Helloooo?

*taps mic* Anyone still here?

Ok, so I pulled another one of my disappearing acts. I swear my intention is to post regularly! I just swear I see squirrels and rainbows and get distracted lol

I have started Bullet Journalling (more about that later). One of the reasons, is to be less squirrely. One of my goals for May is to get back to blogging regularly. The whole point of this blog is so people can learn about our journey and so me and the kids can have this cool diary of sorts to look back on. I also really enjoy writing!

Teeny up-to-date on us...
Joshua - as of his last speech assessment, he is up to 2.5 years old in speech. This is fantastic as a year ago he had 4 words and relied solely on sign language. He's *finally* starting his 2nd block of speech therapy next week so hopefully we can get that number even higher! We're also waiting on referrals and assessments from the Ottawa Children's Treatment Center for autism, sensory processing disorder and occupational therapy. Joshua also starts soccer this month!

Olivia - in February she joined Brianna in Time4Learning after completing Reading Eggs and Math Seeds. She has already completed Social Studies for Gr. 2 and is 3/4 done science and math in Gr. 2. So we're mostly focusing on English, which has always been her weaker spot, but she's more than half done Gr. 1 there. She loves Brownies and is excited to do her first camp with them this month. She also starts her 3rd year of soccer this month.

Brianna - finally finished all her Gr. 6 work and I swear it's like a light bulb clicked. It took her almost 3 years to finish Gr. 6 yet she's on course to finish Gr. 7 by the end of July! She is absolutely thriving in Pathfinders and graduates to Rangers for next year. She's been working her tail off to sell cookies and fundraise to pay for their trip to England in 2019. She squeezed into her final year of science camp (technically she ages out 5 days before camp but they've allowed to to take part this year). She's been encouraged by the River Institute to volunteer with them next summer (most likely helping with the younger campers group).

Isaac - graduates this year!!! How the hell did that happen! Wasn't it just like, last year, that he started Kindergarten!? He's been accepted into 2 programs at one of the city's best colleges (!!!) and currently plans to do both, double majoring. He's also working with a program there to work over the summer. He may possibly get a couple hours sleep. He has also almost completed a completely drawn by hand, D&D style game with a friend of his. We tested it out this weekend and it was pretty damn fun!

Dylan - has been working full time at the same place Lee is since the fall and has been doing great! While they work for different companies in the same building, he and Lee see each other a couple times a week. Everyone thinks they're brothers lol He had some nerve wracking trips home in the winter due to storms (he has the same anxiety that Lee does and this was his first winter doing any kind of distance driving).

Lee - after a round of (fairly low) winter blues, his anxiety appears to be doing much better. He's in his happy little world at work in wash bay without anyone breathing down his neck. There's a possibility of promotion to days wash bay late in the summer due to someone's retirement that he's really excited about, so we've all got our fingers crossed for that one!

Me - I fell into a food-happy slump over the winter and gained 9 of my hard-earned 40lb loss back. However, now that the weather is nice again, I've been getting out for multiple mile walks a few times a week. My business is slow, as it always is in spring and summer but I'm happy with that as it gives me time to selfish sew! My goal is to have 75% of the family's summer clothes be mama made this year.

So that's us for now. I hope to have a LOT more frequent postings, including a pile of the drafts I was working on last fall. How's everyone else doing in blog land?

My New Mom's Planner!

So, like a LOT of people, I live on my smartphone. However, I love a good pencil and paper. I still do my budget by hand, with paper and pencil. I use spreadsheets all the time for other things. But certain things just require pencil and paper.

I've made a planner before and failed. I discovered it was too long. I'd get bored and keep forgetting to write in it. The beauty of making a planner as opposed to buying one is that it's completely custom. I can't keep a planner for a whole year so I make one for 3 or 4 months. I don't need school phone numbers or dry cleaner numbers. I don't add them. I DO need a cleaning schedule because I'm a terrible housekeeper and no planners have that.

Insert - I'm bored and like to play with Microsoft Word and print stuff.

I'm left handed so coil binding or Steno-style is pretty much required.

Daily, weekly and monthly cleaning schedule for my lazy house-work-hating self

Full year calendar with days off school

Master Grocery List

It's titled pantry inventory, but really it's my "basement food" inventory

I don't follow meal planning in the sense of this is what we WILL eat this day, but having many meals written out, gives me ideas and prevents too much cereal or take out for supper

Living in an old house, there's always fixing to do

In correlation with my weight loss efforts, I have this tracking page....

