Monday Math

No math this week.  I did receive Life of Fred Algebra to help sharpen BB's math before he has to take the placement test for his college (he hasn't had math in over a year).  I also picked up Singapore 3a.  Please don't mention that I recently said I was happy with what we are doing in math.

Does filling out student loan forms count as math?  They should.  We read Stafford Loan documents, finalized and submitted the scholarship application, and tried to figure out how much money he will need to be able to eat, live, and ride the train to class in Tokyo.  

Who are you?

Are you who you think you should be? Are you who you could have been? Do you work hard enough? Do you value the right things? Do you know your designated evacuation point? Were you ready for real life when you left home?

Watching my teen hang out around the house and kill time until he can go away for college and adult life really makes me question things like this. Who is he? Who will he become?


According to the current plan, he will go away to college in January in Japan three semesters a year. He will be able to come home for at most two weeks at the end of each semester.

Did you know that his school recommends having a three-day supply of food and water in case of an emergency? AND that they have designated evacuation points near each dorm? Something about that scares me. There are TWELVE MILLION people in Tokyo.

I always knew he would grow up someday. I haven't bought the plane tickets yet, but someday is swiftly approaching.

Summer Report Week 5 - Tv Station

This week certainly went by fast. We had a great day at the park with friends and took a trip to a local television station to watch the noon news broadcast. CC loved getting a chance to play on the green screen and see herself on the map. We also managed to make it to the pool one day. The rest of the week, we hung out around the house and watched the baby chicks grow and generally enjoyed summer.

We took the level test from Drawing with Children. CC enjoyed the level 3 exercises, but I think I topped out at level 2. This weekend, I will plan out a couple of exercises at both levels with something for LB added in.

We started R&S Grammar. The first day was great, but I should have stuck to the lessons for the next day. I skipped ahead and ended up facing the dreaded question "What is the point of diagramming?" With that, I felt defeated. I am back with the teacher's guide today trying to figure out what I did wrong other than going too fast. I was looking at Writing Tales last night wondering if I had been correct when I thought that the grammar in context would be more beneficial for now.

After a three-week break, I started CC on math fact worksheets. By Thursday, she remembered that she knew her facts and the sheets were boring. I was surprised it had taken three weeks. Next week, we will pick up where we left off with BJU and Singapore.

We finally got news from the university in Tokyo! They WILL be able to accept payment from the FL 529 plan. So that means that BB WILL be going to Tokyo for college next January! Now all we have to do is get the student visa, arrange for a trip to Japan to take his placement tests, meet with his adviser and register for classes - oh and figure out how to pay for the big difference between the cost and what the 529 pays.

Week 34 - Weekly report

This was a very busy week. We did everything planned which was a lot. CC was nervous about playing guitar on stage at the expo, but she was terrific. The kids played Rockin' Robin. The one day space camp was wonderful. She had trouble sleeping Thursday night because she was still thinking about how much fun she had.

BB was accepted at the university in Tokyo! So now we are working with the admissions office to see if we can get the prepaid tuition program to pay for it.

The current college score is:
Applied - 5
Accepted - 4
Rejected - 0
Waiting for decision - 1
Admission deadlines passed - 1
Registered in - 0
Longest elapsed time between application and answer - 5 months
Shortest elapsed time between application and answer - 3 weeks

CC started R&S spelling this week, and it went well. Now I am thinking about using R&S for grammar too. For math we are working through the chapter on money, and we discovered that we need to start the math lessons with a set of warm-up problems. I am going to look through the BJU TM cd to see what they offer for additional practice. She needs to do addition and subtraction with and without borrowing and carrying before we start each math lesson. According to her it "warms-up my math brain." So now our math lesson consists of review, then new material from BJU, then word problems from Singapore. We are a long way from when we began the year struggling to get any math done.

Week 33 - Weekly Report

This week went by too fast - again.

Here are some first grade highlights.

Math - We finished up chapter 7 on double-digit subtraction with borrowing. We also tweaked the way we do lessons by doing one page of BJU math per day and one page of Singapore Intensive Practice everyday. SP IP is setup topically so I chose a different topic than we are doing in the main math - measurement. I think this will challenge CC and provide her with a steady source of word problems.

