I’m keeping this loose sort of diary of our homeschool in an effort to convince myself that we really, really are learning and growing and educating around here.

Monday

Karate Kid (12) goes over to help his grandmother do laundry on Monday mornings. While he’s there he’s supposed to do his math lesson and read in some book. Instead, he did laundry and watched cartoons. Then, he dawdled all afternoon, and finally, when it was time to go to our co-op end of the school year Spring Showcase, he still hadn’t started his math lesson. So he stayed home and did math.
Betsy-Bee (10), on the other hand, did her math and her grammar and started a new reader, Joan of Arc (Wishbone version). She and I read an introduction to the reformation in Mindy and Brandon Withrow’s Courage and Conviction.
Z-baby (7) did her math and reading and history and science with her sister, Dancer Daughter (19). I miss doing school with Z-baby, but I don’t miss her stubbornness.

This evening I read aloud a little from Oh Ye Jigs and Juleps by Virginia Cary Hudson. If you’re unfamiliar with this little collection of essays, they were supposedly written by ten year old Virginia around the turn of the century. I found a like-new copy at the library book sale on Saturday, and since my paperback copy is falling apart, I snatched it up. LOL funny, and my younger urchins, who have never heard these compositions covering subjects as varied sacraments and gardening and The Great Wall of China were begging me to read more.

Tuesday
Karate Kid did his math lesson in a timely manner and then went to canoeing. Maybe yesterday’s fiasco made him realize that we meant what we said. Later he finished the last study guide for the last module in his General Science book.

Brown Bear Daughter is re-reading one of the Harry Potter books because she says the movie version is due to come out this summer? She spent a lot of time working on her biology.
Betsy-Bee was the one who had a hard time getting her math lesson done today. She wanted to clean her room instead. (She always wants to clean/rearrange her room.)
Z-baby read half of a book to me: He Bear, She Bear by the Berenstains. Her reading is improving, s-l-o-w-l-y.

Wednesday
Today at lunch time, I caught all three girls, Brown Bear, Betsy-Bee, and Z-Baby, sitting in the living room, reading or at least perusing books. Brown Bear Daughter was still working on Harry Potter; Betsy-Bee was looking at several Amelia Bedelia books; and Z-Baby was looking at this series of books. Her grandfather, who died several years ago, bought this set of books by Joy Berry for the children. I hate them. They’re didactic pop psychology, and they’re boring. But the kids have all at one time or another read them voraciously.
Karate Kid has also jumped on the Harry Potter bandwagon. The thing is they’re rereading the books. I’m so stubborn that I never read any of them even once. Why would they want to read them all again?
Brown Bear Daughter and I worked through some rate times time equals distance problems in her algebra book. Those kind of problems frustrated her, but I thought they were kind of fun.
I found Karate Kid’s history workbook yesterday! He lost The History of Western Civilization: Middle Ages just before he finished the final lesson and the final exam. Now we can complete the middle ages and move on to explorers, reformers, and renaissance thinkers.

Thursday:
Karate Kid‘s assignments for the morning: do a math lesson, mow the yard, take his last science test, and pick up his bedroom.
Betsy-Bee is supposed to be doing her math lesson, and Brown Bear Daughter is reading Harry Potter instead of working on her essay for her English class.

I read Brer Rabbit in the Briar Patch (Disney version) to Z-Baby after she had finished her regular schoolwork with her sister. They’re reading Ramona the Pest, and in today’s episode Ramona freaked out about having a substitute teacher and hid behind the trash cans. I can picture Z-Baby doing things just like Ramona does in the books.
Karate Kid did his math and science, and mowed the front yard, and cleaned his room so that he could go to drama class. They’re working on musical drama techniques so that they can do a full-fledged musical next school year. When he came home after nine p.m., he watched a math video, this time about trigonometry. Now he says he knows more about trig than I do since I told him that I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew about it.

Friday
This Friday was our last day of homeschool co-op for the school year. We do fourteen weeks in the fall and fourteen weeks in the spring. The kids finished up their classes in style, although two of them still have a little more science to do to finish the textbook for the year.
This afternoon Karate Kid is studying lock-picking. He’s trying to get his sister into her house after she locked the keys inside.