Well...Hello There!

It's been so long that I am not even going to bother trying to "catch up" but instead will just start fresh, and share what's going on!

...The Girl...

A retrospective of fifteen years

She turned FIFTEEN this month! Can you believe it? She's studying math, writing, ancient Chinese history, environmental science, and baking at the moment. Her plan, as of now, is to start at the local junior college next fall, or sometime soon thereafter, entering the culinary arts program with a focus on baking and pastry. Eventually, she'd like to start her own bakery-café, but will spend at least a couple of years working for someone else to build experience.

In the meantime, she paints frequently, still loves sculpting, and still enjoys documentaries. She's also taken up archery. She helps cook dinner nearly every night, and on the nights I work late, she is always the one to pop a casserole in the oven and make a salad, although she and The Boy did make a veggie burger dinner together last week!

...The Boy...

Happily fixing his aunt's car

The Boy is enrolled in his first automotive class at the local junior college, and absolutely LOVES it. He's working toward becoming a fully ASE certified mechanic, and also dreams of having his own shop one day. He's also studying math, Russian, writing, environmental science, nutrition, and ancient Chinese history. He's rebuilding a 1972 Chevy pickup here at home as well.

Still loves reading, art, and science fiction movies! His ankle, injured from parkour a couple of years ago, is looking more and more like it will need surgery, so we'll be working toward that for summer. He'd love to get back into fencing by late fall, ankle permitting.

...Me...

I'm still working at a grocery store, and at the local university. A month or so ago though, I came to a huge realization. I'm a decent teacher, but I'm not a great one. I'm simply not passionate enough about it. And students deserve someone passionate, and absolutely dedicated. I know a lot of people who are... just not me. Where I do really shine is in administrative work (aka secretarial work). And there are some good potential opportunities coming up at the university. I'd like to work there, at the junior college, or for a good nonprofit.

I am still working on my Master's degree as well. I had plans to tackle my thesis over winter break, and then the kids were sick, and I was sick, and then we all got better, and then we got sick again. Added to the unfinished thesis are the facts that I still need some foreign language under my belt, and I need to take the literature comprehension test. So that I don't kill myself over the next few months, I'll be paying for "project continuation" units over the next year; taking French over next fall and spring, taking the exam next spring, and working on my thesis throughout.

...And in Other News...

We fixed our leaky roof! The family room has been getting increasingly bad over the years, leaking so heavily last year that the room semi-flooded during the heaviest storm. But we put on "peel and seal" roofing, and it actually works! Our next major project is the kids' bathroom plumbing, which leaks like crazy unless we replace washers every two weeks. We're going to get a conversion kit to change it from an old, two-knob set-up to a single knob set-up. And we need to re-do the shower surround at the same time. Fun times!

M sadly lost his job last fall, and has been going through some health issues. We are working toward solutions for both, but it might be a while, which is part of the reason I've been putting in about 50 hours a week, and not working on my thesis. I'm exhausted most of the time, but the kids are really helping me hold it all together.

So, to finish things off for today, here are a couple of random pictures! The first is a drawing I did last night of an orchid from a book on orchids. It was the first time in years that I actually sat down and just drew, and it felt fantastic, and I am mostly pleased with the sketch. The second is a picture I snapped when leaving the university campus a few weeks ago.

Sundries...

...Some random notes for Wednesday...

The Boy started studying physics again, this time through Khan Academy. So, inspired, I went ahead and had him add me as a coach, then I added The Girl in there too, so I can have her work on math and science through the site.

If you haven't checked it out, Khan Academy is FANTASTIC! I use it regularly with the two girls I tutor, and am hoping to make far better use of it with my own kids.

M and I put the Duolingo app on our phones, so we can start learning Spanish. I know some, and can understand a lot more than I can speak, but there's a lot left to learn!

Learning is, and should be, a lifelong process, as far as I am concerned.

image courtesy of patheos.com

I took the CBEST yesterday. Thankfully, I never will have to take it again! Anyone in California who wants to teach has to take it at some point though. One more hurdle out of the way! I got my math and reading scores right away, and those are just fine. I'll get the essay results in another week and a half. I've applied for a few positions teaching English in the fall, but haven't heard anything back... yet. Some of our districts are notoriously slow to hire.

The Boy is teaching The Girl his newly-accomplished parkour skills. She loves spending the time with him, and they're being active. It's a win-win situation! I've also been taking both of them roller skating once a week, when the rink has its $2 days. And when they are at my mom's, the often take the basketball down to the local park to shoot some hoops.

As for my own physical activity, I've recently begun working on running. Right now, I go back and forth between a fast walk, and a relatively slow jog. But, my distance is increasing regularly, and I'm really enjoying it, much to my own surprise!

A Wind in the Door hooked both kids in right away. We're actually reading most of the books from our Afternoon Basket! And we've been doing math and language arts regularly!

M found a dead butterfly that I think we'll be checking out with our jeweler's loupes. I'm thumbing through The Private Eye, and need to get some sketchbooks!

This Saturday, The Girl and I have our last puppy petting session for a month and a half. This litter will be moving on, now that they are bigger and have mastered basic commands, and the new litter isn't due until early-mid May. We'll get to meet them around the two-three week mark.

Just for fun, here is what happens when the kids get a hold of my phone while I'm driving them around...

Hope your week is going well!

A New Year...

