Weekly Report-ish

When I first imagined our homeschool I pictured a stream of consciousness kind of learning that would play to my children's creative energies. There I was, in my thoughts, a fresh faced young nun with a pixie haircut and a pert little nose and the voice of an angel; leading my flock through the fields of Austria, their sweet voices raised in song as we learned. Sure, we were wearing the drapes but did that stop us from putting on elaborate puppet shows? No. Only the Nazis could put an end to that.

I suspected, even then, that this might not be our reality. I was all for field trips but Austria seemed ambitious and I adore a pixie haircut but even if I had one, I'm a little too creaky and scowling to pass for a maiden governess. I also suspected that my children didn't need to learn to be creative. In fact, I learned very quickly that my children needed to learn how to put their business ends into a chair and be quiet.

Now that we've made some progress in the area of proper comportment for lessons we are back to sprinkling in some directed creativity. Is that even a thing? I think so. Today we spent about 10 minutes looking at a page in, "Come Look With Me: Enjoying Art with Children", which is a cool little book with beautiful representations of classic works of art. It includes a brief discussion of the artist and the piece and some questions to get them thinking about thinking about art. Henry looked bored, Susannah fell out of her chair twice (I think on purpose, out of boredom) but Eleanor played along.

Then we did our art project. We made sugar cube step pyramids to go along with our studies on ancient Egypt. It was not very challenging which made it perfect for me. Henry, again, was less than taken with it and when I said, "Well, if you don't want to do this you can go and stand in the corner instead." he said cheerfully, "Ok", and went and stood in the corner. Well played. That's my kid for sure.

I don't have much to add to the last post. I haven't discussed math very much. Probably because it hasn't been a problem. They get it. I don't. Good enough. This week, however, Eleanor really had a time with the Singapore math day. Easy stuff was tripping her up. 9 + 2. Just couldn't figure that one out. And forgot about borrowing in subtraction. That's not good. She was doing borrowing in 2nd grade at school but Saxon 3 hasn't incorporated it much, if at all. Was she having an off day in general (9 + 2 is certainly something we covered earlier in the week) or is she backsliding? Any ideas?

I'm so ready for soccer to be over. This Saturday is the Jamboree (aka disorganized last day of games) and its the weekend of the big dance recital. That's always equal parts great fun and tremendous ordeal. I would love to have ONE week off from extracurriculars. ONE. What would happen, do you think, if I just enforced one?