Our homeschooling year continued full swing into the first half of June mostly because this is a testing year for us, and I wanted to finish up a few things before I administered the tests last week. As a result, I am feeling burned out on all things homeschool. I am so glad we have those tests out of the way, and now we can relax a little, though we have some exciting summer activities we need to get ready for. I’ll be able to tell you all about that next month.

We will do some “lite” homeschooling during the summer months, and I also do a lot of administrative work in the summer, but I don’t mind. I have to write up progress reports for the year, and I use that as a way to document everything the boys have achieved during the year. I’m not required to show it to anyone, so I include everything, and it makes a good keepsake. I also like to put together a slideshow of photos from our year, but I never finished the one for last year 😬, so I’m not pressuring myself to do it this year either.

I am still working on a 7th grade curriculum, which means settling on the resources for all the subjects plus a full literature curriculum, in which I’ve picked my own books, resources, and questions to ask (with help from the Internet). This is the first time I’ve planned so far ahead. It’s been fun, but it’s a lot of work, and it’s slow going because I have such little time to work on it. (Here’s where I daydream about a week alone in a mountain cabin to work on stuff like this. lol) I am also putting together a much more formal plan for 4th grade for my younger son than I ever did for his older brother, but that’s much easier to do since I have already taught 4th grade once.

My twelve-year-old told me recently that his younger brother was lucky because I already did all my experimenting before I got to him. lol That’s not always true, though. My younger son is very different in his interests and learning style, and I feel like I’m starting from scratch with him, though it is nice to have a bunch of resources and experience to draw from.

Speaking of curriculum, if you read my last post about how our year went, you might want to skim over it again. Because I forgot to include some things! Opps. I realized this as I was working on the progress reports. This is what I get for trying to write fast.

What else have we been doing? I just posted my twelve-year-old’s spring recital piece on his YouTube channel. I hope you’ll check that out.

As for me, I enjoyed having a photography job last month at the beautiful William Harris Homestead. My great aunt is the person who restored the log house and dreamed of using the homestead for heritage education. Now her daughter (my cousin) is carrying out that dream with help from a wonderful staff, which I got to photograph too. I love how my photos turned out, so I hope you’ll check them out. How I wish I could do more photography jobs. 🙂

We also took a day off to visit the Atlanta Botanical Garden Gainesville. Since my son has a keen interest in trees and horticulture, we bought a family membership to the Atlanta Botanical Garden last year, and we try to take advantage of it! We got lucky to see a pileated woodpecker while we were there.

And what else? Well, it’s mostly just been busy Daily Life stuff. But we do enjoy hanging out at home on our front porch when we can, and we all like to read and watch television. For fun, I thought I would list our current favorites.

Books to read silently:

12-year-old: Death Gate Cycle series

9-year-old: Calvin and Hobbes (any book will do)

Me: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

 

Books I’m reading aloud:

Chickadee by Louise Erdrich

Finding Wonders: Three Girls Who Changed Science by Jeannine Atkins

Just for the 9-year-old: The Little House series

 

Television

The whole family: Deep Space 9 (Netflix), Northern Exposure (DVD), Big Dreams, Small Spaces (Netflix)

The boys: The Adventures of Puss in Boots (Netflix)

Me: Scott and Bailey, The Durrells in Corfu, Poldark (all on Amazon Prime)

 

If you’ve read this far, thank you! I appreciate your readership so much. Please tell me what you have been up to.