I thought it would be fun, perhaps enlightening, to keep a record of what we learned, or at least explored, each week in our homeschool, especially since I sometimes get discouraged and wonder whether or not we’re making any educational progress at all. As I waffle back and forth from strict and rigorous requirements in a classical education mode to a more laissez-faire unschooling approach, I’m thinking that it would be helpful to write down at least some of what we do around here, educationally speaking, helpful to me and maybe to you all, too. We are learning, just not always in a traditional way and not always exactly what I want the urchins to be learning.

Monday:
Z-baby (7) did her regular schoolwork with her older sister. Her math, reading, language lesson and writing practice take about an hour when she does them with Dancer Daughter. It was taking all day when I was trying to do it with her between distractions (for me) and stalling (on her part). She also watched the Kit Kitteredge (American Girl) movie again; I suppose she’s getting some feel for the period of history that we keep hearing is returning: the Great Depression.
Betsy-Bee (10) did little or no schoolwork today. She listened to Narnia stories in her bedroom and re-arranged her room. She likes to clean and re-arrange almost weekly. She’s reading Garfield cartoon books right now.
Karate Kid (12) did a Saxon math lesson and watched a math video about pi with his dad. He practiced drawing, too.
Both Bee and Brown Bear Daughter (14) went to dance this afternoon.

Tuesday:
We read a Psalm from the Bible, prayed together, and then I read them Young Lochinvar by Sir Walter Scott.
Z-baby again did her regular work with Dancer Daughter. I heard them reading from Story of the World about the Rus. I asked Z-baby to tell me later what they read about in their history book, and she said, “We read about the Rocks or the Rus and how they tried to conquer Constantinople.”
“Did they?”
“No, because the Constantinoples had something like sea fire, and it would burn on the water. It burned their ships and they had to go home.”
(She can remember and pronounce Constantinople, but not Rus?)
Z-baby and I also read a few poems from Jon Scieszka’s Science Verse. The evolution poem was rather stupid, even for true believers, (Grandpa was an ape?), but I liked the Gobblegooky poem, a take off on Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky.

‘Twas fructose and the vitamins
Did zinc and dye (red #8)
All poly were the thiamins
And the carbohydrate.

After science poems, Z-baby listened to Prince Caspian on CD. She also asked me to read The Buck Stops Here by Alice Provenson in an effort to stall before going to bed. We talked about some of the presidents as we went along, particularly which ones were assassinated.

Betsy-Bee did her DailyGram and read a chapter of Caddie Woodlawn. She can’t find her math book (Saxon 5/4). I can’t find it either. She also started Book 3 in Mindy Withrow’s history series, Courage and Conviction: Stories of the Reformation. She’s visiting Narnia again in her bedroom after the schoolwork is finished. We finally found the math book, too late to do math today.

Karate Kid did half a math lesson before he went to his canoeing class. I must say that the canoeing class has been good for my now 12 year old Boy Explorer. One week they walked through the sewers with flashlights and found? Better them than me. He finished the math lesson and did a simple worksheet/map exercise for history.

Brown Bear Daughter is reading Mere Christianity for her English/worldview class. She’s also trying to cram Algebra 1 into about three months so that she can test out of it and biology, the science class she’s been in all year. The public school she wants to attend next year won’t take her word, or mine, that she’s completed either course, so she has to take a test. She’s adamantly opposed to taking biology again next year which she would have to do if she doesn’t pass the tests. The next course in their sequence is physics, and they won’t let her take that class unless she’s finished Algebra 1 and taking geometry. Ah, what a tangled web we weave when first we decide to enter the public school system.
Under protest (hers), BB Daughter and I listened to Exploring Music on NPR on the way home from dance. The program was about Beethoven and tempo. She said it only reinforced her distaste for classical music.

Wednesday:
Karate Kid has a test in his math class today. He thinks he’s ready to ace it.
Z-baby did her regular schoolwork, and then listened to still more Chronicles of Narnia.
Betsy-Bee did her math lesson and her daily-gram, but not much else as far as assigned school work. She’s been re-reading Utterly Me, Clarice Bean by Lauren Childs. She spent a couple of hours working on a story called She’s Gone, but she won’t show it to anyone until it’s done.
Brown Bear Daughter is working on her solo for dance, and she has biology homework to complete. She only has two more co-op classes of biology lab, so she’s working hard to complete her Apologia Biology textbook.

Thursday
Ummmm . . . I forgot to keep a record, and I don’t really remember what we we did other than regular school stuff: math and grammar.

Friday
We have co-op on Friday mornings.
Z-baby is taking three classes at co-op: Seven Continents, Feather Files (a class about birds), and P.E.
Betsy-Bee is taking a writing class, an assorted topics in science class, and cooking.
Karate Kid takes Apologia General Science lab, a class on the stock market and how it works, robotics, and geography.
Brown Bear Daughter is studying Apologia Biology, Spanish 1, Study Skills, and Starting Points Literary Analysis and Worldview.

Have I made us sound as if we’re getting more done than we really are? I actually worry that my younger set of four urchins are learning to slack off and get by with the least possible amount of effort. But then again maybe I expect too much.

The continuing trials and second-guessings of a homeschool mom. To be continued . . . .