Well I've been incognito for quite some time. I have to feel motivated to write and I just haven't been feeling it lately. My camera is on its last leg as well so you can not blog without having good pictures. I do believe I was able to capture a few good shots this week.


1. The cell experiment with Jello. My DD10 just loves experiments and I am working hard to research resources to liven up her science studies.

There are just way too many choices in the market for homeschooling. You can literally be up all night (it is now 12:24 AM) looking at samples online. I think I'm going to go out on a limb and just pull library books and read about science topics, find experiments that further explore the topic, and have DD write a summary about what she learns. I have such a hard time letting go of the notion that I need a curriculum provider to put everything in a grid for me to make sure my kids are learning. OOOO....I found some great material on homeschoolshare for a chemistry unit study. Now I don't have to reinvent the wheel.

What else have we been up to sense my last post?

2. hanging out with new friends from co-op. Mondays are the kids favorite day of the week b/c of co-op.

3. We are waaaayyyyy behind in MFW Explorers to 1850. I don't know how to get everything done in one week. My grid says its week 20 something and we are in Week 15. I believe we are like 8 weeks behind. Maybe I'm going to have to skip some weeks to not end up schooling all summer. ...sigh...

What's going on in academics?

4. We used Easy Grammar last year but I have to shake things up so I added BJU Grammar to hit some issues I see that come up in my kids' writing. In my work with them I often refer back to topics they learned in Easy Grammar that way it keeps the knowledge fresh in their brains. For example, I often put problem sentences that I find in their writing on the board for us to figure out what is wrong. We start by putting parenthesis around the prepositional phrase (Easy Grammar), identifying the subject and verb of the sentence, and drawing a line between the subject and predicate. By the time we do this they are able to see that conjunctions are missing or they used the wrong participle part of a verb, etc. We don't really diagram past this exercise but I think it is really helpful to help them see how they should write complete sentences. I like that BJU gives you paragraphs at the end of each lesson so you can find errors. I have learned that it usually takes multiple resources to address different academic needs. However, it can definitely get expensive.

5. I just captured the picture below. DD10 decided to construct her own Paddle to the Sea out of a cardboard box. Isn't it great? It's equipped with navigation, a dog catcher at the end (why would you need this in the sea?) and a telescope. Her imagination at work, love it! Maybe it's the Mechanical Engineering classes she's been attending for the last 4 weeks that has her juices flowing. I really like the 4 books in the Beautiful Feet Geography through Literature series. We have really learned a lot about the river systems and industries in the US that have been spawned by the river.

Perhaps I will have more spurts of motivation to keep my blog. I've been spending a lot of time on the Well Trained Mind forums learning from so many veteran homeschoolers. I do believe that forum is the single most important resource that I have found where I've learned so much about this journey.

What went on in your homeschool world this week? Join the weekly wrap up by visiting the weird, unsocialized homeschoolers blog and sign up and see what other homeschooling families have been doing this week.