It’s hard to believe that in a few short weeks our homeschool year will be done!! The pictures I have from the last month are fairly scattered, but I’ll try to give you the quick run-down on what’s been happening with each of the kids. We have testing coming up in a few weeks, and one by one the kids are wrapping up subjects (some a little more quickly than others). 

And while I did consider doing a vlog for some other stuff, a) it’s too noisy in the house and b) sitting down for more than five minutes has been hard the last few days because there are a ton of things going on right now. My mom is scheduled for her next hip replacement Wednesday (tomorrow), so I’ve been trying to get things lined up here (rather unsuccessfully to my aspirations) before I have to spend at least two nights with her at the hospital. Add in the rest of life and some other things happening (swim team restarting soon, etc…) and I feel like I’m being pulled in a million different directions. Feel free to remind me that I did say “yes” to these things, so I heaped it on myself, ok? 

That said, here’s a peek at life in our house the past month. 

4th Grade (Kaleb)

Kaleb has been working hard on his math and is eight lessons shy of finishing up his Teaching Textbooks Level 5 for the year. The multiplication worksheet that I put together for him has been a definite help and I’m working on a division one as well to keep those numbers lined up. That said, decimals may be the death of me. (grins) On the bright side, once he fully grasps the concept, this will be the last time it needs to explained. So there’s that.

Two weeks ago something rather fun showed up on our doorstep, which the boys were completely thrilled to help me open and expand it. I haven’t shared a lot about this yet (but you all – I will be soon)! The kids were fascinated by the memory foam aspect of this convertible beanbag from Cordaroys. They are especially excited since it means we will have a queen size bed for sleepovers with friends! See the picture below for what it’s like in beanbag form (and if you are interested in a coupon code, let me know). 

The very best news of the month though??? Kaleb finished up the first book in The Boxcar Children series. Can I tell you how much rejoicing there was in the house – and how proud Kaleb was to have read it?

After he finished reading The Boxcar Children book, I pulled out the other books from his 4th grade reading list for him to look over. Admittedly, it was one of the harder books on his reading list for the year, and I assumed he would pull out one of the easier ones to finish up in the next few weeks. Instead, he asked if we could find the next book in the series and read that one. Inside I may have been jumping up and down. For him to make the choice on his own, rather than my telling him what he was going to read, made reading that much better and easier if you will. His attitude toward reading changes when he has “control” over it, and his reading improves. And that I love. 

In other subject areas, Kaleb has finished his grammar and science, and we are getting close to finishing history as well. Math should be wrapped up in the next two weeks and we are continuing reading, writing, geography, and spelling until the end. 

6th Grade (Zachary)

Zachary has been working overtime in a few subject areas, especially writing and math. He isn’t super crazy about writing things out by hand and we have had some software issues (we finally broke down and subscribed to Microsoft online). With all of the laptops that have broken the last two years, they haven’t been de-registered from our previous software programs – and oy. Now Zachary has no excuse in the typing department (wink). 

Math is one of those areas that Zachary has gotten a little bit behind in. To make up, he has been working on two lessons a day to stay on top of it. We had to go back through some of his past lessons together and have him re-work through them with me. While he isn’t thrilled at the doubling-up, much of that is due to his wandering (literally). He gets 2/3 of the way through a lesson and gets distracted. And I haven’t been doing a great job following up on his completion, because he “said” he did math, but left out the fact he hadn’t finished it. So, we’ve been working through those to get it all done. :)

With the weather warming up, we’ve had some fabulous days for sitting outside and learning from the lawn or porch swing. Whenever possible, our history and read-aloud time has contained sunshine in some form. 

That said, he took one of his writing assignments from Writers in Residence and went crazy (in a good way) on it. Rather than keeping it simple, he turned an autobiography assignment into a fourteen page paper. We are still working on editing the assignment, but I didn’t want him to fly through the assignment to complete another one if he was taking this one so seriously. (sidenote: it’s hilarious – and good, so win-win)

Outside of school, Zachary has been participating in Boy Scouts and wrapping up requirements to reach First Class (should be soon). He is loving the camping – even in the rain – hiking, and all the other fun stuff that goes along. 

Zachary has wrapped up his Rainbow Science and both Who is God?  and Who Am I? so far. He is reading the last book on his 6th grade reading list and history will be completed soon as well. 

8th Grade (McKenna)

McKenna is *this* close to finishing up her Literature class and Algebra 1. She should be able to wrap up the remainder of her classes by the third week of May. 