I am hoping you all have a 

My New Year's Resolutions...

Organization

This includes finances, our home, homeschooling, meal planning, etc. I wrote about this topic in a whole post of its own!

Health

Pay more attention to my body (I'm reading Intuitive Eating for some guidelines on this)

Remember to take my supplements

Move every day. I love hiking, biking, swimming, roller skating, etc., and I want to have fun while getting healthier. I figure if I move every day, I am on the right path!

Personal

Start meditating more -- just a few minutes a day is better than none!

Work toward my personal and professional goals in 2015. Chances are strong that I will be laid off in June again, so this time I am going in prepared.

Start learning Spanish.

Expand my knitting repertoire.

Week One Down...

Phew!

Actually, the week, as far as homeschooling, went very well. Better than I expected our first week to go! We changed a few things around, but that's to be expected. We had some big hits, and no misses (yet anyway).

A slightly old picture, with her pal Emily

THE GIRL

The Girl tackled Saxon Math 6/5 this week, as well as a few lessons from Reading Horizons. The math was, this early in the year, mostly review work... a lot of pattern/skip counting, which I explained to her is a great way to practice multiplication. She finally noticed the pattern the 9 times table makes, and was very excited to share her discovery with me-- "Mom, the 10's go up, and the 1's go down, and then halfway through, you just turn the numbers around, and if you add the 10's and the 1's...they always add up to 9!" I remember too when The Boy made that discovery a few years back, and it made that part of multiplication so much easier. In reading, she worked on common words, "ed" endings, and silent e words. We also started reading Dr. Dolittle's Puddleby Adventures, which she very much enjoys. We read from A Child's Story of the Animal World (our "new" science/zoology "textbook") about the animal kingdom, and small creatures, such as the amoeba. And she watched a couple of episodes of Blue Planet. How we love David Attenborough! The Girl says "his voice is soothing and he knows SO much about animals!"

We did not get to our writing plan this week, but will add that in next week. I also hope she'll apply her reading lessons more next week to actual reading. I picked up a few library books for her, and we've been writing each other notes, plus I leave her a note every morning when I go to work and she's still sleeping. And I need to pick out some projects for her to do from The Amateur Zoologist.

Another slightly old picture

THE BOY

Something has happened with The Boy. Somehow over the summer, my boy really started growing up. He took all responsibility for his own work this week, and did everything I gave him to do without complaint. Not only without complaint, but happily!

This week he tackled his first lessons in The Art of Problem Solving. Now, if you have never seen this math series, it's pretty tough. It is what is called "discovery based", meaning that they give him several problems to solve at the beginning of the lesson, and then explain ways to approach them. This fosters a different sense of understanding than math he has done in the past, and so far he absolutely loves it. I had him sit down yesterday and read, a second time, through their solutions, and he kept saying "I never thought of it this way, but they make it easier". He did manage to get nearly every problem correct this week, so I think we're off on the right foot. He also read a chapter in Conceptual Physics, defined the key terms, and answered a couple of the comprehension questions, in addition to watching a lesson from How Things Work, which involved fairly copious note-taking. And he watched an episode of Into the Universe, wrote an informative paragraph on the uses and benefits of nylon, and read several chapters in The Phantom Tollbooth. He also worked, on his own, on a few drawing projects from Drawing: The Complete Course. And he did lesson one in German, from Duolingo.

I realized yesterday that next year, he will be the same age I was when I started summer art classes at the local junior college as a concurrent high school student. He is very excited about the idea of trying out college that way next fall! He figures he'll start with an art class, then maybe add in German, and then start taking placement tests for math and English. In a nutshell, that means we have another two years, more or less, to finish building a really strong language arts and math base. YIKES!

Next week I want him to continue working with Write Source 2000, to develop other types of paragraphs, and to brainstorm a writing project. And I think I might add in readings/projects/videos from The New Way Things Work, since the Conceptual Physics readings don't take him long.

I asked him point blank if he noticed I ramped up his workload this year. His response was "Yeah, I noticed, but I like it."

And a really old picture!

 TOGETHER

We did an art project (Drawing Upside Down) together that turned out to be tougher than I anticipated. We watched an episode of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, all about what music really means. We started our logic/arguement course, which, as it had Monty Python clips, was a huge hit. The Girl even insisted we take the quiz at the end of the section we did, so I let them answer the questions, getting 9 out of 10 right. We read about Crete in The Book of the Ancient Greeks (as well as a chapter in The Human Odyssey, but the kids and I prefer the Mills' book), learned about the origins of the English alphabet with The Word Snoop, analyzed some denotations and connotations with Figuratively Speaking, made progress through The Twenty-One Balloons, and started The Marvelous Land of the Snergs just last night (our bedtime reading), which so far is just absolutely delightful. We also started our Sunday geography studies, using DK's Geography of the World and outline maps from National Geographic.

Next week we'll add in grammar and poetry, and I plan to read from Tales of Troy and Greece, especially the stories of the Minotaur, and of Daedalus and Icarus, since those were specifically mentioned in our history readings. We'll tackle our geography reading with The Glorious Adventure, nature reading with Swampwalker's Journal, listen to some more Bach (the composer of the month)... and I am still planning our art project.

Looking at everything here, it has been a good and full first week! I am very pleased with what we're attempting, and how well it has started out. Now only 35 weeks to go!