Science - We dissected sheep brains, hearts, and kidneys this week in the co-op science class. All of the kids thought it was amazing. I tried having CC read from one of the Kingfisher science books this week. Here is how that went.

Me: "Please read a chapter from one of these books today and then talk to me about what you learned."
CC: "I don't want to."
She read it.
Me: "So what did you learn."
CC: "I learned these books are way below my reading level and that I already knew everything in the chapter about the earth's crust."

I think I will be hitting the library this week to find some new science books. Until then, we are both enjoying Endless Ocean. She is learning a lot about fish and coral reefs and the game requires a lot of reading.

Not-preschool is great fun. We were playing with the Melissa & Doug spelling puzzle this week. She knows her letters and thinks that it is cool to spell. I also used her fingers to demonstrate some math problems this week. She loved "helping" her sister with math. Today she came to me with seven fingers held up and said "Is this how old my sister is?" I said that it was. She responded "5 plus 2 is 7" and showed 5 on one hand and 2 on the other while she was saying it. What do you say when you find that your 3yo who was fingerpainting in the kitchen floor has taken off her clothes and is making prints with the rest of her body? "Wow" was all I could think of.

BB is finding that the end of the semester can be painful. He had a project due in philosophy this week. In addition to that he is playing two parts in a Japanese play this weekend. He has an oral exam in Italian Monday, a research paper due Monday for philosophy, a group project due in Italian Wednesday and three finals are squished into the next two weeks. I was a bad hs Mom and allowed him to push his British Lit. papers to after his finals.

We are still waiting to hear from the college in Tokyo and finished the application for school number 5 this week. The current college score is:
Applied - 5
Accepted - 3
Rejected - 0
Waiting for decision - 2
Registered in - 0
Longest elapsed time between application and answer - 5 months
Shortest elapsed time between application and answer - 3 weeks

Week 26 - Weekly Report

Like my dog sled team?

The girls are almost over their chicken pox. It has been a long week. We did learn that baking soda in the bath is even more comforting for the pox than oatmeal. Their appetites are back which is good - I was worried.

BB turned 18. We normally make a holiday of someone's birthday, but this year BB had two classes at the cc, and he even had an Italian test. So we had a big breakfast with presents and candles in the muffins, then he spent the rest of the morning studying and most of the day at school. Welcome to being an adult. It was very poignant for us since it was his last birthday home.

Our IEW lesson this week had us doing a rewrite of a fable with dress-ups. It was difficult. We had to change the story but keep the moral and basic plot the same. I have never done that kind of writing before. I do appreciate that the plot was set for us which allowed us to focus on the mechanics of writing and not have to really worry about coming up with original content. I always knew in theory that this was a good idea. Now I have experienced just how well it works. This really reaffirms my plan to implement classical writing in our homeschool from the beginning for the girls. I think I would like to actually do something like Writing Tales in a co-op. I need to think more about this. I wonder if there are any families in my co-op that would be interested in doing this...

We started doing the second grade part of FLL this week. I have been planning to start FLL 3 with CC before summer, but realized that I could try using what we have instead of buying something else. Shocking. I sat both of the girls down and taught lesson 100 to them. LB climbed on the back of the couch and added random nouns to our conversation while she was pretending to be a lion cub. CC was surprised that she knew what nouns were (they had been discussed in this week's IEW lesson that she was forced to listen to). One grammar lesson is complete - we'll have to see how long it lasts.

CC is still enjoying the HWT cursive book. We finished chapter 2 in BJU math 2. This week we counted playing Zoo Tycoon as part of school. The girls were feeling better, but not well enough so I tried to do enough school to keep them consistent but relax enough for them to rest and recover.

LB has been enjoying the Giant storybook by Beatrix Potter. She also started to really enjoy doing mazes.

BB is enjoying Frankenstein. He agreed that it is a nice change from all of the poetry that we have read. I think that it fits nicely with what he is studying in philosophy right now. Shelley's writing reflects the struggles of her age with questions about what it means to be human. It follows very nicely after Paradise Lost too. Not just because of the references to Milton, but also because of the creation and fall of the monster.

