A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

Chalk drawing by Little Princess assigned by The Good and the Beautiful   Temperatures dropped, soared, and dropped again.  We wore everything from shorts and sandals to coats and snow pants . . . sometimes even on the same day. At any rate, it only added another variable to the many we're dealing with in our homeschool. The babies' schedules have been changing--drop-off/pick-up time of day, which days of the week, etc..  We're doing our best to roll with it, but it's something to adjust to. Playing Patty-Cake with Little Mister Frog in the last minutes before his Mom picked him up.  Clapping is an exciting new skill!   Beowulf's psychiatric appointment has been moved a week closer--what a blessing!  But we're still dealing with the challenges of trying to get him through each day with severe ADHD and DMDD and no working meds.  The initial success we had with our visual timer has worn off with the novelty, and it can take him 2 hours or more to do wha...

We're still getting used to extra babies in the house.   As well, Beowulf's ADHD and Lola's as-yet-undiagnosed ADHD kept them from accomplishing very much school work. That said, we still learned and grew a whole lot this week. On Monday we had a field trip with our neighbor who used to work for the State Forestry Department.  She prepared some handouts that she delivered and we went over in advance and then met us in front of our house on Monday morning for a tree-identification walk around the neighborhood.   We already knew walnut, maple, osage orange, and oak, but we learned about sycamore, cottonwood, tulip poplar, Ailanthus, wild cherry, and elm.  We were also introduced to several other trees that didn't stick well in our memories.     She showed us lateral and terminal buds as well as how to identify tree growth.   Lola found lots of treasures, but she was not happy to have me photograph her or them!   Ailanthus leaf stems make great ante...