That’s right, y’all. All of our horribly unsocialized homeschoolers won the Spirit Award for the STATE level Science Olympiad this time–beating out 48 other middle schools (since the spirit award was giving to one team across both Class A and Class AA) in displaying exemplary sportsmanship… OUR FIRST YEAR THERE!
And thank GAWD because it saved us from BigGuy insisting we leave the whole shindig…
It started innocently enough: I was lamenting (by way of Facebook messages) to two of my friends about trying to meet the needs of BigGuy while occupying Girly with something other than the television. Jen always has great ideas and I don’t think she had a clue what she started with her brain dump into the Facebook message…
Next to packing lunches, planning is the complete bane of my existence. I loathe each with equal passion. Currently, I am detaching from reality each evening with an inflammation-inducing comfort of organic milk (we have been dairy-free for ELEVEN years) and chunky Chips Ahoy cookies (we have been gluten-free for a decade and pretty much flour free because of blood sugar issues for easily 3 years)… because I am in a quandary about how to proceed with my kids educational needs and I just don’t feel like dealing with it.
But I’m going to deal with it, obviously… Here is the quandary…
Continue reading To plan, or not to plan… that is the question
If you have a kid that functions better at school than they do at home, this is the phrase that will make you believe not only that you CAN’T homeschool, but that you SHOULDN’T–for your child’s sake (and maybe yours). I hear this a lot… about how “kids need structure”. I don’t disagree with the concept although I may have a different perspective on how that manifests in real life. My son and I do NOT function without structure. Seriously. Train wreck.
Structure: “something arranged in a definite pattern of organization” (thank you, Merriam-Webster online). So how do you create this when you homeschool?
It was a weekend that feels like the first day of the rest of our lives… because Boy Scouts is NOT Cub Scouts, people. For one, in Boy Scouts, the boys run the show. There are adults there to be sure nobody is hurt and some basic rules are followed; but the boys live and suffer by their own hands. So when the Scout assigned to build the campfire Saturday night didn’t get to it, everyone ate “raw” s’mores.
And this was BigGuy’s first Boy Scout campout…
There is nobody more surprised than me at the current state of BigGuy’s grades through the virtual school. He is completely done with the first unit in each subject. Each subject is broken down into roughly 5-6 units. Here is how it’s going…
This weekend, I feel like the torch was officially passed to my husband on the Scouting front. He and BigGuy left early Saturday morning for the first of what will be many Scout camping outings. This one was very short, but they banged out all of the requirements to get him his “Scout” badge (the very first rank in Boy Scouts).
That, however, left Girly and I on our own…
So, the topic of orphanages comes up in the context of talking about a new family I met whose daughter was adopted from an orphanage in Guatemala just before Guatemala closed to adoptions. Our family has been foster parents (before Girly could remember) and one of our former foster children wound up in a group home–which is a special kind of uncomfortable for me. Our kids have a fairly accurate idea of how “the system” works, and this conversation was to clarify the difference between orphanages, group homes, and what becomes of the children in each…
OMGOMGOMG!!! I haven’t talked much about BigGuy and Science Olympiad because, well, ummm… it’s our first year involved and it wasn’t as much of a “team” thing as we anticipated. So it kind of threw us for a loop. But OMGOMGOMG!!!
BigGuy and his partner–both fifth graders–took 4th place in Meteorology!!! Our team is allowed to have fifth graders because the size of our “school” is so small. The competition is mostly 6-8th graders. Two of the schools in the regional competition are private gifted schools with performance criteria for admission.
AND… we are the FIRST homeschool team to ever make it to state finals in Illinois! WOOHOO!!
BigGuy: “There’s such a thing as a LESSER loved book?”
Me: “Yes”
BigGuy: “I don’t have any of those.”
This combined with the constant state of his room equals a future “Hoarders” celebrity.
Educated Adventures 