Middle School

This is not a way to run a blog, people! As I look back at my posts here, I have to laugh at my repeat failures at posting regularly. I myself am aghast at how little time I have to post a simple update on a regular basis.

Well, this year the Artist has been working on 6th grade, while the Engineer has been working on 8th grade. The Artist just finished up Sonlight's Core F (Eastern Hemisphere) and has begun Core G (World History Year 1 of 2), which puts her at a 7th grade level for Bible, history, and literature. She's using Teaching Textbooks 6 for math and Exploring Creation Chemistry & Physics for science.

The Engineer is continuing to work through Core H, which he'll finish by the end of this school year, for Bible, history, and literature. For math he is working through Life of Fred's Algebra I and for science he is taking Biology I through One Day Academy. He also taking Engineering 2 through ODA. In between those subjects, both kids are finishing up First Form Latin, which they've taken 2 years to work through, writing, grammar, spelling for the Engineer, picture study, composer study, P.E. through a homeschool program that meets at local parks, American Heritage Girls for the Artist, and Boy Scouts for the Engineer.

The Engineer with his science project at the ODA Science Fair.

I've been working diligently on setting up next year's plan for the Engineer, seeing as how he'll officially be in high school! The Algebra I and Biology I subjects from this year will go on his high school transcript, but taking them early will free him up to take other courses in high school (or slow down a bit). He has decided that he wants to learn Spanish for his foreign language study. I'm trusting that his Latin study will have primed his mind to be receptive to Spanish. We had tried to study Spanish several years ago, but the kids just couldn't seem to hold any of the words in their heads. I'm hoping it will be different this time around. (The Artist will continue to study Latin until she is ready to choose a language for high school.) The Engineer will take Chemistry at ODA next year and possibly be interning for Biology I, which is a great opportunity as well as a great thing to add to his transcript. I'm thinking I might register him for a study skills class as well because that is one thing (of many) that I never learned in high school and which subsequently hurt me in college. He will definitely have a different kind of schedule next year. He'd been having half days once a week for the P.E. program, but we're thinking of having him take parkour next year, which would be multiple times a week for shorter durations. He'd probably only need to be at ODA once a week instead of twice, so that will balance out somewhat. Most of his work will be done independently, but I know I'll need to continue to work with him on grammar and spelling, as well as foreign language (Spanish). Otherwise it will mostly be having discussions on what he's reading for Bible, history, and literature. Oh, and I'll need to continue to work directly with him for writing. I'm planning to have him learn essay writing for a semester and then speech for the second semester. The writing will still be through Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW). I'm thinking about using history and Bible from Core 100, but I'm cobbling together American literature on my own so that he can read fewer books but dive more deeply into each of them.

For the Artist, she'll be registering to take General Science at ODA. This will be her first time to take science with someone other than me. The workload will definitely be greater, with more writing and testing, but I'm praying that the lab work and getting to be with other kids will help balance out any unpleasant aspects of taking science with someone else. She'll also need to do her first science project. She will continue Core G and then move into Core H when she's done with that. Math will probably be Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra. Hmm. Maybe it should be TT7, then Pre-Algebra in 8th, with Algebra in 9th. That sounds about right. The Engineer is a year ahead on math and science, so I get a bit mixed up when I'm planning for the Artist. She is still averse to taking art instruction from anyone anymore, so she'll probably continue to create things on her own. She recently opened a Zazzle store, but we haven't officially launched yet because she is still working on the storefront designs.

The Artist after getting her ears pierced.