And this workout tracking page

In a plea to appeal Brianna to math, I came up with math points in which she can earn Minecraft time or money

In response, she asked to also have to opportunity to earn chore points.

Major school plans

Keeping track of curriculum used

Thus far it's been working well. We've been eating real food and my housework is at least getting done better than before.

I'll be working on sharing the pdf files I make her on the blog. For now though, if you can work simple programs through Word, feel free to copy them :)

Totally Flipping Brianna's Math

Brianna has several issues that are just part of her life. She has Sensory Processing Disorder, Central Auditory Processing Disorder and probable Dysgraphia. Such is life. We deal with it. Now, however, we are looking at the probability of Dyscalculia.

Brianna is a smart child. Regardless of her alphabet soup of letters between her diagnosed disorders and her probable ones, she still excels in many areas of life. Except math. Math has always been her sore spot. In a sea of straight As in everything else, the highest grade she's ever gotten in math is a C, but most often it's a D or (currently) an F.

While she seemingly has no issues with grades 1 through 4, grade 5 hit her like a lead balloon. It took her 3 tries to make it through Gr. 5 math. She is now on her 2nd try through Gr. 6 math. And yet, she's doing Gr. 8-10 in most other subjects.

Going into the high school years and the fact that she needs at least Gr. 11 math for the college course she wants to take, we obviously need to figure something out.

What we're going to do first is have her do almost all of the chapter tests (thankfully no test anxiety here) from grade 2 to 5. That will hopefully pin point the specific areas she's struggling with.

From there, we're going to spend extra time with Khan Academy, drills and randomized math questions in problem areas. Hopefully we will go back with Math Mammoth in a few months as both she and I enjoy it. We are also looking into Life of Fred and MobyMax.

Loooong Awaited Update

So since I only blogged a whole *2* times last year, there's kinda been a lot missed. The somewhat condensed version...

Dylan: 19, lives with his mother. Dylan graduated high school. He took an intense 8 week course for heavy equipment operator. He is now working at his first full time job, which he loves!

Isaac: 16, lives with his grandmother. Isaac got his drivers license over the summer (which he is super proud of). He got Honours on his most current report card. He is still very geek/computer driven.

Brianna: 13, at home. Brianna had a slow start to the year. We did minimal core subjects and otherwise unschooled. My brain just wasn't having it. While this helped heal my brain, it didn't do much for Brianna. She does great unschooled learning for self taught or guided learning but anything that is required, but she doesn't particularly want to do, she NEEDS to be "sat on" to do it. Thus, she did poorly to failing miserably at several things. After a summer of normal summer schedule, we got back to business for school. She is doing great in all areas other than math. Don't get me wrong, she is actually good at math! She just doesn't like it, so she slacks off.

In November she again took part in NaNoWriMo. Last year she wrote nearly 10,000 words. This year she more than doubled it to 20,000+ words by the end of November and isn't even done her story! She took a couple month break from it and starting next month will be working on finishing it and editing it. She story is Minecraft fan fiction.

Brianna started working for our neighbour, being a regular babysitter and also doing random jobs around their house. She saved half her money all year and did really well with what she kept. She even took on a couple other babysitting jobs and is building herself a good reputation.

She finally started Rosetta Stone French and is excelling in it. The program doesn't "pass" you unless you have set grade (I believe 75 or 80%), but for most lessons this is easy as pie for her. She is struggling with the writing portion as she's a horrendous speller, even in English. And she has some issues with the grammar portion but French grammar is hard.

Brianna really didn't do all that well in her training or races last year. It's a goal she's working on for this year and thus far she's doing pretty good!

Brianna took part in a science fair with our homeschool group. She put together a project on Earth Sciences, focusing on various rocks. She did really well with the project and even did a presentation in front of the group! She is very stage fright and didn't want to do the presentation portion (not required anyway), so I was super proud of her when she chose to.

Brianna got an undercut and then a short bob in the battle of her amazingly thick and heavy hair. The undercut did a lot over the summer for heat control but the knots she was getting in the remaining length was still a lot to take care of. Once we chopped her hair to jaw level AND kept the undercut, she is both cool and able to take care of it better.

We've started looking into high school and college requirements for the course she wants to take (Environmental Technician). I am not looking forward to high level math. Or writing transcripts. Or high school in general *sigh*

Olivia: 6, at home. Olivia has been working hard at learning to read. She's got a list of 22 words she can fluently read and is excellent with sounding out phonetic words. She is confused over a lot of the English rules, but they ARE confusing.

