Just a Regular Week

"America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration." Warren G. Harding (1865-1923)

I love it when we have "normal" weeks. Not perfect ones, no, there was one really bad day this week where the kids didn't understand me and I didn't understand them. But that is all part and parcel of life -- not just homeschooling. Homeschooling, though, does push me to try harder to get to their level, to reign in my selfish tendencies, and to help them learn the disciplines of paying attention and listening. But there is something about normalcy that just feels good and leaves me (and I think the rest of my family) with a deep contentment.

Here are a few pics from the week:

Addie built Jericho out of her blocks. She was so thrilled, and since her joy is mine, I was thrilled too. Not sure who the bear is... maybe Rahab?

Carter finished his first language arts project. Now, most of them will be more "project oriented" but this time, I had the choice of doing a book project or a project geared toward getting the child to practice the godly character traits we had studied. We had been studying responsibility and diligence along with the biography of Amelia Earhart (who coincidentally was NOT always responsible). This is his sheet where he assigned himself a task for responsibility (making sure his room was immaculate without being told) and diligence (striving for excellence with his piano practice). He did this for five days, and each task was worth a certain amount of "counters", which I made nickels. The max he could earn was 4 nickels a day, or 20 nickels. I told him if he earned all of the counters, he could keep the dollar. He earned them all, turned his project sheet in today and we talked about how good it felt to exercise responsibility for things he knows he's supposed to do. It was a great project!

An experiment in mummification. This is a "control" apple next to an apple soaking in baking soda and salt. They will do this in co-op as well, but I didn't have the co-op assignments yet so we went on and did it. He loved it so much, I know he'll love doing it at co-op too! And this way, Addie got to experiment because she has diligently been listening in on our science reading. I'm taking pics of it every day and will post the process next Monday or Tuesday.

The garden is STILL producing... Here is one of Addie's watermelons. And it was GOOD.

Carter doing dictation. I wasn't too keen on this thought but a friend does it and told me it's worth and I read up on it. It seems to be a very good language building skill, and one of our agreements is that if he does super neat work in dication and his other assignments, we won't do as much work in the handwriting workbook. He does very well with dication. Today, he even got a hyphenated word and got all of the commas in the right spots.

With all of this accomplished, we can now go shopping for a few fall clothing items to see them through to winter and then hit the grocery store. We are thankful it is Friday and look forward to some good family time this weekend!