As for me, I actually walked for twenty minutes each day on the treadmill. I am trying to make it part of my routine. I also made wonderful shrimp pasta with a tomato cream sauce. Not that I needed another recipe with heavy cream, but it was REALLY GOOD. Thanks Ree!

Week 24 - Weekly Report

This week we went sailing on a ship in a far away tropical ocean. LB was catching fish for dinner. CC was cooking, and I was handling the sails. We had a few problems such as sharks, sea snakes and an iceberg. We sailed for about two hours in the swing in the backyard until a cold, north wind blew in a mighty storm and we had to dock in a safe harbor. It was a nice break from our typical winter routines.

Academically, this week went well. Basic, Basic and more Basic - I really like basic. My first grader read, did handwriting and math everyday. This week, she actually did 5 extra lessons in math for a total of 10 math lessons this week. I am thrilled - I paid her for the extra work, but shh don't tell anybody. She also read an entire chapter book at bedtime - it was only a Judy Moody book, but it was free-choice reading, and she read the whole thing.

Co-op was very good this week too. CC really enjoyed her face-painting class. It was the first time they did full-face paint. LB also had fun being a model for the class after her story time class was finished. Hubby even joined us for lunch and helped out in the human body class.

I think BB is getting a bad case of senioritis. He and his ps friend were both complaining that they are tired of high school and ready for college. I have 4 more books I want him to read for British Lit. I think that I will assign comprehension and essay questions for each and just let him run with them - right after I finish reading them and come up with the questions. Note to self - don't be so picky about literature programs for future students. Doing your own literature class is a lot of work.

I have been working through the IEW with BB and making CC sit in the room while we do the class. Yesterday, I had to pause the dvd several times so that we could discuss things. It is amazing to listen to my 7yo and my 17yo discuss story elements together. We discussed conflict, characters, setting, and types of stories. Little moments like this are what I really love about homeschooling.

Week 24 - The Plan and some grammar

This week I am planning to not be as busy as last week. I really am. However, we are doing a thing for Girl Scouts on Monday, co-op on Tuesday, and gymnastics on Wednesday. Thursday is of course Valentine's day and hubby and I are going OUT for an early dinner then maybe a movie. We have reservations and BB is babysitting. Nice.

My recent realization that the basics need to be our focus for the rest of first grade has left me with a big problem. In a word - grammar. That horrible G-word. I was pretty certain that we could continue to slide without it, but it has recently moved in my mind from something that is pushed too early on kids, to something basic and fundamental. I was all set to do grammar as part of Latin and as part of writing (Writing Tales), but I am not starting those until next year and I want some grammar before this year is finished. CC is a great reader so I am looking at higher levels of grammar than I would normally look at for a first grader. I am not sure what I am going to do. I'll keep thinking about it. Here is my current criteria:

• I don't want something that requires too much writing.
• I want something that incorporates more than just grammar - I like multipurpose.
• I would like to cover things like parts of speech, commonly misused words, plural rules including irregulars, noun-verb agreement, helping verbs, punctuation, abbreviations, and alphabetizing.
  
• I want the lessons to be short.
• I would like a workbook, but I don't want it to be a "self-teaching" program, I want to teach it to my student.
• I want the lessons to stick. I don't want to finish the book and wonder what the point of it was.

I have seen a few that would work. I just need to make up my mind and get one.

Here are the simple details for next week.

First grade - Five more math lessons. Five more handwriting sheets. Five more books from FIAR. Learn about the history of Valentine's Day and read about Cupid and Psyche.

High School British Lit. We are going to work through another lesson in IEW, and we are working through Paradise Lost still. I came up with some questions for BB. These will be essay and discussion questions. I like having something specific to talk about for the books we read.

What ideas does the poem convey – and how is the form of the poem related to those ideas?
Is there a moment of change in the poem?
What is the poem’s subject? or What is it about?
Do you feel sympathy with this poem? Does it resonate with you or is it foreign?
What is Milton’s view of man? Does man have any power in this poem?
Describe Milton’s God.
Describe Milton’s Satan. What drives him?
Which character was more sympathetic - Satan or Christ in this poem? Do you think that Milton intended you to react that way? Why.
Eve seems to have been deceived. Was Adam deceived? Give a reference to support your position.
What is your favorite quote from this poem?
Give an example of a description in this poem that was very vivid to you.

