Homeschool Mother's Journal: In Which I Am Not Very Creative

I seriously had no idea what to title this and was going to apologize for a very generic title that had the date, until I realized that the "no creativity" thing was actually a bit of a theme this week! LOL

In our homeschool... Landon and Kennady continued studying the Revolutionary War time period.  I felt a little bad that I didn't have any great hands-on activities to do this week, but we are planning a day trip to Philadelphia soon so I'm excited about that.  When we talked about the different features of historic Philadelphia, I was able to point out places that I had been to before and what we would likely be able to see when we visit sometime in the next couple weeks.  We have yet to decide on a day.

I still have to check over much of Spencer's work from this week, so I'm not sure how far he got in all his subjects, but I do know that he and Landon (and Kennady) have been working on some of the classical astronomy projects.  This week they each made a sun volvelle, but they still have to finish the activity that goes with it.  (A volvelle is a traditional astronomical calculating instrument that shows various motions of celestial bodies in the sky.)

The kids were also outside observing sunrises, sunsets, and twilight to darkness transitions.

Once again, there were things we should have done that we didn't.  Usually that was because our plans changed and we weren't home when we thought we would be.

On Thursday afternoon I went to the first of our planning meetings for our group's spring co-op classes.  I'm thankful to the moms (and one grandpa!) who stepped up with cool ideas for classes to offer.  Mostly I'm thankful that I didn't feel any pressure to teach this year! LOL  I've taught for several years running and definitely wanted a break this year.  I did volunteer to help one of the moms teach a finance/economics type class, but I'm not the lead teacher, so I'm totally okay with that.  

In other news... on the weekend, Landon worked at a Civil Air Patrol activity again.  And Spencer helped DH and some of the men at church with work on building a storage shed.

The rains came on Tuesday! This was the greenhouse parking lot when I went to pick up my hubby from work.  It's not clear, but the parking lot was a couple inches deep in water.  It was amazing how fast everything drained once the deluge stopped though.

Helpful homeschooling tips or advice... hmmm... sorry, I got nothin' this week.  LOL

What's working/not working for us... we've still got some tweaking to do before our schedule can really be said to be working for us.  We did much better with getting everyone up on time this week! Only one day that I had to wake the boys and they lost gaming time.  But even though everyone is getting up on time, we're still not quite ready to open the books and get started on time.  So the first thing we're going to do is bump up the time they need to be up and moving by 10 minutes.

We also have a distraction most mornings when my oldest son is getting ready to leave for work, because it's usually right in the middle of our history lesson.  Not sure how we'll handle that, but I do know that if Landon and Kennady and I are actually working on the lesson when Harrison comes upstairs, rather than just getting our stuff together and hoping to start, that will help immensely!

Thoughts/questions I have... can we fit one more computer-based course into Spencer's study, or is that just too ambitious in terms of managing time on the computer?  (We just need another computer, I guess.)

One of my favorite things this week... I made challah for the first time on the weekend, and it was amazing.  And not difficult to do!  In fact, I'll be getting another batch of dough ready tonight, as soon as I finish this post.

A photo/video/quote or link to share... 

"Books are a uniquely portable magic." ~Stephen King

And I guess even more portable when you have an e-reader.  LOL

On the bookshelf...

• Educating the WholeHearted Child by Clay Clarkson with Sally Clarkson
• Will You Love Me in September by Philippa Carr
• Brightest Heaven of Invention by Peter J Leithart, with Shakespeare's Hamlet

Finished The Killing Way by Tony Hays.

A parting shot...

This post is linked up at iHomeschoolNetwork - see whether other homeschoolers are more creative than we were this week! (I bet they were.  It wouldn't take that much.)