I am so relieved to say that our ambitious endeavors in the homeschool world have, so far, proved to be absolutely awesome. I love spending the days with all of the girls and, fortunately, Dillen loves being schooled "at home." Our days are spent waking up when the mood strikes us, studying in our home classroom or somewhere like the harbor, beach or park, taking field trips whenever/wherever we want and having FUN! The program we are using, Community Home Education Program (CHEP), is a free home school program offered through the Orange County Department of Education. Everything (the books, study guides, teacher manuals, classes, workshops, field trips, parties) is free!! I am assigned a full-time, certified teacher to work with, too. If ever I have any questions, I can call her or meet with her. So far, Dillen has been growing leaps and bounds and her CHEP teacher has pushed her ahead so that she is now finishing workbooks typically given at the end of 1st grade. She is already reading at a 2nd/3rd grade level and is exploring 2nd grade math - understanding carrying in the 1,000s, telling time and counting out change. I imagine we will be starting 2nd grade materials after the 1st of the year.

We have Dillen taking choir, tone chimes, rhythmic beats and art all through CHEP. And she has been involved in the oceanography workshops this month that will lead up to a field trip at the end of this month at the Long Beach Aquarium. There are approximately 1,400 children enrolled in CHEP and Dillen has about 20-25 buddies she sees regularly at the CHEP sponsored classes and park play dates. It's incredible to me how popular home school is here. We run into home schoolers every day at different places around town.

In addition, I have Dillen and Roxy enrolled in gymnastics and will be getting them into swim soon. Dillen still takes karate.

Umm, yeah. Soooo, we're busy. ;)

Here are some pictures of our homeschool adventures thus far. Some are from the classes they've taken (I love how Roxy is so welcome to join in Dillen's CHEP classes) and from field trips. We recently took a field trip to a children's farm to study animal shelters and then we went to the Fairy Gardens (with our own fairy toys in hand) to discover possible fantasy shelters.: