If you’re new here, you might not know that I am a homeschool mom.
I am homeschooling a fifth grader (my daughter) this year since my oldest (my son) graduated last year. We have homeschooled since 2018.
For the sake of the blog, I refer to my daughter as Little Miss.
Little Miss and I started some lessons in early and mid-August this year and then jumped into lessons more earnestly in September. In Pennsylvania, school can begin any time after July 1. Some parents homeschool all-year-round and then take breaks in the middle of the year around the holiday seasons. As long as students are taught for 180 days or 900 hours throughout the year, then homeschool parents are meeting the requirements under the law.
I started lessons early to allow for a longer break around Christmas and in case our school days were thrown off at all by my parents health, which has been steadly getting worse lately.
Part way through September I rediscovered Outschool and signed Little Miss up for a painting class, which she absolutely loves. I say rediscovered because I did purchase one class on there for my son years ago. I’m not sure why we never tried it again.
Little Miss loves her painting class so much I added a drawing class last week with the same teacher.
First, though, what it is Outschool? Second, I am not being sponsored in any way by Outschool to mention it in this post. I’m simply sharing what we are doing for homeschool this year.
Outschool is a site that offers online, live or pre-recorded classes, for students of all ages.
Classes are held through Zoom and there are a variety of topics and subjects offered.
The teachers are independent contractors of sorts so it’s important to really study what the teacher is offering and if it is a good fit for your student.
Each teacher requires they be able to see the student at least once at the beginning of a live class to be sure that they are really talking to a student. There are other security measures in place to keep the learning environment safe. Little Miss likes that the classes are live and she can interact with the teacher and other students during the classes.
We do have to pay for the classes. With my son I took one class and paid for the class I wanted to take. Now the site offers a monthly credit program and then you can purchase extra credits as you go along and each class is worth a certain amount of credits.
The credit program works okay but sometimes some of the classes are quite a few credits and that can get a bit expensive.
In addition to the art classes, I also signed Little Miss up for an animal club that meets Thursday nights. She liked that class so much we went with a Zoology club that is held earlier in the same day, with the same instructor.
I also added a hands-on science class which features a very enthusiastic teacher and a lot of information. Little Miss enjoys the projects but not listening to why the experiment works.
So, altogether Little Miss is taking five Outschool classes, mixed in with the subjects I am teaching her — three science classes and two art classes.
I am also teaching her math (well, actually CTCMath out of Australia teaches her math), English (reading, grammar, spelling, handwriting), and history.
For history we are using the Beautiful Feet curriculum, which focuses on teaching history through literature. I’ve gone a little rogue for the Civil War section of the curriculum because the book they recommended seemed very, very depressing. But, in their defense, the curriculum is aimed at children a couple years older than Little Miss. She’s a bit advanced in her literature, though, so I decided I could use the curriculum as a jumping off point and make it our own. I remove books or supplement with additional books where needed.
The Civil War-themed book we are reading is about two young girl friends — one from the South and the other from the North — who exchange letters during the war. It’s called Secrets of Civil War Spies by Nancy LeSourd.
We also will have classes with our local 4-H once a month, but they haven’t started yet. I tried to get her into more classes or programs in other 4-H programs, but the 4-H program from the county next to us won’t pick up the phone or return my calls. I looked at 4-H because I liked the idea of “clubs” that would meet once a week or even a couple of times a month. Instead, the 4-H in our county holds clubs that teach one thing only for a couple of months. In the winter certain classes (which they refer to as a club) meets maybe once a month. It doesn’t really make it possible to form friendships, but I am sure it will still be nice to attend them anyhow.
Little Miss also attends a church program once a week at our former church.
Writing all of this out helps me to feel a little less concerned about our homeschooling line-up this year. I sometimes worry we are not doing enough for school but when I really look at what we have planned, I realize we are.
What I like about how we homeschool is that we participate in a variety of different styles of education while also having the flexibility to spend more time with Little Miss’s grandparents and for her to spend time exploring the subjects she enjoys. Right now, that subject is art and animals.
I’m excited to see what other subjects she will like to expand on as the school year continues.
Good afternoon! Welcome to another Saturday Afternoon Chat.
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Yesterday we met with our homeschool evaluator and school is now officially over for this year.
We drive 45 minutes one way to meet with her each year.
This week it was a long drive after a week of driving to VBS 20 minutes one way and spending two hours there each night for a few nights. We missed Tuesday night because of a flat tire on our car and Thursday night The Husband drove her. This was VBS at a church we don’t belong to.
I appreciated that because I’ve been having pain in my neck and driving around the windy roads and curves and hills we live on flared it up quite a bit.
I enjoyed taking her on the days, though, because we were able to chat about different things and watch for animals together while we were driving to and from VBS.
Little Miss is fairly independent and usually attends most events without us but lately she’s been a little clingy. She wanted me to stay with her during VBS since she didn’t know anyone, but she got involved easily and most of the time didn’t mind if I was there or not. I didn’t follow her around. Instead, I simply sat in the back of the sanctuary on very pretty, but uncomfortable pews.
She would run up to me off and on and get a hug, almost like a reassurance. The next day I told her I would probably sit in the car and read that night instead of sitting in the church, but she said she wanted me to be in the church.
“You don’t need me,” I told her. “You were having fun without me.”