We are fortunate to have an incredible Shakespeare theatre not too far from us. Each month they offer student matinees and a “talkback time” with the actors after the show is over and we love to take advantage of their acting and knowledge. The theatre we visit is a recreation of Shakespeare’s indoor theatre and the actors and actresses are fabulous. 

Our high school co-op group laughed and followed the bulk of the performance we saw, but at times the dialogue moved so quickly some parts were lost on the kids. Still, it brought a deeper level of respect and understanding of Shakespeare to the kids. One more paper to write and she is done!!

10th Grade (Laurianna)

This is one of the only pictures I have of Laurianna recently (her 16th birthday), but she too has been working hard in her studies. There will be some subjects that will carry over into June (Constitutional Literacy, Visual Latin, Art, and DriversEd.  

Her co-op classes will be ending mid-May, so history and literature will be finished then. She only has about ten lessons remaining in math (woot!) and then the extra free time she has will be poured into focusing on her remaining classes. Although it hasn’t been the optimal year for her health-wise, she has worked hard when she can and is determined to finish strong. 

In Other News…

April the giraffe finally had her baby!! We were getting ready to head out the door for an Easter event at our church when I happened to turn on the live feed and saw that labor was happening. We watched as much as we could before we left and the kids had the live stream on all the way to church. We had to pause the feed during the egg hunt (we were helping with face painting, etc…), but we saw everything once we returned home. And then it was too much fun watching that little baby giraffe walk around. 

Speaking of the Easter event – this is what 3+ hours of making cotton candy can do to a person. And this is after I spent time wiping off my face. This pictured doesn’t honestly do it justice, but I was rather sweet until we were able to get home and clean up. Sticky, sticky, sticky.

That’s about it for the last few weeks – how are YOU all doing? Close to finishing up the end of your year?  

A few links for you: 

• 10th grade mid-year homeschool update
• 8th grade mid-year homeschool update
• 6th grade mid-year homeschool update
• 4th grade mid-year homeschool update

(photo credit: my lovely daughter, McKenna)

Hi everyone!! Life feels like it is picking up speed the last few weeks. The weather has been warming up again (yay!!), and we are trying to spend more time outside to enjoy every bit of it! Trees are blossoming – it’s been lovely, especially after our early March snow storm.

And we are still waiting for April (the giraffe) to have her baby. Whenever we can, we peek in on the YouTube feed to see if anything is happening, and the kids ask every morning what the update is. I will say we have been learning a lot about giraffes and having so much fun with the live feed (I may have it streaming on my phone while writing this – it’s true). 

So many of you have been enjoying the video clip sum-ups of our weeks, so here is a peek into the last three weeks or so of life. Feed readers can click here to see the video.  The lighting is crazy and I’m hiding in my bathroom again (so there’s that), but somehow the whole actual talking thing makes me also feel like it’s more of a conversation between us (albeit one-sided). 

Here’s the quick sum-up (and more below): 

• I’ve been traveling. Last week I was in Arkansas and this week in Nashville, TN speaking at Teach Them Diligently. I absolutely love this part of the year because I get to connect with other homeschool moms and really share my heart, pray with others, and be encouraged through the process. This past week I was also able to meet with some friends I haven’t seen in over twenty years (since the early 90s). The two babies above? Those are the kids of two kids (now grown men) I babysat many years ago. It was SO wonderful to spend a few hours with them and meet their wives and catch up! 
• School goes on when I’m not home. The girls have been working through their work independently. Zachary and Kaleb require more 1:1 attention, so I’ve left detailed lists with what they need to work on and my mom has been going through their work with them. 
• The kids have been playing this game almost every single morning. 
• Next week we have a week off (our six week on/one week off schedule). I’m looking forward to a lot of cuddle time with the kids and enjoying not needing to be anywhere. 
• Laurianna has still been having off days health-wise. She had a 3 week spell where she was feeling great, but then last week had three really rough days again. Since our last break, she has scaled back on her workload and is tackling the core subjects and fitting in a few lessons of others when she can, but essentially trying to keep herself feeling well. We finally had an appointment with an auto-immune specialist and based on bloodwork, he does not believe her Bartonella is causing all the issues. So – we’re back to square one and waiting on another doctor for advanced genetic testing because she is showing all the markers for a connective tissue disorder. The good news is – we can lighten up on dietary restrictions at this point, which makes it much easier on both her and myself! 
• Kaleb is reading an honest to goodness chapter book. We pulled out The Boxcar Children and he is now at chapter seven and reading to my mom and others – WOOT!!!!