Olivia took, and failed, swimming lessons last spring. I am very glad she failed as she didn't do well enough to pass. She practised hard over the summer though and I have no worries that she will easily pass this spring.

Olivia joined soccer last year and just loved it! Her favorite position is defence and even got a Player of the Game award for her defensive skills. She can't wait to join again this summer.

She is still excelling in math. She is flying through her Gr. 1 work and will easily be into Gr. 2 work before the school year is done. She loves doing Khan Academy like Brianna.

We chopped off all her hair last year from being almost to her butt. She wanted it "short like Daddy". We convinced her to get a cute bob with bangs. Not good enough, she still wanted it shorter. She now has a short pixie cut, which she loves.

Olivia has started learning French. Brianna's Rosetta Stone requires fluent reading so for now, we'll just be working on the basics. Brianna is doing a lot of the teaching. Olivia can't wait to use Rosetta Stone too!

While Brianna was doing her NaNoWriMo, Olivia decided to write a book as well. She drew pictures then dictated to me what to write. She's not quite done yet but she's done really well so far!

She also lost her first tooth (and now 2nd)! It had been wiggly for a while and the adult tooth was even growing in behind it, but she was very worried about pulling it out. Finally when it was barely hanging on by a thread, she let me pull it out.

Joshua: 2.5, at home. Joshua is not doing tot school yet (though he probably could!). He is mute. No particular reason for it. He checks out medically, has perfect hearing and is at average or is advanced for normal toddler development. Except in speech. Because of this, we are holding off potty training and schooling until we can get some better communication, which is our current focus.

He is excelling in sign language. He consistently uses 22 signs on his own and is learning many more. The girls are also using/learning sign language with him. We (Lee and I) are currently in a parent to child class and after that we'll be doing further speech therapy with Joshua.

Eventually we'll care about school for him. Right now, him being able to communicate is our number 1 priority. He's only 2, we're not worried about the rest.

Lee and I: As we're fairly open about, you may know that Lee has Generalized Anxiety Disorder. On average, it's well controlled. Sometimes he has bad days, some times he has really bad days. Last spring he had several bad months. He was actually so bad he was off work for 5 months. It was hard for everyone, most of all him. He was raised in a "man-up" generation and has always had a hard time dealing with feeling out of control or depressed. With a LOT of support, he made it through. He's back to work, though his first month was really rough, but now is going great.

Towards the end of his time off, we went on our long planned cross-Canada road trip for his best friend's wedding, in which he was the Best Man. It was so awesome to get away, just the 2 of us. We missed the kids like crazy, but thankfully Skype kept us in touch. I'll have a big blog post about this trip later.

I have been busy with my business. I've been trying out new fabrics and techniques in me sewing to try to get past that "beginner-novice" title. It's been surprisingly easy in some areas, and really tough in others.

My grandma died just before Christmas. She'd been struggling with various health problems for years and open heart surgery (which completely fixed her heart!) seems to have sped up some other issues. The girls, Olivia in particular, took it really hard. It makes me sad that Joshua will never really know her. It makes me sad that we don't get to see her any more. But I'm glad that she's not struggling with her health any more.

19 Days Late....

I don't typically "do" New Years Resolutions and maybe that's why this is 19 days "late". I really want to get back to my blog. I love writing, even if I sometimes stink at it. I really love reading my blog's history to see how much my kids and my life has grown. I need to get back to writing my blog.

I know, I know, I've said it before. I'm also a squirrel. My friend, Sabrina (who I've known over a year now, but no one would know, cause I suck at this blog thing lately), says I'm like a squirrel cause I flit around doing a zillion different things at once instead of focusing on one thing until its done. It's true. And maybe a kinda good thing since I have my house, my homeschooling, my business and more. I need to be able to take care of all of them. But I DO tend to leave a LOT of things unfinished to go on to the next great idea.

I found a great app, Keep, that's been really helping me. I have check lists for work, school, general to-dos, ect... While there's a zillion things on each list, I AM actually getting them checked off!

I WILL start writing my blog again. I'm sure I've lost the few followers I had by now, so for now, I'll just talk to myself. But hopefully, soon, people will start coming back to read about our little world

Summer Curriculum

Here's a look at our plans over the summer in regards to school.

Because we homeschool I, of course, plan to lock the kids in closets all summer and beat them with books. We can't have them socializing, now can we?! Ok, so maybe I've heard the S word too often lately lol Here's what's really going on.

