A little bit of everything...

Merry (belated) Christmas to everyone! I hope everyone had a great holiday. Ours was wonderful - lots of family, food and gifts. :) Brenna made out pretty good this year and got a lot of nice things. Brendon and I got her a lot of cool stuff (no toys from us this year!). She got a new bike from 'Santa', a helmet, telescope, a planetarium, a couple games and her own set of golf clubs. Brendon loves to play and Brenna has really been showing an interest in it and wants to go with him all the time. So I found these cute clubs with a bag just her size. She was so excited and has gone out with Daddy once. They played 9 holes and he said that she got the ball in three of the holes all by herself. :) They are going to start going out to the driving range and the putting practice area every weekend. I will have to go with them and take my camera. Brendon said that she did real good and was very excited. She is our retirement plan. LOL!
So Brenna got a karaoke machine from Grandma and Grandpa too, which she LOVES! You really should see her sing Hannah Montana songs - it is pretty entertaining. Aunt Jenny and PJ got her a "rock star" outfit and she has a blond wig and knows ALL the moves. By the way, Hannah Montana is a pop star that Brenna loves. No more Wiggles or cute little kid songs for her. It is actually kinda sad for me. Makes me realize that she is not a little baby anymore. I can't believe that she will be 6 this year. How the time flies!! I am so ready for another baby - hopefully this year will be our lucky year. :)

Anyways, Brenna is doing GREAT in karate and Brendon and I are so proud of her. Anyone who knows Brenna knows that she LOVES to talk and is a social little butterfly and wants to make friends with everybody! That has really been our biggest obstacle in karate. She just wants to talk to everyone and "be Brenna", as my Mother would say. I finally had a talk with her and told her that karate is not 'social time'. She has been MUCH better and is paying attention a lot more. Her teacher is great with her though. He actually made her do push-ups a couple weeks ago because she would not stop talking. I hate to say this but... I thought it was GREAT! LOL :) She needs that and needs to learn how to pay attention more and focus on things. Right now she is a white belt (beginning belt) but on March 1st she will be take the promotion test for her yellow belt.

Well there's not really much to write about on the homeschooling. We took an extra long Christmas vacation. LOL The Homeschool Group has not met in a while because of Christmas and the New Year. That should all resume sometime pretty soon. In February we will start our Co-op again but this time it will be for two months instead of one and we will be meeting every Wednesday. I will be one of the teachers in the Kinder-1st class and will be teaching them about weather. I will have to start researching things soon and come up with some cool hands-on stuff. I am all about the hands-on learning. Kids learn so much better that way and have so much more fun.
As for OUR homeschooling, we really haven't been doing that much the past month. Brenna came down with two colds/sinus stuff within a month and each one knocked her on her butt for about a week. I was sick too for almost a week and a half so that kinda slowed us down a bit. Neither of us were sick during Christmas though, thank goodness. I really wasn't all that concerned with 'school stuff' during the holidays either. She has been reading though and is getting better and better. We have started reading the Junie B. Jones series. They are about a 5 year old little girl and are so funny and she loves them. They are chapter books, which I like so much better then the books with pictures on every page that you are finished with in five minutes. We incorporate math and science into our days as well - it might not be 'sit-at-the-table' type stuff but what 5 year old wants to do THAT? LOL For example, we were at my Grandma's the other day and I was filling her ice maker and had a few huge chunks that I had to get rid of in the sink. A light bulb went off in my head and I called Brenna in the kitchen. I showed her the ice and asked her what ice was made of and why it was hard, told her what temperature water had to get to in order to freeze, ect.... I had the faucet running and asked her what would happen if I put it under the warm water. She was so interested and was really into it and answered all of my questions correctly. She had a blast holding the ice and watching it melt under the water in her hand. It was a lot of fun and she loved it! Something so simple yet so fascinating to a five year old. I love it!
I would like to start doing more writing pretty soon with her though. She knows HOW to write all of her letters, we just need to perfect them. We will probably accomplish that with pavement and chalk. :) I am also thinking of giving her spelling words every week and having spelling tests on Fridays. Nothing hard - just easy words like 'the', 'girl', 'boy', ect.... She writes all the time and does a pretty good job spelling most things but she writes phonetically (the way things sound) - like 'knock' to her is 'nok'. I have read that it is very good that she is doing that - especially at her age. I think she will have fun with spelling words though. And if not, then that's okay - I will at least try it. I do not want to force her to do anything. That's why so many kids have such a hard time learning or think that learning isn't FUN - because it is FORCED on them. I don't want to force anything on my daughter. If some people think that I am going too easy on her or think that kids are SUPPOSED to be forced to learn or "that's just what they need to do", then so be it. That is one of the reasons why I chose to homeschool. All the books I have read and articles on the Internet all say the same thing when it comes to children learning - it HAS to be fun and enjoyable to them and something that THEY want to do. Is my daughter going to never learn anything unless I make her sit at the table and force her to study and read out of textbooks and do worksheets? Of course not. Children have a natural desire to learn. A lot of times that natural desire is crushed (by the public school system I think) because they are made to do things. Does that mean that I will never make her sit and study something or challenge her? No. But she is only 5 and I want to instill in her at an early age that learning is fun; not a chore or something that has to be dreaded. I want to eventually have a child that craves knowledge and WANTS to learn new things. I, as a mother, do not want to crush that natural desire.