So this was the week with all the running around. No, wait — this week just begins all the running around I’ll be doing this year. Ack. I need a nap just thinking about it all! I made notes during the week so I could attempt to be somewhat coherent in this post since we’ve been w-a-y busier than usual and it has taxed my little brain!

This week went well, all things considered. Lindsey did not hate school, did make new friends, and said she actually liked it better than she thought she would. One thing that really helps is that she feels the teachers are actually there to help her, rather than to try to make her life difficult. And Kathryn says I am more fun this year; evidently I was rather boring last year. 😉

One afternoon each week this semester, Lindsey takes a driving class, required in our state before she can get her license. When I picked her up this week after the first class, she said she never wanted to drive and wished we didn’t even have to be in the car then. It hasn’t truly scared her off of driving forever, but I do think it made her take it much more seriously. The teacher of the class is a police officer whose job it is to knock on the doors of parents to tell them their teen has been killed in an auto accident; teaching this class is his way of trying to reduce the number of teens that die from careless driving.

While we do school, Lacy the WonderDog is usually laying nearby, pretending to be lazy but secretly learning everything we discuss in our school days. Seriously, she’s a genius. Ask anyone who has ever spent any time with her.

Kathryn wrote a letter to her new penpal this week. I think their first letters crossed in the mail, so we waited a little while before sending the second letter in hopes that wouldn’t happen again this time. She keeps one box with her stationery, stickers, and stamps for letter-writing, and another box for letters. Sometimes she and her cousin Cullen exchange letters, too, even though he only lives 20 minutes or so away.

Maps will be a big part of Kathryn’s studies this year. We plan to make them all look sort of old-fashioned, so I print them on parchment-style cardstock, then Kathryn colors them with watercolor colored pencils, and goes over them with a wet paintbrush. This week she did a world map (shown in the photo below) and a Ptolemic map, which are both part of our Time Travelers study. Lindsey made a 12-gore map for her Geography class this week; once cut out and taped together, it looked like a slightly-warped globe. Pretty cool.

Kathryn’s history studies this week had her reading about explorers, and coloring flags that some of the old explorers would have flown on their ships. She also read about native American homes, and began reading a book called Naya Nuki about an Shoshoni girl in the early 1800’s.

In science, Kathryn reviewed a Christian Kids Explore Biology unit on plants (which we did last school year) and we began a unit on Birds. She defined vocabulary words in the lessons, colored a bird picture, and did a word-find from the unit. In an unplanned but relevant nature study, we observed birds out our living room window; this week was hot, humid, and we had an air quality alert most days this week, so I did not take my sniffling, sneezing, coughing, wheezing, allergy-flaring-up girl outdoors for a “real” nature study. We’re looking forward to fall weather so we can get outside more often!

Kathryn and I also began using Simply Grammar, a Charlotte Mason style book written by Karen Andreola. I’ve had it or a year or two but never used it until now. It’s just simple little grammar lessons we can do mostly while sitting on the couch together.

Lindsey has done well with doing her at-home work assigned from the Academy, and I’m still getting the hang of how the teachers want me to document that I have reviewed and checked her work. I do like that they require me to be involved. Lindsey also had her first at-home test, administered by me but to be graded by her teacher. If you’d like to know about how we’re doing homeschool with Lindsey this year, please see my previous post where I explain it all more thoroughly.

As for extra-curricular stuff: Lindsey has Color Guard practice two evenings each week, and she is participating in high school choir at church; Kathryn began Girls in Action at church this week, and will begin her weekly chess class next week.

This evening is Lindsey’s first public Color Guard performance, at the first football game of the season. She needs to break in her new uniform shoes, so she was wearing them around the house this morning with knee socks and her pajamas. I laughed, and then took a picture. 😉

Some stressful, unrelated-to-school things are going on right now, but I am very pleased with how we managed in our first week of school, and looking forward to next week — AFTER a Saturday that, I hope, will allow me to just plain relax and spend some time being still.

Jamie

Wife, mom, J-ma. Introvert who enjoys good books, sunshine, and authentic conversation. Often seen with a steaming mug of tea in hand – unless it’s lost yet again in the microwave. Read more »