“Yes, but it’s just nice knowing you’re there,” she told me.
That definitely got me in the heart and left me feeling emotional. I didn’t mind sitting in the church as much after that and enjoyed the hugs she gave me when she ran back to me. Plus, the church has beautiful stained glass windows and it was nice to look at them and watch the sun pour through them.
Two of the days of VBS were very hot but the rest of the week the weather was pretty much perfect. The hot temperatures are gone again for now, but it is not as cold as it was in May. I prefer the cooler temps, though. Not freezing, but cooler. The heat and humidity really takes a toll on me. Much worse than simply feeling too hot.
Yesterday our drive to the homeschool evaluator was uneventful. It was a little emotional for me because it is the last time The Boy will be evaluated now that he has graduated. This marks the end of our six-year homeschooling journey together, and he’s thrilled, but I’m going to miss it.
I loved picking out a curriculum for him and learning it with him. The last two years were pretty hard because he was pretty much over school, but we made it, and he’s ready for his next steps..
Little Miss and I will be continuing homeschooling for this next year and I’m planning to use a curriculum but also be open to more deviations from strict curriculum, as long as it is still educational.
I’m looking forward to our school year and to using art and literature even more than I did last year. I also have my eye on a really interesting music curriculum. Looking for different curriculum is a highlight of my summers, so I do feel a sense of loss not looking for curriculum or books for The Boy this year.
There is another VBS at another church this upcoming week, but we haven’t decided if we are attending it or not. There are two or three other VBS events this summer we hope to attend as well. And there are also 4-H events coming up. So we might have a busy summer, but maybe also a relaxed one at times.
So what have you been up to this past week? Any vacations yet? Family gatherings? Shopping. I’d love to know. Let me know in the comments.
P.S. I am offering a link-up here on Saturdays now, but I’m also part of a great link-up on Thursday — The Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot — so please come join us and link up your favorite, new, or older posts there as well. Just search “Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot” in the search bar to the right and you’ll find the latest link-up! We are also looking for additional hosts so don’t be afraid to throw your hat in the ring for that.
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Come back tomorrow for Sunday Bookends, where I chat about what I’ve been reading, watching, listening to, doing and share some favorite photos and links from around the blog community.
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I am absolutely floored that this school year is over and I know I say that every year but this year really did fly by.
As I always do at the end of a school year, I sit here feeling as if I didn’t do enough, teach enough, or find enough educational opportunities. Looking back through photographs and the paperwork I’ve gathered together for our end-of-the-year portfolio, though, we did a lot more than I realized.
This was The Boy’s final year of school and he did a lot less for me than I wanted to but he was also enrolled in a building and construction class at the local technical school and gained way more experience and education there than I could have offered him.
We did work on some English reading, including Sherlock Holmes and Beowulf, but he also read or listened to several books independently throughout the year. He also researched quite a bit of history on the Byzantine empire on his own and then learned about how to paint Warhammer models.
Many afternoons were also spent helping his grandfather with various home DIY projects and property upkeep and he helped the local cemetery association clean up the cemetery, including the gravestones
While he isn’t yet sure how he wants to use the education he received there, he will always have that knowledge in his future, whether it is for an occupation or in his everyday life.
He’s taking some time off and easing into his next step, something his dad and I support.
He still has a couple of things to write up for me and then his portfolio, which I will present to our state-certified evaluator next week, will be done.
Little Miss and I had a lot more variety in our education this year with not all of it focused on worksheets or physical curriculum. We studied subjects in a more relaxed way, spending more time on subjects that interested us instead of feeling like we had to quickly move ahead.
We did use some curriculum, such as BJU for English and The Good and The Beautiful for science. We also accessed an online curriculum called CTC Math for our math course, and combined that with The Good and the Beautiful, Math with Confidence, and worksheets.
For history and literature, we read historical fiction, including The Sign of the Beaver, Johnny Tremain, The Littlest Voyageur, and Caddie Woodlawn, while watching or reading supplemental material for the subjects each of those books dealt with.
We mixed lessons about Pennsylvania history in with our regular history. We are required to teach history about our state at some point during our children’s elementary school years, but I focus on Pennsylvania and local history at some point in the year, every year.
This year we had the added information about our family fighting in the Civil War, which I researched more of as I wrote a couple of blog posts about that subject.
In the beginning of the year, we attended a two-month art class sponsored by the local library and led by a local artist. He honestly did not teach much at all (and I probably would not attend a class with him again), but having the chance to interact with other children was the main benefit of that experience.
We also attended a couple of field trips with the local homeschool group. That group only met once a month, though, so the opportunity for socializing was not as strong as I had hoped.
Next school year we hope to join a local co-op for some more hands-on learning and interaction with other homeschool students.
There was a time of adjustment for Little Miss that is continuing because one of her homeschool friends was sent to public school this year. That left her without friends to interact with, which is one reason we have signed her up for VBS events, 4-H clubs, and library events this summer.
She participated in a 4-H cooking class in the spring, which she thoroughly enjoyed.
We read books either together or separately throughout the year. Little Miss read two and a half Harry Potter books this past school year. She’s almost done with the third.
Together we listened to Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink and The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis. Out loud to her, I read The Saturdays and The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright and Miracle on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorenson, as well as Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (later learned this is usually read by eighth graders), The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare, and The Littlest Voyageur by Margi Preus. We also listened to part of Miracle on Maple Hill on Audible.
In the 2025-2026 school year we plan to use some curriculum but also leave ourselves open for more exploration and relaxed education. This doesn’t mean Little Miss will be left to do whatever she wants, when she wants, but she will have more of a say in what she learns and how.
She will be in fifth grade, and I want her to have a more relaxed educational experience that will let her feel less like education is a chore and instead make it feel like it is something fun and exciting to do.
I’m researching curriculum now and have already been given some great ideas in groups and by Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, who homeschools her son Wyatt.
We are also starting homeschooling activities in July this year, instead of August. In Pennsylvania you can count any activities held after July 1 toward the next year’s hours/days so if we participate in anything remotely educational this summer, I will be counting that toward our final hours. This will allow Little Miss and I to take breaks throughout the school year at any time we need to, without losing educational time.
Honestly, every day offers some sort of education, but I am not the kind of parent who can do something very minor and count that toward school. I know some parents would count a walk down the street as PE and call it a day, but I feel there needs to be active learning of some kind going on for it to count as a full day of school.
What is nice about homeschooling is that there is no real wrong way to do it (unless you sit your kid in front of a gaming device all day, every day, and teach them nothing). There are a variety of avenues to reach the ultimate goal of homeschooling, which is to provide a child with a well-rounded and complex educational experience that goes beyond the four walls of a classroom.
I am excited to see what the 2025-2026 school year will bring us and I’ll try to keep my blog readers updated on it better than I did this school yar.
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Saturday, the family and I got out of the house for an outing for the first time in months.
We drove about an hour south to attend a gathering at a pottery studio with the local homeschooling group.
The group leader had set up a chance for our students to visit the studio and paint pottery. It was a gloomy day to travel on, but it was still nice to get out. We didn’t stay as long at the studio as I hoped, with Little Miss declaring she was done and over it all within a half hour of arriving.
I had gone to the car to get a drink of water and The Husband and she had stayed back to finish her project, which was very small and not terribly exciting to me, and when I looked back up after a few minutes of being in the car they were walking toward me.
They were done and ready to get lunch, The Husband said.
Little Miss chose a small paw print to paint. If that’s what she wanted, that was okay, of course, and it was one of the cheaper items available so it worked out well but I still thought she’d really want to paint a larger piece of pottery.
I thought she might choose something larger which would give us longer to interact with the other children there. Unfortunately only four families showed up and there were only about six kids there, including mine, and three of them were boys and Little Miss had no interest in talking to them.
I had these grand visions of introducing Little Miss to the fellow homeschooled children casually by asking the children what they were working on and then telling them what Little Miss was working on and how old she was, etc. etc. but Little Miss has a mind of her own and when she’s done with her art or project, she simply likes to leave.
(I am editing my original post here to make it clear that I love Little Miss has a mind of her own so this isn’t a complaint. As the comments came in I realized I hadn’t really clarified that.
It just cracks me up that I always have these plans to try to encourage her to step out of her comfort zone and she’s like, “nope. This is how it’s going to be..” and is not swayed one bit. I think it’s going to really pay off as she gets older to be that aware of what she wants and not compromise…. Though it would be nice if she stepped out just a bit so she can meet some new people but that will come organically over time.)
At lunch at a local restaurant we found online, Little Miss also said she thought my plan sounded creepy.
“Hey, little girl,” she said in a creepy voice, I guess pretending to be me. “How old are you?”
The Husband and The Boy thought her impression was pretty funny, but that is not how I was going to ask. I was going to attempt to engage them in conversation so Little Miss could also engage them in conversation. These attempts of mine pretty much fail every time. We will have other opportunities with events going on with the local 4-H and homeschool groups this spring as well.
The hamburger I ordered was the largest I have ever seen circumference-wise!
Yesterday Little Miss and The Husband went to see Paddington 3 and The Boy and I stayed at home and did our own thing. He played a video game (Skyrim) and I doodled in my reading journal, colored in some Nancy Drew illustrations, worked on blog posts (including this one), snuck a couple spoonfuls of some ice cream we’d picked up the day before, and watched some YouTubers.
This week we don’t much planned, other than me going to my parents at least once or twice to help clean.
I finished Every Living Thing by James Herriot and Nancy Drew: The Sign of the Twisted Candles by Carolyn Keene this past week.
Now I’m reading Grandma Ruth Doesn’t Go To Funerals by Sarah Mondragon and really enjoying it. I found it for free on Hoopla and I can only read it on my phone, which is terribly annoying. Hoopla doesn’t allow it to be sent to a Kindle and I don’t have a notebook to read it on. It can be read on my laptop but that isn’t very comfortable for me. I don’t want to pay full price for it until I am sure I like it and it released in February so..this is my only option at the moment.
Little Miss and I are reading Miracles on Maple Hill for school after finishing The Sign of the Beaver last week. I’ve read Miracles on Maple Hill before but wanted to read it with Little Miss this time of year (maple season in Pennsylvania) and it will fit with Middle Grade March.
I’ll also be reading The Moffats by Eleanor Estes and Violet Jenkins Saves The Day by Stacey Faubion for Middle Grade March. I may try to squeeze in Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry but that might have to wait until March.
The Husband is reading The Maltese Iguana by Tim Dorsey.
The Boy is reading Frankenstein.
This past week I watched All Creatures Great and Small’s season finale and cried through it. I also watched Edwardian Farm, which was more of a rewatch because I watched it before but missed a ton of it because I kept wandering out of the room or family members talked through it. Ha. Family. I tell ya.
I also watched The Rise of Catherine the Great as part of my Winter of Douglas Fairbanks Jr., which finishes up this week.
In April and May, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I will be watching movies that take place in Paris. We will update you more on that and our choices when it gets closer to the start date.
I am working on making all of my ebooks of my fiction books available for purchase through my site so you can “own” the ebook (or the license to read it) and read it where you want to.
I started brainstorming more of book four of the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series as well.
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
Welcome to my weekly chat. I can make you a cup of tea, pour you a glass of juice or milk, or hand you a water bottle. Which would you prefer?
Today I thought we’d chat about my week last week and then you can share about your week in the comments.
I’ll start with yesterday and work backward.
Yesterday was a somewhat long day so I am glad that it is raining today, giving me an excuse to stay home and read, write, and watch some comforting shows.
I really didn’t have to do that much but for some reason it felt like a lot. I dropped The Boy off at my parents to help Dad mow the lawn on their large property, picked up groceries and a prescription 20 minutes away, dropped off a few items my mom had asked for, came home and unloaded the car alone (something The Boy usually helps with but couldn’t because he was still at my parents), cooked dinner and relaxed for a bit, and then finished out the day by taking Little Miss to her first Horse and Pony Club 4-H meeting about five minutes from our house.
I don’t mention my chronic illnesses a lot, mainly because I have not been officially diagnosed with the one illness (Fibromyalgia), but it’s that one that leaves me so dragged out after driving a lot and after a busy day.
When I have a busy day one day, I find I need one or two days afterward to recover my energy and get my muscles to stop burning or aching. I am better off than a lot of people but if I do too much in one week, I actually end up with what is called “a flare” and that sometimes takes me out for a week.
A few weeks ago I had a good week where I felt like I could do a lot. I kept going and by Saturday of that week, I was having stomach issues, exhaustion, brain fog, aching, and all kinds of other odd symptoms. My mom, who has Fibromyalgia, said it sounded like a flare and she may have been right but a couple of weeks later (if there are men here, feel free to skip the lady talk coming up), I started my period, which I have not had in a few months. In other words, I’m not sure if it was a full-on flare of just hormones. Whatever it was, it was annoying and frustrating.
I push through the days even when I have flares, though, and I’ve had more good days than bad in the last several months so I’ll take it. I never have a day where I am completely pain-free or without having to rest through a period of exhaustion, but I do have days where the pain is better and the exhaustion is a little less intense.
In addition to possible fibro I take medicine for hypothyroidism and that is a mess – trying to balance out side effects from the medicine and also get my levels to where it will help the low thyroid issue. I’ve dealt with that for over ten years and it is not fun at all.
I don’t ask anyone to diagnose me with fibro because I’ve tried to mention it to two primary doctors who dismissed me – with one sort of laughing at me and telling me it’s not hereditary when I told her my mom and grandmother both had been diagnosed. Mom says that there isn’t much doctors will do for you anyhow, unless it gets bad enough for them to give you pain meds but the pain meds can also lead to some very debilitating side effects so she doesn’t use them often. If it gets to the point I can’t function at all because of the pain, I will push harder for a diagnosis.
Now, back to the horse and pony club I took Little Miss to yesterday. We’ve been looking for some activities for Little Miss to become involved with and in this area, 4-H is one of the main activities. We don’t live on a farm so we can’t raise a farm animal, but luckily the program offers several different types of clubs for young people to participate in. Little Miss doesn’t have a horse but she is hoping to learn more about them and be around them so we decided to try the horse club.
She is also interested in the Lego Club, a baking club, and maybe a knitting club. A couple of those only meet in the winter. We are waiting for more information on when their meetings will be.
I knew a couple of the parents who were at the meeting last night, but I don’t know them well enough to talk to them and they were all in their own little chat groups so I sat in my car and texted my “online friend” (she’s a real friend that I hope to meet in person soon) instead. While sitting there I noticed that every car around me was a jeep or SUV and all of them were either white or black. It was a bit weird actually.
It was also a reminder to me that a lot of people in my area who are in programs like this have a lot more money than me. Those were some expensive cars. I’m sure many of them have car payments but I still felt out of place with my beat-up 12-year-old Lincoln with the left front still mashed in from the deer we hit last year because we couldn’t afford to fix it.
I also have a headlight that isn’t working because the brackets have broken off the one we purchased that my dad was going to replace for us. That’s a long story but hopefully, we can get it replaced soon.
None of the people there made me feel like a redneck outsider, by the way. They were very polite and kind people who answered questions when I asked. I felt like a redneck outsider on my own because of the damaged front end of my car and the fact I was drinking rootbeer out of a brown glass bottle, making it look like I was kicking back a beer in my old beater car.
Honestly, I’d rather be in the old beater car because it’s not bad inside with heated and AC seats, Bluetooth capability and a built-in GPS.
