first piano recital

My twelve year old son performed at his first piano recital, he was awesome. He played a song called Latin Logic. I noticed that his self esteem shoot up the roof because people were complimenting him. My daughters violin recital is coming up shortly.
Last night I took the kids to the mall to participate in Salvation Army's Christmas angel project. We picked a card from the Christmas tree which stated the present that the needy child wanted. The six year old boy wanted a transformer, so we purchased one over at Toys R Us and brought it back to Salvation Army.
Tomorrow I am having the kids review all the U.S. capitals and also the capitals of various foreign countries. It's pretty cool to hear a six year name the capitals of United States and five foreign countries. The kids have also memorized the first twenty presidents of the U.S. and what they were famous for.

Another Beautiful day in Paradise

Hawaii truly is a glimpse of what heaven might look like.
I gave the kids a day off today....we decided to do a back yard barbeque. My son and I picked some Keawe wood for the smokey flavor. I love to barbeque, can't wait till Thanksgiving day, I smoke the turkey for 7 hours. You have to be very attentive to the turkey through out the day, but in the end it comes out juicy and full of great flavors.
I played Chinese jump rope with my youngest daughter. It's actually a pretty good cardio work out.
I ordered a free SAT testing CD from Homeschool Legal. Turns out that the NFL sponsors the free SAT testing CD....fortunate for me since I'm kind of short of cash.
Blessings

Difficulty with math

This morning I woke up at 7:40am instead of the ussual 6am. Some telemarketer guy called at 4am, and I couldn't go back to sleep right away. My oldest was awake watching t.v., so I asked her why she didn't wake me up....her response was that I am suppose to wake myself up. My son was still asleep, so I had to get him out of bed. I let my six year old daughter sleep until 8 since she doesn't actually start school until 9. Since I woke up late, I decided to start our school at 8:30. I made their ussual turkey sausage and oatmeal for breakfast.

My son was having difficulty with his math, no matter how many hints I gave him, he took sooooo long on figuring out the answer to the equation. My two daughters can easily do their math with minimum help, but with my son, it takes much more time and patience. I wonder if he is having difficulty because he is a lefty?
We are done with school for today, my son is practicing his piano right and my daughter is playing her violin. I think I will enroll my six year old in violin.

Homeschooling in Hawaii

Today is a beautiful day, cool breeze, sunshine, nice view of the ocean from my home....what else could I ask for?
My six year old daughter is learning how to tell time. Today I taught her about the concept of "half an hour"....she caught on pretty quickly. I asked her questions such, if I left home at 10, and arrived at the mall in a half an hour, what time would it be....reply of course is 10:30. She is on tape 3 of hooked on phonics. In the previous lessons, she learned how to sound out two letter suffixes, and now she is starting on two letter prefixes.
Most of her lessons are from books that I buy from Borders. We have already completed the 1st grade level writing, so I bought a 2nd grade writing book.
More to come regarding my other two kids.

I'm Back

Sorry for being away for such a long time. I am now living in Hawaii. Yes I am still homeschooling the kids and enjoying it very much. I am so amazed at how fast kids learn. I have completely changed our curriculum around, I will post it at a later time.
Aloha for now.

Back to Homeschool

Finally finished cleanning up all the mess from the Christmas presents. Today we worked on math and grammar. My oldest worked on adding and subtracting intergers, and the middle worked on his multiplying three digit numbers again. My kids use a math website which teaches how to work problems, and then quiz them. As for the grammar, we used the Middle School Advantage 2005 program that I bought from Best Buy.
I'm starting to teach my three year old letter recognition. She is very eager to learn because her older sibblings get to have all the fun.
I took the kids out snowboarding, we had a blast.
The kids Highlight Magazine came in the mail today, I will have them read it, and give me a short oral report on what they learned.
Ron

reading and math

Today we did math and reading. Math can be somewhat fustrating to teach, takes a lot of patience. My son worked on multiplication of 3 digit numbers and my daughter worked on fractions. It took about 20 minutes to complete the math work. I think we have to do math everyday so that it becomes second nature to them.
As for the reading, I had them read a short story, and then they gave me an oral report about what they read.
My daughter ussually has her violin lesson on thursdays, but her teacher is on vacation right now. I will have her practice on her own today.
I was planning on borrowing an educational video today, unfortunately the university library is closed till the beginning of January.
I just remembered that we might be getting some DVD's from the mail today. I rent dvd's online and use it for the homeschool.
I'll close here for now.

We did science today

Today we made a mold fossil and a cast fossil. We worked with a toy centepede, plaster of paris, and sand. The kids learned the process of fossilization (hope that's an actual word), and about what the paleontologist does. The whole process took about 1 hour. It took a while, but the kids had fun doing it.

My first Post

Hello, well this is my first blog in cyber space. Seven months ago, I started homeschooling my three kids and it seems to be going very well. My kids are 11, 9, and 3 years old. I will be putting up my posts, hopefully everyday, and let you know of our progress.