A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

That's Belle in line with friends to listen to a devotional by President Dallin H. Oaks at BYU-Provo I hate to whine too much. I count my blessings every single day. I do! It has been a rough few weeks, though. For me. Nothing huge has happened. But I feel defeated anyway. And I don't think I should pretend otherwise. I'm old enough and experienced enough to know that seasons like this will pass.  I will feel light shining through me again, and I will see more clearly the good that I am doing. Acknowledging the hard will, perhaps, make the joy all the sweeter. Our habits and routines keep us grounded. Morning Meeting continues to be our daily anchor.  We're reading, discussing, singing, and memorizing our way through scripture. High School Studies have been simpler lately because between post-surgical healing and a cold, I haven't been up to putting notes up on the white board for history/geography.  We've focused instead on reading and narrating.  We finished...

As I write this, I'm sitting by the fire pit, watching my kids toss a football and make"torches" so they can burn leaves and "write" in the air.   My camera is charging, so I'm not getting any pictures (but, yes, I am on the computer *sigh*).   (I just asked Little Princess to take pictures, so maybe next week I'll remember to include some in my weekly post.)  We did school on Monday. Then Sir Walter Scott was off work T-Th, and he offered to clean out the garage! I've been asking him to work on this for years now, and the stars--weather, schedule, energy--all aligned to allow it to happen. So we ditched school--although not for the high schoolers.  We finished Much Ado About Nothing , continued grammar, and started Mystery of History volume 3.   We still need to watch our favorite movie version of the play, but I won't let the younger kids watch it yet, so we need to find a time when they're not around.  Waiting until after they're in b...

  Belle doesn't take pictures, and she's never in them, either!  I'm going to have to get some done of her ASAP.  Our friend volunteered to give Belle a free photography session (and she's very good), so it will be fun to have some gorgeous portraits of my darling girl. Belle has been transitioning out from under my homeschool supervision.  She took 2 classes at the community college--1 each semester for dual enrollment credit. Fall semester:  Communications 100:  A:  1 high school credit Winter semester:  College Algebra:  A:  1 high school credit With her prior 22.75 credits, these two put her at 24.75 --a perfectly acceptable college preparatory level of high school work.  Indeed, she was accepted to SVU for admission Fall 2022! Belle has decided to defer her college enrollment to serve a full-time mission for our church.  She's had her first meeting with the bishop (the leader of our local congregation), and she's filling o...

 I feel as though there's nothing to share . . . we get up, we clean up, we study, we struggle, we triumph, we read, we fix meals and eat them, we play, we feed babies, we talk (or don't talk) . . . we're in a quiet place. I'm so used to living in crisis, that it is hard for me to see the power of the quiet moments. (I used to be so good at it!) I'm training myself to see again. Though we're in a quiet place, we still have our struggles.  Beowulf had a hard time with school.  We didn't have any book-ripping or chair-throwing, but it did take all of my patience and energy to convince him to face the table and focus on the work in front of him.  Each lesson ended with completed work and no violence. A triumph! Wednesday night church activities took everyone from home but these two and me.  In between tidying-up jobs, I watched them watch their movie. How grateful I am to have young ones at home! Every day we joyed in our babies being back in our home.  Though...

 We're in the zone:  chores, school, family time. It's the zone I always want to achieve, and I'm so grateful we're here. The first day at dance was good.  We did a show run through, just to see what we did and did not remember; there's significant review to do!  I was right that the covid surge would affect our ability to perform in the community.  We do have two shows scheduled, but none at nursing/rehab homes.  We'll have lots of time to rehearse and have fun and work on our Friends and Family show planned for mid-April. Nature Angel, Little Princess, and I all agree that our preschool activities are just right for our little ones and our family.  The older kids love to join in for some of the sensory activities and crafts, and Nature Angel said, "Knowing what we're doing and having it all planned and easy is letting me do better at school and keeping me from feeling frustrated with the toddlers.  It's just nice to have a plan that they like, ...

 This week the pics are all about Lola.   This is what she did instead of chores one morning.  She's a brand-new 7 year old, and the drawing she did is amazing!  Done with her non-dominant hand!!!  I couldn't even be (too) annoyed that she'd been ignoring her chores.  Her Northern Finch is hanging on our gallery wall, and I hope she'll do more sketches like this! She did it!  She finished the entire book!  She's faking stoicism here, but she was super proud of herself, and all of us are proud of her!  She's now working on Language Lessons for a Living Education 1 in order to review and build on the skills she's worked on here. I excused her from all written work seeing as it's her writing hand that's in a cast, but she loves her math games and begged to play a few of them this week.  She's becoming more and more adept at using her left hand.  In non-Lola-related news, we kept losing our read alouds. We were working on Tales from An...