A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

We closed on our new house on Tuesday. We also spent 6 hours at urgent care, in an ambulance, and at the hospital keeping H4 under observation for her bumped head.  It's a concussion.  It was terribly scary for a while, but she's all better now. She bounced back from her injury faster than I did from my worry. Then there was Thanksgiving to prepare for and celebrate (at our old home, just us, because we still have pinkeye going through the family).  Now it is time to prepare to move.  We take possession tomorrow at noon.  The sellers have been in that house for 40 years--long enough to lose their house keys and just use the garage "clickers" as their means of entrance and exit.  That makes me smile. Even though it means we have to replace the locks on every exterior door on the house. S11 came to me yesterday and asked, "Could I just try one day of public school?  Just to see what it's like?"  I explained that public schools simply d...

I've been hard on myself for the shape of our homeschool in 2013.  We've prepared our home to sell (it hasn't, yet), we've searched for and purchased a new home (we close on Nov. 26), and we took a giant vacation to see family and friends whom we haven't seen in 4 years or more.  We still have to actually pack and move!  All of these have sucked the life out of me, and the "good" parts of school have fallen by the way. Today I read an invitation to share what works.   I'm taking that invitation as one of my Father in Heaven's tender mercies reminding me that I am not a failure.  I should take a moment to review just one thing we're doing well. Instead of forever focusing on my failings. What works? Composition books. (Image borrowed from here ) We love composition books.  I buy them by the dozen when they are on sale before school starts.  I pass them out liberally to my kids and keep quite a few for my own use.  One for scrip...

We are in the middle of buying the house I wrote about before. It is a nightmare of paperwork and hoop-jumping. School remains minimal--the older 4 are doing their independent math, reading, and writing.  S11 and J9 continue to work on NaNoWriMo.  We attend Explorer's Club meetings, extracurricular lessons, and church activities.  Preschool is nonexistent, and A6 is teaching herself how to write in cursive (M11 gave her some lessons, and I printed a template for her to copy).  The kids read whatever they can get their hands on--E13 recently read The Great Gilly Hopkins and is currently working on The Hero and the Crown .  I read aloud at night; we finished A Wrinkle in Time , read half of The Complete Peterkin Papers before giving up because they were too silly to even be funny, and we're in the middle of Milly-Molly-Mandy for the littles and Mama's Bank Account for us all. Scripture study and devotionals have fallen by the wayside (except for evening ...

November 1st has come and gone . . . already!  I did none of the hoped-for NaNoWriMo writing exercises in October that I'd kinda-sorta thought about.  I, in fact, forgot completely about NaNoWriMo. But my children did not. The experience of last year must have been powerful because when the medium-sized girls saw the calendar, they immediately asked for a journal.  I let them get their own. They set their goals:  5,000 words each.  It is not even close to the 50,000 NaNoWriMo encourages, but this is self-motivated activity.  Who am I to argue? S11 and J9 opened their journals after their regular school was done and wrote all day long.  They both wrote more than 1,000 words their first day.  I suggested they set their goals a little higher. They declined. Today they've written and written and written.  I forced them outside into the autumn sunshine for several hours, but they've still managed a healthy several hundred words e...