The station is 10 minutes away from R’s house and just 20 blocks from mine, and it only costs about $10 roundtrip for both DS9 and myself (by contrast, gas for the trip is about $18), and it goes all the way up past West Palm Beach.  The ride to the station near R’s house is approximately 40 minutes, only a few minutes more than driving, and without the hassle of traffic. The Tri-Rail is very well-policed, clean and spaciously comfortable.  It’s a very nice way to travel.   In fact, its second-to-last stop doubles as a Greyhound station, and I have figured out that it would cost under $50 for both of us to get to Orlando, and take about as long as by car (and less time as by bus – and is MUCH more comfortable), so the next time we head up there, we’re doing it that way.  

But I digress.  We got back on Friday, had a long talk about his behavior (more on this in my next post) and did some reading, handwriting and math.   The new math curriculum is marvelous and exactly at his ability level, but it is taking FOREVER for us to complete each lesson right now, just because it is just so radically different than anything else we’ve ever done that he’s really resistant to it.  We are using the Base-10 blocks that we got from another mom and those are just what my little visual-kinesthetic learner needs   Once he hits his stride with each lesson, he really enjoys the puzzles and the exercises, so I think once he gets into it, he’ll like it much more.

Saturday, I had a four-hour shift with my inbound customer service job.  The first hour, DS9 took a bubble bath He loves to just soak in bubbly, warm water and it seems to really relax him.  Conversely, he finds showers extremely unpleasant and unsettling at a sensory level, so I just have to remember to keep my bathtub very, very clean! LOL  The second hour and a half, he quietly sat by me as I took calls.  He worked on some handwriting, then worked on more of the Ed Emberley animal drawing book. He is LOVING that and I see his drawing improving by the day.  I’ll definitely be getting more of the series.   Then he vegged out at my grandma’s studio apartment next door for the remainder of my shift, and then we just had a lazy Saturday.

So that was our low-key first week back. We didn’t get everything accomplished that I had hoped we would, but that’s okay – it’s just our first week back!