A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

It's been a hard week.  (Oh, no!  Not this again!) But it has also been a beautiful week. We are still adjusting, failing, tweaking, and evaluating. I wonder when we'll find our groove . . . probably right before Christmas, and then we'll lose it! :) Good things include: Little Princess' photography class .   This week's theme was a study of her family in pictures.  She took photos of odd, quirky, typical, exciting, boring, and posed moments in our days.   (And yes, Sir Walter Scott and the older teens are oddly missing from this file while Lola is especially prominent.) In defense of this blurry picture, we never did replace the camera lens, so Little Princess is working with an only semi-functional lens.  I just like how she caught Nature Angel working in her bedroom under her desk. 3 boys caught NOT doing their chores!!! Anything outdoors--morning walks, hikes, picnics, and parks .   Through our morning walks we completed Hike #27 of 52....

 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...