On the home front I've been working steadily to curb my family's dependence on highly processed foods. It has been a challenging project and is still underway. I don't think we'll ever be rid of highly processed foods altogether, but we have cut out a lot of it. It is maddening to think about what the food industry is doing to people's bodies! We've run out of homemade treats, so I need to get on the ball and restock our supplies. However, that will probably not happen soon because I've got a proofreading project that is keeping me busy right now and I am supposed to be judging for three fiction novel contests. Once I wrap up the proofreading project, I'll be able to focus on one of the writing contests. After that I'll be able to devote myself to the second of the three. The third one I have asked to be contacted after the spring since that contest will be receiving submissions all year. My work, home, and homeschooling life have made it close to impossible to get back into exercising. I first stopped running because I had a foot/ankle injury. By the time that healed, my allergies were in full swing. I ended up quitting the gym because one of my three instructors was on maternity leave, and no sub. had been found for the class, thereby canceling the class. Another instructor, the following week, left because she'd been promoted elsewhere. No sub. had been found for that class either by the time I quit. The final instructor was talking about pushing the class start time up by 15 minutes (from 5:30am to 5:15am), and that's when I decided that I wasn't supposed to pay the gym anymore. I don't have time to go to the gym aside from early morning hours, and I'd been very good about going to the gym at 5:30am 3 days a week for a year! I was done. I'm a night owl naturally, and I'm back to those habits. Anyway, I'd like to get back to running, but I don't see that happening in the next few weeks. Soon though.

The final thing I'll mention as I sign off is that in about a week our homeschool community will be having its annual Homeschool Clothing Swap. It is a wonderful opportunity to clean out our closets and bless others with what we no longer need or want. Whether you bring donations or not, everyone is welcome to browse and take home whatever they want for free. Of course taking things to sell elsewhere is discouraged because the point of this is to BLESS others directly, not make them money. I bring this up because I'm so happy to be donating things! I've got at least a minivan's trunk full of items (clothing, toys, knick-knacks) waiting in my bedroom to go to the swap. I've also committed to providing some literature on some homeschool-friendly groups (like AHG, Boy Scouts, our P.E. program) for the information table that will be there, so I'll need to make sure to be prepared do provide them.

Camping in Cold Weather

The Engineer has gone on a backpacking trip for the weekend with his Boy Scout troop. Poor guys! It's cold! The low is almost down to freezing tonight and will be slightly warmer on Saturday. The highs only get to about the high 40s, possibly low 50s. The Artist and I had gone on our AHG troop campout last weekend, and I was cold enough then! I'm so glad we're not camping this weekend.

I've been spending many hours over the past few days trying to determine what to do about the Engineer's schooling next year. I'd really like to move him more toward independence, and I'm thinking that we'll use Sonlight, particularly Core 100. I think I'll have the Artist do Core G, but very loosely. I plan to get the Core G IG but rely on the library for the books that we use. That will automatically whittle down our book list, which will be a good thing, as well as our budget. It will already be very expensive to buy Core 100 for the boy. I'd like to also use Science Core G for the girl, which is not cheap. I'd been wondering what to do about her science for next year, and Science G looks pretty good. However, it is likely that I will opt for a less expensive science option. I think I'll keep on her Teaching Textbooks, using 6 next year, as TT5 has been working out pretty well this year. I'd like to move the Engineer onto TT Algebra next year, but he's not excited about that option. We'll see. I need something that bridges the gap between his math studies and my math knowledge better. I don't know if TT is the way to do it, but I feel inadequate in helping him with the Life of Fred books. ???

With Core 100, the Engineer will do the Bible, History, and Literature, but we'll continue using IEW for language arts for both kids. He'll also continue to do science at One Day Academy, which has been working out pretty well for us.

IEW may be experimental for the Artist and me next year because I'll most likely be pulling source texts from her other subjects and applying the 9 units to them. I haven't had to do that yet, so I'm a bit nervous about how it will turn out and my ability to teach the system properly. I'll have to do a lot of review along the way, I suppose. She won't be ready for SICC-B yet. I'm keeping that until 7th grade for her. Her brother is using that this year in his 7th grade, and it seems like a good fit.

I'm planning to have the Artist continue with Core H in her 7th grade, using only the IG and library books again. But I'm hoping to use Bible H for her 6th and 7th grades instead of using the Bible G in 6th. Then we can take our time through the books rather than racing through them. Besides, that will give me some room to add in the logic and current events training in 7th grade as well, like the Engineer's been doing this year.

Another thing I'm pondering is using the Mystery of History books (and Genevieve Foster books?) as the Artist's history spines for Cores G and H. (I'd actually forgotten about the GF books until this moment.) I suppose I could also use those books to pull the IEW source texts from... at least for the first year.

