Our Homeschool Traveling Zoo: Back to School

As the holidays concluded, we once again embraced the schedule and activity that is our school day.

Well, OK, maybe embraced is, for some of us at least, euphemistic for "trudged groggily," but hey, we started school this week. Awake or not, here we came! :P

This week Cub:

*Did 4 devotionals and 5 days of SL Bible

*Survived (barely :P) 3 algebra lessons and a quiz

*Completed 4 days of SL history

*Jumped back into chemistry, finishing 3 lessons. We looked at Lifepac 8th grade science, thinking we might save the rest of Tiner's Integrated Chemistry and Physics for next year, but ultimately decided that, well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. :)

*Worked through 3 days of Latin, attended piano lessons and band, took 3 Karate classes, kicked my rear at the bowling alley, listened in on his brother's read alouds, started Trek back, and made his mama both proud and thankful for what a great kid he is as I was reminded this week of what "typical" teenage behavior can entail

*Rejoiced at the fact that there was no writing assignment for this week, so he only had grammar and spelling. To top it off, he's getting to re-read Tom Sawyer in literature (because I didn't like the book that SL assigned and let him pick a replacement). He's wishing that English class was always this cool. :)

The pic to the left is posted (with Cub's permission) in the interest of keeping it real. The joke about the math problem that says, "If you have 4 pencils and I have 7 apples, how many pancakes will fit on the roof? Purple, because aliens don't wear hats" pretty much sums up my oldest son's opinion of anything involving numbers. He is bright and funny and responsible and creative and godly and sweet....and just does not get math, which explains the 67 (his first attempt) and then the 85 (his second attempt) on the algebra quizzes in the pic. Oh well. Everyone has different strengths. We'll just keep plugging away at what obviously isn't one of his and rejoice in the meantime in all those things that are. :)

Enjoying one of her Christmas presents :)

This week Crawdad:

*Eventually (sort of :P) woke up and completed 4 days of Preparing including history, Bible, poetry, and notebooking

*Did 2 Apologia fish lessons in addition to his HOD dessert science

*Completed 4 lessons in his BJU reader, 4 grammar lessons, and one day of dictation (OK, we slacked here a bit)

*Soared through 3 pre-algebra lessons and made a 100% on his first pre-alg quiz (Math is his subject.)

*Listened to me read from Adopted by Indians, Rascal, and Tirzah, participated in his Who is God? study, enjoyed piano and band, went to Karate 3 times, started AWANA back up, and bowled his best game yet :)

Preparing science notebooking page

Crawdad's first pre-alg quiz

Crawdad's notebook page on whales from Apologia's Swimming Creatures book

Piano practice

Cub and Taz and watercolor paint

They love the ability to school on the couches. :)

Left, um, I have boys? I told them they could have some cookies while they finished their work one afternoon. I stepped out to swap the laundry and returned to the school room to discovered impaled Keebler elves strewn across my table. I suppose all the giggling should have tipped me off. Predicate nouns and proper adjectives aren't that funny. :P

This week Taz....made some crafts. :) She did some other stuff too, like 2 days of LHFHG, several pages in both Lifepac science and social studies grade 1 workbooks, practiced reading, argued with me through multiple pages of Abeka K math (that child hates to add, even though she's quite good at it), tried to wrap her mind around the idea of sound waves, and generally just made life interesting and enterataining. :)