Winter Days

Homeschooling: We have been really struggling with Writing for Motocross Boy. He just HATES to write. Doesn't even much like thinking up the story. I've tried a variety of ways to motivate him using every book I could find for teaching writing. Nothing much works. I think part of it is just the physical act of writing - it's not something he likes to do. Typing isn't all that much better. He DOES like to write single words on index cards or blank sheets of paper when he's "playing" but if I try to incorporate that into "school" he balks.

So we are going back to basics. How important is creative writing anyway? Isn't the goal to be able to write a good sentence and know how to form paragraphs? I'm also a believer that the more you read the more naturally writing comes to you and almost by osmosis you are able to write in paragraphs and even spell better. Motocross Boy is going to be writing single sentences for a while. We'll drill that back into him until he can consistently write a full sentence. Then we'll add detail to those sentences. And before he knows what hit him they'll be paragraphs. I hope.

The other thing we've been doing is watching the History Channel's How the Earth was Made series. I'm finding them pretty interesting but disappointed that the History Channel doesn't have anything to help me review the material in each episode. I watch them, take notes, and then make up a short 10 question quiz of True/False and multiple choice questions. I wonder if they'd be interested in buying my quizzes when we are all done?

Horses: Our heavy weight Schneider's horse blanket is about 5 years old and up until fairly recently was in excellent condition. Unfortunately, Stanley's best friend, Chip the TWH, likes to grab hold of it and usually forgets to let go when Stanley walks off. There's no trim left on the shoulder pleats and now there are a couple of rips in the fabric over his butt. While I'm very impressed that the blanket held up so good this long, I hated to spend the money to buy another one. I ordered the new on on Friday and it's HERE!

Motocross: The race schedules for this year are posted! MPX will have 8 races. Baja will have 9 if you also count the one up north at Otsego Club. When I match them all up with the horse shows we only have 4 overlapping weekends. This also means exactly 3 weekends with no racing and no horse shows between April and November....gulp.