WR: Winter Crunch Time

Weekly Report. It was going to be a weird week, I knew from the beginning, because the middle was book-ended by a long-day of play practice on Monday and co-op, ending with play practice on Friday.

I think that we will be ready for the One Act Play competition, which is on January 31, but meanwhile we have lots of details, like music and dance. I find myself waking up at night thinking of dance routines. Natural, since I'm a dancer- NOT!Between play practice, working out details for the Winter Warm-Up and nailing down housing, chaperon's etc for TeenPact (Thank-goodness for a great team this year- Joanne and Barb rock!) the not-so-littles and I eeked out the usual math and phonics as well as...

...reading Cub D'Aulaire's Greek Myths, a well-loved volume around here. A couple of night ago we read about Orion and how he was made into a constellation by the gods. I got up with Flower last night at 4 a.m. when she had to go potty. She looked out the bathroom window and practically shouted, "A constellation!!" She was so excited she went and got Daddy out of bed. Being the astronomy geek that he is, he spent the next 1/2 hour talking with her about stars, the winter and north sky and what they were looking at. Homeschooling takes place night and day around here!

Feche boy continues on with Omni II- finished "Creeds" and is on to the next section. One of the writing assignments was for him to write his own Creed. He loved it and it came out quite good. I wish Omnibus had more art, music and architectural history involved. I want to work more of that in to next year. Great ideas so far from the TWTM gals but if you have any more, send them my way!

We have started Christian Studies II. They pack a LOT into each lesson. Little wonder since volume II goes from the first book of history through the prophets. Each lessons reading is taking about an hour. I just hate to break it up into smaller chunks, though, so I just make myself a big mug of tea before I start reading and KB pitches in when my voice is done. Speaking of voices, the kids watched My Fair Lady on Monday night and have been singing and quoting it ever since. The boys especially love "Why Can't an Englishman Learn to Speak?" and have been singing it excessively. It is pretty darn funny, especially the rendition my 2 cute blondies give!

We are watching How Shall We Then Live by Francis Shaffer. Excellent overview of Christianity and World History. We are going through all 10 sessions quickly this week and then we are going to go through it again slowly and do the study guide. A friend also loaned us History of the World MegaConference. TeenPact alumni homework focuses this year on ancient civilizations and their legislation regarding families, so both of these are great fits with the research Feche-boy is doing to get ready for our week at the capital February 23-27. To find out more about hands-on government and leadership training through TeenPact go to www.teenpact.com

Did you have a full week? I hope that it was full of JOY and Wonder!