This week are are also finalizing the application for yet another college. BB decided this weekend that there is another place he wants to apply.

Congratulations

Congratulations is an interesting word.  You know as soon as you see a letter that starts with "Congratulations" that something good has happened.  Today we got our first congratulations letter from a college.  BB (Brother Bear) is going to college!

Big sigh of relief.  I didn't realize how anxious I was until I was relieved.  I remember when I received my first congratulations letter from a college.  I was top of my class and had great test scores, but I was still very anxious about being accepted into a college.

BB getting his congratulations letter finally let me believe that I did not in fact ruin his life by pulling him out of public school in high school.  Homeschooling him in middle school was not very stressful to me.  I knew that he was very smart and that if just read and did his math, he would end up okay.  He wanted to go to public school for ninth grade so we enrolled him and he took interesting classes that I could not offer and I felt okay about it, but it was a mistake for him.  

When I brought him home, I worried about limiting his future if I screwed this up.  The history I picked was too boring or too fast or too slow.  The literature I planned read too many books too fast, or it didn't read enough, or I am sure I assigned them in the wrong order.  No matter how much I tried, I couldn't explain simple factoring to him.   I was full of doubts and questions.  He has always been a bright kid and is growing into a brilliant young man.  Now that we have our congratulations letter, we can both relax and enjoy our next adventure. 

Weekly Report - Week 19

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." That is a line from the poem we are learning this week. I think it is a great little piece to have stored away.

This week we focused on getting back into a rhythm with school. I think that starting the day with a reading and practicing memorization has been great for us. I read while they are still at the table for breakfast then it is easy to move from that to our next school task. We read a different subject each day (Roman History, fairy tales, natural science, geography). This gets us efficiently through our subjects.

LB's (dd3) attitude has improved this week. I think that having a more solid focus for the day really helps everyone's attitude. I also have been giving her intentional time early each school day. She has really enjoyed joining in our crafts. Creating things for herself givers her confidence and seems to be inspiring her. This morning she wanted a diaper her baby doll, but didn't have one small enough so she sewed one herself from some extra fleece we had. A whip stitch is easy and useful. We have been working on habits and right now we are working on taking turns which is hard for her since she wants every turn.

I have stopped having CC (dd7) read aloud to me. Instead she has reading time set aside each day. We alternate who gets to chose what she reads. One unexpected side effect is that she has started reading to herself more. She is allowed to read in bed after her sister goes to sleep and she has been speeding through easy chapter books like The Magic School Bus and Magic Tree house books this week - two a night. She also has been reading longer than her thirty minute requirement. She is moving from learning to read to reading to learn and is enjoying it.

BB (ds17) enjoys making voices for different characters when we are reading Hamlet. Our readings are probably much more lively than you would expect. I have also been having him read several criticisms and a biography of Shakespeare. We are going to spend the month on Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

This week has been great. The only thing that we planned that we didn't include was doing exercise. There is always next week.

Ready to Start Fresh at Week 19

I am a Mom with a Plan. I have four weeks of lesson plans ready. I have books pre-read. I have memory items on cards. I have a checklist. We will start being classically eclectic again instead of eclectically unschooling. I have noticed that LB is getting to be more fussy than she has been, and she woke me up in the middle of the night Friday night to ask me if I would teach her to read now that she learned her letters. I think she is needing more structure in her day. I will work on that after I get CC and BB back to work next week.

We are going to try this for four weeks then readjust as needed.
Monday, Wednesday and Thursday will be our big school days since we will be starting co-op and Girl Scouts on Tuesdays, and I work Friday afternoon.

For CC, here is the Big Plan for the next month. We will read the Virtue Tales by Bennett, do memory work, Form Drawing, Roman Mythology, Yoga, Handwork, Reading and Read Alouds each of these three days. This is a lot more than we have been doing, but I think it is do-able. On Tuesdays we will read and have a read aloud. If there isn't co-op or girl scouts, we will go to the Y to swim. Fridays will be only Reading, Poetry, Memory Work and a Nature Walk. Our read alouds will rotate - Just So Stories, Fairy Tales, Story of the World, and a Holling C. Holling book. We alternate her readings between my choices - science encyclopedia or a book from Sonlight intermediate readers or WP LA 2 readers - and her choices Judy Moody or Little House.