Well, I haven't done any editing tonight as I'd originally planned. I got lazy tonight as I finished reading a book and figured I'd just finish up tomorrow. The Artist and I had planned to do some service hours in the morning helping to pack Operation Christmas Child boxes, but I've got my editing, a lot of cooking (dessert I didn't make tonight, soup for Sunday's church luncheon, and treat for Saturday evening with friends), and running to get done. I hate to make my activities the priority, but the girl doesn't want to go anyway, and I really only have Saturday to do my things. Sunday is mostly about preparing for the week and making dinner.

It's late. I'm turning in.

Monday after camping

The Artist and I went camping last weekend. I was so happy to sleep in my own bed again. She and I went for our AHG troop's fall family campout. Kirk doesn't like camping, and the Engineer gets bored without older boys to hang out with. This weekend included my leading of an optional Fire Safety & Fire Building merit badge workshop. The workshop had actually been rescheduled due to rain that made our original location soggy. Overall it went well. I won't go into details here, but suffice it to say that I'm done with fire and smoke for a while. That doesn't keep me from planning the spring campout for the Explorers and older ranks. :-)

We have wrapped up homeschool for the day, and the Engineer and his dad are riding bicycles. Kirk got the Engineer a bike off Craigslist so that he could go on the annual bicycling trip with his troop. They practice bicycling longer and harder routes for a few months before the trip, and the Engineer's old bike was not up for the challenge. The Artist and I finished a simple sewing project, drawstring bags, and she's off doing something as well.

I've got a Mom's Night Out event tonight to go to, which I'm looking forward to very much. The ladies in this co-op, called Faith at Home, are so nice. Tomorrow night is another Mom's Night Out with another homeschool co-op. I know several women that attend, but I can never seem to join them. They meet once a month. Anyway, I am hoping to join them tomorrow as well. The difficulty is that I have a client project to work on! I will need to finish getting dressed (yes, I'm still half in pajamas) and work on that manuscript so that I can go out and spend time with friends.

After reviewing several old posts, I'm realizing that short and sweet is better, so I'm going to make a greater attempt to write something more frequently and not worry about getting everything. I miss my little kids. However, I love my present-day kids so much. I'm sad that I can't have copies of each age of my children to continue to love. I supposed I'd have a very busy household if that were possible!

Onset of Autumn in Austin

November was ushered in very decisively with fall weather. That's not to say that we haven't had warm afternoons, but the chilly mornings have become a mainstay, along with cooler evenings. Today brings in a storm system that is supposed to rain here for a day and a half. The heavy rains are supposed to arrive before dinner, so I'm hoping to get a run in before then.

My husband's been in Houston over the weekend and is to return home today. The kids and I have been carrying on, and my time has been very restricted as a result. Fortunately, the monster (the dog) has been behaving himself relatively well, but I imagine that he will take it all out on my hubby when he gets back.

It's been almost two years since I posted last. I opened a notebook that I'd begun when the Engineer was 3.5yo and the Artist was 16.5mo and read the few entries that are in there. My kids enjoyed hearing them. I'll add them here:

Tue 1.24.06
(3.5yo) runs around house yelling, "Push my button! Push my button!" while wearing a large one-button toy remote clipped to the neck of his shirt.
I asked him about this the next day when he clipped it on again, to which he replied, "It makes everyone stop, that's how I get through." When I asked if I could borrow it sometime, he heartily agreed.

Wed 1.25.06
(16.5mo) asked for crackers when we got in the car to go to MOPS after dropping off at preschool. She had not eaten much breakfast and I had some baby cereal (hot) to feed her at MOPS. So I said, "no, honey. You'll get some cereal at MOPS," and buckled her in. As I got in the driver's seat, she said her first full sentence, "Pweeth, mom, kkakk kkakk. Pweeth." (Please, mom, cracker, please.) Of course I couldn't resist rewarding her with a laugh and a cracker!

