Fungus and Flu (they alliterate, no other connection)

I’ve been thinking I should get more photos of M up on the blog, so last Saturday when he did his lab I pulled out the camera.

We are going slowly through Algebra and Biology, partly because the paid classes are more concentrated.  I think when Ben did high school, we wound up going slowly through the home classes, then doing them in a concentrated burst in the summer after the paid classes ended.  M is taking more classes at Good Company Tutorials than Ben did at this age, so it’s hard to compare their experiences.  I keep thinking I should be an old hand at this by now, but things have been different for each kid.

M had to wait on kitchen table space to get to his fungus, so he missed something with the spores, I forget what. (He read this over my shoulder and said you can only see the spores if you look at them in Spring.) I peeked into the microscope once he’d adjusted it, and it made me think of cool textures for knitting.

Since these photos, he’s come down with either a really bad cold, or the flu: I don’t know which because the pediatrician’s office doesn’t want to test him because then they’d be spreading it to all the babies of our town.  Everyone has been asking so: we missed the Tamiflu window because I think he had another cold before this one ramp-ed up and I missed the Dun Dun Da! moment, but our office doesn’t use it with children anyhow, so it’s a moot point. The office gave me a list of things to watch for to signal that I need to zip him to the ER, and another list of comfort measures. He slept all night until 5AM today then got up for a glass of water, I’ve been bringing him cough syrup at 3AM, so it was nice to sleep more!

A friend from church was working at a community college years ago when they were discarding microscopes, and he saved this one for Ben, It’s been sitting on a shelf waiting for M. After this year it will wait for K, then I’ll probably give it to a younger homeschooling family. Free happens sometimes.

Meanwhile, in the testing coop organization world, the church we’ve rented for years needed to raise the rent (the first time they’ve done that in 30 years, how nice we’ve gotten the building cheaply that long!) That co-op is deciding if they can afford to continue. I’m waiting for all the e-mail votes to come in, I have a plan B in mind that will be cheaper, and possible easier for me to administrate, but will be harder on large families with non-testing children. I’ll have to hire a babysitter myself in that case.

Eagle’s Wings has organized the classes and chores for the coming short semester, now we are up to ordering books, finding materials and writing lesson plans.