Homeschool blue

We dove right in today to a more enthusiastic response than I expected, frankly.

Meelyn, as usual, got down to business without much chatter. She efficiently worked through her math lesson (she reported that it was an easy one and that there was no need for her to get further explanations from the kindly professor on her Saxon D.I.V.E. CD-ROM) and then moved on to the Wordly Wise vocabulary and Reading Comprehension 8 for Young Catholics, which is a Seton book. Meelyn is on Lesson 82 out of one hundred twenty lessons in her text. Unlike so many public school classes -- and I remember this well, because it happened to me frequently as a public school teacher -- we are able to finish entire textbooks each year.

Aisling got sidetracked due to being a big boogerhead and having to look up those dictionary definitions. But she did do the practice problems on the math lesson that covered prime factorization and went on to do the practice problems on her current lesson (Lesson 72 out of one-hundred twenty) so that she wouldn't be a day behind. This is one of my favorite things about homeschooling; if there's something that needs review, we can go back and review it until it is completely understood. By the time she finished, Aisling was triumphantly trying to give me the prime factorizations for every three to ten-digit number she could pull off the top of her head. I made her stop.

She also completed her own Wordly Wise lesson and a lesson in Reading Comprehension 6 for Young Catholics.

After those things were finished, we all sat down together to begin our new course on elections in the United States. Today began with a lesson on the Electoral College. The girls learned what the electoral college is; how a state's number of electoral votes is determined; how the president is elected based on the votes ofthe electors; and how a president can win the popular vote and still lose the election. They also learned that there are some people out there who would absolutely love to do away with the electoral college, assisting their candidates into the White House while denying a voice to the people of smaller states. Like, say, Indiana.

That took us about forty minutes. I am typing right now while lunch is in the oven. Aisling is finishing up her last few questions on the electoral college worksheet and Meelyn is reading her library book. Lunch -- frozen pizza -- smells good.

After lunch, we're going to do a brief lesson in home economics. I define this as the stove timer's being set for twenty minutes while each of us takes a downstairs room to tidy. My husband lugged all the Christmas totes downstairs last night, but the house still looks like homemade hell. I can't stand it. I really can't. Not to mention the fact that the Christmas tree box is still in the living room -- we found that we are out of strapping tape and my husband refuses to take the box downstairs un-strapped. He drives me mildly crazy.

After lunch, the girls will have their U.S. geography pages to do (state of the day: Delaware!) and English, with a further study of prepositions. We switch off weeks with English grammar and composition, by the way.

The girls are also going to do a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream for the ARCHES Talent Show next month. They're going to do the rustics' scene of Pyramus and Thisbe, hamming it up for the crowd. I need to make a copy of their scripts while they eat, then eat my own lunch.

After that, we need to head out to the library. I need books on Ancient Greece, plus I need to stick my head into Carry On, Mr. Bowditch before the ARCHES group tackles it in March. I've never read this book before and I'm looking forward to it. I hope it's a good one. If not, it's too late; the kids voted for the book from a list of classic literature for middle schoolers. I hope the club's discussions won't be on the level of Reasons Why I Hate This Stupid Book.

After all that brave stuff I typed yesterday, I just realized that I missed something somewhere and we only have seven subjects today. Rats! I was just kind of kidding about that "Home Economics"class, but maybe I'd better seriously consider it after all.