In the evening, as I was changing diaper, she spilled some Goldfish crackers on her chest. I said, "oh, did you make a mess on your shirt?" to which she replied, "kkakk kkakk en shur" (cracker on shirt). :)

(3.5yo) continues to dress himself! He loves to paint and create various art pieces for myself, Dad, or .

January 31, 2006 (Tue)
words at almost 17 mos (in 4 days [meaning a 4-day time period] in no particular order)
Mama (Mom / want to nurse)
Daddy
Baby
Dad (Grandad/Gran)
Dog
Meow (cat)
Duck
Ee (eat)
Kkakkakk (cracker)
Peess / Pweeth (please)
Eye
Shoe
Juice
My (mine)
Do-Tee (Dora)
Ba-pa (Backpack)
Gurbur (video / Gerbert --I have no idea what "Gerbert" refers to)
Aisy (Maisy)
No
Bath
Uh-oh
T (t.v. / video)
Uh-muh peess (I want some more please)
boo [as in book wthout the "k"] (book)
tee (toothbrush / teeth)
star
horsie
yes
ball (ball / balloon)
pee-pee (where pee-pee comes from / diaper / crotch)
pah-tee (potty)
ti-shoo (nose running / tissue / nose congested)
op (help)
kachoo (catch you! chase)
weahyu (where are you?)
shur (shirt)
dat (that / this)
pay (play)
pate (plate)
wow
ddejoo (thank you)
ba (banana)
walk
pats (pants)
hi
bye
ashy ashy...(all) down! (ashes, ashes, we all fall down)
adee (raisins)
money
adee (Eddie from Maisy)
boo! (hide-n-seek)
towch (couch)
tiss (kiss)
Max
all done
cow
dance
watch
'kay
aw done
achee (ouchie)
bird
bug
box

March 11, 2006 (Sat)
3.5yo
As I'm washing up in the bathroom, walks in and I say, "hi, shortie" followed by walking in to whom I say, "hi, shortie. Hi to both my shorties. How long you going to be short, ?"
"I dunno"
me "you think you'll be short a long time?"
"I hope so"
me (laughing) "I hope so, too!"

So that's all I have in that notebook. Of course I feel terrible that I didn't record more of their lives while they were so little.   :-(    I am very glad, on the other hand, to have this record of my kids' lives, although it is sporadic and can only capture a small portion of them. Well, it is obvious that I felt compelled to write about them so that they will have some record of their young lives that can entertain and elucidate them in future years. I hope one day to turn these posts into a book for each of them that they can carry with them. I suppose I could make the settings private so that I could truly personalize these posts and add their names, but all of the information would be stored online anyway, and I don't want to risk their privacy for that. My kids will know of whom I'm speaking when they read these anyway.

The Engineer is working at a 7th grade level this year, and the Artist has graduated to working at a 5th grade level. They continue to take homeschool P.E. once a week, and they each have a class at One Day Academy that they take. The Engineer is taking Physical Science, and the Artist is taking an art class called Building Art Skills. She has been unhappy with this class so far this year, and I'm hoping things will change for the better soon. I spoke with the teacher last week, who informed me that they had been doing a foundational basics approach for the last 6 weeks and that they were beginning on projects now, which should be much more challenging and engaging for her.

This year is our first "real" year of Latin. We'd used Getting Started with Latin last year because I'd been so discouraged at my kids' inability to learn foreign languages with other curricula. Getting Started take almost a remedial approach and is very slow. Well, lo and behold, the kids started to retain some Latin! They did well enough with that last year that I took the leap for this year and invested in First Form Latin by Memoria Press. They're really doing well with it, and I'm so happy. The program is laid out very well (although it is not perfect), and they don't struggle with it as they struggle in some other areas of school subjects.

We are still involved in Boy Scouts and American Heritage Girls. In fact, the Artist and I are going to a family campout for our troop this weekend. The Engineer and their dad don't go with us. The Engineer usually doesn't have any peers to hang out with, and their dad just doesn't like camping. :-)

Well, I've got a lot to get to, so I'll wrap it up here for today.

