And They Fledge...

One of the assignments for E's summer writing class was to write a poem about summer. Now, when E has a writing assignment, it means that both of us do a lot of work. It's just where she is in her development—she has absolutely no idea how to take her teacher's posted assignment and translate the words into a plan and process on her end. So I'm much more hands-on than I've ever had to be with either of the boys' online classes. This is mostly because E is taking her first class at age 9, while L and P started their first online classes at 13 and 12, respectively. But this is also because they're boys, and she's a girl. That's an obvious statement which probably lacks obvious relevance to my reader and therefore sounds pejorative... unless you happen to be raising or teaching both boys and girls at the moment, and you've already noticed for yourself that they really do tend towards some major differences in their learning approach. L's first o...

June has been a big month for us. It is littered with wonderful answers to prayer in the midst of a hard situation. D had been affected in early April by a mass layoff at his company, and as the job search wore on, we got bolder and more specific with our prayers. Every one of them was answered, and the biggest upshot of June was that D has a new job; a great new job that is the right next step for him. Appian Swag! June is also full of other milestones for our family. P graduated from middle school with a bang and is now officially a 9th grader. His chemistry teacher (note that P was taking HIGH SCHOOL chemistry in 8th grade) unofficially gave him something along the lines of a "most improved" class award. He told P that he had seen how hard P had worked to implement his constructive criticism, and he wanted to give P the chance at ending up with an A. He gave him a couple of last-minute extra credit opportunities. P rose to the occasion and ended up with JUST enough...

There are five people in this house, all of whom use computers. There are three men in this house, all of whom have important online meetings. There are four rooms in this house that have some sort of workable space for setting up a computer and using it to make calls. One of these is E's room, which really doesn't count, as her desk is too small to be of any value to D, and too girly—and small—to be of any value to her brothers. But with a couple of floor cushions in addition to her suitably sized desk and chair, E happily spends a lot of time in there. She makes a lot of "calls," too. Recently D overheard her pretending to be someone named Kaitlyn who apparently works as a receptionist at a vet's office. There were lots of polite phone conversations, as well as some in-person nudging of clients towards better managing their pets while in the waiting room, and a few off-the-record sighs from the quite harried Kaitlyn. This is the kind of stuff that most dads mi...

We have a plan. The plan, of course, is worthless, according to the old Army aphorism; but the planning itself is everything. How else will we know what to deviate from? (Sorry, Churchill, but ending a clause with a preposition is something up with which I will put. Although I must mention that the fabled connection between Churchill and the preposition issue is tenuous and confused .) So here's the plan: we have married L's high school requirements with the P1052C engineering pathway at Durham Tech and come up with an idea of what his junior and senior course load will look like. Note that when I say high school requirements, I am not talking about what is actually required in order for him to graduate. (As the principal of a legally recognized home school in NC, I have carte blanche to decide what is required in order to graduate him.) I am instead referring to the far more relevant question of what most colleges expect him to have taken, which is the following: H...

Today, top on the list was cleaning my house. Beautiful sunbeams have been streaming through the windows, illuminating about 10+ days' worth of dust, because my usual housecleaning schedule somehow didn't happen last week. (I have an excuse. My vacuum has been in the shop for a tune-up for two weeks now, because a) these people are clearly in a hurry to call me and tell me it's ready, and b) I'm clearly in a hurry to call them and bug them so I can get it back. 😏 But since most of my cleanup work is dusting and mopping, this excuse really does not muster.) So what have I done today? I cycled laundry, and made breakfast for my kids, and sat with my coffee and crocheted two short rows of my current project (which has a deadline, because I need to wear it to my BIL's wedding—this is not idle frittering, don't judge; besides, sitting STILL and QUIET with one's coffee is half the benefit). I placed a couple of necessary online orders, and had a conversation wi...

E is about to take the plunge into the world of online classes. I find it kind of interesting that E is only 4 grades behind P, though 4.5 years younger. This happened for the same reason that P is only 1 year behind L in math and science, though 2 grades younger. You have a little kid who is bright and capable and eager to learn and do, and they're coming along behind the older ones, so you just hand them a crayon and a math book and let them run, so to speak. If E were in public school, I'd have held her back, because it's not a good situation for many reasons to be the youngest girl in a classroom. I could very much see her taking a year off between graduation and college, like I did—which was one of the better decisions I ever made; thanks, Mom and Dad. But here she is, heading towards starting 5th grade the very month she turns 10, and she's doing well. I used to kind of despair over her standardized test scores, which were way behind her brothers' at her...

I mentioned in my last post that it's the time of year when one must get all one's academic ducks lined up for future pond-paddling. This includes everything from thinking through all the plans, to filling out the paperwork to implement them. Sort through your options. Pick your preferences. Research your resources and choose your druthers. Chart and spreadsheet and calculate. Make sure your kids are taking what they need to take to tick all the right boxes, which means make sure you know what boxes need to be ticked. I made a mistake with L, with that last part. I did not realize soon enough that a) all colleges pretty much expect you to have had biology in high school , and b) the life science course he took at TPS (which I would  swear was listed as appropriate for 9th grade; although when I went back to verify that some time later, I was either wrong—which is possible—or they had changed it—equally probable) is considered a middle school course and does not count. The ...