For BB, we are doing Shakespeare. We will work through Hamlet, a Shakespeare biography and Bloom's analysis of Hamlet. We'll also watch two movie adaptations of Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I just need to decide on a writing project to go with this.

I seem to do better when I not only have a list of things to do, but also when I have really studied and planned what I will be doing. I feel more prepared and more like I am teaching my children. I have my enthusiasm for schooling back. Hopefully my kids will catch some of it. Now if only I could find where I put Minimus, I could start planning out our Latin.

British Lit. has lots of poetry

BB and I have been toiling through Medieval British Lit. this term. It seems like everything was poetic and very dense. This morning after my shower I came downstairs to find BB reading the Tolkien translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to CC. It was really cute. He just emailed me his assignment for this week and I had to share. He was assigned to retell the story. I was assuming he would chose to tell it in prose but was surprised by poetry. Here is my senior son's poetic retelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Take a chair and you will hear,

The tale of a contest,

Not far from here.

Starting the day before new year.

At the feast of that famous table round,

The footsteps of hooves trod the ground.

Upon it, a knight so obscene,

From his head to his toes all dressed in green.

A burly beard and an axe made of steel,

Bellowing for the strongest foe,

That a deal may be made to strike a blow.

'Come out and face a man that is real!

I come here not for battle or war,

But someone to strike me a blow with my axe,

Thats all I, you will hear from me no more.

Except a year from now I will strike you back,

Is anyone here man enough for that?”

With that calling rose the noblest of kings,

Grey and wise, but large with strength.

Accepting the challenge, the giver of rings,

From the table a voice spoke, short of length.

'Your majesty, If I may, I have no noble deeds,

Allow me to strike this blow,

If not for honor then for the need,

Lust for blood, and death of this foe.'

With that, the king stood down,

The man, sir gawain, grabbed the weapon

And readied the blade to hit the ground.

Then the green knight's head went off and down.

But to everyones surprise the body in green

Grabbed his head and turned away,

'Remember the deal we made sir gawain,

Come find me in a year and a day.'

A year followed and sir gawain set off.

He was going to keep his promise,

He left without sneer or scoff.

Stopping at a manor with intent to rest,

Inquired of the knight in green.

The lord of the house saying without jest,

'The man you seek lies across the stream,

A two mile ride, it would seem.

If what you tell me is true,

You have three days before your day is due.

In this house, stay with me and my wife too,

We are happy to accommodate you.

But shall we, strike a deal, for fun if nothing more,

Every morning I'll hunt, until sleepy is the sun.

And you will stay within my door.

At night we shall exchange the goods we get bar none.'

To this said sir Gawain,

'My lord i shall play this game.'

The next morning the lord's wife came,

With offerings of love and seduction.

But nay, what a flawless speaker Sir Gawain was,

Meeting every parley with a true explanation.

Resisting temptation of bliss,

But the woman before leaving, stole a kiss.

That night the lord gave sir gawain Venison,

A kiss gave Sir Gawain to the lord in return.

The second day two kisses for a boar,

But the third produced something more.

The lady offered Sir Gawain a belt,

Immortality, she said, leaving through the door.

That night the lord came with a fox,

Sir Gawain gave three kisses,

But not the girdle in the box.

The day after that he set off to find,

The knight in green to settle the deal.

Hearing the sharpening of blades, he made up his mind.

With girdle on his waist he waited to feel,

The green knight's blow when he would keel.

The green knight raised the axe and feigned twice,

On the third blood struck

Sir gawain's neck trickled slowly.

Sir Gawain called shenanigans, which wasn't nice,

The green knight just laughed, and gave a look.

Revealing himself to be the lord of the house,

Knew of the belt, of which he took.

To this he said, as quiet as a mouse,

'You broke the rules, now go back to your nook.

