Miss 12 enjoying the gift of a horseback riding lesson.
The garden harvest is in, the fire is roaring, the weather forecast predicts snow, and we had our first mulled apple juice of the season. Winter is coming, and with it more cozy study days…I hope.
Seterra is the latest big hit at our home, once again rediscovered. It provides hours of learning, competition, and fun.
In our homeschool…
Last weekend Miss 16 wrote the SAT and over the previous weeks she casually wrote a few practice tests to prepare for it. After reading The Perfect Score Project, I realized that the reason she did not need extensive SAT preparation is because she has such a solid foundation in reading, writing, and math. All she needed to do was to learn a few SAT tips, review a bit, and get a feel for how the test actually works. Now that is out of the way she has been concentrating on math while continuing on with her online English course and her physics as well as other schoolwork, reading mystery novels…and avoiding French.
Miss 14 has been plugging away at her learning, focusing mainly on math, biology, vocabulary, Bible, and French, while also moving along in other subjects. We’re setting up Rosetta Stone Dutch again as well, after taking a half year break. One afternoon a week she helps out at an ethnic store, and she also seems excited to be taking two extra judo classes a week, although I imagine that in the long run 7 hours a week of judo may be a bit much.
Miss 12 is busy with a cookbook she’s writing for NaNoWriMo. It’s not a novel like the rest of the world is writing, but that is fine. She is also working hard on a poster for the annual Legion contest. Of course, that means that regular schoolwork is being neglected to some extent, but she is learning a lot from doing the things she loves.
As usual, I’ve been tweaking our homeschool to make it work better—adjusting planning, record-keeping, and curriculum. I’ve also started the final push on Miss 16’s high school records.
In our gardens and yard…
The front yard is strewn with firewood that the dogs play with, so a new task has been added to our Saturday job list: clean up the front yard.
The garden needs to be cleaned out for fall, but we are still freezing beets and beet tops, giving away chard, and popping out to pick kale or broccoli. Our squash and pumpkin stash is slowly disappearing. We have only a few of the delicious buttercup squashes left, but many pumpkins and spaghetti squashes.
In our gluten free kitchen…
Food of all sorts: vegetables from the garden, fruit from the store, nuts, bacon, fresh potatoes, soups and stir fries, all kinds of meats, and, of course, the occasional cakes and cookies.
Some of my favorite things were…
- Hanging out with family and friends.
- The warm fireplace.
- Successful learning.
- Our treadmill.
- Bible study.
Questions/thoughts I have… Every time life changes, we need to refocus on our purpose and figure out practical ways to meet our goals. I suppose the reason it is so easy to lose sight of goals and start coasting is because life never stops changing.
Fitness… I am slipping below 10,000 steps a day, partly because I am busy, partly because sometimes it’s just too much. On the other hand, I no longer need to sleep more than 9 hours a day, and that is a real joy. I must be more focused on doing other exercises, though, because I can feel myself getting weaker and weaker.
Some of the things I’ve been working on…
- Homeschooling.
- Harvesting the garden.
- Reading.
- Running around; I haven’t driven this much in years.
I’m reading… Revelation. I finished The Perfect Score Project, The Stories We Tell, The Big Fat Surprise, Road Trip, and You Shall be Free Indeed. Currently I’m reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, and Universe by Design. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine went back to the library. Also on the back burner are Pascal’s Pensees, A Man Called Intrepid, and 52 Weeks of Family French.
Reading aloud…We read John at mealtimes and have finished Captains Courageous. After that we read Anne White’s Junket, a humorous story about a dog, and now we’re enjoying Tom Sawyer.
When my husband is home for meals, we read Isaiah. In fact, we just finished it.
I’m grateful for …. Smiles and laughter.
Quote or link to share…. Remember Galileo’s experiment when he dropped objects from the Tower of Pisa? Well, here’s a modern version of that experiment. It’s magnificent!
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This post is linked to Kris’s Weekly Wrap Up and to Finishing Strong.
Sounds like a good week. What a blessing to have a horse lesson, sounds fun.