Homeschool Highlights - Valentine's Day Edition

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Welcome to Homeschool Highlights! 

This weekly link-up is your opportunity to share some highlights of what is happening in your homeschool and in your world. I've been hosting this link-up for awhile, but since my youngest graduated from our homeschool, I'm now passing along the hostess baton to another homeschool blogger.


I'm so excited to be able to introduce you to the new hostess for Homeschool Highlights! Please visit Megan at My Full Heart and get to know her. For the next couple of weeks she and I will co-host the weekly Homeschool Highlights, and then I'll bow out. Thank you, Megan!

Grab a cup of coffee and let's get started!

This week's news  . . . News from the past couple of weeks, actually, and although it was a lot of "the usual" there were a few events that were a bit out of the ordinary!

We stayed home to watch the Superbowl again this year, and a few friends came over. None of us care much (or in my case, at all!) about football, so this is the one game we watch all season. As you might expect, we are paying at least as much attention to the commercials as we are to the game itself, and some of us are here just for the food. Turned out the "kids" all played games in the dining room and watched very little of the game, so it was just the parents watching TV. The food was wonderful, if I do say it myself. And it was a great evening overall.

The college semester began on February 3rd, so the first week of the month was very busy with Kennady starting classes and adjusting to that new schedule. Meaghan is doing her classes online, but has spent Mondays and Tuesdays at the college with Kennady while I'm at work. So far Kennady is enjoying her classes and even Math hasn't stressed her out yet. I spent way more time on my non-work days running errands during that first week, when I'd hoped to have a couple of days each week to spend entirely at home.

Friday morning we were surprised when there was a tornado warning for our county, and even more surprised when tornadoes actually touched down in five different place and did quite a bit of damage! Nothing right near where we live, but right through the Main Street and downtown areas just a block or two from where I work. Many large trees downed - quite a few falling on houses - and parts of roofs torn off. My workplace and most of Main Street was without power for the entire day. I sure was glad to not be working Fridays any more! The storms passed through very quickly and by late morning everything was back to normal and cleanup well underway, so for us things were not much changed.

On Saturday evening we went with a group of about twenty from church to the Hershey Bears hockey game.

A Bears win!

Kennady's phone basically died during the game, so we went to get her a new one on Sunday afternoon. That was something we'd been planning to do for a couple of months, but kept putting off. 

This past week was more or less quiet and ordinary. Our Tuesday ride home from school and work was disrupted by a flat tire - ugh! That wasn't fun, but it happened while I was driving, and right in town during stop and go driving rather than while Kennady was driving or on a highway. It wasn't difficult to pull into a parking lot and get help, and not even a long wait for someone to come change the tire for me. (When I texted hubby to let him know what happened and that we'd be late getting home, he asked if I couldn't have changed the tire. Excuse me?? I could, but why would I when that's what we pay the AAA membership for?? I was just getting my money's worth!) 

Yesterday was our first Open House at the homeschool co-op, so I spent a little extra time there. I was acting as hostess for the Homeschool Moms Night Out in the evening, so I just stayed in town for the whole day instead of running home for a rushed dinner. I was able to enjoy a longer-than-usual coffee break with a good friend in the afternoon, and pick up my groceries during my free time between co-op and the evening meeting.

Do you have special plans for Valentine's Day today? I had thought it would be big family dinner, but the boys and their friends have plans for the evening, so it will be just me and hubby, and Kennady and her boyfriend here for dinner. I'd better get started baking bread and dessert though!

What I'm Highlighting . . .  my Valentine's round-up post from a couple of years ago: Sweets and Hearts for Valentine's Day

 

Reader Favorites . . . some of the most read posts here on Homeschool Coffee Break over the past couple of months - thanks for reading, commenting, and sharing!

Auxiliary Kids



Twenty-Six Lists - Goals for 2020



January Photo Album



Coffee Break Reading List (February 3, 2020)

On my blogs recently . . .

Here on Homeschool Coffee Break:

Twenty-Six Lists #3 - Getting Out of Town
Coffee Break Reading List (February 3, 2020)

And on my book blog, Just A Second:

Wordless Wednesday - Hershey Bears
What I'm Reading - February 10, 2020
Scripture and a Snapshot - Turn Your Ear to My Cry
Wordless Wednesday - Canadian Coffee
Scripture and a Snapshot - Continue Your Love
Monthly Bookshelf Review - January 2020 with Connect Five Friday

Just A Second is where I share book reviews and other book-related things, and update on what's on my bookshelf. I've been reading:

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals
Until the Mountains Fall by Connilyn Cossette
Emma by Jane Austen
The Curse of the Healing Kiss by Mark McClelland
The Next Always by Nora Roberts

A parting shot . . . Kennady was so happy with the quality of the camera in her new phone! She sent me this shot of Merida that she particularly liked when testing camera features.

Grab the button and link up with Homeschool Highlights!

