Friday, July 27, 2012

Session coming to an end.

Next week is the last week of my session 7 classes, Women and Religion and American Presidency. I feel like I did just enough in the classes to get by, which is concerning for me because I know that I need A's in all of my classes to be a great candidate for the OT program. This is what is getting me, I really dislike ready history, and my American Presidency class is all history books, so to be honest I did not read the books. I just participated in all the class discussions. I am not a political person, so I took the class hoping to get insight into some of the political matters that are going on in our world today. I did get plenty of insight. Enough to know that I am happy where I am. People really get heated about politics, and it was just a class. I am hoping Father Issac chooses to base our final off of the class discussions.

Then in my Women and Religion class, it was very interesting. If I had known that I was going into a feminist class, I think I would have been more prepared for some of the personalities that would be in this class. I loved reading these books. They were about feminist journey about finding religion. I could relate to some of these women and I received more insight in the Muslim and Jewish religions. I am always open for learn, just not reading about history. LOL.

About two weeks ago I had to have emergency gall bladder surgery. I was admitted into the hospital on Saturday and was not discharged until the following Tuesday. I must tell you that the gall bladder does not play. I had no symptoms before the pain hit me on Saturday, it was not a gradual pain, it was a sudden lightening strike. I still say it was worse than labor. So having surgery caused me to miss a weeks worth of class. With only having 6 classes a session, missing one class is like missing 2 classes. So I have been playing catch up on my class work. I still have an assignment that I need to turn in for my Women and Religion class, then I had to make up 2 test that I completely failed... hhhhh.... so the teacher has given me opportunity to watch a movie to get extra credit.

After next week, I start my biology classes at the end of August that continue through December. I have Bio 261,262,263,264 and Phys 261. I like biology so I think these will intrigue me a bit. Then I am applying to the OT program in October.

Oh and my mother in law is coming up from Jamaica to help with the baby. I am a person who loves schedules and routines, so I am a little worried that she is going to come in and mash it all up!!!!! My husband is trying to ease my anxiety about that. I hope all is going well with all of you out there and I hope things continue going well for you.

Friday, July 6, 2012

Time4Learning.com 30 Day Review

My three kiddos, my 3rd grader going to 4th grade and my twins that are going into kindergarten, was able to get a little boost for summer learning with Time4Learning that I came across on Pinterst.

My 10 year old really enjoyed the program. I like how the program gave him of a refresher of things he went through in 3rd grade. The language arts section gave him an opportunity to read passages and then answer questions regarding what he read. He really looked forward to playing the activities. He did not get very far in the math section. In the math section he able go over was the expanded form of writing numbers. It took a little time for him to get used to the exercise because the directions were not very clear, so I helped him a little and then he got the hang of it. He was also able to do some social studies that was mainly reading about geographical locations and history. My 10 struggles with reading, so that part was a little difficult for him. He was not understand the concepts of rivers, lakes, farming land, etc. This might have been some 4th grade work that he has not went over yet. We were not able to go over the science sections which he really looked forward to. I was mainly focusing the language arts sections because he was preparing to retake the IRead test, here in Indian, the state requires that all 3rd graders pass in order to move on to the 4th grade. The first time he took the test he failed by 3 points. So the school put him in summer school for 3 days a week and I used this program as a supplement. Guess what? HE PASSED THE SECOND TIME!!!!!!! Yeah!

The twins, who are 5, really liked the program. They always asked to do the math. The math section mainly went over patterns, difference, building things that were different, and matching. The program was very animated. When they got something wrong, the program friendly asked them to do it again and then showed them how to do the assignment again,and the program went over this process until they got the correct patter or answer, what ever it was asking them to work on. The language arts section went over letters, how many letters are in a word, sentence reading, and even asking them to read along. Many of the words were sight word; however, it seemed to bore them a little. The characters were very colorful and animated to catch my young one's attention.

Overall Time4Learning is a great supplemental program. I would recommend, as they do, for parent to be close to their child while going through actives because they can get confused about some of the directions. The program is very kid friendly by being colorful, animation, even using kid like humor. I can say my kids all looked forward to doing the program. They seemed like it, which is great because learning should be fun. As a parent, I want them to look forward to learning opposed to them feeling like it is something that they had to do.