A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

Less than 6 weeks until Pixie leaves us again to pick up her wonderful college life.  She's registered for classes, and she's got an apartment contract, too.  She's been working/dancing 14 hour days ever since she got home, but I caught her in a rare resting moment. I got two good days out-of-doors, but the kids got six ! The calendar may say it's still late winter, but someone didn't tell the weather that because we haven't dropped to freezing all week, and the forecast says we aren't going back any time soon. We decided to take a risk and do some early garden planting.  Nature Angel is working on it as a specific goal for the church Children and Youth program, and the whole family's involvement will work for the little ones. That's Nature Angel's finger for comparison! Our garden beds as of March 3, 2020.  On that first day, we planted lettuce, sugar snap pea, and spinach seeds.  I hope to post lots of awesome updates w...

After putting together our Day in the Life post last week, I ran out of steam to report on the week. The week went mostly as the reported day went.  It was really a very typical day and a productive week for us. But there are a couple of things to record. Brother finished his first phonics book.  He's now working with Explode the Code 2. We had a show on Thursday.  It was at an assisted living facility to which we've never been.  The activities director was quite stressed by us all being there, and during our first clogging number she ran out and said, "No more of those shoes!" So we clogged in silent bare/stocking feet. Which kind of defeats the purpose. But at least this year's show is light on clogging, and there were plenty of other numbers that were unaffected by her panicked edict. For the littlest performers, it gets very boring waiting for a turn to go on stage. But sometimes, when they are waiting for a turn, they can watch from ...

This is my crew last summer--the day we said goodbye to Pixie as she headed off to college. I actually have all 12 of my children home right now. Rose Red is nearly 20, graduated from our homeschool a year and a half ago, lives at home, and is working as a server at Applebee's as she tries to understand what it means to be an adult. Pixie is newly 18, graduated from our homeschool almost a year ago, is a dance major at BYUI, and is spending her off-track semester working full-time in the 1-year-old room at a daycare. These two still are part of our family days, and their schedules directly impact the rest of us, but I am no longer responsible for their day-to-day educational needs. The remaining 10 are still under my educational supervision.  Among these 10 children we are schooling while we cope with anxiety, depression, FASD, ADHD, DMDD, ODD, ASD, PTSD, and Intellectual Disability. Here is a February Wednesday in our lives. 5:04 am :  Sir Walter Scott's a...

We are recovering. Little Princess was the last to succumb, so she still feels weak, and Baymax is still on constant bedrest.  The rest of the kids are energetic enough to play games before I make them take naps. It felt like influenza, but it was shorter-lived. Whatever it was, it was dreadful, and I'm glad to see the back of it . . . even if we are left with treating asthma flare-ups and boggling levels of sinus drainage. I was knocked out flat the longest (thank goodness for Sir Walter Scott's PTO!), but Baymax has been by far the most ill--his fever sat at 105+ for over 18 hours despite every medication, every effort we made to cool him down.  At the end of that worst day, he finally fell asleep sandwiched between ice packs.  I am so grateful for the priesthood blessing that precipitated the decline of that fever! He is, however, still quite ill. Other than Morning Meeting, which we managed to have 4 times during our sick week, and one day of Academy r...

We did all of the homeschooling we had planned every day--Morning Meeting, Independent School, Symposium, Colloquium, Academy, Jr, K., and Evening Reading.  It was a very routine week in many ways. The week also challenged me to the breaking point . . . but I didn't break . . . and we soldiered on. My Jr. Ks finished their first of two Alphabet workbooks for the school year. They loved finishing their pink books and starting their blue books. My teens finished Unit 9 of The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts . This is Belle's Unit 8 sketch finally finished! Super Start's Unit 9 art project And Belle's We did not enjoy the literature selections for Units 9 and 10 at all, so after completing the Unit 9 selections, we dropped the books completely, turning instead to The Odyssey, which is how we are diving back into the Omnibus studies we dropped when we decided to simplify our school days last semester.  It is an outstanding translat...