Long day but still a success overall...

The kids and I decided to have a more laid back day today as we had a really rough night last night. Our smoke alarm went off during the night, not just chirping from a low battery but actually going off.. After being awaken from a dead sleep at 4am, adrenaline pumping and rushing through the house to figure out where the fire was, I determined that it was a dirty sensor on the smoke alarm in the hallway. But the broken sleep had an affect on all of us today. I had a migraine the size of Texas and Ashleigh was tired and slept most of the morning. Garrett, who managed to somehow sleep through the commotion was the only one not affected today. Charles was lucky and missed the excitement as he was off babysitting a jet all night and wasn't home til 6am.  It did bring to light the need to do a unit on fire safety however, as all three kids, including my teenager, were unphased by the sound of the smoke alarm. While Ashleigh did wake up, the other two slept through it completely.  I was planning on a unit for fire prevention and safety in October in conjunction with Fire Safety week and this just cements the idea in my head even more.

Thanking God it was just a false alarm!!!

Since none of us really felt like doing a whole lot today, we decided to skip history and call it a day after our other classes. The kids were really cooperative (all things considering) and got their reading, drills, math and science out of the way. We went ahead and skipped copy work however, as I decided I wanted to switch from what we are currently doing and instead use one of the "Happy Scribe" units I purchased from Currclick.  The kids, Garrett especially, are having a hard time with letter placement using the three line method and so I think switching to the Happy Scribe will be better for them until they master it. I'll be looking over which particular unit I want to start with over the weekend and will begin on Monday, as I have various units ( I picked up a few combo packs so I have alot of choices).

While we did have a pretty lax day, I'm not going to fret over it too much, as the kids did most of what we had planned for the day, with the exception of our history lesson. Since we are basically ahead of the game in SOTW, I am okay with this. I guess that's one of the great things regarding homeschooling, we can set the pace and adjust as needed. Even if we didn't get through the necessities today, we could easily do them this evening if we needed to. 

Tomorrow is our first test so I'm curious to see how that goes. We will be testing over our first chapter of Science in regards to Living and Nonliving things.  I'm debating how I am going to test them however.  I may pull them away individually and do the test with them away from the other one so that their answers do not influence the other one. Ashleigh tends to blurt her answers out pretty quickly, while Garrett has to take a few moments to think about things. When this happens, Garrett will usually just repeat what Ashleigh has said. This makes it hard to get an understanding of what Garrett actually knows.  I'll try separating them and see how it goes.

I also need to find a test for SOTW that's easier for kids their age. If I have to, I guess I will put one together myself. We have the tests that accompany the text book but it seems to be geared more for children a bit older than they are. They know the material but they need to be able to see the spelling of the answers to write them out, without it they tend to balk and refuse to write. Asking a couple of 1st graders in their first week to not only come up with the correct answer but to try to spell works such as irrigation, The Fertile Crescent and Lower Egyptians on their own and without a key seems a bit unreasonable. Both can come up with the proper answer but they get frustrated trying to spell it out on their own right now. Guess I know what I will be researching tonight...