Homeschool Mother's Journal: In Which There are Cowboys, Hockey Players, and Giant Reindeer

In our homeschool... We tried to buckle down and get more done this week, but at this point I'm not sure how successful we were.  We still had a couple of days with late starts and interruptions or distractions - I guess that's always the way though!

In history, we did a biography of Fanny Crosby, and learned about the cattle drives in what we think of as the "old west" - cowboys and wild west shows. I'm from Calgary (Cowtown) so I love the rodeo events and chuckwagon racing and many of those exciting things that were born on cattle drives and on the range and became popular entertainment during the heyday of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show!  I sure wish we could take a trip to Calgary during the Stampede and call it a field trip! LOL

Other than that we worked on catching some things up, and I think we'll be in pretty good shape by the time we take our holiday break.

In other news... Landon promoted to Staff Sergeant at Civil Air Patrol.  DH and I were both there this time and DH got to stab himself put on the new pins.

We've been suffering some pretty serious hockey withdrawal because of the NHL lockout, but we got a little relief this week.  We had tickets to the Hershey Bears game in Washington DC on Thursday night.

We have tickets to a Hershey Bears game for tomorrow night too!

Helpful homeschooling tips/advice to share... Sometimes I need to remind myself that we're HOMEschooling.  It's okay to stay home.  We don't have to do everything and always be on the go.

What's working/not working for us... Visual Latin.  Finally got back in the groove and have been working on it and the kids are remembering that it's fun! And a bonus: made me look like such an awesome homeschool mom when Kennady told Daddy all about the Latin vocabulary she learned.  LOL

Thoughts/questions I have... There has GOT to be a way to tweak our schedule to make it easier to fit things like Latin and the writing program in better.  Got to be.  I just have to figure out how to do it.

One of my favorite things this week... hockey! We had a great time at the game, but I was so disappointed to find out that the NHL negotiations have broken down yet again.

A photo/video/quote or link to share... Here's a website - Christmas Around the World - that describes Christmas traditions in various countries.  The descriptions are brief and share a little of how the holidays were celebrated in the earliest tradition, and of course modern celebrations may be quite different.  Fun for a quick holiday-themed unit study!

On the bookshelf... I just haven't had the time to read a whole lot lately.

• King Alfred's English by Laurie J White

And I read A Christmas Homecoming by Anne Perry.

A parting shot...

Our friends lit up their giant reindeer/swingset for the holidays!

This post is linked up at iHomeschoolNetwork - see what other homeschoolers did this week!