Brianna has a zillion activities as usual! She's doing a science camp next week and a sewing camp in August. Brianna also goes swimming at a local outdoor pool with friends most afternoons. Olivia would have joined soccer this year, but the only group that allowed 4 year olds was almost an hour away, so we'll wait til next year.

Brianna also does a Park Leaders program at the neighbourhood park Tues-Fri mornings. Olivia even gets to join her this year! Unfortunately this is officially Brianna's last year, but I'm hoping since our park has a small group that she can be allowed to go with Olivia for a couple more years, even if it's only as a "helper".

Brianna and Olivia both joined the Read to Ride program with the library. In exchange for giving weekly oral book reports to the librarians, they get a sticker on their library cards that allows them on the city buses free (with an adult for Olivia!). Brianna loves it because she can go to the library any time without worrying about the heat and humidity (the library is quite a hike away) and Olivia just loves the bus!

Both girls ran a fun run today (which also happens to be Brianna's birthday!). Olivia is over the moon, thrilled for another race! It's all she talked about all week. Brianna has her 4th triathlon next month. She really needs to step up the pace in her training if she wants to beat her time from last year. She has great plans to do training and then forgets them quickly lol We're working on figuring out some kind of schedule for her to follow that works around the heat but still gets her running at least a few times a week.

As for actual school:

Brianna and I are doing a joint writing project. Each day we add to a story. Just 10 minutes of writing for each of us. Brianna thinks it's great both because it's something we're doing together, but also because it only requires 10 minutes of writing (she has a lot of issues putting thoughts to paper so "hates" writing). We've only been at it a few days, but it's fun so far. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what to write after Brianna's sometimes scrambled line of thought, but by reading what I write, she's also (without realizing it) learning proper writing style, grammar, punctuation, ect...

I'm also throwing spelling review at her once a week or so. Which, while I find it tedious, appears to be working as he spelling has *greatly* improved over the last couple of months. What ever works, eh?

Normally we'd slow down drastically in the math department, but Brianna wants to "catch up" her math as she's a year "behind". So we're working our way through Math Mammoth's Gr. 6 curriculum over the summer. I certainly don't expect her to finish it in 2 mths, but by doing a regular amount of pages rather than our summer amount of pages, she'll get a great head start.

We are still doing our country studies but we'll spread it over 2-3 weeks instead of cramming everything into 1 week. I had considered stopping them for the summer but as soon as we were winding down with Iceland, Brianna was harassing me about what our next country was. So we'll continue.

Olivia is in Kindergarten so already has quite the watered down schedule. To be honest, I do school with her whenever she asks for it or I think to ask her if she wants to do some. This works out to be, on average, 1-3 times a week. As she's still technically "ahead" if she was in public school, I'm not worried.

Over the summer, we're working on telling time, calendars, drawing shapes and convincing her to write her name more often. We'll also be working on making sure she's got all of her letters down, capital and lowercase and start working more on letter sounds.

Tot School - Pumpkins

Linking up with 1+1+1=1

I haven't linked up in quite some time, mostly because Olivia hasn't been terribly interested in anything "schooly", but also because I'm been horrible at documenting what she HAS done. Now that's she's 3 I plan on encouraging/offering "schooly" stuff at least once a day, rather than waiting for her to ask for it as I did in the past.

For some things, we use Typical Course of Study through World Book as a guideline for what Olivia "needs" to know to "complete" Pre-K. Here's a current list of what we've got to work on...

- Matches shaped or objects based on size
- Completes incomplete sentence with proper word (really never tried this)
- Prints own first name (currently working on tracing it)
- Understands top, bottom, middle
- Knows age and birthday (we've got age down, working on birthday)
- Repeats a sequence of orally given numbers (if they're in order, sure. We're working on mixed up numbers)
- Is able to stand on one foot for 5-10 seconds
- Able to button a garment
- Cuts simple shapes
- Handles scissors well (just started with scissors)
- Takes care of toilet needs independently (fighting  through this right now *sigh*)
- Crosses residential street safely (working on it)
- Knows home phone number (working on it)

She loves to practice cutting but refuses my help in showing her how to hold the scissors so she can make more than one cut *sigh*

She's loving these pumpkin pages I found at 1+1+1=1!

We did some yard work this week, Olivia had a blast in the leave

She also wanted to help Daddy dig up the spent plants in the veggie garden :)

Olivia grabbed this foam magnet picture frame, wrapped it around her LeapFrog toy and declared it a hexagon!