It also provides me with a comfortable creaking sound that comes from the undercarriage as I take turns. That creaking keeps my life exciting and me on my toes because I’m never sure when the car might fall apart underneath me.
Because of the broken headlight, I needed to get out of there before dark and I thought the meeting was only about an hour but it was going on two and I was starting to panic.
Little Miss still hadn’t had a chance to lead the pony around and she really wanted to do that so I had to wait because she would have complained the whole way home how she had to sit through them talking about how to take care of a horse and when it came her time to actually lead a pony she didn’t get that chance.
Driving home in the dark on one headlight or listening to the 9-year-old whine about how she never gets to do anything. Hmmmm….I chose the one headlight which then resulted into my humming that 90s song by the Wallflowers. “We can drive it home with one headlight…”
I’m like that character in the British sitcom Miranda when certain words or phrases in everyday conversation make her think of certain songs and she just belts them out. Well, she isn’t just a character since the sitcom was based on the life of comedian and author Miranda Hart.
Anyhooooo…. Need an earworm? I can provide that for you:
The farm where this meeting was held was gorgeous, by the way. There was a small barn/stable and four or five horses in the field, beautiful views and the clouds were amazing last night.
There was also a random guinea fowl wandering around that I thought belonged to the people who owned the house but later learned had just wandered onto their property earlier in the week.
They had no idea who it belonged to. These birds are great in our area though because they eat deer ticks which can help to cut down on the population. We have a high number of Lyme disease causing ticks in our area so the less of them, the better.
Earlier in the week Little Miss and I visited a greenhouse near us that is open for about a month out of the year. They used to be open all summer and longer but the children of the original couple who opened it run it part time now since their father passed away a few years ago and their mother is older now and can’t easily help run it.
I was so excited to see her this week when we visited, though, because she is a beloved member of the little community where I grew up and she has one of the best smiles and the most cheerful spirits I have ever seen. Seeing that smile of hers was just heartwarming and I almost hugged her but since I don’t know her that well, I held back. My mom would have hugged her, though, so I at least told her Mom said ‘hello.’
It began to rain while we were there so we didn’t stay long and for one of the first times in the last few years we’ve visited, I didn’t take photographs during our visit.
I did take a couple of photographs as we drove over the hill to my parents, however. Well, Little Miss took this one.
And then I took one as Little Miss planted one of her flowers later that day in the rain, with her winter coat and gloves, even though it was not that cold out.
We’ve actually been having warmer temps this week. These are the temps I would love for us to have all summer because I do not do well at all in warmer temperatures.
Speaking of flowers, the lilacs in our backyard bloomed, but only on one smaller bush.
It appears that our big, very old lilac bush has actually died and will not be blooming this year. That was heartbreaking. I’m not sure if the early frost got to it or what happened, but for some reason the younger bush did bloom. We may have to eventually remove the older, gnarled tree that probably has seen a lot of history. I wonder if it as old as our large rose bush, which my neighbor told me is over 100 years old. Her grandparents or aunt and uncle, one or the other, used to live here and she lived with them for a while.
I am looking forward to when those roses start blooming in June, around the same time as the peonies. Our backyard is alive in the early summer and it’s exciting. I couldn’t believe how one day in early May the trees were naked and then suddenly they were green. It was really exciting to see this year.
Watching things bloom the next couple of weeks will be a nice respite from homeschool which is actually a little more stressful this time of year as we try to finish up units and testing before June 4 comes. June 4th will be our last day of school. The main thing I have to complete is a standardized test for Little Miss, which is required in third, fifth, and eighth grades in the state of Pennsylvania. We can use a standardized test from another state so we are using the California Assessment Test. It is an untimed test so we can take breaks from it, which we did a lot this past week because there were so many multiple choice questions to answer.
The grade on the test doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we do it and my homeschool evaluator sees it and says, “It was done and you met that requirement.” The local school district does not have access to the scores. Only I do. What the scores help me with is learning what areas of math and language arts we need to focus on next year. These tests only test those subjects. I have already learned, through the test we did Wednesday and Thursday, that I need to focus more on punctuation with Little Miss next year. She reads wonderfully but does not know much about punctuation.
Getting both of the kids to the end of the homeschool line has been like dragging a stubborn mule which has rolled itself on its side in the mud and closed its eyes. I can’t wait until the final day and will be glad for our summer break.
In closing, I thought I would mention that I have been trying to share videos of myself on social media to connect with my readers and I hate it. I hate how I look, sound, and talk. Still, I’m trying to push forward and connect in a different way with readers. I may chase some people away but some people might actually like placing a face with the account and following along on my writing/author journey. I have met new readers and writers and bloggers after posting new videos and that’s been nice so I guess I’ll keep doing this from time to time. I even set up a – gasp – YouTube Channel, but I don’t plan to be posting my face on there very often. I actually don’t know what I’ll be doing with that yet. Maybe nothing. Time will tell.
So, how was your week this past week?
Is the weather getting nicer where you are?
Have you been drinking any nice teas? Taking any hikes? Sniffing any flowers?
The fire in the woodstove just would not cooperate Monday morning when I tried to get it to light. I am convinced something is wrong with our draft, like maybe it is stuck or something. I gently wiggled it a few times and the fire finally started to take off after burning up a ton of cardboard, papers, and even the box for some caffeine-free Diet Pepsi my son picked up the other day.
