I am mom to a Letterman!

Here he is, Mister B with his First Varsity Letter.  So proud of him.  After the hoops I jumped through to get my homeschooler on the high school team I feel pretty darn good.  All his hard work swimming for two teams has certainly paid off.  Freshman and a Letterman, so very cool!

Musings

Just the other day I got to take advantage of one of the many educational homeschooling perks.  Mister B was struggling with the lesson we were on in Biology so I decided we should go back a few chapters and start over.  Perk.  In school if you are lost it is more of a too bad try to keep up come in for tutoring kind of thing.  In going back those few chapters we discovered there was a whole section we skipped in one of the chapters.  Ooops.  Guess what was covered in that chapter-the stuff he was having a difficult time with.  Needless to say, it is all making a bit more sense now.

High School swimming is over for the season.  Almost undefeated.  They lost to the last team they swam against.  So close. But overall it was a great season.  The club team they both swim on had its second undefeated season.  I don't know how the kids who swim for their high schools and a club team manage to fit school and homework into their day.  I found the experience extremely challenging and was exhausted.

Little Miss and I have taken to working out together before school starts.  It has been a couple of weeks now and I have to admit (as much as I hate to admit it) but I really do have more energy and a lot more patience then usual.  Who knew (ok, everyone knew, but I didn't want to believe it).

I am beginning to think that this half of the year is going to go better then the first half in terms of finding our groove.  For certain I feel like a finally have a handle on the high school scheduling of work.  Little Miss is so going to benefit from it when she gets to high school.  Poor Mister B has been my experiment.

Another Day Completed

Sometimes it just feels good to have completed a day without steam pouring from ears and flames shooting from eyes. These past couple of days have actually gone fairly smoothly (as smooth as a day with a teenager and soon to be teenager can go)

Today they had discussion group and it was our turn to lead.  We did The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber.  I have always liked that story and now seemed a good time to follow up the last meetings satire discussion.  Who knew there were so many themes to discuss (http://www.shmoop.com/walter-mitty/table-of-contents.html).  It was quite eye opening to see how they view *cough* middle aged to old people (it seems there is a point where you can no longer change your life) and marriage.  They all thought it was funny that if the wife was wearing the pants the husband was wearing the skirt (side bar-kilts).  A nice discussion on what it means to be a man and not letting those around you define who you are.  And, disappearing into a fantasy world is probably not the best way to deal with your life.  People will think you are nuts.

This High School Thing

High School is a lot more time consuming then the younger years.  I find myself with little time for blogging and that makes me sad.  I like going back and reading about the things we have done and seeing pictures of the places we have gone.  Between course work and swim team it seems we have little time for all the fun things we used to do. Come the spring I want to figure out a way to get some of that back in to our days.

In the mean time, Mister B has gone to his first high school dance.  Swimming for the high school swim team allowed him to attend the freshman dance.  He went with some friends and had a great time.  My little man is growing up so fast. Not so little anymore (he has got me by a good few inches in height but he is still my baby boy).

Little Miss is writing a short paper on Galileo.  I took her to the library to use the encyclopedia.  Lets call it retro day.  Sure she could have used the internet but there is something soothing (quiet) about working at the library.  I think there is value in knowing how to research something without electronics.  Sometimes you just don't have access.

The Good Things jar is filling with good things. Although I seem to be the only one putting anything into it. I remain hopeful that the rest of the family will catch on.

The New Year is off and running

We are grooving along in the New Year.  We have some slips of paper in or Good Things Jar.  I am hoping we can keep it going all year.

Mister B and Little Miss are chugging away at their lessons and making progress.  Mr. B has been reviewing Commutative and Associative Properties along with finding the Lowest Common Multiple.  Little Miss is dividing with decimals and a review of adding and subtracting fractions.

In English Little Miss has been reading Lyddie and learning about life as a servant back in the day.  Mister B is working on Run On sentences and will soon be starting Animal Farm (one of my favorites- 4 legs good-2 legs bad).

In History Little Miss has started to learn a bit about the Age of Enlightenment and will be writing a report on Galileo (good news-she remembers getting to look through his telescope at The Franklin Institute a few years ago).  Mister B has been studying about State origins.  I was unaware that we have North and South Carolina because farmers did not want the North.  The South had a better climate for growing sugar cane.

In Science Mister B is learning about bacteria and Little Miss is working on volume and mass.

Mister B is making progress in Spanish.  He knows his seasons, how to count to 100, how to tell time, and the months and the days of the week.

And swimming, lots of swimming.

And the countdown to Little Miss' Bat Mitzvah.  I can not believe it is a few months away.  It seems like just yesterday that Mister B became a Bar Mitzvah. No more babies.  Just teenagers.  2 teenagers.  2 teenagers who are taller than me.

January 2, 2013

The holidays are over.  We are all rested and recovered from our New Years Eve celebrating and today we jumped back into school.  With my resolve strengthened from our school break I am making an effort not to raise my voice (yell) so much. 

Me, yell?  How can that be?  Don't my blog posts practically shimmer with the joy and rainbows that is homeschooling?  A little secret...It is not all unicorns and cupcakes.  Some days I want to load them into the car and drop them off at the local school and let someone else deal with them.  I may have mentioned that before but I have been feeling it with greater intensity lately.  Hormones. Theirs not mine.  Well, sometimes mine.

Today started off decently.  After the initial raising my voice moment I sat down with them and reminded Mister B and Little Miss M that I need their help in achieving that goal. 

They both got back into the swing (for the most part).  I think today had the crowning achievement of Little Miss writing 2 Haiku.

Flowers grow in dirt
They need water and sunshine
or they will not grow

Family is good
They are very important
You need them always

Also for 2013, in an effort to focus on the positives in our lives we have started a good things jar. (Right now it is a ziploc bag but it will be a jar).  When something good happens you write it on a scrap a paper and put it in the jar.  At the end of the year we will read all the good things that happened.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Solstice, Happy Festivus (I really should pick up a Festivus pole).  May you experience the joy of the season.

When I started this blog at the beginning of this adventure I always seemed able to find the time to post something about our days.  The older the kids get the more difficult this seems to be.  And now that Mister B is a high schooler I seem to have even less time.  Academics take up a large part of the day for both kids and then they swim, and swim, and swim.

Mister B is loving swimming for the high school team.  So far they are 4-0.  A good start to the year.  The high school team seems to be easing his social needs of hanging out with kids his age frequently.  When he is not with the high school he is with the club team.  This is a great relief to me, and as we all know, it is all about me.

Little Miss M is enjoying her time on the club team. Unfortunately, she is getting a little lost in the shuffle of getting her brother where he needs to be.  I am hoping this resolves itself over the next couple of weeks as she is feeling the effects.

Academic wise we are plugging away with the usual subjects and all is on target in that area.  Today they had philosophy, a class they continue to love, where they have been discussing rights.  Today they talked about animal rights, vegetarians and do plants have rights. Moral rights vs. legal rights.  So much to talk about here. They could probably spend the whole year on this topic.