A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

 It wasn't as "regular" as I'd hoped, but it was a good start. On Monday, we celebrated our last day with The Munchkin, and we had a wi-fi outage that messed up all of my final getting-ready-for-school plans. Thank goodness for all of the middle-of-July printing projects I completed! I did put the following schedule/routine on the whiteboard: Chores/Dressed Morning Meeting FlyLady Home Care High School w/Teens  (kids do math) Snack Academy--Group (reading and activities) Lunch Academy--Individual (narrations, copywork, art projects) Free Time--after you show Mom your work So far, it is working well. Our FlyLady Home Care is a timed 10 minutes of doing housework from the FlyLadyPlus app. With 9 of us doing simple jobs, we are doing a combined 90 minutes of home care each day beyond our basic routines! We started high school with MacBeth ; we read 4 acts this week and will finish it on Monday.  (Shakespeare never disappoints!)  We also began reading The Last of the Moh...

 I'm resting a lot. We're being lazy about bedtimes and meal times and waking times. There's a lot that's good about that . . . but . . . *sigh* . . . I'm ready for a more regular life. We still have our Morning Meetings. We still sit down as a family for dinner and family prayer each evening (at least most of the time). We still do chores and math and read together as many evenings as possible. It's time for more. I realized this week just how absent I've been from my children.   Physically present. Mentally absent. Planning, choreographing, resting, organizing, studying, errand running . . . they're all things I do for my family.  (Yes, even the resting!)  But I don't interact with them as much when I'm doing these things as I do when we're in our school routine. I'm glad I have lots of reading together and activities planned to do with the kids, so that I'm more mentally present with them. More eye contact. More listening. More lau...

 I write "Curriculum Plans" with absolute sincerity. They are plans . Not commitments. We will use these plans as long as they are a good fit for us. We will change when we need to, if we need to. That said, here's what we're hoping to enjoy! Morning Meeting (Devotional) This will continue the way we have done for 20 years.  We'll have a scripture of the month, a scripture of the week, a hymn, some Bible reading, some Book of Mormon reading, some reading/discussion/lessons on whatever our church-wide curriculum is (Book of Mormon for '24, Doctrine and Covenants for '25).  I'll hang up the weekly art "poster" in each Come, Follow Me lesson for our consideration and appreciation.  We'll open and close with prayer, and we'll continue to practice Thankful Thursdays every week. Math Teaching Textbooks for all 8 kids:   Nature Angel completed Algebra 2 last year, and she asked for Geometry this year.  Little Princess is on to Algebra 2, bu...

 The kids were so used to hiding from the heat that they missed an awful lot of good outdoor weather! So did I, for that matter. I spent my days cutting music and choreographing dances for American Rhythm. Nature Angel spent her days cutting music and choreographing dances for American Rhythm. She did a lot more choreography than I did because I stopped constantly to prepare, serve, and clean up meals. The kids read books and built stuff with magnetic tiles. (I wish I could accurately represent the excitement and clamor of Sir Walter Scott coming home with our weekly library haul!) As I realized how beautiful the weather actually was, I started kicking kids out of the house; "You all have to spend at least 30 minutes outside." They would complain and moan and accuse me of being the meanest mom ever.  But they would find out it was beautiful, and they would last an hour outside.  Then they would come in, feel the lure of the outdoors, and out they would go again. Sir Walte...

 She did it!  She graduated! And because of that, we took a trip to Idaho (and then Utah). We headed out 2 weeks ago on Monday afternoon. (Don't worry, this will not be a travelogue!) Our trip purposes were twofold: 1.  Attend Pixie's graduation. 2.  Visit with extended family, especially Sir Walter Scott's mom, who is declining rapidly. Along the way, though, an awful lot happened that we can count as education! Geography The kids were pretty intensely involved in mapping the routes we took to our various destinations.   *They counted hours and miles.   *They watched the landscape change.   *They asked questions about the landscapes we passed through.   *They observed climate changes.   *They interacted with new environments:  i.e. cold lakes and rivers! We hit this Idaho river when we were between housing.  Had we thought clearly, we could have rented tubes and floated the river, but we didn't, so the kids...