We will have to light a fire all week with the cold temperatures but soon we will be able to light a fire less and still turn the heat down. Having the fire helps us not to have to use as much heating oil and kept our heating oil usage down from mid-October through last week.
It is actually progress that my son purchased that soda I mentioned above since in the past he wouldn’t pick it up because it reminded him too much of his great-aunt, my aunt Dianne, who he loved immensely. She passed away in 2018. Talking about her was very painful for years but now he’s able to talk about her more, sharing the good and happy memories he has of her with his sister.
Buying the Pepsi was a chance for him to show Little Miss a version of Dianne’s favorite drink. Dianne drank Pepsi for years, partially because it was what she was used to since my grandfather worked for Pepsi in North Carolina for 30 years.
It’s Monday when I am starting this post and I have given Little Miss the day off from school since her brother had it off from the technical school he attends for President’s Day.
Tomorrow we will be back to our regular lessons.
This year she and I have been studying a lot of history through a variety of different ways, including a textbook through The Story of Our World. Like last year we are learning about history through historical fiction as well.
This week we will be starting a historical fiction book about Pocahontas.
I actually have two books about Pocahontas but decided that the one book may be for older children so have decided to go to one written by Jean Fritz, who we have read books by before, including The Cabin Faced West, which we finished a couple of weeks ago. The other book is written by Joseph Bruchac, who wrote Children of the Longhouse, which Little Miss absolutely loved, but seems to be written for teenagers. I am sure it is a clean book but it just seems a little older so I decided I am going to read it this spring and see if it is something Little Miss will like.
Reading historical fiction books helps us to branch out into other topics that are brought up in the stories, including information about historical figures or events. The textbook provides us with fairly dry facts only.
The subject I have struggled with the most this year for Little Miss has been science because I’m never happy with the science curriculum we have. I also never have the supplies we need for experiments. I always feel like I’m not teaching her enough science or the right science. She, however, has learned a lot of science from the educational shows she watches so I often find her correcting me when I am teaching her science from a book.
We really liked The Good and the Beautiful science but it is a bit expensive so I have decided to wait until we have that extra money to purchase curriculum and will probably purchase from there toward the end of our school year and then finish up the curriculum in our next school year. While their sets are expensive, they are nice and thorough.
We have used their energy, birds, and ecosystem curriculum and enjoyed them all.
Homeschool for The Boy is more stressful for me these days because he will be a senior next year and I feel like I have taught him nothing this school year.
For him it’s English where I feel like I have really dropped the ball. We have bailed on almost every book we have started this year because it has either been too wordy, too old-fashioned, or just didn’t hold our attention. That will change next week because I have decided we are starting A Tale of Two Cities and plowing through the difficult beginning and flowery writing to get to the story.
That way I can at least feel like I have exposed him to some more classic writers.
We have already read books by George Eliott, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen Crane, William Golding, and Mark Twain.
I hope before I am done with him (so to speak) we will read books by Dickens, Steinbeck, and maybe George Orwell. I’d really like to add Austen in there as well but we will see. We will be starting, or re-starting, A Tale of Two Cities next week.
For history I decided to purchase a book called A History of the Twentieth Century by Martin Gilbert. This has a comprehensive list of facts that will provide us a look at history that we can then use to jump off from with videos and further study.
The Boy will be a senior next year as I just mentioned and I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around it. He’s already checked out of schoolwork pretty much but I’m not ready to let him go. How is it possible he will be 18 in November? The thought has me weepy beyond belief these days. How does the time go by so fast? I should probably stop thinking about it or my computer screen is going to be soaked with my tears in a moment.
This is totally a topic shift again, but do you ever find yourself without a pen and paper or your phone and you have to remember something for like, say, your grocery list and you keep repeating what you need to add to the list because you’re afraid you’ll forget it?
Well, I have because for about half an hour this morning, I found myself repeating “maple syrup and hot dog buns” as I did other tasks around the house. I didn’t have my phone next to me to add it to my Instacart list.
I finally added it to my list but now I’m still singing “maple syrup and hot dog buns” to myself.
What I should probably add to that list is mouse traps, but I am hoping our hunter cats will finally get all the mice out of our house this week. A few months ago Scout (our youngest) had a mouse pinned in our heating vent but never got to it. This weekend The Boy reported a mouse ran across his feet while he was playing a video game because both cats were chasing it. He then watched them double up on this mouse with one of them hiding under the couch to scare it and the other one waiting at the end to grab it. Then they batted the thing around for a while and apparently lost it because they were more interested in toying with it.
Sunday we left them in the house together while we went to visit my parents and when we came back I joked with them that they had better have caught that mouse. I was saying all this while I was reaching for the light. It was dark in the kitchen and when I felt something squish under my boot while joking, I thought, “Oh, Lord, let that be a grape we dropped earlier in the week.”
It was not a grape and I was very glad I hadn’t kicked my boots off yet because it was indeed a dead mouse and my foot on it made sure it was even more dead – let’s just leave it at that.
That wasn’t the end of the story though, because yesterday Scout was chasing another mouse and it came running toward me, resulting in a lot of screaming from me because I didn’t want it to scamper across my bare feet like it had my son’s the other day.
