2018-2019 Week 2: A Good Week

Mommy and  Rebekah

I have come to accept that Mondays will simply be crazy days in our homeschool. My husband is off on Mondays so it tends to be a day with doctors appointments. Jason had an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon and came away with cortisone shots in his shoulder and knee. Mason had to get blood drawn and a urinalysis for his fast approaching surgery. Then there was errand running to the post office, UPS store, and pharmacy. We discovered a monarch caterpillar making a chrysalis outside. He had gorgeous yellow, black, and white stripes. We plan to transfer it to our butterfly habitat after the chrysalis has hardened for a few days. A large part of the day there was homeschooling to do. Today lessons included:

• 8 math lessons (3 on CTC Math, 5 taught by me)
• 4 reading lessons using 3 levels of All About Reading
• 2 Physical Science lessons for the middle schoolers
• Group science for the 5 elementary ages
• Latin with the senior
• The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts lessons (each has a host of parts on any one day that may include grammar, punctuation, spelling, dictation, writing, reading, art, geography, poetry memorization) for the oldest 4 children
• Scissors practice for the Kindergartener
• Handwriting practice for 3 students
• Group history lessons for 7 students
• Art History for the senior
• Literature for 5 kids
• Piano practice for 6 kids on their own level, from very beginner on up

 I absolutely love it. Being here when someone struggles and conquers a concept, listening as they share insights, learning together, diving into interests, disagreeing over things, finding ways to work that fit the child - it is all good. A simple example, this evening my senior came to me and let me know the math we have started with is not what she needs for her goal of improving her ACT Math score. She wasn't sure what she needed, just that where we placed her in CTC Math isn't it. I had been working on a plan so we dive into focused ACT math practice tomorrow, finding the types of problems she needs to work on and then pulling from past ACT tests, Khan Academy, and CTC Math for that practice. 

Makayla doing Chemistry

We ended our evening with Family Home Evening. Tonight was a discussion of the sons of the people of Ammon, who defended their families during some of the Nephite and Lamanite wars recorded in the Book of Mormon. We sang, read scriptures, talked, and then had ice cream. After ice cream we brainstormed activity ideas for future family home evenings, because we like a mix of lesson and activities. We were able to get input from everyone and now have a list of ideas ranging from going on a picnic to baking treats and delivering them to friends' families, to attending a local high school play, having a fire and smores in the back yard, and learning to play badminton with a set a neighbor gave us. 

Daniel doing math

Tuesday it rained off and on. The highlight of the school day for several of the kids is the fact that we are currently in  Ancient  Egypt in our history study and we recently went to see actual Egyptian  artifacts (including a mummy and sarcophagus, pottery shards, things with hieroglyphics, and a replica Rosetta Stone). Yesterday history included tasting fruits of Egypt while learning about life for the commoners and drawing maps of the Nile and surrounding places. Today we talked about things like grinding grain, a shaduf, hieroglyphics, and the Rosetta Stone. Some of the kids wrote their names in hieroglyphics, while others translated hieroglyphics into English.

Samuel practicing reading

Tuesday evening the kids asked me to print out the instructions for Hero Kids. It's a role playing game for kids similar to Dungeons and Dragons. I've had the files for a long time now and  just never had a group of kids interested in trying it. I'm going to read over the manual and then try setting it up for the kids. After a practice adventure or two I'll turn over the running of it all to them.

Tobias enjoying some puzzles

Wednesday the clouds were fluffy and the temperatures were a cool 72 F. Early morning seminary started back up for Makayla. This is a 6am scripture study class with other high school teens from church that happens Monday through Friday for the entire school year. The early start time means she is up at 5am to get breakfast, get dressed, and get out the door to drive to class. She gets home around 7:10am. We plowed through school work in the morning and headed into the backyard in the afternoon. In the evening most of the boys and I did our first Hero Kids game before the oldest three kids headed to youth group. I didn't take any more notes on our day than that.

Joseph reading physical science
Caleb doing math

Thursday was the last big work day. Remember, everyone was trying to have a light workload for Friday because of Homeschool Book Club, so they loaded extra on the other days of the week. We plodded through Thursday. I really felt like I was going to be working with children forever. It is easy to bounce between helping several children at the same time around the table when they are closer in age, but when you toss Makayla's upper level courses and Joseph and Emma's middle school work it gets harder. My brain feels stretched thin by the end of it. I decided that I wanted to free up some Saturday time so I sat at the computer and placed a grocery pick up order with Wal Mart to get Friday evening after our Veggie CSA pick up.

Mason reading aloud to me

Friday I was up around 5am, visited with Makayla for a few minutes, then Rebekah woke up at 5:30am (typical for her) so I went back up to my dark bedroom to feed her and get her back to sleep. I came down and swept floors, did my own scripture study, and waited for kids to start waking up. Most kids had just 2 subjects to do for school today: math and one other thing. We got that work done before our friends arrived for book club. This past month we read Island of the Blue Dolphins. We decided today that our next read is Wonder.

Oliver reading aloud to me

It is now early afternoon. Rebekah is up from a nap. Makayla is at work. Mason and I are doing afternoon medical care. The other kids are having some time on their Kindles (Mason is too). Then it is dinner and CSA pick up at the farmer's market and grocery pick up at Wal Mart.

Emma doing physical science reading

 I'm going to sign off here and add some pictures to this post that I've taken this week.

Happy Friday all!