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Homeschool Highlights guidelines:

• Your blog should be family-friendly content, and your post should include something about homeschooling. If I don't see homeschooling in it, I might have to delete the link, and I feel bad when I need to do that. 
• Please link directly to your post, not your blog's homepage.
• Please include a link in your post to Homeschool Coffee Break - you may use the graphic above if you wish. 
• Visit a couple of the other bloggers and comment or share.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Don't miss a coffee break! Subscribe to Homeschool Coffee Break by Email!

©2006-2020 Homeschool Coffee Break. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. http://kympossibleblog.blogspot.com/

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Homeschool Highlights - Flag Day Edition

This post contains affiliate links - using affiliate links from Homeschool Coffee Break helps fuel this blog and our homeschool - thank you!

Welcome to Homeschool Highlights! 

This weekly link-up is your opportunity to share some highlights of what is happening in your homeschool and in your world each week. If you write a wrap-up post at the end of each week, like I've been doing, we'd love to see what you're busy with from week to week. If you'd like to pick a favorite post from your week that spotlights a resource or activity in your homeschool that you'd like to tell others about, we're interested in those too. I'm keeping the guidelines as simple as I can, and they will appear at the bottom of each post, along with the link tool. I look forward to getting to know you, and I hope this will be a source of encouragement and good ideas for all of us.

Grab a cup of coffee and let's get started!

As I mentioned last week, my Homeschool Highlights posts will be a bit different during the summer. And I suppose I'll have to consider how long I'll keep hosting this particular link-up. I'm already in the process of handing off the art link-up. Who knew the chain reaction of seemingly unrelated things that would result from graduating my baby?

So anyway, Kennady does have a Consumer Math course that she needs to finish up, and she worked on that this week. I haven't checked to see how much is left to do. I've required each of my kids to do some kind of personal finance or consumer math before they graduate, so they hopefully have a decent understanding of how to manage their money and stay out of debt. I keep seeing this commercial for a bank that does debt consolidation and that sort of thing. It talks about the crippling amount of credit card debt that young people have and says, "it's just not fair". I don't know - if you borrowed the money, then what would be unfair is if you didn't pay it back. But I digress.

My big boys were gone by the time I got home from work on Friday evening - they went on a men's retreat with guys from church. From all the pictures I saw, I think they had a great time. I worked on Saturday, and in the evening Kennady hung out with co-op friends. Sunday was a rather quiet day, although Kennady and I went out and did some shopping.

During the week, in addition to our regular work schedules, I started physical therapy to fix up my hip, and I did a couple of year-end evaluations for families in our homeschool umbrella group. Kennady spent one day with her friend, and the guys were out that evening too, and I got to thinking that perhaps more of our evenings are going to become like that soon. More quiet and with fewer family members around than I'm used to!

And yes, we watched the Stanley Cup Finals and were so excited for the Blues!

Since the Toronto Raptors were in the NBA Championship, we even watched a bit of basketball. And when I say "we" I really mean my husband. He watched Games 5 and 6 of the series, and I watched maybe a total of ten minutes worth. But it's pretty cool that a Canadian team won the championship!

What I'm Highlighting . . . June 14th is Flag Day in the United States, so if you're American I hope you are proudly flying or displaying the Stars and Stripes! If you want to know more about the history of Flag Day, see my post Flag Day 2018.

What's New . . . Well, I recently got myself a new coffeemaker. And shortly before that, a new French press, because mine was broken.



And this beautiful piece of string art was purchased recently.

And every now and again, I try a new recipe. This week I tried a new flatbread recipe - lavash, which is an Armenian flatbread. Mine didn't come out looking quite right, but they did taste pretty good, so I'll try again next time I have some bread dough ready.

I recommend . . . checking out the Homeschool Crew Review blog because we are looking for some reviewers to join us. Some reviewers - like me! - are essentially finished homeschooling now that the school year is ending, or maybe their circumstances have changed. For various reasons, we always have some vacancies in the middle of the calendar year, so if you've been thinking you might like to do this, now is the time to apply. If you homeschool and you have a blog (or vlog), consider it! Have questions? Ask me!

Find out more here: Apply to join the Homeschool Review Crew!



And don't forget the June Firefly special now on at SchoolhouseTeachers.com! All courses, all subjects - for your whole family, and no limits. Sign up using the coupon code FIREFLY and get your first month for just $5.

On my blogs last week . . .

Here on Homeschool Coffee Break:

Virtual Refrigerator - Grad, Gold, and Firebird
Memoria Press History Study - The Wars of the Jews by Josephus

And on my book blog, Just A Second:

Recent Reads - A Dangerous Collaboration
Wordless Wednesday - The View From My Front Porch
Recent Reads - The Noble Guardian
Scripture and a Snapshot - The Day of Pentecost

Just A Second is where I share book reviews and other book-related things, and update on what's on my bookshelf. This week I reviewed The Noble Guardian (The Bow Street Runners Trilogy) by Michelle Griep and A Dangerous Collaboration (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery) by Deanna Raybourn, and I've been reading:

The Pink Bonnet: True Colors: Historical Stories of American Crime by Liz Tolsma
The Express Bride by Kimberley Woodhouse
An Artless Demise (A Lady Darby Mystery) by Anna Lee Huber

A parting shot . . .