Go back to your town, you cheating thief,

Live in shame you lowlife crook.'

What I would change - looking back at my home schooled high schooler - part 1.

We visited a college last week. I think I am still traumatized. Yes, that is a strong word, but my baby is really going to go away to college. Yes, I understand that it is almost a year away, but I am not prepared to deal with him growing up and leaving home already. Yes, I know it is a good thing but who will take care of him? Who will tell him good night and kiss him on his head? Who will make sure he eats breakfast before he goes to class?

On the drive up to the college we were looking at, he asked me what I thought about him going away. The first thought I had was "I'm sorry. I should have been a better mother to you." I love him.

Anyway, enough blubbering from me. Here is the first part of a new feature.

What I am learning about college admissions

• Keep an up to date digital transcript. Writing one on paper with plans to type it doesn't help when its time to send one off.
• Many colleges are requiring SAT II subject tests. Plan to take at least the math subject test plus one other test before fall of the senior year. We haven't taken any yet and some of the schools we want are requiring them. We are now scrambling to get the test taken so that the scores can be sent before admission deadlines.
• Starting in ninth grade make a detailed course description with list of material used for EVERY class. I have seen some schools that require them, and I don't have one. I am glad none of the schools on our list require them or I would be in trouble.
• As part of twelfth grade English, have your student work on "personal essays". My son's public school friends are practicing writing these and have their English teacher helping them. My son is a strong writer and can write excellent expository essays but is looking at the personal essays with bewilderment.
• Have your child start visiting colleges nearby at least in the spring of their junior year so that they start to form an opinion of what they are looking for in a school. My son and I have looked at colleges online, but walking around and looking at classes, facilities, dining halls, and dorm rooms really helped cement things for us.

We are going to visit another college within the next two weeks. I am sure I will have more things to share.

Weekly Report - Week 8 - Ragweed, Seven Day Magic, Nursery Ryhmes and the Pac-10

Ragweed. It is my least favorite time of the year. Why, is ragweed, the leading story in my weekly report this week? Well I am terribly allergic to it. Most years during ragweed season, I end up with bronchitis, a sinus infection, and a double ear infection. This year has been much better due to my new antihistamine and air conditioning. However, this week, I started losing the battle. I think I have a sinus infection, my ears are popping, and I am sick of being stuck inside most of the day while the last bit of warm weather passes me by, and I had to fall back to a second set of anithistamines that make me drowsy. Ragweed has won yet another round. We missed our field trips this week because of ragweed.


Other than that. CC was sick on Tuesday, so she missed co-op. I only went for history and passed literature off to another parent. LB was sad that she couldn't stay at school with "her friends" and was also sad that she couldn't stay home with her sister. CC has decided that she wants to build a robot. She spent all of her free-time on Thursday working on the design. She has also decided that she loves Edward Eager books. We started our third book by him this week. We have read the first two at least twice, I thought it was time for us to try a new book by him. We were both laughing and CC squealed "No!!!!" when I stopped reading. I like that the children in his books love reading.

LB really likes nursery rhymes right now. This week she kept wanting me to repeat Hey Diddle Diddle. She also blindfolded herself and tried to navigate across the house. It was very cute. And big news! She rode her bike by herself for the first time. It is little and pink and has training wheels, and she can ride it! She just kept giggling the whole time she was riding.


BB was shocked that I actually made him take his test on Monday. He also spent time this week looking at admission requirements for college. I don't know that I am ready to send him off to college - he's my baby. He is looking at BIG colleges. It scares me. I went to a little college with small classes. I'm apprehensive about him going away to something so big. On the left is a college he is looking at, on the right is my college - can you see our disconnect?

So that was my week. We played math, read history, read literature, baked science, copied grammar, created art but nothing else - nothing fun.

High School Report

I have been postponing the High School report all day. I must do it.
Well, BB was actually delightful this week. He was up and ready to drive himself to his 9am physics class by 8:15 though the breakfast I lovingly microwaved for him was greeted with "Whatever." I really can't win them all. He was much more pleasant by the time he got back from class. He enjoyed it, sort of. He thought his professor was weird, but I, having been a physics major for 3 years before changing to CompSci, informed him that all physics professors are weird.

