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Sincerely,
Valarie Juntunen RN

Water Under The Bridge

Okay... very quick synopsis of things going on...

Joe is back at homeschooling with us. He is re-doing Algebra 1 from scratch, studying Romeo & Juliet, doing a review of World History through essays and time lines, taking Japanese and Drama with TJ. We also signed him up to a website called Super Charged Science. It is really, really cool. It has experiments he can do from home, text materials, tests, videos, teleclasses and pretty much everything needed for a great science class. We are also looking into guitar lessons for him.

TJ continues with Time4Learning, supplemented by various workbooks, printouts and text books we have around the house. I'm going to have to sit down with him and make him try harder on the Time4Learning, though. Often he breezes through the lessons with a stunning lack of effort!

As for the rest of the family - Jessica's knees are healing. She goes back to Shriners in March.

And today... I found out I have shingles... joy of all joys. Otherwise, my career is doing well. I just got paid for a nice sized job and have more work on the way. I have a new website (http://www.nurseval.com) and will gradually be building my web presence to hopefully keep my work steady.

Guess that's it!

December 9th 2010

Okay - yup - me again! Life has been interesting! (LOL!) Anyhow, we're finally getting caught up on things. Here is a quick run-down:

1) Jessica had her surgery and is recovering well. She had to be seen twice more for pulling at her stitches/steristrips and now she might have an infection (we're watching it) but over all she is healing better/quicker than expected.

2) Joe got pneumonia but seems to be pretty much over it now. Now all he has to do is catch up on all the schoolwork he missed. However - he's finally bringing his grades up and is no longer failing ANY class. Which is at least a step in the right direction! He's also on the swim team now and is practicing every evening for 2 hours. And doing Science Olympiad still.... so he's real busy.

3) TJ's had a cough for almost a month now. I think it's the dryer air but I'm not sure. I may end up taking him in but the cough doesn't seem to be bothering him and he has NO other symptoms. Just the cough. Otherwise - he's been healthy, happy and BUSY. He's started the Time4Learning program and loves it. He's been writing his own story too. He has Japanese twice a week, gymnastics once a week, swimming once a week, etc. We're also continuing with the geography program, multiplication drills, and various other learning activities. Starting after the holidays some time he'll be doing drama as well.

I've been pretty busy too - I'm still doing the "Updates!" newsletter for the homeschooling group, maintaining their various websites and developing a webstore for them. I also recently accepted a position on the board of the Carnegie Museum in Houghton and am trying to still stay involved in the Celtic Quarter. Work has tapered off for the moments - so I'm bidding for more jobs and trying to keep the forward momentum going (we really need for my career to continue to progress). Trev and I have been going to cribbage tournaments still and working quite a bit on the house.

So there's my quick synopsis. I also have some pics:


Jessica at Shriners. I have lots of other pics (you can see them on my facebook page)

TJ at gymnastics. It's hard to get pics in the gymnasium as the lighting is goofy and there are many kids running around. There are many skills he is learning but for some reason the pics of him on the trampoline turned out a little better than the others. There is one of him on the bar practicing casting on and off (I think that's what they call it but it sounds like knitting to me!) :)

November 12th, 2010

Okay... yeah... not updating again. :(

Anyhow, things are going well for TJ. He's started tutoring in Japanese with an MTU student, twice a week. The tutor is great and TJ's friend is taking it with him. So far it is a lot of fun and TJ's actually seems to be learning! :) TJ's also been going swimming, participating in open gym and doing gymnastics once a week. He's also been attending various activities that get announced in the Updates! such as the Class Acts at the Rozsa (Tuesday he's going to go see a show there). So almost every day he is now participating in some sort of group activity or enriching activity.

As far as work at home - it's going well. TJ's still progressing in his math book. As usual the first few chapters are review of the previous year but TJ's doing a good job of relearning the skills and improving his speed and neatness - which will really help now that we're moving into newer concepts. We're going back and reviewing some writing skills. Doing lots of sentence modeling and diagramming. In social studies we're moving on to the Native American tribes and the first settlers. In geography, TJ's working on a booklet of information on Alaska. In science he is continuing to learn about plants while expanding his scientific vocabulary. Starting Monday TJ begins a new type of learning program too. It's called Time4Learning and uses the computer to teach the core subjects with videos, games, printables and quizzes. This will be used in addition to his current texts and working plans... we'll see how it works!

Joe had parent-teacher conferences and his first 1/4 grades came in. NOT GOOD! I won't publish them but we were not happy. Dad went to the conferences (a deal we made at the beginning of the school year) - so I'm not sure what all went on but I know that Joe's in deep doo-doo with his Dad right now.

Because of this and some other issues that have been going on (TJ's inattention, etc) - we've decided that there will be NO video games or computer for either boy Mon-Friday (EXCEPT when used as part of the educational process - ie research or Time4Learning for TJ). Joe's also grounded from friends and TV until his grades improve. This will let Jessica have an opportunity to play some games (she rarely gets to because even if we tell her she can, she ends up letting the boys take over).

As opposed to Joe's poor performance in school - Jessica's doing great (for her). Her teacher said she's really impressed with how much better her impulsiveness has become and the amount of stuff she's actually absorbing and able to later use to participate in class and answer questions. :)

Just in case I don't get more updates put up before the Thanksgiving break... Jessica has her surgery on November 23rd. Please keep her in your thoughts.

Thanks.

