Day Twenty Seven

My day started great.  Hubba came upstairs with coffee for me.  The best coffee is the cup you don't ask for but is merely delivered before you even come downstairs in the morning.   Just when I'm feeling "off" because I don't feel like he likes anything I make, do, cook or create (he certainly doesn't dole compliments of any kind to me or Banker).  BUT then first he plunks down a pile of old jeans and asks for another denim quilt (I made us one a while back), arrives home after a day of golfing with dinner and then coffee this morning.  Dastardly :-)


But, I digress. 


The Banker came downstairs bright eyed and bushy tailed.  He started working then asked for my internationally famous and totally delicious gigantic order of powdered sugared french toast made from super thick slices of the homemade bread.  I complied of course. He got back into work and proceeded to have a mental breakdown over rough feet.  REALLY?  We are frantic about feet? You can't work because of it?  I wonder sometimes if the preteen angst is academic or hormonal driven.  It's difficult when two things happen (and change) simultaneously.  I hate having to put on my mother-hat during school but he's old enough and there's no confusion there.  You will NOT stomp past me and you will NOT made a snide comment to yourself when I've given an answer.  You don't do that to your teacher OR your mother.  *we had a chat, we'll see if his mood improves.


That drama over, we hope.  My thoughts wander.


The time is sort of flying by.  I can't believe it's day 27 already.  I will admit I feel less sick and more confident every day.  Heart sick not cough cough sick.


I love that I have the plans done ahead of time for the week so Banker can come downstairs, grab his weekly folder and get stuck into the work head of him.   I like the idea of getting the schedule on some sort of spread sheet instead of a word, page per day, document.  I think a spreadsheet type (my friend did one and I lusted after it) is more streamlined and "professional" but the Word, 6 page/wk, document leaves room for daily review and comments and areas for him to update information and futz workloads.  I'll have to keep thinking about it.


Even though I said I wasn't going to think about school this weekend, I did of course.  I spoke to another home school friend who also uses Math-U-See and was happy with it.  So, even though I was pretty confident in my plan to use it next year (actually the end of this year), it's sort of been continually confirmed by iindependent sources, of moms I trust, so that makes me happier that my decision is a good one. 


Speaking of plans, there are going to be a lot of changes when we come back from our camping trip next week.  I have been so concerned about an educational gap that I have completely overcompensated by adding courses, classes and information without doing any vetting of that which was already in place. 


I am not doing any change until we come back, a natural break and all that.  I am going to reduce his course number by half but increase the amount of work in each subject he does.  I still have him working through the math, history, and English he was doing in public school yet I added math, history/social studies, English, language arts, grammar and physics.  Really?  I know, I know.  Well, scrap that, I know NOW.  I needed the month learning curve to be sure I was confident enough, as was he, in the work he is doing.


I am going to reset us to ONE course per subject, some bought, some free;

• Science (free, NASA/Khan *which is my favorite site of all time)
• Physics (free, Physics classroom)
• Math (bought, Math-U-See)
• English (bought, T4L)
• Social studies (bought, T4L + add on free online review from his history book)
• Latin (subscription bought, Cambridge Latin)
• Grammar (free, Grammar101)
• Typing (free, typing web)
• Literature (free, reading classic and writing me an essay )

We will continue a 4 day academic schedule with 1 day for field trips/social activities, etc.  The daytime trips I have planned before the end of our school year are: 

• Geo-caching (with friends)
• Canoe/kayak trip downtown Austin (might invite friends)
• Houston Museum (Titanic) (3 family (7 child) road trip with an overnight hotel for fun!)
• NASA (maybe, we've already been one)
• The Alamo (Texas history, baby)
• Wrath of the Titans movie  (Latin references of course!)
• Hunger Games movie (he read the series)
• Blanton Art Museum

I'm sure I'll come up with other things but this is the list *I* want to see him experience before the chaos of the public schools being out plus they are cool and if nothing else, I'm cool too! 


As quickly as the crisis came on, it seems to have passed.  Banker is laughing, singing and generally back to his "happy in his heart" self.  There's few things so joyful as a 12 yr old making up songs to a pre-algebra work page.  HAHAHAHA   Oh and by the way, they're terrible! hahahahahaha  


Any day that has this kind of laughter built into it simply has to end up in the good column. 


/Tracy