A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

Thanksgiving was an exhausting but blessed day.  We had my sister's family over--that made 22 of us for dinner, and we cooked enough for double that. :) I'm grateful for what we have, grateful for how we celebrated, grateful for people to love and care for, and I'm glad the big day is over. Pixie said, "I love Thanksgiving dinner, but I think I like leftovers even better." I answered, "I know I like leftovers better!" Little Princess This is my first extremely interpersonal/social learner.  She will read and study, but she cannot be quiet about it.  She absolutely must talk to someone about what's on her mind. So she often follows me about the house as I take care of what needs taking care of, talking endlessly to my back or my shoulder or (when she's lucky) my face.  I listen to the plots of all of her magic fairy/abandoned puppy/detective mermaid stories;  I listen to math problems;  I listen to grammar sentences;  I listen to scie

Whatever bug we have, it's not nice.  I'm almost a week into this thing, and while the death grip it has on me may be looser, it's still gripping. And it's spreading.  (Of course!) We've taken to cleaning everything in the house with disposable disinfectant wipes . . . probably a pointless and landfill-filling gesture, but no one has the energy to keep up with the laundry required to keep us stocked in clean washcloths and dishtowels. We just might be celebrating Thanksgiving on our own this year.  We'll see what my sister says, but even though I'll miss her, I'll still be encouraging her to keep her family away from our germ-infested household. We're still limping through Morning Meetings, some reading, and as much one-on-one time as we can handle without crying from exhaustion. But mostly, we're trying to get well again with a little sunshine, herbal teas, fresh garlic, rest, a movie or two, card games, and soup. Baymax says, "

Typically, I'd keep up our homeschooling pattern into December and then do some sort of mid-year evaluation for the kids over the Christmas holiday. But I'm not feeling that this year. I'm mentally ready to end our current pattern after this week, celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, and then move the Elementary 8 into a season of Advent. (The teens have their own agendas.  I'll surely be inviting them to put their studies aside and join us, but I can already hear their answers . . . and I'm sure they'll be pushing themselves through their regular work.) For the past two years, our most recently adopted crew have spiraled into frenzied states of misery at the holiday season, and they've whirled us into their personal storms.  I'm fairly desperate to keep that from happening again.  Prayerfully, I've been researching ways to lovingly replace their panic with peace. It may not happen all at once, but I hope the season ahead can at least be mor

I woke up with sinus pressure and a nasty tickle at the back of my throat.  My bones felt too heavy for my body, and my muscles ached. I knew I was getting a cold. But it was my turn to get the girls to seminary, so I put on clean clothes and headed out the door. The sun came out for the first time in 20 straight days, and I wanted to rejoice in it with my kids.  I contemplated hiking, using a freebie zoo coupon, heading to a newly renovated local park . . . and then I coughed and sneezed and felt my muscles yell at me. Thursday was to be our final dance day of the semester--a full-costume, full-energy show for a local nursing home. The energy required to get through Thursday made an at-home day absolutely mandatory on Wednesday, so I put joy in my voice and sold the kids on an awesome morning of bike-riding in the driveway while I took turns calling them in for one-on-one school. While I worked with Pixie on confusing Algebra 2 equations, the kids got themselves outside . .

This has been the year of Writing with Sharon Watson for our family.  I've got kids using some of her creative writing resources, and I've been keeping some of her ebooks close at hand for my own use.  Her products are high quality and interesting, so it was with confidence that we began our adventure with Illuminating Literature: Characters in Crisis . Characters is Crisis is Sharon Watson's second volume of Illuminating Literature .  Each volume stands alone as a full-year of high school literature studies, and the volumes do not have to be used in order.  Simply choose which volume sounds interesting and get started! Characters in Crisis focuses on what it says--character development and the crises they encounter.  What I like about this study is that Sharon Watson encourages students to evaluate the effect the characters and their crises have on themselves, as readers. Watson's writing style is friendly and engaging, drawing the student into the stud

Using Forbrain by Sound For Life Ltd has been a fun experience for my family. I became interested in Forbrain after reading the various purposes for Forbrain on the website.  There are several purposes listed, but the ones that captured my attention for my particular family are improving: *short term memory *auditory processing *sensory integration. What is it? Forbrain is a simple headset. You put it on and talk. That's all. The website has lots of information about how Forbrain works here .  The best I can understand is that Forbrain takes the wearer's sound vibrations and sends them through the wearer's bones which increases accurate auditory perception. For this review I took a number of pictures of the user's manual, but then I discovered that the whole manual is available on the Forbrain website right here .  It's a whole lot easier to click the link and download the manual for personal study than it is to look at my photos! Th

The toddlers make us laugh. Monday I think it was just a regular Monday at our house. We did everything on our list that we need to get done, and I made it to the fabric store to purchase 24 yards of eyelet for trimming half a dozen little skirts for our dance group. In our Morning Meeting, we reviewed The Living Christ .  We've been reviewing it twice a month since September, and the reviews have finally opened our brains, so we sang our hearts out.  Sir Walter Scott was home for this song-fest, and he was overwhelmed with amusement at the enthusiasm the littles have for singing as well as frustration that he's not around to sing with us every day.   The weather is decidedly wintery--we're barely reaching 40 degrees each day--but we have good gear in which the littles (minus the toddlers) bundled up and headed outside to play for a couple of hours anyway.  I invited them indoors with warm apple cider, popcorn, and pomegranate seeds, and we had a lovely Academy

On Saturday I folded laundry for a looooong time.  Pixie took my picture with most of it--we'd already put a few piles away.  That's not really a school thing, but it is a time-management thing, and time-management is part of homeschooling.  Truly, having all of the folding be my job is NOT working! We went to "The Kitten Farm" on Sunday for Family Night.  Following are a gajillion pictures because I feel happy when I look at them and because I didn't feel like being selective. Last week's tractor pic may have been frame-worthy, but this shot is one in a million!                 Photo credit:  Sir Walter Scott It was honestly hard NOT to bring a kitten (or three) home. We tried to get a card-worthy photo of all of the kids . . . this one won't make it into anyone's mailbox, but it makes me laugh at how hard it is to get 12 kids to cooperate for pictures.