Oh Happy Day!

Yesterday marked the beginning of a new week- a fresh start on our homeschooling, a chance to make a plan and get "caught up" with school, make sure we're still on target and still having fun. It's working! I don't mind getting behind a little bit sometimes- it just means refocusing on our goals and making some little adjustments. (For example, we're way behind on italic but we were just doing 3 pages a week. This week she is doing 2 pages a day every day and on Friday she'll be back to where she was scheduled to be.) Now if we never kept track and just were winging it and hoping for the best by graduation, that I'd have a problem with. Well, that just wouldn't fly in my house. If we're going to learn at home, we're going to have to have a plan to somehow tackle our many varied interests. There's just not enough time in the day to learn everything we want to know and everything we need to know....unless we plan it in.



We rented a great beginning French video from the library and watched that while I was sick. (aah yes, did you catch that? After my griping I deservingly caught the same horrid week long virus the girls had and yes, even a degree or two off and ibuprofen didn't help it from feeling miserable. Poor kids. Bad mommy! Bad mommy! lesson learned.)
(French for Kids: Learn French with Penelope and Pezi Beg. Level 1 Vol. 1 ) Et voila, we're back on target with our French. It was a great review for Grace and introduced our next section on table manners and food. We watched Pride and Predjudice on the public broadcasting station- it's so good! My older daughter's favorite. It was fun to see Grace introduced to it. Of course she thought it was boring and actually left....I think she went and got a book to read instead. She's reading Dragon Rider for the third time. We all got out our knitting or embroidery, too. These girls amaze me. I can't knit anything. I'm still trying to learn to crochet. (I've made a doll scarf, a pillow, and a doll blankie/dishcloth/swatch.) Last night my oldest (who has never attempted crochet as she is perfectly content with knitting) got into the crochet box, dug out a hook and the how-to directions, and whipped up a double-crocheted hat....I might as well throw in the towel and just let her teach me when she's completely fluent in crochet next week. I've been struggling with that book for years and just don't get it. Mary Frances's Book of Crochet and Knitting (or something like that?) was very helpful but we do not own a copy of it yet and the library needed it back. I think my problem is that I'm left handed and I forget which way I'm doing it. Sometimes I can do it right-handed, so I try to do it that way so the pictures will make sense. But other times my brain just doesn't cooperate and I'm too befuddled to understand the pictures until I switch to my left hand and try to think backwards...It's very strange. This is why I stick with sewing and embroidery. I hope to one day be as good as my children at needlework.....It'd be nice to make something special for them or for their children.

Anyway- we basically filled in a lot of time last week with reading and electives I guess, and the bare minimum for math, because you know I was the next one to catch the flu and it's only recently left our house for good I think.



Today I made a 7x table poster for the wall, with a review box on it of Grace's other problem multiplication facts. We did the multiplication to classical music cd for just the 7x table, did a fast facts sheet I pulled out of an old Saxon test book (all those warm up quizzes Elli refused to cooperate on). She completed her Singapore math lesson and exercise, two pages of Italic handwriting, completed a Latin lesson, reviewed grammar and parts of speech through Latin and later via a word problem I had her write down. She worked on her Colonial history unit study, which was reading and researching Great Men of the Faith to make a little flipbook....we read 3 chapters of the horse unit study book last night......only thing we didn't do was spelling or science. That was supposed to be done this afternoon but we got side tracked. It was kind of science though....gardening science.



Grace wants to start her own weeding business. She'll pull, for 25 cents per weed. I said I'd be her first customer if she worked on this front flower bed. I showed her where, reminded her which ones were the weeds, and she went to town. I pulled, too, since I had a feeling her price would end up pretty steep. I needed to prune the rosebush anyway. Yep, there were 46 weeds altogether. She multiplied 46 x .25, thanks to her awesome Parent Partnership math/science teacher. I've been focused on just the tables, I didn't even imagine teaching her double digit by double digit multiplication yet. But awesome, it helped her with this real life story problem! That's when she wrote it out as a "workbook story problem". I kept having her revise it so it wouldn't sound like she was selling weeds for 25 cents. (We came up with 25 cents because in Sunday School they're collecting quarters for a missions project....) She's brainstorming business names, advertising slogans, and thinking about how to make her weed identification booklet. I suggested it would be smart to show potential customers she knows the difference between a weed and a flower/herb/seedling by photographing and labeling various weeds and seedlings and putting them into a booklet to include in her presentation. She identified a couple weeds by name today but nothing impressive- dandelion and clover. We also talked about how much she's charging- 25 cents a weed might be too steep for some gardens. (Mine was $11.50 in case you didn't do the math.) Maybe come up with an hourly rate or a square foot charge? At least try it out and compare. She's going to experiment with these things the next sunny day in the garden. She's excited! She loves to garden. Also thinking about raising plants to sell, maybe as an aspect to the services she can provide through her business.



Today was a great day though. It was sunny, we worked outside, we had school in the morning, got Elli to ballet class, dropped off clothes for consigning, set up a field trip for the Hope Chest Society to go to the local embroidery/fabric shop.... I'm in love with the projects at this store! I just love them all....It was fun just looking at them, but even better we bought a few supplies to start a couple. There were definately a few panic moments during my day but they had nothing to do with homeschooling and everything to do with personal finances.



I love homeschooling and being home with the children. I hate the idea of going back to work. I may have to though, at least part-time, so I'm looking for ideas to creatively work around this without actually leaving my kids and homeschooling. Maybe we'll be able to make things work until next fall when I can hopefully get a preschool teaching position. The hours for that just work out perfectly and it's fun. But not very financially rewarding. So...we'll keep our eyes and hearts open and I'll be praying about it.