A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

  Mister Man is my long, gangly boy-man right now.  He reads and draws.  He loves to be "my favorite kid" when I call, "Who wants to be my favorite kid?" as I'm asking for a favor.   He's gentle and smart. Mister Man grew academically and socially this past school year. Math He completed Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra with a 96% average.  When he asked for help, it was specific, and he understood the answer with minimal coaching.  He's a good student. Morning Meeting Mister Man was an active participant in all of our Morning Meetings.  He read, sang, answered questions, learned to lead music in 3/4, 4/4, and 2/4 time, memorized scriptures, and contributed spiritual insights to our daily lessons. It looks to me like leading music might actually be one of his gifts.  He picks up on the nuances of conducting simply by watching, and sometimes he even instinctively gets movements right.  He is graceful, and as his voice deepens, he's develop...

 Note:  This post was written in two parts.  One I started last Sunday and never finished.  I'm not even a tiny bit in the mood to rewrite it and make a cohesive post.  Blocky and real is what is happening. Sunday, July 20, 2025 I will abstain from details, but life has been complicated this week. I'm writing from the hospital room of one of my children.  We have been given news that makes very little sense to us that we must do our best to understand. As time passes, I'm sure I'll post more, but I do need to be mindful of my child's privacy (which is funny given how much I do share here!). Until yesterday, things were no more challenging than usual.  We finished The Mysterious Benedict Society  (Can you picture how mad the kids are that I refused to read the second volume aloud right now?) and started The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle .  We're a hair over halfway through it now.  It's been hard on Brother to process Captain Jagger...

  This picture of Ladybug is one of my all-time favorites.  She's beautiful, strong, fierce, ready to defend her friends, living totally in the moment. Ladybug grew in many wonderful ways this year.  My favorite developments in her are spiritual and social/emotional.  She's always cared about her testimony of Jesus Christ, but I saw her testimony deepen as she gathered courage to share it publicly and as she worked on her personal scripture study and prayer habits.  Socially/emotionally, she made a lot of mistakes in her peer relationships, but she listened to counsel and made changes.  This has led to her relationships deepening in positive ways. My favorite story about her friendships has to do with the picture above.  She ended up making a social mistake that sent her home early from Girls' Camp.  When her friends learned about her leaving, they were up in arms, ready to defend her--to march to our house and bring her back if they could!  ...

I chose this picture because it is so Little Princess. It's a bathroom selfie. Her expression! She's beautiful.  In a nutshell, here's Little Princess's 10th grade year: American Literature We used the Apologia American Literature text, supplemented with novels .  Obviously, on the list are a couple of Shakespeare's plays, and those don't count toward American Literature, but they were good reading no matter what our subject focus was. :)  Little Princess participated in all of the reading, all of the discussions, and all of the writing assignments (not too many, but a few).  She was excellent at raising questions about the historical context of the novels, moral issues, and author intent.   Performing Arts--American Rhythm Dance Team For one of Little Princess' possible future goals, she has to have at least 2 years of performing arts on her transcript.  This year plus last year made two years.  I asked her about staying on the team or leaving,...

These are the non-textbook books we read together in our two groups for school.  For the teens, we could add in their various texts--especially the American Lit book--but I choose to keep the list as-is with living books. I can say with complete honesty,  that I recommend every book on these lists.  If it wasn't worth our time, it didn't make these lists. With Teens The Scarlet Letter -- Nathaniel Hawthorne Macbeth -- William Shakespeare A Comedy of Errors --William Shakespeare The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave The Last of the Mohicans --James Fenimore Cooper The Old Man and the Sea -- Ernest Hemingway The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -- Mark Twain Of Mice and Men --John Steinbeck To Kill a Mockingbird -- Harper Lee With Kids The Story Girl -- L.M. Montgomery  The Interrupted Tale -- Maryrose Wood Super -- Matthew Cody  Powerless -- Matthew Cody The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh -- A.A. ...

 In my still-new role as a counselor in the Primary Presidency of our local church ward, I inherited the assignment of doing decorations for our Primary Pinewood Derby. When I thought about it, I cried. For 5 weeks. Then the light came on, and suddenly I was happily engaging with Pinterest and my kids and ward members and my husband and Etsy I had a $40 budget and plenty of inspiration. Yes, we did normal things at home:  sending Little Princess off to FSY, Morning Meeting, evening scriptures, daily and bedtime read alouds, gardening apprenticeships, library day, youth church activities, grocery shopping, dance meetings, meal making, canning (strawberry top syrup, Mexican corn soup starter, and strawberry/rhubarb pie filling), and cleaning. But the whole week was really about getting ready for the derby. Lola's Yellow Dragon car Baymax's SWAT car With my family in tow, we hauled  the kids' cars, 16 old tires (I washed and dried them all on Friday), a whole bunch of homem...