Transcripts, Coop, and Laundry – Homeschool and Life Happenings

Life here this week was nothing short of interesting. :) Last week we were off from school and left Thursday for a 4 day camping trip with friends. We truly had the best camping weather – 70s during the day and 40s at night. It was wonderful. 

We haven’t had much of a chance to go camping this year, especially with our (new to us) camper, so we’re still getting used to where everything is in the new layout. All that said, four days away was great and a chance to just relax and the kids could just play and have fun. Coming home though – OY. Hello to the mountains of laundry that needed to be tackled. Seriously, I think I did about nine loads and then we found the cat peeing all over stuff in our bathroom so I had to redo some stuff. It was fabulous. 

Laurianna hadn’t been feeling great while we were camping, so I took her first thing Monday morning to see the doctor. With all of her health stuff recently, we didn’t want to mess around. All of her tests came back clear (we were worried about mono on top of everything else), but then we got a call that she had strep. Because my voice was still gone, the doctor put both of us on a round of antibiotics. Turns out that TEN kids in her college class were out this week because of strep – and here we were scratching our heads trying to figure out where she picked it up. LOVELY. 

We had our joint co-op again this week and Kaleb is really enjoying his group because it involves hands-on learning for the boys. This week one of the things they made were gel beads from the book Amazing (Mostly) Edible Science. (Below you can see the four books we are rotating through for activities for this class with the boys.)

While I know this is silly, this picture just cracked me up. The boys were watching this week’s CNN 10 (and wanted to catch up on the ones they missed last week too), so Zachary decided he could do a chore and do a little school at the same time. Proof that it can be done. :) 

Our high school classes with McKenna are moving along well too. Personal Finance is always one of my favorite classes, especially when the kids really start taking ownership of their money and understand the concept of budgeting and delayed gratification. Foundations in Personal Finance  is a fabulous resource (100% recommend).

McKenna opened her own checking account this past month (she already had a savings account), and over the past few months she has saved up enough for her $500 emergency fund. For her, budgeting and the waiting to spend the money has been a little harder. She typically doesn’t think about where her money is going, so it has been more of an eye opener for her, especially in holding off on purchasing some things – and debating if other things are really worth it. 

Much of my spare time this week has been spent working on updating and tweaking transcripts for Laurianna as well as we prepare for our first campus visit next week to a nursing program she is interested in. While the transcript I have is sufficient, somehow I always have to make it a little bit better. (It’s just me.)

One thing that I was really proud of Laurianna for this week was seeing how she is taking initiative in her classes with her professors. Her English teacher hasn’t been the easiest and is probably one of the most demanding of all the English professors on campus. Despite having a pretty heavy workload, she is more than keeping up and decided this week to make an appointment with the professor to make sure she is on track with a research paper project. The professor was encouraging to her because the students who do the best in her class are typically the ones who seek her out and ensure they are on the right track (her words). I’ve really tried to stay out of her classes (outside of encouraging her) and let her find her own standing in this area, and it made me so proud to see her do the mature thing in this case, especially knowing she is in high school (I’m allowed to be proud, right?). 

But – that’s the sum up of our week. How was YOUR week?