The power is out at the main office for one of the companies I do work for, so I'll take this opportunity to update briefly. Yes, I could do work for the other company - no power outage there - and I will - soon! I am in the usual end-of-the-pay-period rush, although this time is a little more rushed than usual because both companies have their pay periods ending today. I can't remember the last time that happened. Anyway, what that means is that I'm trying to get in as much work as humanly possible so that my paycheck can be as large as humanly possible!

Andy and I had his homeschooling review at the board of education on Friday. Twice a year they review what we are doing and approve (or disapprove) of the education our children are getting. I was really shocked at the number of homeschooling families in this county. They had two separate conference rooms set up, one for elementary grades and the other for middle and high school grades. I saw that the elementary room was packed when I walked by and when I went into our room there were parents with every reviewer there, too. We had an appointment time of 9:30 but we were a little late being seen. I got a glimpse of our the reviewers' main schedule and saw that for a period of about five days, six reviewers had appointments from morning until evening. That's just for middle and high school. That's a lot of homeschoolers! When I registered Andy to homeschool back in August the lady there told me that this was a record year for homeschooling and that they couldn't keep up. Hmm....you'd think the county would wonder why!

Anyway, we are doing just fine. The reviewer said she was very impressed with my choices for his curriculum and that she really liked the education Andy was getting. The only thing she suggested was that we try to incorporate more writing into his work. I explained to her that Andy was an oral learner, as was Tom, and that he learns best by being read to, or reading independently and then narrating back to me what he's read. A lot of times I give him oral exams instead of making him write it out. The reviewer said that it was great that I had figured out the best way for Andy to learn (oral or written), but that's kind of the whole purpose of homeschooling - you know your child better than anyone! She suggested then just to have Andy start a journal and write in that each day, but she said that other than that to just continue with what we're doing. Then I threw a wrench in the works! Lately Andy has been asking about a computer curriculum, and I'll admit that I would like to have done that at the start, but trying to juggle his school work and my work on my computer wouldn't have worked too well. Now that he got a computer for Christmas, he asked if we could try the computer curriculum. I told him we could and so I'll be ordering that this week. When I told the reviewer that we intended to make this change, she said that she had LOTS of families that used this particular curriculum and that she couldn't say enough good things about it. She said that both Andy and I would really like using it, and the best part is that all of his grades and work are kept in a portfolio in the program which eliminates grading and paperwork for me. There is an option for lessons and tests in the program where you can choose whether to have the student read the lessons or the tests or you can click a button and a voice reads the lesson and/or the tests to the student - for those oral learners, you know! There's still a lot of parental involvement, which I like (Andy doesn't always, though!).

Well, enough for now. Guess I'd better get busy doing whatever work I can do. By the way, where did winter go?! I want SNOW - not rain!