Third Week of School in January

I am finding it very difficult to keep posting, although I really want to succeed at this for my children's sakes. We had Monday off for MLK Jr. Day. This week has gone relatively uneventfully, although I have to admit that our long days are pretty wearying by the time we're done. Our short days are too frenetic to post.

Next week, we will take Tuesday afternoon off to volunteer at the Capital Area Food Bank with our field trip co-op that we've newly joined. I may decide to just take the whole day off and take the kids to the Wildflower Center before free admission in January ends. We've got some botany activities to do, and what better place could we go to? (Oh, there's also Zilker Botanical Garden, I guess. We haven't been there in years.)

I had also purchased a voucher for 3 individual entries to Wazoo's bounce house that expires in February, so I've got to take the kiddos. The voucher only lets in one pre-paid, and additional kids are $8 each. I know they'd like to have their friends go, but we'd have to ask their parents to send money with them. It would be too expensive for us to cover the cost of additional kids.

I suppose I could also take the kids to Pizza Hut for lunch on Tuesday while we're out and redeem their certificates for December. That would be a full day taking advantage of opportunities and using up vouchers and free admission and working alongside other homeschoolers. Do we end our Tuesday by going to Wazoo's? Well, the Engineer has basketball practice that evening, so he can't be completely worn out or he'll goof off during practice. What to do?   ;^)

Week 1 of School in January

Wednesday
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Okay. So I didn't have a chance to post anything yesterday. With its being a half day and trying to get the kids to P.E. on time, I thought posting on the blog of lesser priority. After I dropped them off, my day was no less hectic. I go grocery shopping while they're in class and got home just in time to put the groceries away and get on a scheduled phone call with a client. That meeting went a little long, and I had to excuse myself from my meeting so that I could go pick up the kids. Then I listened to the audio lesson that we would be discussing at home group that evening, had dinner with the family, and then headed to home group to discuss Revelation. Then it was back home and work on editing until bedtime.

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Thursday
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It is now 1:27pm, and we just got back from lunch. We were on time all morning, which was amazing, until the last assignment in science. That took awhile (instead of gathering shoes to practice taxonomy, I printed out three pages of shoe images for us to cut and classify), putting us 25 minutes behind schedule. (sigh) I don't think we're meant to end school on time and to complete each subject that day. That's okay. That's what homeschooling is about, right?

My son has Cub Scouts tonight. They are planning their camp-out for this weekend with the Boy Scouts, but rain is forecasted for the weekend. My husband is not excited about going with bad weather, especially since his hip hurts quite a bit in inclement weather. The Engineer, however, wants to go really bad, especially since he couldn't go in December. He also got a lot of new camping gear for Christmas that he wants to try out. I don't blame him. If I didn't have work, I wouldn't mind going with him, but all the other parents will be fathers, and they tend to frown on moms accompanying the boys. I've also been told that I wouldn't find much fellowship there. Whatever. But I do have work to do and my daughter for whom to make time working on her new Sock Bunny gift and her sewing machine, both from Christmas.

Right now the Engineer has gone missing. He is supposed to be working on his exercise in Spelling Wisdom. The Artist is working steadily at her cursive copywork. I didn't push the Engineer to practice his cursive long enough after learning it, and he has forgotten all of it. I've decided to push the Artist to increase her chances of remembering and using it. I may go back to training the boy in cursive again, but maybe not. He has learned to keyboard, but I know he still finger-pecks when I'm not looking. The girl too. (sigh again)

I have to have faith that the kids will pursue subjects as they develop interest in them when they're older. In the meantime, my role is to introduce them and offer them the opportunity to practice those skills and perhaps master them if they are motivated. But I can't push them all the time. They will never learn self-motivation and self-discipline if I make them do everything and remind them to do everything all the time, right? Am I wrong? I have self-discipline, and I admit I was pushed to do things throughout my childhood and never given much leeway to make my own decisions. Perhaps that is why I have self-discipline. But others have tried to push their children and end up having the opposite result. I'm thinking it's a temperament thing. My girl is naturally much more motivated than my boy to pursue school-type subjects. My boy, on the other hand, is much more motivated to goof off and have fun. They will each have their strengths and weaknesses as adults. I don't take the world onto my shoulders, but I do worry that I'm not training them in the way they should go.

