It’s our first week back to homeschooling! Is anyone besides me excited?!  I can honestly say I was excited to start school again. Not only that, but our first week back went SO WELL too!  It’s amazing what a difference realistic planning can make to our homeschool day. This was a review week, and next week we’ll hit the math books and spelling lessons again, as well as add back in science (which fizzled last term) and grammar (which I actually just forgot about this week!)

This week we:

• Read 2 chapters in On the Shores of the Great Sea
• Read 3 Chapters in Famous Men of Greece
• Read 2 Chapters in The Iliad for Boys and Girls
• Read 1 Chapter in Tales From the Greeks
• Read 8 poems
• Did 2 Geography lessons
• Did hours of math drill on Quarter Mile Math, and hours of spelling practice & review on Spelling City.com
• Read 5 Bible stories from Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible

In addition to this, I got the boys started on the book quizzes on BookAdventure.com, which we used years ago but haven’t in a long time. They each took, and passed a book quiz, earning points toward some neat prizes. E and I will also decide on a certain BIG prize for a point level…. not sure yet how that will work. Each passed quiz is 100 points, so I am thinking around the 4000 mark we’ll do a Chuck E. Cheese day or something. There needs to be a good incentive!  We haven’t decided yet.

This week I also read Days 4-8 of my Read the Bible in 90 Days challenge.  I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions… I just don’t make those any more.  This is probably the closest thing to a resolution. I am determined to read the whole Bible, as an overview of God’s story, from cover to cover. My husband was skeptical at first. Now he is listening along on his iPod.  (He’s NOT a reader! He’d be in the read the Bible in 90 years group.)  And we’re both enjoying this!

I’m still pulling hair out over our 12th grader, who doesn’t seem to have a personal stake in her high school classes, and is struggling to pass her Holocaust class.  She’s only got THREE MORE WEEKS. Three weeks of on campus classes… and she’s only taking THREE of those!  After the semester ends, she has her online English class to finish up and then graduate!  Graduate! GRADUATE!  Did I mention she turns 18 in just a few weeks?  Why is this final stretch before adulthood SO hard?  ARG. But we know God is faithful, and it will all be worth it in the end. She will graduate, she will move on into her adult life, and she won’t think her parents are dumb forever.

This week is sort of the gear-up, and then next week will be an odd one. Isn’t that how it always goes?  Next week, I leave Thursday afternoon with 300 teenagers to Snow Camp, and won’t return until Sunday night.  I do it every year, and I love it.  I’ll be leading a cabin of high school girls.  The boys and I will have four days of school, then I get to spend three whole entire days ministering to girls. I wouldn’t change this life for anything…. really, I wouldn’t.