Monday Update

I've been MIA. You might have noticed. Last week was standardized testing for the kids. Getting up at 6am to get the animals cared for before sitting in a small room in front of Scan-Tron sheets for several hours each day really kicked our butts. On the bright side, it gave me a whole lot of "Aren't you glad you're homeschooled" leverage.

Other than that, there's not much new going on. I still haven't gotten the peppers planted in the garden. The ants have eaten off the cantaloupe seeds, so they need to be reseeded today. I still need to get out there with some of these ideas for controlling them; I've been saving coffee grounds for a week.

Isn't this the most beautiful iris? Iris the goat went to her new home on Tuesday. Phoebe didn't even notice.

The goslings are getting bigger by the day.

Onyx's minimancha kids about about the cutest things ever. I am so tempted to keep one, but I am concerned about breeding them to our full-sized buck on their first freshening. Really, they need to go, but we sure are enjoying them while they're here. I'll probably keep a doeling from Kat or Onyx next year.

The baking soda-ACV shampoo routine is still going okay. I think I've entered the adjustment stage everyone warned about, but I'm going to push on through for a few more weeks.

One of my boys' pictures was selected to represent our homeschool group in the Audubon art competition at our local nature center. I'm so proud of him! His is the oil painting of the cardinals. He didn't will a top prize, but he won just getting selected to be there. The winners were all 5th graders and I may be am partial, but I think his was better than most. We took him out for a most extravagant dinner in celebration. Expensive, but we sure had fun and I want him to see how hard work pays off-so have all these years of Thursday art lessons with my aunt.

I am trying to get all of our fourth grade curriculum together. They keep asking when summer break is, but the truth is we will be schooling throughout the summer. I'm thinking of teaching Mon, Wed or Mon, Wed, Fri. I'd love for them to be about done with 4th grade by Christmas. We are going to step up our game this year.

I am trying to move to an approach where they are more responsible for their own educations. One thing I did was switch from Singapore to Saxon math. I never thought I'd use Saxon, but in reading all the reviews, I think it's exactly what we need in our quest to teach them to teach themselves. Cole is also expressing interest in being an architect. It seems like everyone who enjoys the Saxon approach goes on to be some sort of engineer or physicist.

Do any of you homeschool mothers have tips for putting kids more in charge of their own learning?