In my life these two weeks… Warm weather. Cold weather. Gardening. Walking. Black flies. Another funeral. The annual March for Life. Chocolate and barbeques. A sunny afternoon wading in the river. Lemon balm and mint. Projects.
In our homeschool this week…
Mr. 17 is very busy with ALEKS precalculus. He loves it so much that at the end of my ALEKS budget, he offered to pay for part of the next month. He’s also busy with Omnibus as well as the usual schoolwork. Still, he makes time to take hundreds of nature photos a week and to work on a design to use magnets to make a 100% efficient machine. The fact that it’s impossible is just a challenge.
Script Frenzy is over, so Miss 14 is back at her normal schoolwork. She finished BJUP French 1 and is continuing steadily with everything else.
Miss 11 finished Province to Province, a Canadian geography course. She also completed this year’s ArtPac. In fact, she’s well on her way to finishing the year in the next two weeks.
Miss 9 has not been able to focus on her school work. It’s so frustrating! It’s a combination of disobedience, personality, a cold, and a total inability to sit still. Boy, am I glad she’s not in a regular school!
Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share… Sometimes you just need to sit back and figure out what is going wrong and how to fix it. I’m at my wit’s end with Miss 9…and she’s at her wit’s end with reading, writing, and arithmetic, all of which she is about a year ‘behind’ in already. I know, I know, homeschooled kids cannot be ‘behind’ technically, but realistically she is. And this weekend I’m going to sit back, pray, and think about how homeschooling should go for her.
Places we’re going and people we’re seeing… Miss 19, stores, library, judo, the cemetery (again), friends, over 19,000 other prolife Canadians at the March for Life, and the local community garage sale.
We’re watching… Hamlet, Faith Like Potatoes, Sense and Sensibility.
My favorite things these weeks were…
- walks
- cherry-plum blossoms
- good food and together time
- friends
Questions/thoughts I have… This one week when the dandelions bloom must the prettiest one of the entire year.
Things I’m working on…
- Exchanging winter clothes, shoes, and coats for spring ones; all that’s left to do are the boots.
- Doing the homeschooling records, one tiny bit at a time.
- Planting the garden.
- Preparing for the chicks that will arrive next week.
- Getting the verandah ready for spring.
- Thinning out the bookshelves and reorganizing them.
- Streamlining my desk area.
- Clearing out the freezers.
I’m reading… Philippians. I finished Mindsight by Siegel (review coming next week) and Hamlet. I am reading nothing else, nothing at all! I’ve looked at Godin’s The Dip and at a few other books, but they aren’t worth reading cover to cover.
With the kids, I’m reading Ephesians, L’Abri by Edith Schaeffer, The Story Bible for Older Children, and various books for school. We finished Summer Days with the Moodys.
When my husband is home for meals, we read Isaiah.
I’m grateful for … Warm, soft air, dandelions, a neat house, a happy family.
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This post is linked to The Homeschool Mother’s Journal and to Weekly Wrap Up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.
I hear ya! My girl (10) is going through a similar experience with her studies. It’s frustrating! I had a “sit down” with her and will be changing things up for her next year (as well as the other kids).
I hope the changes will work for you and her. I ended up being very sleepy today, so didn’t think about this at all yet.
I would love to read a review of Faith like Potatoes.
I’ve been considering writing one. In fact, I have some rough notes written down. 🙂
Sounds like a good week overall. It’s hard when school just isn’t working for one of the children. I hope that you find out something that will work for you both.
I understand the “behind” thing. My children tend to be on the “later” side of things when it comes to learning. A lot of what I read leads me to believe that it is a developmental issue. Around 12 yo it all seems to come together for them. However, my oldest son (and 5th child) was just recently diagnosed with dyslexia (I don’t know if dyslexia is an official “diagnosis”, but it is a learning disability). There are definite methods needed to remediate his learning. I wish I had known sooner- it would have saved him a lot of anguish.