Tuesday, he once again made it to physics on time which is amazing to me since I don't normally see his handsome face until noon during the summer. The Creativity and 3-d Visualization class didn't go well, and he dropped it. He loved Japanese - as usual. So now he is only taking two college classes and the literature class from me. He and I talked, and he is going to do an art class at home. He has to find a book to use as a guide and give me an outline of the class.

Last night he told me he needed a costume for Japanese class. He and his partner have a presentation due in two weeks and he needs " a cool Gothic" costume for it. Next week we are going shopping at the local freak stores. It ought to be fun for the little ones.

We got a brochure from a language school this week. BB decided that Russian is the next language he wants to learn. He really likes the way it sounds. I am now trying to find Russian classes and researching a trip to Russia for him. I think linguistics would be a great major for him when he gets to college. In case you don't know - he is "graduating" from homeschool this spring. Next fall he will be staying home and taking Japanese 4 from his current Japanese teacher before he goes off to college. The following spring, unless he changes his mind about his language choices, he will be spending a couple of months at a Japanese language school in Japan to cement his Japanese knowledge. After that, he is planning to go off to college. I am very happy that I will get him for an extra three or four months. I'm just not ready to let him go yet. I will miss him.

And this was my week

I had big plans for things to do this week, but alas, the week was different.

Monday, I woke up with the beginnings of a headache, no coffee in the house and not nearly enough sleep. We had stayed up for a few hours after I came home from work watching the meteor shower. Hubby went for coffee in the morning, and as a man is likely to do, he went to Starbucks and got a coffee. When I was thinking of getting coffee, I had thought of getting a pound of coffee so I could make a BIG pot. Anyway.... the headache of the morning turned into the migraine of the afternoon. A quick trip to the acupuncturist fixed that, but by then the day was done.

Tuesday, Park Day. My favorite day of the week. BB got started on his Tolkien study, and I got the kids to the park by noon. It was a wonderful day.

Wednesday, was our Birthday. This year we decided to work on being more flexible and on doing more things together. We went for a wonderful 9 mile hike. It felt great.

Thursday, wow where did my week go? BB drove me to school so I could pay for his classes and we bought his books. I went for another acupuncture treatment. We also did 7, yes 7, lessons in math with CC. Its the beginning of the books so its all review, but still, we did math! She also read 5 pages to me from her first reading book from the WP LA 2 readers. She liked it and it was just the right level for her.

Friday, we sang some silly songs from BB's new not-Preschool book. The girls both had fun. We also went for a walk to collect sunflowers. Instead of painting, we went to the park before I went to work. BB is supposed to paint with the girls this afternoon.

So, my week did not go as planned, but it went. We had fun. We even accomplished some work. Next week, we'll do better.

Technorati Tags: migraine, preschool, schedule, homeschool, acupuncture

Literature for BB

This semester BB is taking Japanese, Physics, and an art class at the local cc. I am only teaching literature. We will be using Literary Lessons from Lord of the Rings from HomeScholar Books for the first semester and British Literature from Hewitt Homeschool for the second semester. I am very excited.

I have to confess that although I love to read fantasy and even epic fantasy, I have never read Tolkien. I think I was afraid to be dissapointed. So far, I am not.

The other thing that has me excited is that Beowulf is covered twice. Beowulf was the first really "important" work that I fell in love with. I am hoping that BB will at least find it interesting.

We will start LOTR Tuesday. I am hoping to be about four weeks ahead of him in the study by then.

First Post Here

Wow - this is my first post here. Yeah it is August of 2007. I am moving my blog. The old blog was, well old.

This is about our homeschooling family. This is my little way of remembering what it was we did. We started homeschool when BB was in middle school. Later, we put him in high school then took him out again.

This year BB is a Senior in highschool. Wow, I am getting old.

CC is in first grade. If you ask her, she will say she is in third.

LB is currently 2 and was born to be the youngest child.

I am a relaxed classical homeschooler. I hangout at the Well Trained Mind boards and get terrible ideas of new things I should be using with my kids. I am learning to not buy everything that works for somebody else.

Welcome to my new little home on the web.