A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

Bike riding, gardening, and septic leach line building ruled our week. The older girls took turns taking the younger kids biking up and down the street. It led to more than one accident. We joked that we needed one of these signs: The problem is, ours would say "0" for every day of the week! We didn't have any broken bones or any trips to the emergency room, though, so no one is complaining. Lola is our last child who does not know how to ride a bike.  Nature Angel and Brother have worked with her many times, but the balance and control remain elusive.  We're not sure why, because she's so coordinated in so many other ways! But this week, Nature Angel got her to pedal successfully for about 20 feet without falling!!! No one had a camera in the moment. I'm hoping for pictures and videos next week. We did a lot of school, and finished a lot of math. This book 5 of 5 finished.  Next step?  Arithmetic 3, but not for a little while.

It snowed on Friday morning! Huge, wet, floppy flakes of snow fell for over 10 minutes! But the ground and air temperatures were just warm enough for it not to stick, and by 9:00 am, there was only soppy, muddy ground to show it happened. And I knew, I just knew that we couldn't have a regular school day. Routines are our saving grace, but the atmosphere in our home has been increasingly tense.  We're having more tantrums (really, though, not enough to worry about), more frustration, less joy in the usual work of the day. I think much of it has to do with the fact that we were supposed to take Pixie back to school this week, and we couldn't. Sir Walter Scott had vacation time scheduled. Super Star had vacation time scheduled. I had mentally prepared to have a break from school for everyone. We all felt it. Especially Pixie, who officially pressed the "Defer" button on her school website this week.  She's made the decision to work full time th

We're knee-deep in the "finishing" stage of school. Though we've been in it all along because we've worked intensely on one or two subjects at a time instead of doing a little bit of each one each day. Ladybug learned a lot from this phonics/spelling resource, and now she's reviewing her skills with Book 3 1/2. Ladybug's cursive is really quite lovely, and now she's working on another book by another publisher to keep her skills up. Beowulf and I only worked on the reading pages in this book because he's doing Memoria Press handwriting and Rod and Staff arithmetic.  This kid grew in his reading skills by leaps and bounds.  He's super excited to start reading regular storybooks next week. This curriculum is definitely geared toward a younger audience than these two, and I'll probably use the books next year with my Academy crew (adding the activities I skipped for these two), but the stories are engaging, and my middle s

While ever so many others struggle, we continue to grow in joy. We're not perfect. :) But we're so freakin' awesome that I feel like I'm living in a dream. Every day school happens.  We have behavior issues that we need to deal with, but they're  minor (to us), so we deal with them and pass them by.   Everyone is growing and learning. The teens and I finished all 722 pages of The Histories of Herodotus !!! It was simultaneously incredibly dull (too many names and details) and hilarious (Herodotus is wry) and fascinating (ancient cultures were crazy!).  I'm quite glad we read it; Belle is quite glad we read it; Super Star is okay with having read it, but she wasn't overly impressed. :) We're on to The Oresteia next week. Little Princess has added YoYo Chinese to her daily studies because they offered one course for free for a month! Little Princess and Nature Angel each got a Book of Mormon in her foreign language of choice--Mandarin