The Homeschool Mother's Journal - January 17

 

In my life this week… the week started very bummed because my beloved Packers lost last weekend. *sigh* I have managed a couple mornings of God Time, but for the most part I haven't gotten back in the groove of getting up early for quiet time since I got sick in December. I waver on whether to put more effort into getting up early because if my body is sleeping, it must need sleep. On the other hand, I also need God Time. What I keep reminding myself is we are not back to normal and I probably need to go with the flow of what's happening and not force anything.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share… I really liked this article about growing daughters watching you. And this is a great article and collection of links on How to Homeschool Getting Started.

What homeschooling in the winter looks like at my house! The girls had been playing outside and were too cold to take off their layers!

 In our homeschool this week… it was just a regular week without appointments so we got all our planned stuff done. For history, we kept reading

and the girls have started creating pages for their notebooks about the different paths and showing the ones that have similar roots and then diverge. The book continues to give rise to lots of good discussion about our beliefs and how they differ from other religions. I thrilled the girls by combining their copywork and their memory work and eliminating a work period. We can't always do this but we can now and they are loving it. And they did both start multiplication on Khan Academy this week. ODD has learned some about it before, but doesn't have her facts down yet. YDD is just learning about it for the first time. Both have to be tested this summer and so we need to spend some time on multiplication before that happens.

Look what we did. . . these are the pages the girls created for the Hindu path and the Buddhist path. I did not give them directions; they both developed their own vision of the page and then created it.

ODD's venn diagram

YDD's "trees" listing what she felt was important

Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share… I really love the tips here for fitting in the extras. I especially need to act like a homeschooler and read at night.

I am inspired by… the Winter Hopscotch from iHomeschool Network

I've been reading the copywork, homeschooling Charlotte Mason high school, unleashing the writer in your child, homeschooling high school, and how to fit in the extras series.

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing… last Friday we met with our local homeschool group for a science day. Here are a couple pictures from that:

ODD and her BFF April

This is what she every time I took her picture this day!

My favorite thing this week was… my new Pandora station: Beach Boys. It's just played song after song that I love. I will say it's absolutely NOT my kids favorite, but I figure they can suffer through tunes I love some times!

Things I’m working on… I had another successful week of counting calories which has meant success in slowly taking off weight. What I've learned is that I could be eating 200-500 calories less a day and I did for a while until I remembered I don't want to lose weight at that pace! So this week I've been trying to keep my calories no more than 200 below my daily goal.

We're reading…

ODD says this book can get very confusing at times, and it has a funny and sad ending. She has read all the previous books in the series, but has decided to read something else for a while instead of moving onto the next book.

This is the newest in the Mitch Rapp series and it was good! I started reading the series a few years ago and got DH hooked. He was very antsy for me to finish this so he could read it! I was pretty pleased to get it read in a week since I haven't found much reading time lately.

YDD liked how going to Mars was an accident, and asked for more of the series which I took as a good sign. What surprised me was that she finished this book in 60 minutes of reading.

ODD is cooking… sloppy joes and 40 minute whole wheat rolls! Monday night she helped me cook dinner and did a great job. Next time she wants me to sit at the breakfast bar while she makes it. Once she gets this meal down, we'll branch out. I am thinking of her first few meals being ground meat based since that was where she started with sloppy joes. I am excited about equipping her to work in the kitchen.

I’m thankful for. . . another good biopsy result for my husband this week.