Day in the Life

Monday.

7:00-10:30 Quiet time for me. Coffee, breakfast, reading the papers. Shower, tidying up, filling the bird bath and one of the feeders. Decided to make muffins and almost burned them because of the spectacle outside the kitchen window -- 5 mourning doves on the fence all watching the finches zooming around the feeder. I had to grab the camera and try to capture it.

I couldn't get all the birds in focus fast enough -- still learning the digital SLR.

10:30 Kids up, thrilled to have muffins for breakfast.

11:00 The teacher from the charter school arrives with boxes of biology lab equipment for us!! Microscope, blank slides and 3 different single-station AP labs. Feels like Christmas in a geeky sort of way.

Brought the teacher up to date on everything and he reads over my son’s work. He sees this son weekly in the Mock Trial class, so it isn’t as if he has no clue what is going on in our lives, but it is his job to review work and assign grades.

12:00 Dad and college son out the door as is the teacher.

12:30 Head to the library to get books, and to stop by the pond next door. My son has made a collection net out of a plastic cup and a section of old hose. After getting a cup-full of pond water, we admire the ducks but as we didn’t bring binoculars and it is hot, decide it isn’t a great day for water-fowl watching and head home.

1:30 Decide it is going to be a lazy homeschool day. While the pond water critters settle to the bottom of the cup, we listen to and read books 10 and 11 of The Iliad. The audio recording skims over the gory battle scenes, actually it pretty much skips book 10, so I read aloud the highlights.

2:30-4:30 Indulge in a lazy afternoon. My violin student has cancelled, college student is out for the remainder of the day, so I don’t have to drive anywhere. Hallelujah!!

4:30 - 6:30 Play with microscope, slides and pond water. Try to identify critters through internet through sites like “Micropolitan Museum”. Dad comes home and has a turn with the microscope.

Decide not to cook. While the menfolk head out to rustle up some fast food grub, I fill in the lesson plans for the remainder of the week. We’ll have to be good about doing real school the rest of the week but really enjoyed our lazy day. Watched a recorded episode of Flash Forward while eating burgers from Chili’s, then will finish laundry and settle down with library book.

Wordless Wednesdays

Happiness is a pair of warm puppy slippers.

Sunday afternoon planning

I can't decide if this is lazy procrastination or necessary work. Probably a little of both. Here I sit on the couch, surrounded by a biology textbook, a SAT II biology subject test prep book, and the outline of lectures from a Teaching Company biology series. Thanks to google I have added to my list of biology bookmarks. I've got us signed up for Project Pigeon Watch so we can have fun with a unit on Mendelian genetics.

My goal? To match Teaching Company lectures to the text book and to be sure every biology topic gets covered before the middle of June next year. Do I follow the order in the text book or the order in the lecture series? Can I find lab ideas and work sheets to match all the topics? Does something at least cover material in the SAT II prep book? Does my ds appreciate how much work it is to do this homeschooling prep work? (I don't want to know the answer to that one!)



This is what the pile of work looks like from today. Sadly that last cookie is now gone, and I still have to finish planning Spanish lessons for the next few weeks. That may call for a glass of wine.

The sad thing is I have no idea what we will eat for dinner. Even sadder is that there is no coffee in the house for breakfast tomorrow morning. Now I am in procrastination territory. Sit here with a glass of wine while looking over Spanish materials, or face the Sunday afternoon grocery store hordes? Hmmm.