A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

For Nature Angel and Belle, this week was AWESOME!  They spent the week at FSY, and had the absolute best experiences of their lives. This is Nature Angel's "company."  Basically her small group that had a few counselors watching over them.  They met for devotionals and were teams for games and other activities. Nature Angel with her best buddy and roommate for the week! She got to meet and chat with Sister Bonnie Cordon--The YW General President! Belle's experience was just as joyful. A bunch of friends The girls in their "company"--it was a really boy-heavy group! Waiting for a class or devotional to start They came home with stars in their eyes and brought the light home with them.  It was so fun to listen to their stories of the week. Life on the homefront was much, much harder . . . more about surviving than thriving. Brother had a number of episodes that led to the complete and abrupt end of his ABA therapy.  He was given an assessment--the results of ...

Rats!  Rats!  Rats! Both Brother and Beowulf are having behavioral flare-ups at the same time.  And Ladybug is extra sassy-mouthed and argumentative.     It's tough around here. Stuff is getting broken.  People are getting hurt.  Most of us are experiencing PTSD symptoms.  We're generally exhausted, unfocused, and wary. The good news is that our babies bring out the best in all of the kids, so the babies have been completely safe and a blessing to us all.  (I'm extra-intensely aware of the babies and watching for any sign that we need to stop providing care to them.  I question it every day.)   Other good news is that all I have to do is take Beowulf off his stimulant, and his dangerous behaviors will stop.  We'll just be left with his usual hard-to-manage behaviors until we can talk to his psychiatrist and start a new med. Ladybug's bad attitude could be a PTSD reaction, and when the boys settle down, she might settle down....

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...

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, ...