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It is 4:47pm, and we finished over an hour ago. But I had to finish copying poetry for their Level 2 poetry memorization program, which I just completed. I'm about to go prepare dinner so that the boy and his father can leave for Cub Scouts on time, but I wanted to check in and finish this post because I'm being so good about posting! :^)

The rest of our studies went pretty well. We mostly caught up on our schedule, and the kids have their friends over now. Because tomorrow is another half day, I don't know that I'll manage to post then, so it may not be until Monday that I can add anything else. We will have AHG Monday afternoon, so I may be too busy preparing for that to writing anything then either. We'll see.

New Year's Resolution 2013: Posting Regularly

Trying again. I've got a new plan, which is to open up a new post each school day and write in those brief spaces when my children are occupied with their work. We'll see how it works out.

It is 12:40pm, and I've just released the kids to lunch. They get 40 minutes. We started school yesterday after a 2-1/2 week winter break. It went well, for the most part. We had cut out language arts to catch up on our time. History went a little long, but I thought the extra time was worth it.

Today we are covering each subject as scheduled, but we are behind time-wise. We started about 15 minutes late today but somehow ended up 30 minutes behind by mid-morning. ??  We are currently 20 minutes behind, but that is partly due to cutting our morning recess down by half to 5 minutes. Hey, I've got to make up the time wherever I can get it! I have learned, however, not to cut out recess entirely because that generally leads to unhappy children.

We've been working on Volume III of The Mystery of History, supplemented with Christian Heroes, Trial and Triumph, and A Child's History of the World. I elected to cover American history concurrently this year so that the kids would get a better idea of the context of our history. As a child, I was always confused as to how American events fit into the larger picture of world events. Unfortunately I have been unable to fit the two curricula neatly together because I'm trying to finish this school year out at the end of the world history book and the end of the first volume of the American history books (America the Beautiful).

Before Christmas break, we finally finished up Exploring Creation with Swimming Creatures. Yesterday I introduced the kids to Exploring Creation with Botany, which we continued today and just put away before lunch. I am planning to alternate the botany study with Exploring Creation with Land Animals. I want to make sure the kids don't get bored with studying plants, particularly the Artist, who finds animals much more interesting.

I'd changed the approach I was taking in supplemental literature and history and other books from the library. I had been going through the Sonlight readers for my kids to use as their readers but found that we were spending an enormous amount of time on school, so I combined their readers with the free and supplemental reading. They now choose from books in a basket or from a list of e-books every morning and read silently for 20 minutes. Then I have them come and narrate to me a bit about what they read so that I can ensure that they did indeed focus on their reading. This has saved us some time from our school day, but it has also allowed me a little room to take care of last-minute things (like feeding the fish or watering plants) before joining the kids for school.

We've also gone back to Scripture memorization this year. I had neglected this aspect of the children's studies and finally implemented the Simply Charlotte Mason Scripture memorization program. We don't do the weekends because we just never remember to, but otherwise we've done pretty well, I think. We are also using the memorization system with poetry. The length of the poems has necessitated the use of a binder in place of an index card file, however. This has been working very well for us.

 It is an overcast, drizzly day here in Austin. The forecast calls for more rain this evening into tomorrow. That's all fine, but the Engineer has basketball practice tonight, so I hope that doesn't create problems for transportation. The unfortunate thing about practice is that it is from 7:30-8:30pm on Tuesdays. I'm glad it was changed from the original 8-9pm slot, but it's not much better. He's got a really good coach, and his team won their first game on Saturday! I know the Engineer was so glad. It was very difficult for the boys on his team last year not winning a single game all season.

I don't remember if we were working the Bible Study Guide for All Ages when I was posting regularly, but we had left that curriculum for a number of years and went back to it last year. The kids aren't super excited about it, but I think it's a comprehensive and thorough program for their level. When they've grown out of the worksheet levels, we'll reconsider our Bible study. We do BSGFAA once a week, doing as much of a worksheet as we can in a 20-minute period. Other days we work on character training (reading from a book called Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends, written by a homeschooling family), Henrietta's Mears's book What the Bible Is All About for Young Explorers, and a devotional for each child.

