A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

It's Saturday morning, and I only made 2 notes about this week.  I spent so much time behind the wheel that my brain is fuzzy.  Car troubles have been paramount on the non-school list of things to deal with.  Later this morning, we should be picking up our van from the shop where we had major repairs done to the brakes (the fact that we didn't have an accident is truly a miracle, and I'm thanking Heavenly Father hourly for protecting us and the people driving around us). We found out that the repairs we thought we could do to keep our van up and going for the next decade before we can downsize to a Suburban or mini-van will cost more than double what we anticipated.  We are back in the market for a new van . . . praying for help in finding something affordable and reliable. On the school front, we had a good week--getting lots of things done.  On the rainy days we put on boots and raincoats and took walks, then we came indoors for creative play.  On...

  We recently had the privilege of using online art lessons by ArtAchieve , and Little Princess (age 7) is an especial fan. ArtAchieve offers lesson in 5 different levels.  Every lesson is available individually for a small fee (and level 1 has at least 5 lessons that are free) or various discounted bundles.   We enjoyed the opportunity to explore the bundled plan Entire Level III .  Level III has 13 lessons (at the time this post was published).  It's easy to what they are by clicking this link .  Once a lesson is purchased it is added to "Your Account" under "Your Lessons." Each lesson title has a small "+" sign next to it, and clicking that shows what resources are available for each lesson. My kids discovered quickly that they enjoyed the PowerPoint presentations more than the videos.  I think this was because they didn't have the sense of having to pause an activity that would otherwise move on without them. Rat...

The big things have gone quite well . . . it's the little things that just about undid me. And I'm crying this morning, for no good reason other than I think I've held it together for so long that something had to give. But after total chaos with the van battery dying on Saturday just as I was supposed to drive 2 teens to work and get all of my errands run for the day, we did manage to plant a flower garden in the front yard. :) Monday was fine.  A regular sort of day.  We got out and on a morning walk, and the kids played with their shadows. "I'm walking on your head!" "Ha, my head is on your back!" "Look how tall I am!" This was when our shadows were in front of us. When we got around the block, I asked, "Where did your shadows go?" The littlest ones were stumped, but the medium sized kids showed them that their shadows were behind them and explained why. Such a small lesson, but an inte...