So Close to the End that We're Planning the Next Beginning

 We finished Human Anatomy and Physiology.

We finished Ali and the Golden Eagle.

We had the best discussions while reading this book!  The kids were so provoked by the bringing of modern technology to a previously undisturbed village still living as their ancestors had for probably 1,000 years that they had to talk it out.  I had the privilege of just listening as they discussed pros and cons to modern life vs ancient life.

At one point I couldn't resist asking them if they wanted to move somewhere and try to live like long ago.  Most of them said, "No!"  

Brother said, "People from long ago can live just fine because they don't know what they're missing.  People from now can't go back because they'll know!"

Lola said, "Sure!  As long as we can take medicine with us!"

It was really, really fun to listen to them voice their opinions and their reasons!

We finished Seven Daughters and Seven Sons.  This book is definitely on our list of Top Ten Family Read Alouds.

We finished our (very brief) study of Israel.

Lola finished her Nature Anatomy study.  I just put away a whole notebook full of her hand drawn sketches.

Mister Man finished this year's Electronics 1-7 study.

He also finished Algebra 1.

A couple of kids finished another CLE worktext each. I think everyone is either down to their last worktext of the year or is about to finish their second-to-last.

Mister Man and Brother finished requirements for another CAP promotion; they promoted on Thursday evening.  

And last weekend all three of my big boys went on a CAP field trip to a couple of military museums.

I went through our Eastern Hemisphere books and decided what we will complete this year and what we will save for another year.  We started Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye (goes with our Israel study) as well as King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry (technically belongs to an Africa study, but it's about Arab Africans, so it's in keeping with the Arab books we've been reading already)

I found that our text covers Africa as if it were a country.  I'm not pleased with that.  I'm on the hunt for a literature-based study of African countries suitable for teens and tweens.  I may have to put my own together because what I've found so far is all focused at a lower elementary level.

Brother doesn't like reading, so he also doesn't like our library days.
He's learned to make use of the time by bringing a CAP text to study.

The. high schoolers and I started our study of Saudi Arabia.

Little Princess was selected to be a Flight Commander at the Space Operations camp she's attending this summer.

The girls and I paid for our church camp that starts in about a month.

We, along with Little Mister (who is nearly a year old!!), caught a mostly mild stomach bug.  It seems to have hit Little Mister and Baymax the worst.

Lola is being so clever training our desperately undertrained doggies.

I got the boys all registered for Encampment--we're talking about hours of downloading documents, filling them out, photographing them, turning them into pdfs, and compressing them to the correct size before uploading them to their application portals.

🤯🤯🤯

Ladybug is crocheting cute, cute dolls.

Nature Angel crocheted a baby gift for a co-worker . . .  and she didn't take a picture of it!!!!

It was a skunk with a mushroom cap and purple ruffled overalls.

I'm imagining it, but I sure wish I'd seen it for real.

Our first few shipments of books have arrived for next year--Mister Man's geometry, Lola's math, Brother's engineering design, Ladybug's human anatomy and physiology (she's going to study this subject every year as part of her EMT/Firefighter goals), Mister Man's practical electronics (hands-on supplies still need to be ordered), and some American History for the 6 youngest.  It's fun to plan and fill out my spreadsheet and watch our bookshelf fill up with the new-to-us materials.

And, yes, I have been homeschooling for over 2 decades, and, yes, we do own so many books!  But I've found that homeschool seasons are not as repetitive as I thought they would be.  Meeting the needs of different groups of kids at different skill/age/gender configurations and with different individual needs means I've needed to adjust our plans very often.

So, yes, I'm still buying books!

(And it's fun!)