I'm a bit distracted right now because I'm doing dictation with the Engineer on his Spelling Wisdom exercise. Not sure how much his spelling has improved since implementing this program, but I do see improvement. I wasn't seeing much joy in other attempts at spelling that we'd done, which wasn't too many, really, because of CM's insistence that children can learn all they need to know about composition and writing through copywork and dictation. I have started formal grammar work with the Engineer this year. We are using a program called Junior Analytical Grammar. Once we finish this book, we will continue with Junior Analytical Grammar: Mechanics. It has been a good program so far. I've been improving my sentence diagramming skills quite a bit as well. The Artist will not begin any spelling until next year and will begin grammar in two years.

We've also begun a program called Institute of Excellence in Writing. It is very teacher-preparation heavy and very expensive, but we've been making pretty good progress with a structured, formal writing program. Again, I had been relying on CM methods to improve my children's writing, but I think the very direct nature of this course, which very specifically has the kids include certain aspects of writing in the manner of doing sports drills, has been a good trainer for me in terms of learning to teach writing. I am hoping that by going through this with my kids, I will be able to develop my own methods for helping older people learn to write. As I go through the program, I have some objections to the use of certain elements (like the heavy use of -ly adverbs), but I understand the creator's reasons for including such elements, and I'm okay with incorporating it into the program for now. Eventually, we will streamline and develop good writing skills. I will liken the heavy use of adverbs to crawling. It's not what we aspire to, but it is necessary to the development of the brain and the eventual coordinated function of the body.

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We're done now at 4pm. Tuesdays are our long days because we have half days on Wednesdays and Fridays. Mondays and Thursdays we end around 3:30pm. Wednesdays the kids are in a homeschool P.E. program, and they attend classes on Friday afternoons. The Engineer is taking Engineering I and Introduction to Robotics, and the Artist is taking Exploring Art Mediums.

Our language arts went reasonably well today, although we just kept getting later and later in our schedule. After language arts was literature reading, which I cut down to about a third of the usual time to make up for being so far behind. It worked out though because we only had a reading from Pilgrim's Progress to do. I had originally started with the original version last year, but it was very difficult to read and to understand, even for me. So this year we are going through it again but with a modernized version. The archaic quality is still there but the difficult words have been updated to modern equivalents. Anyway, it is much easier to understand and try to appreciate. Then we had our poetry recitations and poetry reading, the kids did their math (the Engineer is working through A Key to...Series, currently Measurement, and the Artist is working through The Life of Fred elementary series, currently Edgewood), and then we finished up with art. They had been doing a "Van Gogh still life" with chalk, which we finally finished up today.

I need to go make dinner in a moment, but I wanted to finish jotting down my thoughts. I was thinking that I would create links to the above resources before publishing, but I don't have time to do that right now. Just after school was over for the day, the Artist wanted me to help her unpack her new sewing machine, which she received for Christmas, courtesy of Gran and Grandad. It is a Sew Pretty, Sew Perfect Hello Kitty sewing machine by Janome. It is green and so cute! Anyway, I'm glad to see that she is very excited about it. I need to refresh my own sewing machine skills in order to help her figure out her new machine.

On a quick side note, I had been thinking that we would be done with American Heritage Girls after this school year because the Artist and I had talked about that. Well, I just brought it up and she wants to continue doing it! I told her I might not serve as a Unit Leader anymore because it takes up so much of my time. She reluctantly agreed that I didn't have to be Unit Leader anymore but that she wouldn't continue anymore either. She doesn't want to do it if I'm not her Unit Leader. So now I'm rethinking quitting. I had thought that perhaps we could quit for a year and see how that was working out. But I don't want to take that away from her either. I had envisioned a future with more time to do more fun things, but I don't know if that will be the case now.

Well, time to make dinner.

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Well, it's 10:48pm now, and I never got the opportunity to put in those links that I wanted to do. I suppose I could go back at a future date and put in the links for anyone who wants to check back.