So today....
Hello. Remember me? The homeschooling mom? The one who still lives here, on this blog, in this house, with these kids, as much as I might try to pretend otherwise? I started out this school year with the best of intentions to blog all our school exploits, but now here we are 4 months in and I have totally neglected to mention schooling at all except in the context of reviews.
It's not that we haven't been doing school. In fact, this year we have been much more diligent than any other year in actually accomplishing "stuff"...and that of course spirals into the whole "the more we do the more I realize how behind we are" and get TOTALLY freaked out that my kids will spend the bulk of their adult productive years asking people if they'd "like fries with that?" And that's on good days...
So today I determined that we would hike up our boot straps and actually DO IMPORTANT STUFF...stuff like history (hey, so far this year we have actually made it to the Minoans and we've never made it past Egypt before) and science (are we REALLY still in chapter FOUR of our science book???).
So today we talked about Pollination, how the female parts of a flower get pollinated by the male parts of a flower thanks to God's perfect design. I LOVE Apologia Science! Umm, but back to reality, we covered only about a third of the chapter and didn't do any of the mini-books for our lapbook, so there's tons of work to still be done.
Then we went on to History. The Mystery of History to be exact. We covered Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and, well, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah and his 12 sons...oh, and one daughter. Which for some strange reason prompted me to offer up to the kids more information about Dinah. You know, THE STORY. Why? Well, we made a huge family tree for Abraham's descendants, and they were asking why it focused on the BOYS, and wasn't there a daughter, and who was she born to, and suddenly I opened my mouth and inserted my foot...a little to late ;-). So I read them the Biblical account (skipping the word r@pe and just alluding to what happened with the older kids definitely getting the gist of the act although not the non-consensual part). But that's not the best part...then...THEN there's how her brother's strike a deal with Shechem. You know. "Become a Jew, be circumcised, and you can have her as your wife"...ummm, mommy, what's circumcised and how did that make it easy for them kill all the men? Yeah, you can see where that conversation went...
My girls are still giggling, and I can guarantee you the boys have spent more than a few minutes in the bathroom today "checking thing out" if you know what I mean. And it of course prompted Sari to drag out the old pictures of a very young and very naked Scott in the tub where some things usually hidden are visible. Which prompted more giggling by the girls and humiliation by the boys.
Oh yeah, it was time to change the subject in a BIG way. So we read another chapter of The Hobbit aloud and everyone moved on to writing, which I am really loving. With papers about Pillbugs in hand, Daddy (who is on death's doorstep) became the judge of whose paper was the best and TJ got to go with me to the Redbox to pick out a movie (Alpha and Omega-not Christian as the name might imply, but not awful except the hokey dancing wolf scenes). Scott finished his science work (he is one or two chapters from being done thank GOD!) too, so that was a bonus.
So that was today...just a glimpse in the life. I think maybe we should change our focus to something tame like basket weaving that doesn't involve multiple wives, forced s*x, s*d*my (that was complements of Lot's part in the Abraham story, but I skipped that), and circumcision but then it wouldn't be the true history of our sinful world.
It's not that we haven't been doing school. In fact, this year we have been much more diligent than any other year in actually accomplishing "stuff"...and that of course spirals into the whole "the more we do the more I realize how behind we are" and get TOTALLY freaked out that my kids will spend the bulk of their adult productive years asking people if they'd "like fries with that?" And that's on good days...
So today I determined that we would hike up our boot straps and actually DO IMPORTANT STUFF...stuff like history (hey, so far this year we have actually made it to the Minoans and we've never made it past Egypt before) and science (are we REALLY still in chapter FOUR of our science book???).
So today we talked about Pollination, how the female parts of a flower get pollinated by the male parts of a flower thanks to God's perfect design. I LOVE Apologia Science! Umm, but back to reality, we covered only about a third of the chapter and didn't do any of the mini-books for our lapbook, so there's tons of work to still be done.
Then we went on to History. The Mystery of History to be exact. We covered Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and, well, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah and his 12 sons...oh, and one daughter. Which for some strange reason prompted me to offer up to the kids more information about Dinah. You know, THE STORY. Why? Well, we made a huge family tree for Abraham's descendants, and they were asking why it focused on the BOYS, and wasn't there a daughter, and who was she born to, and suddenly I opened my mouth and inserted my foot...a little to late ;-). So I read them the Biblical account (skipping the word r@pe and just alluding to what happened with the older kids definitely getting the gist of the act although not the non-consensual part). But that's not the best part...then...THEN there's how her brother's strike a deal with Shechem. You know. "Become a Jew, be circumcised, and you can have her as your wife"...ummm, mommy, what's circumcised and how did that make it easy for them kill all the men? Yeah, you can see where that conversation went...
My girls are still giggling, and I can guarantee you the boys have spent more than a few minutes in the bathroom today "checking thing out" if you know what I mean. And it of course prompted Sari to drag out the old pictures of a very young and very naked Scott in the tub where some things usually hidden are visible. Which prompted more giggling by the girls and humiliation by the boys.
Oh yeah, it was time to change the subject in a BIG way. So we read another chapter of The Hobbit aloud and everyone moved on to writing, which I am really loving. With papers about Pillbugs in hand, Daddy (who is on death's doorstep) became the judge of whose paper was the best and TJ got to go with me to the Redbox to pick out a movie (Alpha and Omega-not Christian as the name might imply, but not awful except the hokey dancing wolf scenes). Scott finished his science work (he is one or two chapters from being done thank GOD!) too, so that was a bonus.
So that was today...just a glimpse in the life. I think maybe we should change our focus to something tame like basket weaving that doesn't involve multiple wives, forced s*x, s*d*my (that was complements of Lot's part in the Abraham story, but I skipped that), and circumcision but then it wouldn't be the true history of our sinful world.
Comments
glad to hear we're not the only ones who get sidetracked into really INTERESTING discussions.
and giggles.
we've never really made it past the egyptians either. :)