We start school early in August because we live in Oklahoma, which is beautiful ten months of the year. It it not so beautiful in July and August. It is nasty humid and hot. Sweat pours the second you leave the air conditioning. Outdoor chores must be done early in the morning. We do the errands and the yard work. We go to the pool. But even my outdoor-loving boys are happy to spend these steamy afternoons with their noses in books. Most of the time.
You would think that would mean it was easy to get the schoolwork done. But, really, they just want to go on reading their favorites and doing as they please. It is summertime, after all.
Yesterday, Micah went to his first day of his Challenge 1 class. I went and tutored a couple of Latin Classes. Josiah and Gideon and a friend of theirs and I ate lunch with my mom, did some grocery shopping, and hung out at home.
Yesterday, a dear friend texted me to ask if she is doing something wrong because her children aren’t perfect. I am blaming my morning on her need to know that we often fail around here. One particular child decided to dig in his heels this morning. He just couldn’t choose to do his work happily. He had to argue about everything. He earned some time to cool off and make better decisions. I lost my cool and yelled at him. He lost some privileges. But he returned to his work and got it done efficiently for the most part. I apologized for yelling, and he forgave me. He apologized for being difficult. I forgave him. I forgave me. We moved on.
This morning, we:
- Read today’s portion of the Memory work binder
- Read aloud the first half of John 12
- Looked at Rembrandt’s The Artist in His Studio and read the first bit of a book called What Makes a Rembrandt a Rembrandt.
- Math (one lesson per boy – Saxon 54, 65, and Algebra 1)
- Latin: Graded work for Micah (who did some other work today besides math and Latin.)
- Gideon read every Sir Cumference book ever written and read The Race of the Birkebeiners. Sir GrumpyPants refused to read about the Vikings and complained about reading a chapter in the science book. But my floors were well swept and vacuumed.
This afternoon we:
- Appointment for me
- Violin lesson for Micah; hanging out with friends for the rest of us
- Errands: Library, homeschool consignment shop, Staples, Lowe’s, the bank, the Salvation Army, and the gas station
This evening, I taught a class of moms the first lesson in the Latin book we use, and Jon and the boys headed out to a friend’s house to learn how to fillet a fish. They returned with several pounds of beautiful fillets. We’ll have to pull out the fryer for that.
Things on the list that we skipped today:
- spelling
- a second read aloud
- actually cooking dinner (leftover night)
- finishing several blog posts
- copywork
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