Popping in

or otherwise known as "Popping Out: the story of my overworked eyes."

I thought I'd pop in for a bit. I spent the majority of my day prepping for home school lessons.

Warning: complaining may commence shortly.

10yo and I started the day off with a bang. This is our first full week in the official school year. A great opportunity to get into the real routine of how our days should look. To top it off, Hubs has been having more Sundays off (rather than his usual Monday) and this week was no exception. That means it's an actual full week. If he's home, not much school ever gets done. He keeps us too busy or else he's just too entertaining to focus on anything boring like book work.

We've finally started that morning Bible reading (I have had it on our to-do for ...ever.. but have never implemented it) and are working our way through the book of Esther. As the morning literature reading was being done, I started my weekly plan which went rather quickly. Then I began to think about the real course of study we'd like to take in History. A real chronological type study starting with Native Peoples and working our way forward. We started with the founding of Virginia last week and the book we've been reading then introduces us to Pocahontas. I've been thinking we'll pick up with Native tribes at that point.

I began to search for material to use. I searched, and searched and searched. If you'd look at my page history today, you'd find it incredibly full. What I've found is this: There is nothing that I've found yet, that goes into the study of our nation in the manner in which we'd like to cover it. NOTHING. The Hakim books come close, but they are abundant in skimming and glossing some areas, and sticking on others. I found various unit studies, books that cost a bundle, and adult geared websites, but nothing that gives me the "facts, ma'am, just the facts."

GrrrrrRRRRR!!! A four hour search ensued. Yeah. you read that correctly. 4 hours.

Now, I'm not saying I was zoned in only on the computer, and neglected my children. Not at all. We had lunch, did math lessons, oral narrations and all, but the Momma was working the whole time. Can someone say "multi-task?"

I finally ran across a good state website that lists some of the Indian tribes that lived in our area...wouldn't ya like to know where?...and bookmarked it after reading through a large portion.

Then I moved on to our book of centuries. This is another one of those things that I've been wanting to implement, but was for some reason saving for when we went independent of k12. The time is right.

So, here is a valuable tip for all you other HS'ers out there. Go to www.simplycharlottemason.com and click on Book of centuries. They've done most of the work for you. All you have to do is print, punch the holes, and insert into a binder.

I printed odd pages, reinserted the pages, and then printed even pages on the other side. I also took the extra time to put on all those page reinforcement stickers.

So that, my friends, is the why my eyeballs feel as though they are popping right out. I've spent too much time at the computer (which is pretty typical when I'm trying to find something). I can't just stop without completing what I've started.