My biggest challenge is staying on top of Zachary and making sure he is completing all of his work. Sometimes his memory is a little different than actuality. :) There is a fine line between stretching independence and work being done. 

The kids have been having a blast with our new Sphero SPRK+. We’ll be using it more in the next weeks, but it’s charging and taken a few trial runs around the house. We have an older Sphero, so the kids have been comparing speed and details between the two.

There has been much clicking and twisting going on in the house. My brain may be on sensory overload from the Rubiks Cube. But they are loving it and having fun, so there’s that right? And I especially can’t complain when they have saved up their own money to buy them!

That’s about it for us – how are YOU all doing? 

A few links for you: 

• 10th grade mid-year homeschool update
• 8th grade mid-year homeschool update
• 6th grade mid-year homeschool update
• 4th grade mid-year homeschool update

If anything has made me more certain than ever not to do live videos, it would be my children. In trying to do a less-than-5-minute video, I was interrupted no less than 5 times by either one of the kids or the dog (sigh). Some rather loudly. It’s truly comical. And you all, I don’t know about the noise level in your house, but ours is NOT QUIET AT ALL. 

I’m not kidding when I tell you I purchased a pair of noise cancelling headphones for myself this week. For real. Sometimes I just need to not hear all the extra noises and be able to concentrate on something (noises are a huge trigger of mine – just being honest with you all). 

(can you see the sock feet hanging over the edge of the couch as we watch the live feed?)

Here are the basics: 

• Last week was crazy and I forgot to mention the big ol’ power outage we had when that crazy storm swept through our area. So, our school consisted more of couch cuddling near the warm fire and doing what we could there, and then we spent the night at a friend’s house when we were worried we might not have heat overnight. 
• One of the biggest things I want to instill in our kids is a heart for service. I know they aren’t always super thrilled to take a chunk of their day and feel like they are falling behind in their studies, but truly – they learn just as many life lessons during the time we give to others. So while our time serving at a local soup kitchen once a month can be interesting with the people we meet, it’s also allowing the kids to step out of their comfort zones and be stretched. 
• Would April the giraffe please have her baby? The live feed is playing in our living room, and the kids are keeping an eye out throughout the day. I absolutely love giraffes ever since my trip to Africa several years ago. They just make me smile. 
• We have a new-to-us van, a 2008 Toyota Sienna, which meant a morning of the kids helping me out to see how it fit size-wise. They are all thrilled – for real. It’s the little things. :) I’m not quite ready to give up the minivan even though Laurianna is close to getting her license and her own car – OY!

I’ll admit to sneaking in a bit of “mom” reading when Kaleb is working on math facts. He and I have been using his Teaching Textbooks with the book rather than the computer the last two weeks since Zachary has been hogging the laptop at times (part of it is work, part of that is “squirrel moments). While the boy does long division, I have a few minutes to read snippets of Never Unfriended by Lisa Jo Baker (really good!). 

The boys and I are still working through The Green Ember by S.D. Smith, but are only about halfway through. We try to read at least two chapters each day, but some days it ends up being less because I get a little sleepy during read aloud time. :) 

Kaleb has been working through The Beginner’s Bible and will likely finish it before too long, but I love that each morning he is wanting to read. We’re still working on pacing (because he likes to blow through those periods and just get.it.done). 

Several of our kids are fidgeters, and while I had looked at getting something to keep their hands busy, the two of them bought Rubics Cubes for themselves the last few weeks and have been working on memorizing the algorithm to solve it (which they have done rather handily). McKenna bought herself a speed cube. It cracks me up that the kids are playing with toys that I had when I was a kid. 

In history we have followed the Oregon Trail during our US History time and are now moving into the Civil War. The boys put together some covered wagon models for a little hands-on fun (and because I finally remembered we had them). We won’t talk about how many years ago I bought them and forgot to use them (cough). 

Zachary just finished up all of his science for the year – he’s been working through his program a little more quickly than I anticipated, so for now we will fill in with some extras (EEME & other hands-on fun). 

McKenna really loves her physical science class, but she wasn’t super thrilled with their latest experiment. Sadly, we didn’t have any skim milk in the house so she had to use powdered milk and vinegar to make a slime concoction which absolutely STANK thanks to the powdered milk. It was rather comical because she spent the bulk of the time gagging over the odor and didn’t even want to touch it. I supposed I could have let her try whole milk, but once she got going, Laurianna and I were cracking up and waiting to see if she could make it through the entire process. 

