A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

 There were moments of joy. There are a few pictures to prove it. This was during primary singing time.  Beowulf in the Elvis glasses and sideburns was too perfect to skip the picture.  They were supposed to be dads during the song "A Happy Family." Nature Angel created this shade canopy for the littles one morning. These two joined their friends for church boys' activities for a pioneer celebration.  At the same time, Beowulf joined his pack of buddies for their church activity at the local nature preserve.  They're doing several preparatory activities for a fishing night. Ladybug made friends with a butterfly, and Mister Man used the macro lens on my phone camera to capture the moment. Sugar Bear loves me, even in her sleep. A poor picture of a literature assignment--we cleaned out the last school bins for the 2020-21 school year, and this one, even though her beautiful hand painted watercolors of each character are nothing but blurry blobs in this picture, i...

 Today (Friday) was good. A Wild Day. We went to the lake. It was supposed to be a cool morning and hot afternoon, so I planned a hike and then playing at the beach. But it was hot in the morning too, so we walked about a mile and called it good. Lola loves her "egg hat."  How she wore it while we sweated our way through this walk, I'll never know! We wandered off the main trail to follow the disc golf course through the woods. And somehow, on the way back to the beach, we came up with the game of stomping on one another's "shadow brains."  Disturbing, but fun!   Hike #25 of 52:  Smithville Lake 53.96 miles + 1 = 54.96 miles We took only these pictures . . . none at all while we were on the beach.  We chose to leave the phones utterly alone and play together. Though when Beowulf was trying to turn one of our big blue tubs into a boat, I sure wished I had clean hands and a camera on! Oh!  How those kids worked at balancing and floating! There were more...

It was definitely a first-week-of-school kind of week. Lots of good. Lots of hard. Lots of questions. Lots of meltdowns. Lots of chocolate. What's working? Elevenses:   Taking a note from British book settings, I decided that we could stretch our mornings with a substantial snack and a later lunch.  We all like it, though Ladybug did say to me last night, "It seems like our school mornings are much longer than our playtime afternoons." She's right!  I read The Blue Fairy Book aloud this week--just a few pages each day--while we ate our snacks. Morning Mini-Walks:   Inspired by Jennifer at Bookish Family , as well as reports stating that kids are more ready to concentrate and learn after a bit of outdoor exercise, I've wanted to start our days with a walk for years.  We're finally doing it. Our walks are between 1/3 and 3/4 mile, depending on the morning.  We're outside for 20-30 minutes only.  Some kids point out interesting natural sights--a spider o...