Is it April already?

Today, it was 63 as was yesterday! It has been sooo hard to concentrate on school!! We wanted to play outside, but considering last Sunday night we got 9 inches or so of snow and now its melted, it has been much too wet and muddy to play. :( We have had 2 good snowfalls since Nov and our family is ready for it to be spring. We decided that today. We wouldn't mind if it stayed in the range of 50's to mid-60's during the day and 40's for comfortable sleeping at night. Ahhh. I know. I will have to face the reality of more snow before it can truly be spring, but this was a nice reprieve from the usual January weather. Its been nice and intoxicating having the windows open the last few days. They are calling for a high of only 45 tomorrow with rain, which is a far cry from the sunny 60's, but still very warm for January.

School has been going well. We are getting into a routine, which seems to be more of this: we do what we want, when we want. :) Which is so nice and fun and different. We like it this way. Tomorrow, we are going to try to do math last at Felecia's request because its quite a challenge for her. I have my doubts that it will work that way, I'm thinking she is usually burned out by late afternoon and she won't want to stay focused, but hopefully I'm wrong. My idea was to always do math first and get it out of the way. However, doing it first also has sometimes set the tone for her to have a bad attitude throughout the day, so maybe doing the easier more fun stuff first will make a difference. Today, she got to sleep in till 9:30. The last few nights the kids have been chit-chatting and staying awake till 11-11:30! Tonight is crack-down time. (It's 10 to 9 right now and we'll see what happens -- I currently have 3 very wide-awake kids). In part, its my fault for being lax on them over Christmas break with their bedtimes. I like it for a while when they stay up because this means they will sleep in late, and I LOVE to sleep in. Now, I also like to start school by 9 so we can be done around 3 or 4, which means we all basically have to get up by 8 to have eaten and gotten really awake to start at 9. I wanted her to sleep till she woke up today, and that was 9:30. So she got 10 hours of sleep. This made a big difference in her attitude today. Plus, Curt had an extra day off this week so she was able to hang out with daddy and then do some art with him before starting core courses for the day. Consequently, we didn't start till 1:00 today but we finished by 5:30 so not a bad day overall.

I recently found out that we are able to do up to 12 supplemental hours each week and count towards required hours for school. That's neat! We are constantly in search of free internet educational games. Yesterday, we watched a recorded episode of "Survivorman". It was the one where he was on Baffin Island, The Arctic, Canada. I took notes based on what she and I thought was interesting/noteworthy. We learned a lot and that was a nice supplement to science and history. (In history, we have been learning the continents, oceans, directions, poles, etc.) Before we started the show, I explained to her about seasons and the position of the earth and our relativity to the sun during seasons, and also where Les (aka "survivorman") was and what season it was where he was at. (I had already seen that episode as Curt and I are avid watchers of the show.) It was really interesting to stop every now and then to take notes and answer her questions and then to come up with our own conclusion afterward. I had my doubts as to her interest and how long she would last, but she really enjoyed it as well.