New Running Distance

Today the girls started a new running route. Previously they were running .3 mile (almost .5km). Their records for that distance are 2m 28s (B) and 2m 25s (T).

Now they're running just over 1 mile (almost 1.75km). They didn't do too badly seeing as this is the longest distance they've run in one shot. Brianna's current best time is 10m 41s and Tanya's best time is 9m 52s.

New Years Resolutions - Blog Style

1. I resolve to begin blogging again. I took a break to get my business running but seem to have forgotten to come back. With my business, homeschooling the girls and adding my niece into our homeschool, I should have lots to talk about that I'd really like to record!

2. I resolve to read the blogs I follow again. I have a list of about 100 blogs that I used to get zillions of ideas and 2nd hand support from that I really enjoyed reading and like blogging I seem to have forgotten to go back to. I can't promise I'll remember to comment on a lot of them, but at least I'll be reading them again!

Our Current Curriculum - May 2011

There are NO affiliate links in this post.

We school year round and don't really follow grades. We started Nov 15th 2010 in roughly the 3rd grade and will go until whenever of whatever year. In most subjects Brianna is in Gr. 3, however, her grade levels go from Gr. 1 to Gr. 5. We are working on a mastery basis so she moves on as she can and stays on certain things longer. 


French is at a grade 1 level simply because there is no such thing as French Immersion workbooks. Workbooks are either meant for French children continuing their education in French (Brianna's in the Gr. 1 level) or English children learning French (where Brianna's in the Gr 4/5 level). Since 98% of French workbooks are meant for French children, I base her in the Gr. 1 level.

So, since we don't have set grades or set school years, I figure every 4-6 mths I'll post what we are currently working on. We are currently mostly not using traditional HS items, but regular workbooks you can buy at the bookstore/teacher stores. Most subjects are supplemented by printed worksheets from various sites and of course, library books.

See my last curriculum post from January. 

Spelling: We are using the Spell by Color program on top of me keeping track of words she's spelled wrong (spelling is not "important" in the rest of her work as long as she is trying to spell the best she can) and she copies, alphabetizes, puts into sentences and draws pictures of her words and we do spelling tests (she insists, I'd be happy with just working on her spelling words as above).


History: We're on a bit of a break from History at the moment, but will be finishing up the History portion of the Complete Canadian Curriculum Grade 3 over the next little while. We're also working our way through the Little House books.


Geography: We're working our way through Canadian Geography & Mapping Skills. This is a basic overview of Canadian Geography. Once we're done this book we'll be using the internet and library resources and going more in depth with each province and territory. We're also finishing up with the Geography portion of Complete Canadian Curriculum Grade 3.

Math: Because we went back to Gr. 1 in math with Brianna to see how far back she was, we didn't come close to finishing the items mentioned in my January curriculum post. About a month after writing that, we went all the way back to the beginning of Gr. 1. She flew through that and we are currently working our way through Gr. 2 where we have found the most missing "building blocks" in math. 

Right now we're using Grade 2 Math Ahead, and for small daily work, Math Skills, Second Grade Activities and printed worksheets. We should be done 2nd grade by the end of July and will be moving back to the Gr. 3 stuff listed in the January post.

English: Daily we're using a Skill Builders - Grammar book, learning/practicing cursive writing with Evan Moor's Daily Handwriting Practice and a Daily Editing book. For reading comprehension we're using a Learn on the Go book. Before summer is over though, we'll be finishing up the English portion of the Complete Canadian Curriculum Grade 3 and English Ahead.


Science: Science is a big jumble of a little of this, a little of that, as I'm sure it'll always be! We just finished the Science portion of Complete Canadian Curriculum Grade 3 and are working our way slowly through Science Investigations, but we're doing more *out* of the text books than *in* them. We'll also be doing a Butterfly Unit Study/Lapbook.


French: We just started back up in French after taking a break for a few weeks. French is a frustrating subject for us because I don't speak/read/write French and when Brianna gets stuck there's no one to help her. Google Translate helps, but it can turn a 10 minute lesson into more than an hour to type up all the translations. 

We've switched from the all French book we were using to the bilingual books made for English children learning French. However, these are meant for children in an all English school who will do minimal French. Right now we're using French Smart Grade 4 and Brianna's complaining it's way too easy. I agree. Even *I* know most of the French in it. I feel we'll be quickly moving to the French Smart Grade 5 book.

