The Homeschool Mother's Journal: Fine Arts Edition

1 - Returning books to the library, 2 - Pumpkin Bread w/ cream cheese frosting, 3 - Shakespeare Sunday, 4 - Music Study, 5 - Delani doing her "handwriting on the white board, 6 - Nurse Delani putting a band aid on her brother's forehead (look closely--it's a strawberry!)

In my life this week…
School, laundry, working, and trying to maintain.

I worked at changing out my summer clothes for my winter clothes. Since we don't have much space they have to be kept in a box. That then requires lots of putting stuff through the dryer to get the wrinkles out and then ironing the items that are still too wrinkles. Unfortunately, I don't have a high tolerance for wrinkles, so I had a lot of ironing.

I also had to spend two days getting my "high finances" up to date. I use Quicken and there is a great feature to download all your transactions from the bank and then reconcile your account. This week it decided not to work. Since I have an older Quicken program I can't even get any support, so now I have to save up some money for a newer program.

In our homeschool this week…
We finished our first Shakespeare play for this year (3). We read Othello and the kids had a great time dying at the end. Destini (who is our most reluctant reader/actor) decided it was great fun to die and really got into it. We will finish off this play with watching the film with Orson Wells.

We have started a new hymn "We Shall See the King" for hymn study. We also are working on "Dixie" for our folk song. Since Caleb was studying the Civil War I tried to pick songs from that era. And yes, I know that we are "from the North", but I did have two kids born in Texas and I'm just giving them a taste from the land of their birth!

For our artist study we are studying Norman Rockwell and we studied "The Art Critic".  For Music Study we are listening to Claude Debussy. This week we listened to Suite Bergamasque (part 1 & 2). We are using the SQUILT form provided by Mary at Homegrown Learners (4) .

I have been able to be more consistent with our "morning time" though sometimes it happens more toward noon and it is being called "Bible time" instead. Here are some items we are using through out the week:

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…
Caleb had a doctor's appointment.
The girls and I went to the library where we returned a pile of books! (1)

My favorite thing this week was…
Delani (5)--I forget how fun age 4 can be. It also can be a pain, but we are enjoying all the great comments coming out of her mouth.

In the above picture (6) she decided her brother needed on of her band-aids for a small cut he had received on his forehead. So he had a cute little strawberry placed on his head.

What’s not working for us…
Grammar for Caleb

Questions/thoughts I have…
Do I just throw out the grammar and work on writing or do I look for another program? Would diagramming help him? This is something that I am looking for an answer.

Things I’m working on…
I found out this week that we will be hosting Thankgiving at our house. That means I may have rearrange our school schedule so we can have the house all ready. I am also working on some exciting plans for Destini's upcoming 13th birthday.

I’m reading…


I’m cooking…
Tacos, spaghetti, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread with cream cheese frosting (2), and Costo hot dogs (Oh wait, I didn't cook that).

I’m grateful for…
Caleb went back to the ophthalmologist for three month check-up. Everything looked great. He isn't showing any pressure where the bleed in his eye was and the pupil in his right eye is only 1/2mm bigger than the other one which isn't even considered abnormal. Thank you Jesus for a great report!

I’m praying for…
The upcoming election and our church.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…
Here is a short snippet of how "We Shall See the King" would sound like if you came to church with me. The biggest difference is I don't play as well and it is only the music.


I am linking up: