A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

  I have no idea why this is such a tiny picture.  I took it with the same camera as the rest of the pictures in this post, and I did not edit it.  If I enlarge it, it is nothing but huge pixels.  I'm including it because, even though it is tiny, it has about 3 of my kids during one of our Couch to 5K running sessions. We've now run consistently for 2 weeks!!  Several of the kids and I opted to repeat week one, and if we keep that pace, we will complete the 6-week program in 12 weeks instead, but I don't care about taking so long.  I'm just happy that we're getting out and being consistent. The kids have the 50 states and capitals memorized (not Lola, though, I hope she's absorbing what she can by listening), so I printed blackline maps and assigned the kids to trace the shapes of the states.  Over the course of the rest of the week, I had them fill in all of the states and capitals. Lola was working.  Beowulf was struggling. Working on their map...

 We read books. We talked about what we read. The younger 6 wrote 2 reports--one about Archimedes and one about William Tyndale . . . unless the William Tyndale one was last week.  (I did a quick skim and couldn't find it, so whatever week it was, it is now recorded.) We finished The Ark and started Summer of the Monkeys in its place. We finished The Bible Smuggle r and started Mama's Bank Account in its place. We finished Archimedes and the Door of Science and started Sequoyah: Leader of the Cherokees in its place. And one day, after we did all of our reading, I had a sudden inspiration accompanied by energy to act on it.   Eleven of us picked ourselves up and were out the door to see the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greek historical displays at the art museum. She was so curious about the mummy! We only stayed for an hour maybe, but we couldn't leave without visiting the knight! We were off to the glass maze/labyrinth, but it was closed. :( The museum guard who was...

Random picture of Lola--it's so classically her.  She's got drawing supplies outside without permission; she's on the front porch surrounded by chalk drawings; she's got her manicure set for company as she works on Pokemon art.   We have a couple of birthdays in September, and our activity schedule has been rather full, so we shuffled birthday celebrations around to less full days.  However, that made the first week of September very, very full! Little Princess is our resident baker, cake decorator, and cake decorating teacher, so she was quite busy!!! One simple, elegant cake One fun Pokemon cake--this is Gastly Little Princess could quite successfully open a gluten-free bakery.  These cakes were so delicious, so moist, so fluffy, so perfect!! But she doesn't want to.  So we get to enjoy everything she bakes. :) On the subject of Little Princess' baking, we've accidentally started the tradition of her making us all homemade chocolate chip cookies on dance d...

 Another slow summer week flowed gently by. Singing into the fan . . . competing over who can be louder, actually 😄 Monday We had zero plans.  I grocery shopped.  Kids played.  Teens slept.  Sir Walter Scott did household projects. In the heat of the afternoon, I pulled frozen t-shirts out of the freezer (I'd soaked then and put them in the freezer in the morning).  A hilarious half hour followed as the kids tried to be the first to get their shirt on. Kids--frozen shirts in hand Using the heat through the window to thaw his shirt Ladybug won!!! Beowulf hugged his shirt under a blanket to get it warmer We were sure that second place was a race between Brother and Mister Man, but Lola surprised us all!!! Everyone eventually got a shirt on, and they reveled in the coolness for the rest of the afternoon. A neighbor invited us to watch a small fireworks display, and Sir Walter Scott took most of the kids out to watch.  I stayed home with Lola because she...