Catching Up October 27th

Once again I have fallen behind on my updates! Between work and a round of the stomach flu things have been a bit crazy. I've also been doing a LOT with the homeschool group to help get their websites/blogs organized which makes me reluctant to do much work on here. However, I have to take the bull by the horns next week and really work on my own web presence for work... but I digress -

TJ's homeschooling was spotty last week but this week finds us back on the path of knowledge! TJ's been going to open swim/gym every Thursday and went on a trip on the Ghost Train in Lake Linden on Saturday with a homeschooling friend. It was cute - the grim reaper (a LARGE mechanical creature with a speaker) pointed to TJ and said, "I see you TJ, in the first car." It totally freaked him out! He's still talking about it! TJ also attended his first gymnastics class (of the year) on Monday. He's doing a LOT better than when he was younger and there's actually quite a few boys in the class - so he's got some friends there and it's great exercise!

For academics, we've been taking advantage of our Netflix membership to order educational videos from Nova, the Discovery Channel and the History Channel on the Mayan, Incan and Aztec cultures - as well as on plants. TJ's also been exploring some online science games at http://classroom.jc-schools.net/basic/sciplants.html
These activities coincide with the chapters he's working on in Social Studies and Science. TJ's working on learning how to take notes, make an outline and what the difference is between a primary and secondary source. We've also been working on Poetry in language arts and he is continuing to read Roald Dahl books and do worksheets and activities associated with the books - due to the extra stuff I'm throwing in he's still working on finishing Matilda but I think it's worth it for the extra information (one of the worksheets is what made us take a closer look at poetry - for instance) and for thoroughly assessing his reading comprehension (which is a LOT better than I feared! LOL!). In geography we're moving on to Alaska and doing a bit with Google Earth - a program that lets you view the globe interactively. In Math, TJ's struggling with word problems but that seems to be normal at this age. He'd like to take the lazy way out and just have the problem put before him! But he's finally starting to get it. We continue to work on simple math drills too to keep up multiplication, addition, division and subtraction skills. Japanese has not been going very well but yesterday I finally got in touch with a student at Tech that may be willing to tutor him. Now all I have to do is come up with the money! LOL!

Guess that's about it for now! I'll try to get back to post pictures of Jessica's B-day from last Sunday and to give more updates...

October 4th

We've been so busy I haven't gotten around to updating much! Last tuesday we did go to the corn maze and it was a LOT of fun. Then on Thursday TJ went swimming. We did a lot of reading, math, geography and social studies. We also reviewed Japanese (but no - TJ still hasn't decided what he wants to ask his Japanese penpal - lol! I think he's being shy but we'll get there!). For science we did some experiments with toadstools and mushrooms that we found in Grandma's yard. We also used the microscope to view mold and fungus spores. On Friday was Joe's birthday and not much was accomplished due to Mom being busy getting stuff arranged for that.

This week is another crowded week. 1st, I have a looming deadline for a series of articles and have to get quite bit of work done during the day too. Then today we went and saw a presentation at MTU called Rainforest Reptiles. TJ really enjoyed the show and got to pet a Chinese alligator. He also got to see a large alligator snapping turtle, an African spur tortoise, a black necked monitor lizard, a Burmese Python, a venomous viper (of some sort - can't remember the name), Chinese alligator and American alligator. TJ says there was one more but neither of us can remember what it was. Either way it was a great science presentation! On Thursday TJ has swimming. On Friday there's no public school but TJ (and the other two kids) are going back out to the corn maze; then going to chess club and gym - with the homeschooling groups.

In between time he's going to finish Matilda and start another Roald Dahl book (which will complete his 3 needed for the Roald Dahl contest) plus he gets credit on the Book It! Program. He'll finish Alabama and start ALASKA (we're looking forward to that because it's Aunt Aimee's state!) in geography. We'll start the colonization of America in Social Studies and finish the Chapter 1 in science as we talk about the importance of plants and how the various parts work together to keep the plant alive. In math we'll continue to do multiplication drills and work on book theory - pattern recognition and mental math skills. In Japanese we're continuing to practice the hiragana alphabet while learning more common phrases. Whew... I just hope we get through it all!

Until next update: ittekimasu (roughly: see you later or I'll be back later)

September 27th - Monday

Short but sweet...

Today I'm still getting over being ill so after seen Joe and Jess off to school - I went back to bed for another hour and a half. So we got a late start. Today we finished up the work associated with the book Esio Trot. TJ rated the book 2 stars and it's up on our reading board, then he had a couple different evaluation sheets to fill out about it. We also finally got around to reviewing our Japanese - so hopefully we'll have some questions for TJ's Japanese pen pal (thanks Aunt Holly!). TJ now has an email account (if you want the address just let me know and I'll send it to you - I don't want to put it on the web for EVERYONE - lol). TJ also did multiplication drills, mental math work, geography, social studies (we read about the poem "The New Colossus" that's in the Statue of Liberty), and in science we prepared for the experiments we'll be doing tomorrow with wild mushrooms and toad stools (since many are poisonous - there were a few safety issues to go over). TJ also took a spelling test... he only got 1 wrong! YES!!! And he did some writing with his new words - I think he's finally getting COMPLETE sentences - :)

Anyhow - that's if for now. I'll try to post more tomorrow. Tomorrow we're going to pick some FUNGUS :)
We may also be going to Somero's farm to explore a corn maze and pick out some produce!