Ha.  Thought that was a good way to reintroduce myself here.  No, I didn't go anywhere... except to homeschool.  Things are slowing down a bit now, so I thought I'd reflect here for a while.

I'd say Michael is officially done with Kindergarten.  He finished the curriculum for it by the end of 2005, and then we took a week off for Chanukah.  In January of this year, we started various publishers' books covering one subject per book.  We had previously purchased a summer transition book to be done after Kindergarten, so we let him do that too, beginning in January.  It was more relaxed, but had some introductory stuff for the next grade level.  That was completed slowly, and done by the middle of May.  He also completed a K-1 Math book in the middle of May, and a 1st grade Language Arts book a week or so later.  Since he learned to read shortly before his fifth birthday, he only needed to learn more to expand his reading ability.  (I love it when we sit down to read books to each other.)  He had started a Phonics program for ages 6-8 in January, but it's not quite done.  We are continuing to work on it, a bit each day until it's finished.  It should be done within a month.  Though he made it about two-thirds of the way through a Time and Money book, geared towards ages 5-8, we decided as a family to take a long-term break from it for a while.  I expect we will pick it up again sometime next year, and complete it within that school year.  Michael knows how to tell time to the minute, but started struggling when doing story problems on time lapses.  With money, he memorized how to calculate up to 4 quarters, but doesn't really know multiplication well enough to move beyond more a dollar's worth of quarters.  I figure he's learned beyond what his age level (just finishing Kindergarten now) should know, so he's OK.  He is halfway through a pre-primer Hebrew book, but he learns a little new from that every few days.  He will finish it by mid-summer.  Since he has always enjoyed Math stuff the most, I picked a small workbook for 1st grade Math and he does a page of it each day, over the summer.  I found a similar skinny Vocabulary workbook that has puzzles, wordsearches and such that he's doing a page per day also, at this point.  Along the same vein as the summer transition book for after Kindergarten, we got him a transition book for after 1st grade and he does a couple pages of that now too.  So, except for a smattering of stuff, he's basically getting a summer break.  I try to keep it light and enjoyable.  At this moment, he's found another use for his many books... he's making geometrical designs out of them all over the living room.

Over the past school year, we have been reading and learning the Bible as we go.  We started with Genesis 1:1 at the beginning of the year, and currently, we are somewhere in Exodus.  The Israelites have left Egypt, and are currently wandering around in the wilderness.  I've been looking for a book that I read in my high school years and did a book report on, about the furniture that was in the wilderness tabernacle.  I thought we could lightly use it as we cover that subject when it comes up in our Bible studies.  I'm pretty sure I have some time before we get to that though.  It was a very good book, though I can't recall the exact title of the book.  I think it might be Made According to Pattern by Charles W. Slemming, but I'm not sure.  I've e-mailed my Mom about it, in hopes she might remember, since the book I read had belonged to her.  In a few years, I plan to use a unit study I have already purchased from Heart of Wisdom, covering world history from Adam to Messiah.  I thought it was a neat way to learn about ancient civilizations, including Israel's history.  Though the Hebrew language is older than Latin, there's hardly any emphasis, or sometimes even a mention of Israel's ancient history in most curriculum.  It's important to us, so we will cover it too.

Next school year, I offered to host and teach a Hebrew language co-op, so that will keep us busy.  Since he already started learning Spanish elsewhere, we plan to teach more of that next year too.  We also plan to add more geography and science stuff to our year, than this year had.  Since Michael loves to read children's human encyclopedia books, sometimes as bedtime books, we have purchased something for his birthday that will hopefully be well received.  He is busy still building with books, so I doubt he will notice this as I type (sometimes he reads over my shoulder)... we got him a microscope.  It seems like a nice one, seen here.  I plan to buy the necessary accessories such as slides and stuff when we get the next paycheck in a few days.  The microscope has been sitting here, still in the shipping carton, in a corner of the dining room.  Michael knows he's not allowed to touch it, whatever it is.  I think he might suspect it has to do with his birthday, for I told him that he'll know what it is, when it's the right time.  One more thing I'm hoping to add to next year's curriculum is regular visits to the local zoo.  I had hoped to do a field trip there for us and other local homeschooling families, but the other families didn't seem too interested.  So we will do it solo.  They have a lot of educational programs and exhibits there, and since I plan to study more in depth about animals with him, I thought the zoo might help bring it to life, so to speak.

Sunday afternoon, I came home from work to find Michael asleep on the couch.  This is not normal.  Yes, the living room was a disaster, as usual, but the nap?  Huh?  He slept for a couple hours more and then woke up.  Within a few minutes, he said he thought he was going to vomit.  I scrambled to grab a pot and got it to David, who then stepped on a wooden block in his barefeet as he held the pot by Michael's mouth.  Not too much, and that was it.  But he had a fever - a high one.  He said he felt fine, so I let it go.  He would not eat or drink anything more all day, and continued to lie around.  Three hours later, and asleep again, he was still hot.  I phoned my Mom to ask her to pray, which she did, but also warned me that the fever was too high and I needed to give him something to bring it down.  After a dose of Tylenol, it came down a bit.  In the middle of the night, I checked him but his forehead was not hot enough to wake him to take his temp.  At 6 AM though, he woke up slightly and so I took a temp.  It was high again, so more Tylenol.  After a couple hours, the temp was still too high considering the Tylenol should have still been effective, so I phoned the doctor's office.  They said to bring him in.  The doctor seemed to suspect strep, so he took a swab (which Michael did not like) and gave me a prescription.  That prescription must have been needed, for this morning, Michael was up and bouncing around again.  He still has to finish out the antibiotic, but at least I feel pretty secure that it was not given in vain.  His fever was slightly there last evening, but by morning, it was gone too.

Yesterday, we got news that another of our relatives has a pretty scary health issue.  We prayed right away, and will continue to pray.

Well, it's time to collect the books and toys.  I'm barefoot.

Here is Michael a week ago.