We achieved a vacation – We are back from Tobermory Ontario. Yesterday I put away everything I could reach out of the car, B had band practice and flute lesson, Mom made us a supper. Today I have done M’s kitchen table school, B is practicing flute, I will get groceries after K’s nap, and I have to call the orthodontist to move an appointment. B and I also have to do a spelling list of diction, and some map work, before run around at the park time. His half hour of flute practice has grown to nearly an hour, he looses track of time, which is good: he loves music, and I can blog while K plays with play dough.
This is plan next year time: I need to decide between using Tapestry of Grace for B’s history and almost everything else next year, or gliding over to a history of math and science with the Living Math as Lessons as his spine; he seems to have a bent that way at the moment, we must have warped him. Tapestry is excellent, but a bit intimidating, I don’t want to limit myself by deciding too quickly what we are doing. I have borrowed my friend’s teacher’s manual, but I also need to look through the website a bit more. B suggested that this year we divide up in monthly chunks our goals, then micro divide the goals onto a schedule, so that we would not mess us a whole year’s worth of goals. He really likes goals written out to cross off, I want to go daily, but I think I need to work harder on the method that gets him organized and motivated. When I listed out everything we might do next year at home as well as any field trips and co-oping, I thought, “NO WONDER I am tired.”
We might be adding Spanish lessons at a homeschool tutoring service, what Mary Pride calls a cottage school, which will tie us down a bit in flexibility with day trips, but I can’t teach Spanish, and they can. So we’ll see what we see.
Co-op data needs to be entered into the data base for chart making purposes, I need to encourage the members, I haven’t heard much from them about where they want their students to go in classes, so I’ll have to guess where to put them. I nearly had a car accident on the way to the meeting, and was too rattled to enjoy the planning meeting much. I also need to get back to the person who is interested in us by e-mail; e-mail always picks up while I am away!
The annual outreach to children is coming up at church, this year we are hosting a family fun fair on Saturday August the 28th 10AM to 2PM called “Free…to you.” There will be a bluegrass band, letterboxes, face painting, FOOD, water bottles, bug repellent and sunscreen, songs, I will be telling the Gospel in stories from CEF’s “the illustrated wordless book,” and there will also be puppets. My Mom is organizing it, she is very inspired at the suggestions from volunteers at church. Drop by if you are in the area.
We also need to price FLL and Jr FLL registration this year, and budget out the likely expenses of Lego Club to share with the families that we will work with a bit more up front – more e-mailing and wading through web sites…
My head is clearer than it was before going to Canada. I’ll try to get some of the photos up soon. Well, I’m off to dictate spelling, and think about this year.