A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

*No school. We made too many cookies!!! Nature Angel got to go ice skating for the first time! These are the friends she skated with.  They are most of the girls in her age group at church. Nature Angel, Little Princess, and Ladybug all received subscription boxes from KiwiCo.  They are fun!  We had some problems with Little Princess's Tinker Crate, but the customer service has been quite good to us so far.  We can't afford a full year of crates X 3, but we'll do a few months' worth during the winter. *Tried to keep Brother calm enough to function. *Celebrated Christmas. This is the best group shot I could get. :)  In spite of uncooperative photographic moments, we did have a lovely at-home Nativity experience.  The scary one in black is Super Star as wicked King Herod.  Rose Red was the reluctant inn-keeper.  I think everyone else is self-explanatory. *Had a miscarriage . . . sort of. Actually I'm still ca...

Lola got an owie toe running through the house.  Belle is a good big sister to hold her and put ice on her owie. It all came crashing down this week.  Skipping the gory details, the end result is that Brother has been temporarily given an anti-anxiety med to take to tide us over until his next psych appointment . . . on January 10th. That's not really that long in the game of getting into state-funded psych treatment programs, and he is going to get good psychiatric care over time, but that means we're stuck through Christmas and New Year's Eve with nothing but the ER as a resource (and it's not that great of a resource--trust me, we've already been there this week!). The message Brother wrote during his psych appointment--2 hours before we ended up in crisis in the ER.  Translated, it says, "I'm sorry, but I'm trying.  I'm sorry."  It's true--he is sorry and he is trying, but he is out of control, and he has become a danger to h...

It was a very hard week, including a car accident (my husband is fine, the car is totaled) and a call to the police to help us bring a child home . . . and some other hard things as well. I don't have a whole lot of energy to put into keeping a record of our school time, but I do know that our school time lends peace and a sense of normalcy to our days.  So many people advise dumping academics in order to focus on relationships, and I agree that math is less important than love, but in our house, holding a math lesson--keeping the routines of the day--is how we make it possible to show love. So, in spite of broken cars and conversations with the insurance company and crying through 911 calls, we did have school as much as we could. Morning Meeting --6 days.  We memorized Isaiah 9:6, continued reading Book of Mormon Stories , continued reading The Jesus Storybook Bible , sang Away in a Manger , and recited our daily affirmation poem of the season, I'm a Child of Royal Bir...

We made jingle bell necklaces in Academy. It was a partial school week for us. Not by design. It started when I lost my keys and could neither pick up Rose Red from work nor go grocery shopping on Tuesday afternoon. Then Wednesday (after we'd gotten a new key made) was too full of school and commitments. And school was awesome!  We rolled tiny beeswax candles--44 in all--and burned them all at once.  The kids only rolled them loosely, so it took maybe 15 minutes for them to burn all the way down, and it was the highlight of our week.  It was beautiful and awe-inspiring and gorgeous. Beowulf, inspired by Baymax, drew his own interpretation of the candle-burning activity. When I woke up on Thursday morning (a birthday morning) and we had no supplies for the cake or birthday dinner or balloons or anything else that helps make a day special for a small person, I knew something had to give. So I cancelled school for the day. Sir Walter...

The week started with a blizzard. Which was awesome because there was snow to play in almost all week long! We had 6 Morning Meetings . . . and we started The Jesus Storybook Bible .  I love reading this Bible storybook so much!  I've timed it so that we will spend this month building up to the nativity and then we'll read about the birth of Christ on Christmas Eve morning. We'll go on to finish the rest of the stories through January and perhaps early February. In addition, we started Advent on Sunday night (yes, I know it's early), and we had Advent School each day in place of Academy. This year we're heavy on crafts that go along with the symbols of Christmas.  We covered the star, the color red, and evergreen trees this week. Popcorn and hot chocolate were the snack after playing in the snow all morning.   They were ready for me to read another chapter of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever . We made red holly...