Happy Anniversary and other musings....

 Today started out with little fuss until it was time for lessons. Then it was head-to-head for an hour or two. Not the spouse and I, the youngest and I. It was computer lesson time. After the first five minutes of sheer torturous whining and crying, (her not I) she weaseled a break in her task out of me. This was proving to be a long morning, and it was only 0805. I started the duck pond water and set about paying the bills that were due and calling the oldest in sick from school.

I started a load of laundry and stacked the morning dishes with full intent to actually do them. That did not happen. We worked more on lessons and reading out loud. Health was on the schedule today too and they both hate that subject. Even though the oldest is still attending public school at this time, I have her participate in this program when she is home so that she is familiar with it when the time comes to switch to home lessons. At this time, we are thinking October is the magic month.

Time will tell. There may not really be a magic month. In the meantime, the youngest and I are winging it with schooling. The plan is 30 minutes for each subject on the computer in the morning hours and 15 to 30 minutes of the diagnostic testing each day until her learning level is determined. After that it will just be on the first day of each learning week. The balance of our hours will be with hands on tasks like Environmental Science also known as housework. Earth Science AKA cleaning outside in the yard. PE also described as pulling weeds, taking trash to the dumpster, feeding farm animals (those bags of feed are heavy that might even be weight training!). Of course, there are extra-curricular things like driver's training.

a girl and her dog driving

after removing things from greenhouse

things removed from greenhouse

We also went to town and picked up containers and treasure hunted. I did forget to get the cake to celebrate our anniversary. Oops! I will pick it up tomorrow. I had planned to keep the oldest home again in the morning. She still sounds terrible and is sneezing up a storm. That way she can be there for cake too. No fun celebrating an anniversary without some of the kids, right?

Another thing that is part of our learning day is a TBR. I am going to keep the meaning of that a secret for a post or two. I will tell you that it involves a number and for the oldest kiddo it is 64, for me 6, and the youngest it is 15. It might take us a long, long time to get through the TBR but we plan to try hard.

The oldest just came to me and stated that she may want to start home schooling sooner rather than later. She really doesn't care for the way her Spanish teacher in PS is teaching the class. I did tell her how the schedule would work for us and that she would still be doing Spanish with this program. We spent 15 minutes in the Spanish lesson, and she did great! She only missed a couple of questions.

Ideally, I would have them learn sans internet and we may get there eventually, but we are not there yet. It is not close on the horizon either. It is a challenge to get them learning on their own level as they are stuck on the grade number I.E. 7th and 10th when in reality, they are much lower and the PS system "dumbs down" their curriculum to make it fit. There are positives and negatives to this with the biggest negative being it shortchanges the kid. They graduate, but they cannot do graduate level work. The biggest challenge I am having is that the computer program has the grade level on it and it is tricky to hide it.

Once I made her stand and let me sit, we worked on a much lower grade level allowing her to gain confidence while reinforcing what she should actually know. She did well, this is the younger teen I am speaking of. We will do that tomorrow also and we are splitting the day in half on top of this. That way I can go out with an old friend for some grown up time.

artwork in the yard

this in front of me

this to my left

artist and the art

This creation is complements of my son-in-law. I really like it and cannot wait for him to create more on his next trip this way! With that I am going to close this post and get on with the night!!