A College Visit and Planning a Trip – Homeschool and Life Happenings

This week has been crazy exciting and a wee bit SCARY all rolled into one. Between the boys having their first swim meet and Laurianna and I visiting her a college she is interested in, well, it was something to remember. Add to that – WE BOOKED A TRIP TO THE NETHERLANDS. Yes, all caps, because it was a huge step for us! We will be visiting my family in next May and the kids have been talking about the different places we might be able to visit while we are there. Needless to say – we are rather excited. 

On Monday, Laurianna and I met with the nursing department at the University of Virginia to get more information about their nursing program. Because she is taking classes at our local community college, we wanted to see how many of them would transfer over into the program. 

Before we arrived on the campus, Laurianna worked on a list of questions for us to ask about the program: what community college classes would transfer, tuition rates, what would make her more marketable to their program, etc.. The trip was really eye-opening – tuition-wise (yikes) and also gave us some alternative ideas for her education route the next little bit.

The advisor we spoke to was VERY helpful, especially in showing us a different program that would allow her a little more flexibility (and tuition savings) but result in the same marketable degree. Essentially she is a huge advocate for community college and suggested that we look at Laurianna getting her RN at the community college and then taking advantage of the RN to BSN program that their college offers. Definitely some things for us to look more into and pursue in the upcoming weeks. 

This week we also registered her for three classes next semester at the community college: Human Anatomy & Physiology II, English 112, and a Developmental Psych class. All three will be ones that she can use in her nursing major, so YAY for cheaper tuition rates! 

Pre-Calculus isn’t Laurianna’s favorite class this year, but can I tell you something. I LOVE IT!! Calculus was one of my favorite classes in high school and it is rather fun getting to work through problems with her (and I may be a bit giddy in the process – truly). Yes, it’s probably strange, but sitting down with her to work through problems is oddly relaxing for me. She does the lectures with Teaching Textbooks and will work through the problems she can, but I am rather enjoying this time with her, especially since she is primarily independent in the rest of her studies this year, so I’ll take it while I can! 

McKenna is gearing up for a busy week and a half with her Les Miserable musical coming up in less than two weeks. Trying to get ahead on schoolwork is one of the primary goals for her, but at times that can be a bit of a challenge for me. 

One thing that we decided on this past week though is to switch out McKenna’s biology program. We are working through our class with another friend and both of our girls were struggling to fully understand some of the concepts. At the suggestion of a friend, we looked into another program and showed excerpts to the girls. Both of them really liked the samples they saw because of the analogies that the text offered to better explain concepts.

This new program, The Riot and the Dance, does have a different course outline (although the chapters line up to the point we are currently at), and we decided to keep our labs the same as we planned previously, but overall we are looking forward to using the new program (and reading it ourselves!). 

This past week I did something a little out of my comfort zone too! Carisa (from 1+1+1=1) and I co-hosted an online essential oils class. We’ve both been using them for about five years now and I’m finally at a place where I feel like I have the time to really share more about them with our friends, but have many that don’t live nearby, so Carisa and I set up a Facebook class to share our thoughts – much fun! :) 

One fun thing the boys have been very much into this week – flag football. Every afternoon the boys have been out in the front yard playing together (which is rather hilarious since they don’t really need flags for TWO PEOPLE). You have to love it, but they are definitely getting some exercise and getting along – so I’m all for it. 

And this view. I really never, ever get tired of it. Our leaves aren’t as vibrant as they have been in the past, but there’s something about a dirt road with beautiful leaves that just calms my heart. 

That’s the sum up of our week. How was YOUR week?