Ordinary Time

My prediction yesterday was correct and today was a much better day. We were able to finish what we needed to get done. Math and grammar were completed despite no one being particularly enamored of figuring the difference between simple and compound sentences and we completed our unit on density in chemistry.  As you can imagine, we did a lot of sinking and floating experiments for working on density as well as a lot of weighing and using calculators for computing different substances' actual density. I'm happy to report that people are pretty secure in their use of D=m/v. Heck, I probably understand it now far better than I ever did. I've also repeated the formula out loud enough times that I am unlikely to forget it. One of the exercises had the students try to predict whether a tree branch or a grain of sand had more density. Now, we had just done a hands-on experiment with clay and wax where the smaller piece of clay was far more dense than the larger piece of wax. This...

It's just as well I put off the menu post until today because it is easy to write and I don't have to think. Today was not good. I left the dining room table in the middle of school because I was tired of attitudes. J. had to step in and discuss those attitudes with the suggestion maybe certain children would prefer to be enrolled in public school. We finally finished our day of school, complete with adjusted attitudes at five o'clock. It was a long day.  All of these meals were planned so that they could be prepared without an oven. Yes, our oven is still not working. J. has been working on it and he thinks he knows what is wrong; we are just waiting for the parts to arrive. Who knows when they'll actually arrive. We did look at the ReStore. It seems that the appliance shortages have trickled down to the resale stores. No new appliances arriving, thus no used appliances being donated. On the plus side, if the parts work, they will be less than we would have paid for a ...

Tuesdays are usually when I post the week's menus because it is also the day I go to the grocery store. I'll get them up in the next day or two, but I am completely distracted by wanting to write something else. Actually, it is just an excerpt from Cold Steal , the latest Leonidas Witherall book which we started at tea time. This is for the book lovers and house lovers among us. Essentially, what has happened up to this point is that Leonidas has been travelling around the world, having come into an inheritance. While he was travelling, he asks a friend to oversee the building of a new house for himself. This comes as he is has come home and is seeing the house for the very first time.      "No one, Leonidas thought with a rush of emotion, had any nicer friends.      Only one thing had bothered him. Cassie had apparently wangled all his worldly possessions from the storage warehouse, but so far he had seen no books. Where were his books?     ...

I've been brooding a bit about a new study that has come out which does not have good news for homeschoolers. I have now written and erased an entire post dealing with it, but have decided it either isn't broadly interesting or sounds like sour grapes. It may be sour grapes, I'm not entirely sure. I'll also say I have a few questions about the whole thing. I'll just sit with all that for a while and not foist it onto you.  What I will say is that if someone were to give my children a bunch of standardized tests at this very moment, I'm not sure that they would measure up, either. Their spelling is pretty atrocious still, but is continuing to improve. They read a lot but don't always play along with what they perceive as busy work in regards to answering questions about their reading. Math is still a bit challenging, but I am pretty pleased with the gains they have all made this year. I know this sounds kind of bad, but we focus on different things right now,...

There are days when life goes along quite nicely and then all of a sudden, a child tips over the edge for one reason or another. When that happens, the repair work is often a matter of hours. This was what I was doing between dinner and finally sitting down here to write. I'll give you the short version of all of this right now. Good parenting just takes a lot of time. There is nothing quick or easy or fast because people and relationships are messy and complicated. The idea of felt safety is a very important one in connected parenting. Felt safety means that not only is a child actually safe in their current situation with their current caregivers, but that a child feels safe as well. I can tell you, a person can be 100% safe with people who care about them while that person doesn't actually feel safe. This often is the result of traumatic experiences in the past where the people who were supposed to keep them safe failed in their responsibility. It's a once bitten, twice ...

Let's jump right in, shall we? I had a moment of slight panic when, earlier this week, Y. happily announced to me that Christmas was in about two weeks. It's not as though the date of Christmas changes every year, but boy, did I not really internalize exactly how close Christmas was. There may be more than a couple of IOU's under the tree because of slow shipping times. Apollo is a most acceptable kitten. This is a rare December where we have not already stopped school. In fact, we still have one more week in a valiant attempt to catch-up to my schedule. The children are fine with this; I am the one struggling. Usually I don't think very much about exactly how much time I spend homeschooling, but going so far into December, when I have more than a couple of other things to do, is really highlighting the time-intensive nature of the beast. A comment made by one of my children leads me to believe that one of their lasting childhood memories will be their mother shouting, ...

Today we did chemistry and tomorrow we'll be doing more chemistry as we work to catch-up on what we missed due to being sick with Covid. No one really minds, though, because everyone is enjoying what we are doing. Better yet, they are understanding what we are learning in chemistry. I think I mentioned the program we are using before, but I am so impressed with it that I'm going to mention it again. It is the Middle School Chemistry program developed by the American Chemical Society. The information is all online and is free. You can download the entire program or copy pages as needed. I think it is extremely well done. The teacher pages are clear and give plenty of information and instruction; the student pages have been just the right amount of work for my crew. They do answer all the questions but haven't rebelled at feeling as though it is busy work. There are also animations that help explain each concept and help the students visualize what these molecules and atoms m...