Art/Music: So learning the recorder hasn't happened yet. I have found a proper set that includes all the finger charts and music for it, just got to get around to ordering it. Over the next few months we'll be working on a little basic sewing and these great origami sets I found, Pet Shop Origami and Springtime Origami.


Phys Ed/Health: Brianna is currently training for a local kids triathlon. Right now this involves just getting into shape. We have a 3km (1.86m) route that we're walking. This will turn into being the bike route for the triathlon. There's also a .5km (0.31m) route for running. And finally a 50 meter (54.7 yards) swim. 


In Health we're working our way through Canadian Health Activities with emphasis on Nutrition.

Computer: Still touching on typing skills. We haven't done much lately though. We're using Garfield's Typing Pals and blogging for tools.

Life Skills: Our focus is still on kitchen safety/cooking and penpalling. She can now make her own scrambled eggs and can cook a variety of foods in the microwave. Penpalling, she's been lacking in. I feel bad for her poor penpals! Must sit on her an make her respond! 


Also, today I completed our planning through the rest of "Grade 3". While she's still behind in math, as of October, she'll be in Gr. 4 or above in everything else! I'm very happy that's she's only a month "behind".

Becoming More Relaxed

I've been going at these last few month quite hardcore. Must have loads of core subjects, every day. Barely having any time for fun stuff (even falling under a core subject). So I have decided to force myself to be more relaxed. Since we were coming up to a point where I hadn't filled up the pages of my planner with curriculum to be followed, it wasn't that hard to move stuff around.

As of Monday we have new rules. No more than 3 core subjects per day (I consider everything bookworkish to be core, math, English, science, history and geography all fall under core to me). On days where we have outside activities, no more than 2 core subjects.

My planner suddenly appears bare! However, I look at the last few months and not only would I have 4/5 cores per day, but sometimes more than one activity, workbook or project for a single core in a day! No wonder both Brianna and I were getting so stressed by the end of the day.

This way, we'll have a chance to go more in depth to interested areas, but not be stuck (for hours sometimes) on something that is totally uninteresting. Not to say that we won't still be covering the same stuff, it'll just be spread out more. The fact that we homeschool year round makes this even easier!

Grading

I totally slacked in grading this week. Normally I'm pretty good at grading every night or at least every second night. Yeah, not this week. I was 7 school days behind. *blush* Apparently I need to make myself get back into the everyday habit.

On another grading note, Brianna kept coming over to see her grades (she's in love with knowing what she got). So we had a mini lesson in doing your best when I pointed out to her that the 100% she got one day gets dragged down massively when the next day she speeds through her work without even trying and only gets 50%. She went to bed tonight saying how she's gonna do her super best on Monday :)

101 in 1001 Challenge

I've always hated New Year's Resolutions but I love goals and lists and challenges. Today I started 101 in 1001. This one I didn't sign up for formally (the official site is down, so I'm doing it on my own), but it looks like fun and was quite challenging to come up with my list. I was going to post my list on this and my homeschooling blog but thought it would be easier to make a separate blog for it and just link it to my existing ones.

52 Books in 52 Weeks x2

One of the blogs I follow directed me to a reading challenge that I've decided to join. I'm also going to "highly encourage" Brianna to join (shhh.... I've already signed her up!). 

So Brianna and I are going to do the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge. We'll both track our progress on each of our blogs. I'm assuming you need to do a review of some kind for it to count, so Brianna can even count it towards English work (since a review is like a mini book report).

Daily Reading

I've implemented daily reading into our homeschool. Not something Brianna would be graded on or anything but just a requirement. Brianna loves reading. She'll tell you that. But, especially with Christmas just passing but even in general, since she's home a LOT more now she's currently in an "overwhelmed with things to do" state. Even though she loves reading, she rarely finds time for herself to stop and grab a book. 

At the beginning of our HSing journey we did a reading goal to be completed by New Years Eve. She decided that 25 books in 6 weeks was do-able. I thought she'd by far pass it since she loves reading so much. In the end, after getting so easily distracted, she only made it to 22 books read. Even she was disappointed in this. In looking at her reading log, we noticed there was a gap of NO books read for over 2 weeks.

Hence starting the required reading. I know it won't be needed forever, just until she "remembers" how much she loves to read. So today we started out our 30 minute minimum. She ended up finishing one of her books that she had been dragging through for weeks.

Today she made a goal of 30 books read by Feb 28th. Again (and especially with the required reading) I think this level is too low. Especially since she immediately asked me if she could keep reading after she hit 30. Well of COURSE!