10% of the Year

Pictures: 1) Bram pulled a globe on top of himself and got a little black eye 2) A "help" note that was waiting at my desk when I came back from putting Bram down for his nap one day. 3) cave paintings 4) Lucy Clare and Molly playing with their new handwriting/paint bags




I remember our last year in public school, I counted down the days and would use percentages to remind myself of where we were in relation to being finished. When we hit 18 days this week, it reminded me of that first 10% that year and how both long and short the year looked like in front of me. Only a year to prepare for homeschooling but a whole year before we got to start.

We've had a fairly good 10% so far. It certainly hasn't been without a few bumps and bad days, but we seem to be getting into a good rhythm lately and settling into our new books and curriculum's.

The biggest changes have been how much more teacher-intensive a lot of our subjects are this year, especially for the younger kids. We've always dabbled in the classical theories of schooling, but this year, we dove into it with much more focus. So that means, lots of reading, lots of narration, and lots and lots of memorizing. So far Lucy Clare and Molly have mastered a poem each, about 25 questions in the Baltimore Catechism and 20-25 Latin vocabulary words.

History, as always, is my favorite subject. We're studying the Ancient World, and the Nomads, Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians are proving to be an exciting bunch. We've made cave paintings, tombstones for Pericles, Solon, and Draco, and built huts out of whatever we could find like the nomads.

Bram continues to add an extra level of organizational needs to our day, and although we love having him around, we can fly through work while he takes his morning nap. I know he's going to drop that nap soon, and I don't know what we're going to do then. When he's not napping, he loves to color, (which he calls "bubbles" because he insists we draw circles over and over for him) play dress up, trains, and little people. The girls take turns playing with him in the playroom, and can sometimes lay in there and read while he just plays around them.