August 2021 week 4 11th grade

August 2021 homeschooling in review

Years ago I read a blog called long days, short years. The older the kids have grown, the more true this statement feels. I truly don’t know how the year has flown by quite so much, and each month seems truly to fly by faster than ever. Somehow the kids have started their junior year of college. How in the world did this happen?

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Week 1

We started off the school year with our brand new book for the month: 1984. Everyone agreed they hated it. Their assignment was to write 1 sentence summary of each chapter, when I’m done writing this post I’m going to go read their reviews, I expect it to be a lot of snark and hatred of the book.

I picked up Bottlecap Vikings from Half Price Books a few years ago as a possibility to play when we learned Vikings, and we never played it until this month. It’s a fun quick game to play, but not one my boys really wanted to play again. They REALLY like the longer games.

I’m amused by Romeo, our foster dog and his enjoyment of sleeping up on top of the sofa. It reminds me of Mac and how he used to do the same thing.

I saw this one meme where the husband says to his wife, “It’s very muggy outside,” and she replies, “I better not go outside and see all our coffee cups on the lawn.” He sips coffee from a bowl.

So I decided to do this, only nobody went outside to go see, and it was very disappointing.

Week 2

I finished the July quilt block for the Quilt Block of the Month club right at the buzzer before the cutoff for the entry, and let me say paper piecing that shark was difficult.

Romeo continues to amuse me with the random items he’ll bring me that he finds, this time it was a broken mask that apparently didn’t make it into the garbage.

Then we watched Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, I timed that picture just perfectly so it looks like Romeo is shocked at what we’re doing and that greatly amuses me. The movie is terrible B-grade schlock that is super fun to watch if you go in knowing it’s terrible B-grade schlock.

And finally, we finished off the summer with a trip down to Galveston with my brother and his family. I didn’t get super a lot of pictures from the trip because you can’t really get lots of pictures when you’re out in the ocean. I did get a few great posed shots of all the cousins, and everyone was fighting over who got to lay in the hammock.

We spent a lot of time playing the Harry Potter Hogwarts game with my nephew, who super loved the game and pretty much wanted to play it all the time. This amused me because I brought it to play with my brother and sister-in-law, but we ended up playing several rounds with him.

They did however enjoy playing The Captain is Dead with us.

Week 3

august 2021 week 3 11th

The last part of our Galveston trip. Most of my pictures are of the cousins together. Though I did have my brother get a family picture for us, which made me pretty happy. Then I redrew it because I didn’t have any good pictures of Superman in the family picture because he slipped and fell.

The bottom left picture is of The Artist trying to claim that corner spot on the couch with Leezard also trying her very best to keep that spot Two stubborn people trying their best to stay together.

Week 4

August 2021 week 4 11th grade

And this is when school truly started in earnest. Of course, most of our school now is truly boring to watch and take pictures of. We finally studied Cuba, which the boys were super excited to learn about for some strange reason. Our meal was not super popular for it.

The boys had their first show for the demo team, it was outside in the parking lot. It was fascinating to see.

I completed the quilt block for the month, it was quite a challenge to get done, and I had to be so incredibly careful as I sewed the seams.

Story time

As I said, we read 1984 this month. The kids all hate it. They hate it with a fiery passion that I have not seen before. They hate it more than Animal Farm. They all got together and attempted to convince me we really shouldn’t watch the movie, instead we should just watch the Overly Sarcastic Production summary of the book.

They were willing to PAY ME to not watch the movie. That’s how much they didn’t want to watch the movie.

After much debate, and Jeff saying I could not accept money from them.

I was rather disappointed by that, I was going to extort annoying chores from them.

But, after much debate, we ended up with watching the OSP video and then the Alternate History Hub video on 1984 and ending with the STNG Chain of Command part 1 and 2 episodes with the 4 lights.

We had that all settled, and then I revealed we were going to read The Great Gatsby next month, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth started again.

Superman really wanted to read All Quiet on the Western Front, I visibly shuddered when he mentioned reading that book. I did not enjoy reading that book, and don’t see a reason to inflict that on myself again, I at least see a valid reason for reading the pain that is 1984.

Batman wants to read Warhorse, and my shudder was even more pronounced when he mentioned that. Jeff and I went to see the movie as a date when it came out. I thought I was taking Jeff to a war movie he would enjoy, instead we both sat there in horror for 2 hours as we watched terrible things happen over and over and over again.

Jeff truly wants to ban Batman from reading the book. He hated the movie that much.

The more he tries to ban the book/movie, the more Batman wants to read it.

The Artist didn’t want to read either of the war books, and was desperate enough not to read Great Gatsby that she was willing to propose reading Beowulf rather than Great Gatsby. Beowulf is ridiculously short and that is how she picked the book she wanted to read.

Jeff was totally on board with this because there’s an adaptation of an adaptation that he super loves (13th Warrior which is an adaptation of Eaters of the Dead, which is one of Jeff’s favorite movies).

So, after much debate and begging from the children they are now reading all of their requested books.

That means I have to endure TWO World War 1 books, and not just two World War 1 books, but two gawd-awful depressing books (and spell check I really don’t care if you think that’s spelled wrong, that’s how I’m choosing to spell it).

OH, and final picture

We had our Not Back to School Pool party with our co-op, which the kids all really enjoyed. The Artist sat at a table with her friends and talked for two hours while the boys happily played and wrestled with almost every kid in the pool as they organized various pool games.

All in all, everyone had a goo dtime.

Now, I really am done, and I’m going to track down an Excedrin Migraine because my head is killing me.


Comments

One response to “August 2021 homeschooling in review”

  1. Your August sounds like fun! I wonder why your kids didn’t like 1984 – A read it in school and I think she liked it mostly because of Newspeak. The pool party looks super fun. I admit I am a little jealous to see all those unmasked kids – all the activities here (not the pool ones, of course) are still in masks.

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