A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

 Baymax is just shy of being 7 1/2 years old. He's more grown-up by the day. He became a fluent reader this year . . . after starting the year needing to sound out every word. His habit is to kind of mumble over words that are too hard for him at the moment, but he's reading full-length novels regularly, and he's understanding most of what he reads.  I know the harder words will come with time and experience. He completed a lot of leveled reading books and a variety of spelling and phonics workbooks.  In addition, he has read all of the stories in the Old Testament portion of The Beginner's Bible , writing and illustrating his own narrations for a good portion of that.  He started the New Testament portion, but we ended our formal school year before he could finish.  He loves the stories, and he plans to finish reading and narrating it eventually.   He prefers writing his narrations without illustrating them, and when he asked if he could skip drawing,...

 Three days of rain this week forced us to adjust our schedule, but we still did most of what we'd planned. Monday Only two kids attempted math, and only one completed a lesson because we had 9 dentist appointments scheduled through the day.  Every kid that saw the dentist received a clean bill of health and compliments on good brushing. Tuesday Library day!  It was a tougher visit than last week because our babies felt noisier, and we worked hard to teach them about being quiet with little sign of comprehension or cooperation. We'll keep trying! Baymax was upset because he couldn't find a second book that seemed interesting enough to bring home, and he was not ok with bringing only one book home.  Fortunately Mister Man came to his rescue with a book that satisfied Baymax's requirements (adventure and fighting), and we were able to escape just as Sugar Bear broke into full throated wailing. Later in the rainy, rainy day we pulled out shaving cream.  The babies ...

 We did it! We went camping! And it went well enough that we might do it again. The week leading up to the camping trip and the preparation for the camping trip were rather stressful. Poor Sugar Bear was the victim of an accident caused by another toddler's mischief, and I called her mother to meet us at the emergency room.  Sugar Bear is ok, but it was terrifying while we waited to find out.  It was an emergency I'd never faced before in 22 years of mothering. How grateful I am that her parents still trust us to care for their babies! How grateful I am that there was no permanent damage done!! The second math booklet is finished! Little Princess did several hours of MEL chemistry, and her cute assistant was quite faithful. We were able to do Math Monday and Library Tuesday.   Storytime--with varying levels of interest! But the accident happened as we were trying to leave for the park on Wednesday (though Sir Walter Scott took my youngest 6 to the park later tha...

Such a lot of free time these days! This first full week of our summer schedule was a joyful success.  Everyone happily looked forward to the activity of the day and was terribly cooperative while it happened. It looks like he's reading, but it was only a 2 second pause in his running and leaping! Because of psych appointments, we switched our park and library days, but that means we ended up at the library with half a dozen babies in tow.  Even that might have been fine, but Little Mister Frog had a bee in his bonnet, and he just ran and ran.  He inspired the rest of our babies to do the same, so we corralled them in one of the new community rooms and allowed them to bounce off the walls in there while we took turns watching them and searching for books. The boys each found a Lego book, and the rest of the week was spent poring over them, making plans for their Sunday Lego-palooza. The park outing was short and sweet (those psych appointments!), and we had lots of fun in...