I can’t believe it but the intrepid huntress lost this mouse too and as far as I know it is now hiding under our stove and The Husband has declared he’s searching the house this weekend to “find where these creatures are coming from.”
As I write this, the sun is pouring in our windows and the temperature outside is the warmest it has been in a week, but still at a chilly 40 degrees.
I’ll be lighting the fire before I get ready to take Little Miss to Awana at a church 20 minutes away to try to stretch what wood we have left into March, since Pennsylvania doesn’t believe in early springs no matter what the groundhog says.
So how is your week going so far?
I hope it is going well.
Let me know in the comments, even if it isn’t going well.
I know that many of us say that about every month but November really did fly by for me.
We had some activities, but for the most part it was a relaxing month.
We celebrated two birthdays, an anniversary and, of course, Thanksgiving.
We took a field trip at the beginning of the month to a reptile zoo, which Little Miss was thrilled about.
The Boy and I enjoyed it too, but she was just in heaven. I’m sure we will visit there again in the spring or summer.
We did schoolwork and while there were some of it we didn’t enjoy, we are learning a lot of new things from a variety of sources this school year, so that has offered us some more chances for fun than other years.
I am moving a little away from a strict curriculum for some subjects and focusing on reading books on the topics or doing more hands-on activities instead of paperwork.
That seems to be a lot more relaxing for both the kids and for me.
The Boy still has to do some paperwork, but Little Miss is doing a mix of paperwork with reading various non-fiction and fiction books and exploring more of the things she is interested in.
I plan for us to do some lessons on cooking in December and January for both Little Miss and The Boy.
Even with our oven broken, there are many other ways to cook and that would be something to teach the kids in case they ever move into a place that doesn’t have an oven.
My goal this year for homeschooling is to focus on life skills and things that they will need to know how to do in life in addition to academics.
I still feel like I am not doing enough with actual curriculum, but teaching with less strict curriculum and more freedom in how we learn seems to be benefiting the children’s desire to learn and their overall feeling about school in general.
We still continue to use the curriculum, of course. We are just not as strict on using it every day. Some days we allow reading, art, music, and exploring to be our educational guide instead.
In a couple more days we will be moving into December and I love December more than I used to.
I once dreaded December because I knew cold weather came with it. It officially kicks off a winter that usually lasts a couple of months here in Pennsylvania and sometimes even more.
But now I know that December is when we can make excuses to watch cozy movies, read books full of Christmas happiness, and tell people who want to know if I want to go out in the cold for some sort of cold activity that I have family commitments for the holidays when I really don’t and just want to stay in and drink cocoa and watch movies instead of attending whatever function they want me to.
I’m joking about that last part, of course. I don’t really lie to people. I’m middle-aged. I just tell them like it is: “I don’t want to go out in the cold because I’m old now and I don’t have to do things that I don’t want to. So there.”
Our house is already decorated for Christmas. The Husband (my silly “pet name” for my husband here on the blog only) decorates every year the day after Thanksgiving. I would probably wait until December to decorate otherwise, but it’s nice to start the happy movies and books early.
We only decorate inside because our neighbors go all out for Christmas. Everyone in town (of like 600) loves seeing their lights, but the people driving on the highway down the hill from our street also love it because you can see them from there. They aren’t at the level of one of my husband’s co-workers who has a huge display every year. It’s one of those displays where people almost have accidents looking at it and it’s on a busy street too.
I’ll have some more photographs of their display later on this month, I’m sure, but here are a couple photos I took last year for now:
The weekend after this upcoming weekend there is a holiday event and book sale at the local library which I am looking forward to. I have a couple classics I hope to find there. There is also a light display at the local fairgrounds either that weekend or the next that we plan to visit.
So, while December was once not as fun of a month for me (until we got to Christmas), I now like several things about it, including:
Colder weather that allows us to snuggle up under covers with a cup of cocoa or tea.
Christmas movies and books
My neighbor’s decorations
Christmas celebration and family time
Christmas events (like book sales!)
Snow on our naked trees to make them look less depressing with no leaves
Fun things to cook or bake
What are you looking forward to in December? Let me know in the comments.
I’m hoping August will be less so and at least this week it should be less crazy.
In July we had a lot of activities – summer reading, camps, swimming, appointments, new trucks to pick up, and friends of Little Miss and The Boy coming over. It was all a bit crazy at times.
We tried to go swimming at my parents at least once a week in July to take advantage of the pool my dad had worked so hard on throughout May and part of June.
I wrote a little bit about Little Miss and me and how we play in the pool in a post last week. She, of course, is very creative and likes me to rate her jumps from the ladder into the pool in the voices of the characters from the books we’ve read together over the last couple of years.
Most of the events we had weren’t the entire day but they were in the middle of the day so it would make traveling or attending other events a challenge. It was okay, though, because it gave us something fun to do without draining a ton of our time and energy – or at least it shouldn’t have drained our energy but there were some weeks where we felt a bit drained from all the running around.
There were a couple 45-minute trips, up and back, to either drop cars off places and pick them up or pick up the new truck (last week).
Being so busy didn’t give me a lot of time to blog or read blogs. I did have some time to read and work on book two of my cozy mystery series, however. I’m really enjoying writing this series. It’s a ton of fun.
