Monday Musings...

Outside My Window...
More cloudy gray skies, and more rain to come! We are supposed to have a few sunny days later in the week, to be followed by more rain, and then more sun. There are plum trees blooming everywhere... so pretty! And acacia in bloom too, which usually indicates allergies on the way for The Boy.

In My House & Garden...
We're definitely getting better at keeping the house tidy, though I still sometimes play catch-up, like yesterday's four loads of dishes (yes, I was them by hand, we don't have a dishwasher, so they are smaller loads, but still...) and three loads of laundry. The kids have gotten much better at remembering to pick things up on a daily basis. I still need to purge some books (the pain!), and pack some away.

In the garden, my hydrangeas are leafing out, as is the apple tree. The limequat is in constant bloom, and the dwarf peach put out flowers over the last week too. Everything else is wet and often muddy.

In Our Homeschooling...
The Boy and I looked at the pre-test for Art of Problem Solving Prealgebra last night, and figured out some areas to do a little extra work on in addition to Life of Fred. So he'll be doing some Math Mammoth work this week in fractions. We'll also be targeting some decimal work, and integers (both a little later on). We didn't finish his short story last week, so he'll be rewriting and editing that this week. He will also be taking the National Mythology Exam this week! He'll be thumbing through a few books on Nikola Tessla to pick one to read.

The Girl will also be using Math Mammoth this week, to work on multiplication while we wait for the Saxon 5/4 test packet I ordered. I think she's bored with where she is in Saxon, and needs to move forward. Testing her out of lessons seems the best approach to jumping ahead. We made some great progress in reading last week with a combination of whiteboard spelling (word families, suffixes, etc.) and reading from real books, so we'll continue that! We'll be starting Winged Moccasins: The Story of Sacajawea this week as well.

Reading & Watching...
I had ordered a bunch of free science dvds from HHMI recently, and just got them in the mail Saturday, so we might check out one or two of those. I'm still reading Uncle Tom's Cabin for class, and hopefully will be starting Overcoming Dyslexia this week. In fun reading, I'm going back through the Hunger Games trilogy, as The Boy is starting the third book today, and I want to be able to discuss the books with him. It's been a while since my original reading of them, so I have lost track of some of the finer points. We'll be watching Modern Marvels: The Great Wall of China this week, as we read about the Great Wall in both The Human Odyssey and The Complete Book of Marvels. I also challenged myself to complete an assignment I gave the kids -- one biography or autobiography each month, so this month I am reading Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen.

Happenings Around Here...
The Girl's birthday is tomorrow! She'll be ELEVEN. She talked about maybe going bowling, and of course we'll be making special meals, she'll get gifts tomorrow morning, etc. She had her first roller derby practice with the older girls last night, and adored it. I haven't seen her work that hard in a while -- I think she needed the challenge! We're going to go to the local school parking lot after hours this week and work on her getting a running start on her toe stops... something she struggled a little with last night. The Boy has fencing tonight and Wednesday. And today I am going around to look for the last present I need to pick up for tomorrow!

Hope you all have a good week!