Fun socks make studying even better, right? Laurianna has been working hard to keep up in several of her core classes (chemistry, geometry, history, and literature) and filling in with the other three from her 10th grade curriculum list as she has the energy. She has a few big tests coming up this week and is working hard on those classes, finished reading her last book for literature class, but still has a few papers to write for that class. 

That’s about it for us – how are YOU all doing? 

A few links for you: 

• 10th grade mid-year homeschool update
• 8th grade mid-year homeschool update
• 6th grade mid-year homeschool update
• 4th grade mid-year homeschool update

We took a vacation the third week of school. That is the beauty of homeschooling, my friends. We can plan to do whatever we want, whenever we want. With Labor Day and my hubby having a vacation day, school would have been a bust anyway, so we had planned on camping. Unfortunately, it turned out to be one of the hottest weekends this summer, so camping was scratched and we found an indoor activity to keep us (slightly) cool, and technically we could count it as PE for the week. 

Incidentally, if you are wondering when the best time is to hit an indoor trampoline park, the answer would be a Friday morning before noon. Another tip, if you have birthed at least child, you may want to consider purchasing a ticket for the shortest jump time possible, unless you have taken stock in adult diapers. You’re welcome (and so the truth). You just remind your children it is all their fault. 

Very last minute, we decided to have the kids participate in swim team again this year. Our local team has new coaches and a new practice schedule, so we waited while trying to figure out how we were going to balance life and practice with four kids, and not lose our sanity in the process. We’re one week down and so far so good – but we’ll have to see how it is going in a few months. :) 

Butterflies are emerging from their chrysalis and those are moments we simply sit and stare. It just never gets old. Ever since I’ve was teaching preschool over 18 years ago, it has completely fascinated me, and now our kids too. This year we didn’t get to see the process itself, but did see something interesting. Aphids were all over one batch of milkweed we brought home and after one butterfly had gone into it’s chrysalis, the aphids were all over the thing. We were worried about it for a bit because we didn’t know what they might do. Yesterday when we looked at it, all of the spots where the aphids had been were little tiny golden dots – it was the most amazing and pretty thing to do – a gold polka-dotted chrysalis (and sadly we didn’t get a picture of it). 

While there aren’t a TON of things to share that we’ve been doing during our school time, one of the more monumental moments came when my husband took Zachary away for his Passport to Purity weekend. Our initial plans for the weekend didn’t work out, so the two of them found a hotel, Rick planned a surprise football game trip, and the two had a great time away together. Rather than picking out the same gift as his sisters (because a tea cup just doesn’t do it for the boy), Rick and Zachary found him a great knife for him to have in the years to come, especially handy during his time with Scouts. If you’d like to read more about our weekend away with the girls, you can read more here. This is the only picture I have of their weekend – grins. :) 

In the meantime, we’ve been plugging away at school, adding in a new subject each week now that the kids are getting more into the routine of things, and overall it’s going really well. Most days. There are still major moments of drama (I will not name any names) and frustration, but there are also many moments of success that completely fly in the face of all the frustration (and those are worth their weight in gold, my friends). 

Reading for Kaleb is plugging along. We have picked up some various readers for him to read every other day and he is really doing so much better – which is an encouragement to both of us. This is again one of those times when I need to remind myself not to compare where his progress is, especially in comparison to his siblings. Zachary at this point was starting Level 4 of All About Reading and Kaleb is on All About Reading Level 3 – but progress is progress and we will take every little bit, especially the fact that he is wanting/trying to read other books to us.  

Our one computer is back up and running, which means McKenna can now work whole-heartedly on Latin. She is absolutely loving Visual Latin this year (and earning that credit). She and Laurianna both are trying to talk to each other in short phrases which is cracking me up. The first time I heard them trying to say something to each other I thought they were using Pig Latin and couldn’t figure it out, until they started cracking up and told me what they were saying. 

In an attempt to finally clean off my camera’s SD card, I managed to delete a slew of pictures I thought I had already uploaded of some of the other things we worked on the past two weeks: science experiments with Zachary, a few pictures of Laurianna and her artwork, but the good thing is – the pictures don’t mean that progress wasn’t made (thank goodness). And my SD card is much happier at this point too since the pictures from two years ago have finally been removed. 

That’s a really quick look at our past two weeks – what have YOU been up to?