Homemade Summer Fun!

School has ended for this family, this semester. We're enjoying our summer vacation and I'm trying not to think about the fact I have not finished up this semester's paperwork, nor planned for the fall.

The teen graduated this month and has her college classes for the fall all lined up. She took the ACT again a couple weeks ago and we're anxiously waiting her scores. Either way, she is still going to college at the local community college.

The summer has been packed with many kids visiting, spending the night, movie nights, pool days and laziness galore. We're trying to fill moments with art, reading and other things besides organized homeschool or TV. Camp time is coming up and I'm hoping to sneak away with the hubby for a weekend before the fall descends on us.

Today the little one had her cousin over and they searched high and low for a 'slip-n-slide' type apparatus in this house. They settled on a paint tarp. Perfect homemade summer fun!

I'll be back soon I'm sure, whining about all the schooling I need to plan, now for just one child. In the meantime, enjoy life. Talk soon.

Homeschool Art - Mushrooms!

Walking through the new books department of the library I found this unique book of mushroom paintings; A Visionary Field Guide Mushroom Magick by Arik Roper. The colors were so vibrant, I wanted to cut the pictures out and frame them! Needless to say, I brought it home for further perusing.

Yesterday we moved our homeschool time down to my art room and the girls wanted a bit of art time. I thought of that book. We started out with patterned paper scraps and looked at some of the mushroom paintings. The girls drew mushrooms, taking in all the details.

The teen then painted over her sketch with gesso (it allows for the pencil marks to be set but still seen.) She then used fluid acrylic paints with matte medium to paint her mushrooms complete with a background of clouds and a floor of leaves.

The little one went with the simple approach and just colored the mushrooms with Koh-I-Noor colored pencils.

While they worked on their art projects I made ornaments. Maybe I should make some mushroom ornaments! lol

Homeschooling vs. Slackerville: a fight to the death

(Image picked up from: Your Name University)

Ahhhh, the holidays are coming. This is the point where I start to panic, adding up our hours, shuffling and organizing our school paperwork in an effort to see how far we are behind! So far this year in hours, we're ahead (don't ask me how, I don't know.) However, let's compare how much 'homeschooling' we're actually achieving compared to how much 'slacking' is going on, shall we?

The Little One.

Homeschooling getting done:
1. Math - 4th grade book is finished, 5th grade book is started and we're flying through it. 1 point for homeschool, maybe even 2! Check.
2. Reading - Read Alouds for Sonlight history; we're behind. Really we're so far off the track I don't know where to begin to pull us back on. BUT, the little one is reading her way through The Chronicles of Narnia and has started reading The Edge Chronicles series I gave her for her birthday in August that I do believe she never even cracked open until this week. Even though we're behind in the history reading, so much reading is going on, I have to pry books out of her hand to get anything else in it, even food. I call this 1 point for homeschool. Check.
3. Bible - Quizzing is finished every week and class for it is attended. Dh and the little one are reading their way through the gospels. I think they're in Mark right now. 1 point for homeschool. Check.
4. Music - on the upside, since Choral class is, in fact, a class right before Wednesday night church and DH is in charge of getting her there, we're on track with that. 1 point for homeschool. Check.

Subjects in which Slackercity has been become our home:
1. Science - Sonlight Human Body study... hmmm. Bored. We've dropped it completely. I need to find some activities and projects, books to read. I did find this link while looking up books, so she might play with it today. Yucky Discovery. The worksheets from Sonlight weren't cutting it for either of us. We're doing no science right now unless you count the constant inventing/baking she is doing (today she is torturing my senses and diet with homemade carrot cake, evil child.) But I'm still saying we're behind so: 1 point for slackerville.
2. Piano - Lessons have completely gone by the wayside due to lack of time, and let's be frank here, lack of discipline on my part. 1 point for slackerville.

A Tie has been called:
1. English - We're sort of caught up on Wordly Wise vocab, yet behind on English book & Daily Grams. I call this a tie.
2. History - Sonlight Core 5 has this optional program you can buy (which I did not) called Eastern Hemisphere Explorer package. It covers all aspects of different countries. Instead, we have been ordering country books & videos from the library and drawing/writing about these places in our 'Country Notebook'. It gives her a place to draw and also practice a bit of writing on things SHE finds interesting about those countries. We were going so well, even getting the reading of history books in but haven't done this in a couple weeks. So I'd say we're tied.

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The Teen.

Homeschool vs. Slackerville - TIE.

All homeschooling classes have been suspended until she finishes out this semester of college courses. She has a Sociology teacher who has never taught before and doesn't know the meaning of time management, an English Comp teacher who is obstinate, doesn't give feedback on papers so you have no idea what you're getting wrong, gives no feedback on drafts so you know what to correct. She just tells you to go to the writing lab if you don't know what you're doing (HELLO! Why am I paying YOU to teach my child then, huh?) She also has a history teacher that wants you to basically memorize all of world history. He's is a good teacher, just unrealistic a bit.

This experience has soured her on college, especially this campus in general. We've had meetings with teachers, talked with directors and if something doesn't improve, the dean will be hearing from us next. Incompetent teachers suck. I feel bad for her, she worries too much and has trouble sleeping sometimes because of it. If we can just get through this semester with B's, we'll both be overjoyed. I'm praying for her everyday. Next year should be gravy, all art courses for fun.

So, homeschool is slacking at the moment or really we've prioritized. She'll go back to Algebra 2 studies over the holidays to catch up. Government was almost finished anyway so we'll do a final project over the holidays to wrap it up. Maybe a field trip and a written/drawn presentation. We dropped the Bachelorette Living course entirely. She knows everything I wanted to teach her except how to check things in a car so we'll do something else next semester instead of it. DH will teach her car stuff when we actually get her a car this summer hopefully.

We missed the deadline for Dec's ACT test so we'll shoot for the February one and start studying in earnest for it over the holidays and January. She learning that homeschool has been a cakewalk compared to real life.

So that's an update on the fight between homeschool and slackerland. Not sure who is winning. Stay tuned for a new report by the holidays. Hoping I have better things to share.