This week I need to shift into homeschool planning mode, even though it doesn’t start for another couple of weeks.
Usually, we start school after Labor Day, but this year The Boy will be attending a career center near us and school starts August 24th for him so I decided Little Miss and I will start the same day, but with a reduced schedule. We will probably read a few books, or watch some educational videos each day to ease our way back into the school year. Math, which neither of my children enjoys, even though they are both good at it, will wait until sometime in September.
I won’t give The Boy any assignments after school those first days when he starts at the career center and instead will start adding his homeschool lessons in very slowly as we get closer to September. The career center classes are from 8:30 to 11:30 each day and then he will have homeschool lessons in the afternoon throughout the school year.
This should probably be in a separate homeschool post and most likely will be put in a separate one too, but I am truly looking forward to our homeschool year this year. By the end of last year, I had found a groove for homeschooling that works much better for us as a family. A more laid-back groove that will allow us to learn in a more relaxed and free way. There will be more emphasis on reading, exploring, hands-on activities, music and art and less focus on strictly following a curriculum, worksheets, busy work, and anything else that public schools focus on and call a real education. I don’t want my kids to have to prove they know something by filling out worksheets, taking tests, writing essays or regurgitating to me what they’ve learned.
We will, of course, have to do some of those things to help me know what areas we might need more work on and because those are the kinds of things I need to show a little bit of at the end of the school year to our evaluator, but it will not be our main focus this year and I’m so excited.
We have a few more summer activities for August – including a local firemen’s carnival, trips to local state parks, and a vacation Bible school at the local Catholic Church, which is held by all the churches in town – Catholic and Protestant.
We also are planning at least one or two more trips to a local state park and maybe to an amusement park a couple hours away. It’s hard to get too far away because of The Husband’s schedule. A lot of the events he covers during the summer are on the weekends.
How about you? How was your July and what’s on your schedule for August?
Here are a few photos from the month of July. With all the activities we took part in, I am surprised I didn’t take more photographs. This isn’t all of the photographs I took. I have some on my phone as well but in August I hope to take even more on the Nikon.
It felt so weird yesterday morning when I realized I didn’t have to plan our homeschooling week out and I also didn’t have to get ready to argue with Little Miss about lesson time.
It felt weird and also freeing. I literally did a bit of a dance in my kitchen while warming up my tea as it hit me that I can take it easy most days for another two months.
Speaking of taking it easy, I want to take it easy even during homeschooling next year, especially after talking to my evaluator and realizing homeschooling doesn’t have to be as strict as I have been making it.
“You realize you only have to teach these subjects at some point during grades kindergarten to sixth right? You don’t even have to teach every subject every year, let alone every day.”
I’m paraphrasing that by the way. That’s not an exact quote.
I will be teaching the core subjects every year, of course, but as she pointed out to me – most public schools in my state are focused on reading and math and a small amount of science or history before sixth grade. Apparently, I am an overachiever because I have been teaching math, reading, science and history every day, every year since kindergarten with Little Miss and she is going into third grade this year.
I’ve now been told that, yes, I should teach those subjects throughout the year but I can break it up however I’d like. I can take a month and only focus on English or Math or I can mix things up and teach science a couple of times a week.
The reason I would most likely offer math, especially, every day, is that is a subject where concepts need to build upon one another and be consistent to be sure it is in the brain. It’s more of a subject where practice is very important.
The Boy is another story.
I have to make sure he takes certain courses before he graduates, whether those classes are taught every day or not. I’m also the one who determines if he graduates. Both me and my evaluator, to be more specific. And, well, if we really get technical, the school district does have to sign off on what I submit to them as well, but it’s unusual for them not to approve what a state-certified evaluator signs off on.
I need credits in certain subjects for The Boy from 9th to 12th grade. It’s four credits in English and three in Math, Science, and Social Studies, as well as two years of arts and humanities.
Those credits can be met by either about 120 hours of learning and studying time on the subject (including activities and independent reading) or they can be at least 80 percent completion of a textbook.
He will be attending a trade school for high school students in the fall and part of what he learns there will most likely count toward those credits as well.
The Boy will need two more credits in English and Science. He only needs one more in math and history/social studies. I told him this means that his senior year will mainly be attending the trade school and arts and music. I’d say he liked the sound of that but he’s a teenager, so I mainly just received a grunt in response.
I am hoping to incorporate more art and music into schoolwork for both the kids next year. I really enjoyed being able to focus on artists, composers, and musical instruments throughout much of May with Little Miss.
I hope to be able to incorporate at least a semester of music lessons for The Boy in addition to planned art classes.
I have a feeling I’ll be hammering out all those details in the next two and a half months, even when I am supposed to be taking a break from it all.
In end of the year news, Little Miss and I read 34 books together with two of them being read on her own. The Boy and I read two together. It was one of those years where there were a lot of other things focused on. They were both good, deep reads, though: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Fellowship of the Ring.
When we start school up again – either in the middle of August or the beginning of September, it will be our sixth year of homeschooling. It’s insane to even think it has been that long. What a ride it has been. We’ve definitely had trials, tears, and some doubts, but in the end it has been one of the best decisions we ever made.
The Boy and Little Miss have had more time to explore their interests and also to spend time with their aging grandparents and avoid some of the more stressful situations that can develop at public school.
