A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

KCHC Graduating Class of 2025! For reference--there's our girl! Graduation pics are here! There are some I still need to purchase, but these are the free ones so far. Nature Angel and her friend, the other senior in American Rhythm, performed their senior duet at the graduation.   They were awesome! Look at the height she got on that heel click! And here they all are, ready to be official.   Celebrating their accomplishments! Here's how she got to this point: Did she do more than is recorded in her 12th grade year? Yes. I just didn't bother to record it because she had more than enough credits to graduate. Nature Angel can read, write, compute . . .  actually, I looked up this chart: If I ask her to do one of these things, she will do it very well.   She communicates clearly, effectively, and kindly. She is responsible with money. She is able to learn what she wants to learn when she wants to learn it. She is able to learn what someone else requires. She ha...

  This photo would not be her first choice for me to include in this end-of-school-year post, but I love it. Yes, she can be more traditionally pretty--gorgeous, actually--but all I see is really real beauty.   And she's in her element. (This location happens to be the Chicago Art Institute.) Nature Angel completed her 11th grade year with almost too many credits to record on one form. This is a cropped screenshot of her official transcript. There is one blank line left, and she's actually still working on that credit.  I told her I was closing out her 11th grade transcript, and that I'd save the credit for that course for 12th grade.   This year she spent time recovering from our hard summer of 2023, and she spent a lot of time coping with the ongoing effects of that hard summer that have only been resolved in the past month or two. She says she wasted a great deal of time at the start of the school year.   She says her time management was poor. ...

 I spent 4 delightful days with Pixie in Idaho last weekend.  She lifted me out of my old-mom comfort zone and got me to try a ropes course, go paddleboarding, and hike up an extinct volcano known as "R Mountain."   I, in turn, helped her make 10 freezer meals (2 each of 5 recipes) that should give her a solid 20 meals for the first month of the fall semester.  We also toured her campus, attended church together, watched movies, shopped, and talked and talked and talked.   It was hard to leave home to go visit her. It was equally hard to leave her to go home. My gratitude to Sir Walter Scott, Belle, Nature Angel, and Little Princess knows no bounds.  It took 3 failed attempts to visit Pixie to finally get to one success, and it would not have been possible without their voluntary sacrifice and service. On the home front, we walked every school morning--Sir Walter Scott maintained the routine while I was gone.  Most of our walks are pretty rou...

Nature Angel has completed her 9th-grade year.  As with Little Princess, it seemed that she was doing less than she actually did, but she did so. much. good. work! Language Arts:   0.5 credit English 9, The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts High School 1 , 5 out of 10 units completed Math:   0.75 credit Algebra 1 with Geometry, Saxon, 90 out of 120 lessons completed Science:   0.5 credit Biology 1, Apologia Exploring Creation with Biology, 9 out of 16 modules completed History:       Ancient World History--Creation to Christ , custom-created course with literature, 1.0 credit          The Old Testament          The Three Brothers of Ur          Gilgamesh the Hero          Shepherd, Potter, Spy, and the Star Namer          Tirzah          Tales from Ancient Egypt (most of it)     ...

  Nature Angel turned 14.     She finished 8th grade.   It's the end of an era and the beginning of another for my beautiful angel girl. Nature Angel--8th grade: Colloquium:        Astronomy , Master Books      Modern World and American History through Literature , Beautiful Feet Books      Ancient History , Mystery of History Language Arts 8 , Oak Meadow Algebra 1/2 , Saxon General Science , Apologia Elementary Greek Year 2 , Memoria Press; Book of Mormon in Greek Book of Mormon   Notice there is no plan for working full time as a childcare provider.  That's because we had no idea how our school life would change during the 2020-21 school year. We soldiered through the plan as written when there were first 1 then 2 toddlers.  When we added both an infant and another toddler to the mix, the plan broke down, and we had to make some changes--namely dropping some of these st...

It's hard to write about Nature Angel without gushing.  She's a child of so many talents and so much goodness! Colloquium , Morning Meeting , Elementary Read Alouds , American Rhythm , church activities, and our 52 Hikes comprised part of her schooling. She's diligent and careful--her work is always high quality. She will accept nothing less from herself. Her individual studies included: Language Arts:   Oak Meadow Grade 7 Language Arts --completed.  This was a rigorous program with lots of reading, lots of writing, and plenty of spelling and grammar.  It's also a program requiring lots of art, which is why it is a good fit for Nature Angel.  History:   Oak Meadow Grade 7 History --completed.  Same as above, only instead of spelling and grammar, this program included geography and research.  I think she was on the computer gathering information almost every school day. Greek:   Memoria Press Elementary Greek Year 1,...