Settling In...

Homeschooling this fall has been more about getting settled in, than it has been about starting a new academic year. I've made some more changes to my Learning page to more accurately reflect what we're up to, most noticeably, that I'm not doing formal spelling with The Girl after all, but I'll talk about that in a minute!

What We're Up To...
The Boy is well entrenched in another semester at the junior college. He's taking, and seriously enjoying, stellar astronomy. After each class, he comes to me with stories of his teacher, and what was learned, and I am thrilled it is going so well! In the spring, he hopes to take sculpture, and perhaps German.

As for The Girl's spelling, I am approaching it in much the same way I did with The Boy, which was correcting it as we go. Instead, I am having both of them participate in writing projects, even some collaborative pieces. The Girl is reading SO well now, and she's picking up some spelling just from reading, so I think this laid back approach could work.

Math is going well too. The Boy is continuing with TabletClass (algebra), and The Girl is zipping through the first book of Key to Fractions.

Still To Add In...
The Boy will be studying Big History this year, as we find it meshes extremely well with his science choices (astronomy this fall, biology at home in the spring). I haven't quite decided if The Girl will do this with him, but I think it is more likely she will have a year of naturalists and animal scientist biographies.

The Girl completed her first orientation at the Wildlife Rescue Center. She has two more trainings to go before she can start fostering young wild animals in the spring. She may also volunteer for some classroom visits with the education team.

And read-alouds... I have a list of dystopian literature at the request of the kids, so we just need to get to it! I'm also gathering a few books on various topics to rotate through the Afternoon Basket during fall.

Everything Else...
Roller derby is back in full session, so The Girl has practice twice a week. The Boy is still working on his truck rebuilding project once a week. I only work four days a week now, and love my jobs, despite the need for more penny pinching. I do a bootcamp workout three mornings a week, TRX once a week, and I run a couple of times a week too, so I feel better than I ever have! The Girl is going to train for her first 5k with me, one that involves chocolate, definitely a big motivation!

We lost one of our two dogs last week. She started sleeping endlessly, and stopped eating, so we knew she was going (she was 13 or 14). She died peacefully in our family room on the 12th, and we held a lovely funeral for her. We also gained a chicken, when a friend found one wandering down her street, and thought of us!

Hope everyone's fall is off to as good a start as ours, though maybe not as slow!