A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

I really did. We'd taken the family out ice skating--the cost of entry being a gift from Rose Red to the family.  I had chosen not to skate because I'm only just getting back normal use of my left shoulder, and I was afraid of hurting myself again.  (I'd reinjured it over the weekend, setting back my progress already.) Sir Walter Scott got skates, and joined the kids on the ice, mostly to stand by the wall and be available in case of accident.  I was just making noises about going home to dinner soon, and he'd been grateful to see that he could keep his balance far better than he'd thought he would since his stroke nearly 3 years ago . . . when he fell. He sprawled out face-first on the ice. It knocked the wind out of him.   But when he got his breath back, he skated off the ice, returned his skates, tolerated some jokes from me about us being geriatric parents, and started texting pictures to Rose Red to thank her and show her what a good time we were having be...

 We did it! We completed our Christmas School. We did all of our shopping (I think the checkers at Dollar Tree can now be counted as family friends). We did all of our cooking. We did some of our cleaning-- Actually, this is my cue to talk about Nature Angel.  She took it upon herself to work with the younger kids on decluttering their bedrooms! Seriously, she volunteered hours and hours of patient guidance for their decision-making.   And two of the three kid bedrooms are tidy and organized! She wanted to help Brother and Beowulf before Christmas, too, but she didn't realize how long each project would take. She's promised to help them in this last week of December. She and Little Princess also put a lot of hours into decluttering their own room.   The whole house feels lighter for her work. We do our usual 3 tidy-up sessions in the house each day, but I've also been throwing in an occasional spontaneous "5-minute clean up."  I set a timer, and we do ...

 It was a hard week. Hard enough that I'd like to just pretend it never happened and move on with life. But we did do Christmas School each day, and I am obligated to record our learning somewhere, and this blog is my chosen record. We covered Japan, Czechia, Kenya, France, and Puerto Rico this week. This has to be the funniest Christmas story we've ever read.  I couldn't stop giggling as I read it, and the kids cackled several times. Our other Kenya Christmas books didn't arrive, so we watched YouTube read-alouds of A Kenya Christma s and A Kenyan Christmas .  But A Stork in a Baobab Tree was by far the best one, and I really want to add it to our library. Tome dePaola sets the story in Italy, but it is a retelling of a French story. ( Madeline's Christmas didn't arrive in time, but the kids have since taken turns reading it on their own.) This book has the cutest illustrations!! For Japan, our activity was folding origami paper cranes.  It could have been be...