A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

And that's why I missed a week of posting about our homeschool. I was so sick. So. Sick. But now I'm okay, and my family helped me every day, and we didn't do much school, but we did what we could, and it's okay. (So I keep telling myself every time I want to panic about how hard it is [again!] to get really going with a productive school year.} It's okay. No one died. No one abandoned the family. We didn't give up. We just had to take time off . . . during our third week. Habits we kept up because my husband and teen daughters are amazing:    Morning Meeting    Math    Cursive/Copywork    Individual Subjects    Seminary--Yes!  That started this week! Before I realized how sick I was and how awful I would eventually feel, we engaged in a little bit of what I like to call "documentary school."  This means I found a documentary online that goes with one of our areas of study, and we watched it. 1.  We watched the National Ge...

 The kids were so excited for Monday evening because Dad was coming home from work to take them to the park for an evening of playing baseball.  They even got to pick up their favorite friends along the way.  We don't have any pictures because Sir Walter Scott forgot his phone, but that just means he was able to participate fully without stopping to frame a photo. Everyone came home sweaty, tired, hungry, and happy.   I had our usual Monday night huge pot of pasta ready and waiting for them as they walked in the door. Earlier in the day, our case manager made his weekly visit, but this time he had a nurse with him because she did some digging into files and found that we'd not had a nurse visit at any time in our history with this service, so she started fixing that lack with Brother.  He got weighed and measured in various ways, and we spent a good part of the afternoon answering questions about health habits and history.   I am delighted to repo...

 I took pictures this week, but not of my kids. They're all pictures of American Rhythm costumes because we had our costume return session, and as I put them away, I took photos, so that we can catalog them in a more organized spreadsheet than we currently have. I'm also making cross-referenced spreadsheets, so that we can look up what we have by costume/accessory name or by bin number. It is strangely satisfying. The kids were invited to be stage hands for a play their friends are in (we cannot afford the co-op the friends are in, or we'd join them).  5 of my 6 younger kids volunteered immediately; Baymax abstained, saying, "I prefer to watch the shows." I was worried that he'd feel left out while all of his siblings were involved, so I encouraged him to go to the first rehearsal and see if he liked it. He didn't. For exactly the reason he expressed beforehand. I am humbled by his 9-year-old sense of self. (But I'm still glad he went and knows for sur...

6:30 am next to my driveway We dove fully back into school this week. And it went fairly well. Because our Christmas School was so enjoyable, I designed a month's study in the same style. This is the first week's plan. The kids said they knew what would happen when they brought snow inside to melt, and they acted a little bit blasé about it all.  But then it started to melt as they worked, and they began applying pressure, moving their cups to places in the sun, and generally becoming engaged in the process of a huge cup of now melting down to an inch or two of water. Not included in the plan above are my handwritten notes about including spelling (I printed out a variety of grade level lists), and over 3 days, the kids copied them, studied them, then had a mini spelling test of 5 of the words from their appropriate lists. Ladybug and Mister Man share a list. Brother, Beowulf, and Baymax share a list. Lola has her own list. It was surprisingly easy to do the spelling list aroun...