Island of The Blue Dolphins is Traumatizing

 We finished the Florence Nightingale biography.  

We decided to read Island of the Blue Dolphins next because it's a great book and because it was referenced quite often in The Elephant's Girl.  Everyone was primed to enjoy it, and we all are.

But it is totally traumatizing!

Disasters strike chapter after chapter after chapter.

My kids are groaning, shouting, and kicking on the floor with frustration about the unfairness of Karana's life, and I'm exhausted from the soothing required.

However, we're persevering.  

They can't stop talking about it.

They're not even needing me to be part of the conversation.  Sometimes I just have to stop reading and let them go.

Sometimes I shush them and tell them to listen.

Depends on the conversation happening.

We've read book after book that has really reached the kids' hearts and minds, and I'm thinking I need to move this kind of reading to another part of the day and pull out some dry tomes for bedtime.

I keep saying this, and I'm not sure when/if I'll actually act on this, but they're so alive and interested!!!

(Honestly, it's great.)

Life, while not smooth, is less bumpy than it has been for the past couple of months.  Looks like the July-September cycle is ending.  

I wonder if there's a way to interrupt this cycle . . . I've got some thinking to do.

The teens and I finished the second half of The Landmark History of the American People.  

I've assigned the girls to each read a book about one post-Civil War subject of interest.  Nature Angel is waiting for Jane Addams' autobiography to arrive through interlibrary loan, and I'm not sure what Little Princess is going to choose--but I bet it will be something about the space program. :)

Once they've each read and written about their book, they will have completed a half credit in their survey of  American History course.  

Next up on our agenda--Much Ado about Nothing!

The teens are really throwing themselves into their personal passions.  

Nature Angel spends hours and days on the computer designing her doll house, studying architecture, learning the ins and outs of the CAD program she's using (SketchUp), and computing measurement after measurement.  She's also playing the guitar regularly, crocheting, knitting, reading, studying, and generally being an incredibly industrious student.

This is a picture she took accidentally while setting up her camera to record some clogging steps.  She's proving to be an excellent choreographer and teacher.

And this is a screenshot of a video she took of herself playing the guitar.  "The video is for my eyes only!" she said.  "It's for me to improve my form."  

Little Princess does math and science and reading every day.  She's working her way through the Harbor and Sprout Engineering Unit--she made a teeny tiny bridge out of toothpicks and clay this week.

It was stronger than it looks. :)

And she bakes!!  These are the apple butter cinnamon rolls I wrote about last week.

Honest truth, I can't remember the week!  

We lived a lot; we schooled a lot.  But I hardly take any pictures these days, and without pictures, I can't remember stuff.

This is Brother ironing his own shirt before church.  
Life skill!

This is Beowulf reading a Wings of Fire book to Lola.  It turns out that she's always reading when they read to her because she follows along in the graphic novel version.  
Clever kids!

We went to soccer because the early morning forecast was for a break from the storms until noon.  The forecast kept updating until a storm arrived during practice.  We cleared out of there just in time to watch the incredible lightning show from the van as we drove home.  They were about to scrimmage as we had to leave, and that was disappointing.  Here they are drowning their sorrows in snack mix with candy corn.

These are some of my choreography notes spread across the kitchen island.  
Yes, I am still doing choreography even 5 weeks into the semester!

He's 8 1/2, and I am still charmed by his pudgy hands.  I will miss those hands someday.

A rare moment of Lola working diligently on an assignment not of her choosing.

I do remember that one day I played several episodes of Crash Course Anatomy and Physiology.  It's way over my kids' heads, but it was certainly more advanced than the kid videos I'd found before, and Mister Man particularly liked it.  Afterward, I asked the kids to share anything they could remember, and they definitely each learned something.  

I just asked Ladybug if we should watch more, and she gave me an enthusiastic, "Yeah!"

Nature Angel could hear the lectures from the dining room, and she was impressed.

Most of us really liked the adorable animation that appeared on the screen every once in a while.

The kids are still working on the definition of a predicate for our grammar memorization.  It's hilarious to hear them answer, "A subject . . . oh!  no!  A predicate is . . . oh, I can't remember!"  When I ask, "What is a predicate?"

They've made a lot of progress this week, though, and they remember to stop and not try to tell me what a subject is. :)

Our math fact of the week was adding doubles/multiplying by 2.

And we listened to a lot of Haydn.

I miss the preschoolers.  

We do have Sugar Bear and The Munchkin, and I could certainly do some activities with them, but I was forced to prepare when we had half a dozen littles to take care of all day.  Having only two is so not a challenge that I'm getting lazy about preparing activities.

I'm not actually lazy--I'm decluttering the house, refinishing an armoire that is going to become an office cabinet, and painting the basement in addition to homeschooling and all of the regular mom stuff that needs doing each day.

But I'm realizing that I'm a good preschool teacher/caregiver!

And I miss it.