Grab the button and link up with Homeschool Highlights!

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<a href="http://kympossibleblog.blogspot.com/ title="Homeschool Coffee Break"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7wr0-NI6UdHibWAcXkrcAc47y8tPrt4d0dQLduL1h628DtaQN_6us-rb6vzu_8LDx3E-r7ZQKsNCio2VE_GfY7upd7KXurFKK3IsQN7uN1b5a009xdVCZrVDlaCc_kh_ZMdoIWIm7GpWq/h120/homeschool+highlights+B.jpg"  width=132&height=150&cropmode=none" alt="Homeschool Coffee Break" style="border: none;" /></a></div>

Homeschool Highlights guidelines:

• Your blog should be family-friendly content, and your post should include something about homeschooling. If I don't see homeschooling in it, I might have to delete the link, and I feel bad when I need to do that. 
• Please link directly to your post, not your blog's homepage.
• Please include a link in your post to Homeschool Coffee Break - you may use the graphic above if you wish. 
• Visit a couple of the other bloggers and comment or share.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Don't miss a coffee break! Subscribe to Homeschool Coffee Break by Email!

©2006-2019 Homeschool Coffee Break. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. http://kympossibleblog.blogspot.com/

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

How Do You Do Phys.Ed.?

This post contains affiliate links - using affiliate links from Homeschool Coffee Break helps fuel this blog and our homeschool - thank you! 

No matter how long we've been homeschooling, we are curious about how other homeschoolers do things. And homeschoolers who are newer to the game obviously have lots of questions! This series will try to answers some of the questions homeschoolers ask each other. Questions about how we handle some of the little details and about our opinions on different aspects of homeschooling. Questions that we all might answer differently because what works great in one family might not work at all in another.

How do you do Phys.Ed.?

This can be a practical concern. We know it's good for kids' health for them to stay active, and if they want to play sports, we'd like to give them that opportunity. And in many places there's a grad requirement of at least one Phys.Ed. credit during high school. So how do homeschoolers make it happen when they don't have a school gymnasium and twenty other kids in the class?

There are plenty of opportunities out there for kids to participate in sports, and homeschoolers can usually find the options that work for their families. And like so many other "how do you homeschool" questions, this one has many possible answers! Here's how we've done Phys.Ed. over the years.

In our school district, homeschooled students may not participate in high school team sports. I've heard that in other school districts, that may be different. There are now some teams in different sports that are made up of primarily homeschooled students. My kids have played team sports, but we chose community based teams. All three of my boys played community league baseball for five to nine years or so. My daughter played community softball for nine years. We also have had volleyball, hockey, lacrosse, and soccer teams that the kids could have played on. We probably would have been even more open to sports if we didn't live so far away from everything! But regardless, that counted as Phys.Ed. Kids that play team sports during their high school years can definitely count that towards their Phys.Ed. credit.

softball champs!

The biggest contributor to my kids' Phys.Ed. grades on their report card, and their Phys.Ed. credits in high school was the co-op style gym class our homeschool fellowship group has operated. One day a week, we rented space at an indoor sports facility, and our kids could play football, soccer, basketball, badminton, volleyball, field hockey, and many other sports and wide games in appropriate age groupings. In fact, this gym class was the highlight of my kids' week for many years! Even when they weren't crazy about whatever sport they were currently playing, they loved getting together with their friends.

The homeschool group also had a Field Day in the spring, and we tried to participate in that. Track and field events, perhaps a soccer game, and a tug-of-war with the parents were featured events.

2011 - Kennady placed fourth in the football throw, not far
behind the boys that took the top three spots!

Other sports opportunities that were part of our Phys.Ed. classes included archery classes, basketball tournaments, bowling, paintball tournaments, and weekly gym nights hosted by our church. Landon was a member of Civil Air Patrol during his high school years, and the physical training and activities were counted in his Phys.Ed. credit as well.



Before the kids were high school age, I just gave them a grade on their report card for Phys.Ed. and didn't worry too much about how much time they were spending. They were active and had engaged in physical activities and sports, so they got an A! During the high school years, when the grade was for a credit, we based the credit on hours. So I calculated the hours they were in the gym class, and had them log the time they spent at paintball or football or gym nights. None of my kids had any trouble at all coming up with enough hours to equal at least a half credit during each year of high school, and that was without playing organized sports!

See my related post: Middle School Monday - Phys.Ed.

How do you do Phys.Ed.? Leave a comment and let me know what works for you - or leave a homeschool question you're curious about.

***************
This post is part of the March 2019 Homeschool Collection on the Homeschool Review Crew blog.

Don't miss a coffee break! Subscribe to Homeschool Coffee Break by Email!

 ©2006-2019 Homeschool Coffee Break. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. http://kympossibleblog.blogspot.com/ 

 We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.