A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

I didn't take pictures . . . that's actually why this post is appearing in December--I kept thinking that I should document a certain day, and then I'd forget to take pictures, so I'd skip it with plans to document another day. But now November is over, and I want to write about a day.  The most recent day is November 30th, a Sunday.  Not a school day, but really, one of the reasons we homeschool is so that we are free to teach our children in faith about our faith: "And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins." 2 Nephi 25:26  Our worship is part of our education, so, Sunday it is. The morning started quietly.  I sat down at the computer to upload pictures from our camera and to write our weekly homeschool post.  As I worked, children woke one by one, served themselves a breakfast...

We took the week off school to prepare for Thanksgiving.  Each day we still had morning devotional, personal scripture study, and evening family scriptures and prayers.  On Sunday through Wednesday and then again on Saturday we had family evening read-aloud time.  Other than that we cooked.  I'd thought we'd so some crafting, too, but we didn't.  Monday We planned, shopped, and made strawberry freezer jam and cranberry sauce. Mashing strawberries Stirring cranberry sauce.  She said, "This is easy, but it's taking forever!" I3 helps stir the berries, pectin, and sugar together. Bottling up the final product   Tuesday We made pie crusts, gingersnaps, a cheesecake, and cranberry bread. The four oldest get their first pastry-making lesson. Learning that pastry takes a "light touch" Completed pie dough disks--ready to refrigerate until tomorrow Cranberries are wiggly things--prone to escape the knife blade! ...

The promised snow never came.  We made it to all of our church meetings all weekend long. Then I crashed. Monday We started the week on a sour note.  I was still so tired from the weekend that even the simplest routines seemed like mountains to climb.  The kids were ornery, too.  We had tears over school and bad attitudes over helping.  Somehow we did all of the chores, all of the school assignments, saw Dad off to work, and made it to bed a little bit early. Tuesday  The second day of the week was better.  Perhaps the early-to-bed was what we needed--perhaps it was my fervent prayers--because it was a whole different household on Tuesday.  Smiles, kind words, and helping hands came back.  J is for Jellyfish.  We watched a video online about jellyfish, then we made this jellyfish craft. I3 was kind enough to let A7 and H5 join him in his "Little Kid School"  The subject of jellyfish was so interesting to them that t...