A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

 We finished Human Anatomy and Physiology. We finished Ali and the Golden Eagle . We had the best discussions while reading this book!  The kids were so provoked by the bringing of modern technology to a previously undisturbed village still living as their ancestors had for probably 1,000 years that they had to talk it out.  I had the privilege of just listening as they discussed pros and cons to modern life vs ancient life. At one point I couldn't resist asking them if they wanted to move somewhere and try to live like long ago.  Most of them said, "No!"   Brother said, "People from long ago can live just fine because they don't know what they're missing.  People from now can't go back because they'll know!" Lola said, "Sure!  As long as we can take medicine with us!" It was really, really fun to listen to them voice their opinions and their reasons! We finished Seven Daughters and Seven Sons .  This book is definitely on our list of T...

 We had our annual lighting ceremony on Monday night. And by sewing madly in the late afternoon, I managed to finish 24 gift bags (20 of them were made in previous years) for our Christmas book advent. We've been faithfully opening one a day, and I love, love, love how the kids still gather around and get excited over seeing what book is in what bag and then settle happily down near the fire for read aloud time. This week we opened Dasher, Santa's Twin, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and The Night Tree.   We're just reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever a chapter at a time, so it's fun to double up and read a picture book and a chapter book. We're also trucking along rather well with regular school. We did add The Jesus Storybook Bible to our Morning Meeting. We read The Big Wave , and we're almost through with The Master Puppeteer . The Big Wave is the single best book about grieving I...

And that's why I missed a week of posting about our homeschool. I was so sick. So. Sick. But now I'm okay, and my family helped me every day, and we didn't do much school, but we did what we could, and it's okay. (So I keep telling myself every time I want to panic about how hard it is [again!] to get really going with a productive school year.} It's okay. No one died. No one abandoned the family. We didn't give up. We just had to take time off . . . during our third week. Habits we kept up because my husband and teen daughters are amazing:    Morning Meeting    Math    Cursive/Copywork    Individual Subjects    Seminary--Yes!  That started this week! Before I realized how sick I was and how awful I would eventually feel, we engaged in a little bit of what I like to call "documentary school."  This means I found a documentary online that goes with one of our areas of study, and we watched it. 1.  We watched the National Ge...

  For our first day, we had a field trip to the Nelson-Atkins art museum.   Our history/literature focus this year is the Eastern Hemisphere, so we spent a couple of hours in the Asian wing of the museum. Granted, the Eastern Hemisphere is comprised of more than Asia, but that's what we had access to on this day! We picnicked on the museum lawn, and then headed home so that Little Princess could be available for a Zoom meeting for CAP as well as her second-to-last Chinese class. I put the kids to work writing a paragraph about the experience. Lola wrote:  "Everything was boring because I am not the kind of person that enjoys this." Once I got her to add a sentence about where the art was from, I accepted her work. She's something else! 🤣🤷🙄🤣 For the rest of the week, we stayed home, practicing our schedule and starting just a few subjects.   High Schoolers: *Received their planners and some time management instruction *Started literature with Otto of the Silv...