A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

Mister Man spent months kitting this orange scarf that he proudly gave to Grampa Chad.  The good news is that Grampa Chad proudly wears it! Monday What a great day!  We had homeschool magic during Academy when our plan was to simply read a simple introductory book about the human body that inspired watching YouTube videos showing actual human systems and one video of a white blood cell chasing down a germ. The germ video was my favorite. The kids were alive with the wonder that only young kids can show when they wake to a bit of knowledge they'd not known before. During Symposium, the teens and read the first 55 pages of The Book Thief . Ummmmmm . . . this book is amazing! I don't know where it's going to go, but sometimes I lose my breath from the perfection of the prose, and I'm willing to take this ride. It's for our teen book club in mid-October. Water color painting by Little Princess--as assigned in The Good and the Beautiful Sir Walte...

Waving good morning to Pixie (sent via text) during Morning Meeting It was a hard week. Hard enough that I yelled to my husband, "I'm sick of being the mother!  I'm going to go cool off!" And then I slammed the door on my way out to take a walk.  (Barefoot . . . but it was hot all week, so shoes weren't really necessary.) My behavior was hardly fair to anyone in the house. But my family eventually forgave me, and we mended what we could. Our education this school year certainly has less to do with math and more to do with learning to live with one another!   Brother was released from the psych hospital on Thursday morning--just in time to attend dance with us.  His psychiatrist took DMDD off his list of diagnoses and added a new med to control his aggressive behavior.  It was incredibly challenging getting the prescription filled--eventually we asked the pharmacy if we could see what our private insurance would cover instead of using Brother...

Nature Angel built this little playhouse last Saturday.  The cute little fairy with the watering can is our friend that we babysit. I canceled school this week . . . mostly. We had Morning Meeting and evening reading each day. The teens and tweens were accountable for 3 days of independent study, and Mister Man was assigned to finish his Prairie School literature study. Which he did. And this is how he did it. Ladybug also completed 2 math lessons, and she got up each morning to do her personal scripture reading/narrating. Nature Angel and Little Princess are still loving Duolingo .  And I'm getting a kick out of the progress reports that are emailed to me. Nature Angel's report Little Princess's report Nature Angel and I had to find an online Greek keyboard that she can use to type her answers and then cut and paste them into the blanks on the Duolingo site.  That was a little confusing, but now that the problem is solved, all is well...

Over the weekend, Nature Angel inspired the kids to create a city in our yard.  They played for hours ! "Oh, Mom!" Belle said ruefully, "We almost had a normal week of school!" This was late Thursday morning as we regrouped after the police caught Brother for us about half a mile from home. I'd given chase and gotten within 10 feet of him, but then we hit a hill, and his adrenaline-driven 52 lb body glided up the hill ever so much faster than mine did. He was rounded up, and appropriate information was shared with the officers from each city involved (we live on the border of the two cities), and we were all home within the hour. It was only half an hour later that Brother's dissociative episode ended, but everyone was so wiped out that Sir Walter Scott stayed home with Brother while the rest of us went to dance. (If I weren't the teacher to more than half of the children, and if my children didn't comprise nearly 1/4 of the students, ...