March Homeschooling 2019

I SURVIVED MARCH! Or, I think I did. We sat down towards the end of February and scheduled out our entire month, and it was super packed, and then I got to the start of the month and I got an invitation to a baby shower in Iowa, and discovered Great Homeschool Conventions was that weekend…. Sigh.

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March week 1

I’m actually writing about this before March is actually over because I’m leaving tomorrow morning to head up to Fort Worth for a homeschool convention.

We started the month off with the boys turning 14! AAAAAAAAHHHHHH! This is so scary. They got all the Nerf weapons, including Nerf grenades and the new Nerf overwatch guns (only sold at Gamestop stores, which caused much consternation from their Grandma who was trying to find them). They’re quite proud of them.

My boys have been drooling over Nerf grenades since they saw a review on YouTube. They have great plans to throw them at their friends on park day.

The day after their birthday they got their presents from Aunt Tara, and Batman was super excited to get a bunch of new cooking knives, and then proceeded to cut himself while preparing dinner from his World of Warcraft cookbook.

The kids helped me try out Safe Vision app for screening YouTube videos. I really enjoy a lot of the features in it (read my full review).

 

March Week 2

I’m writing this week without the benefit of my reminder pictures while I’m up in Iowa. I had to login to my blog because of an URGENT update, so I thought I’d take a minute.

This was the weekend of going to Great Homeschool Conventions Fort Worth. I went to every single teaching high school session I could find, and by the last session I went to, I felt like I knew more than the person presenting. Now, I probably didn’t really, but it was some amazing material and I have pages and pages of notes.

And like happens at many conventions, I got to meet some amazing people. I met Dr. Wyle, who wrote the original Apologia stuff and now has an elementary curriculum. He spent a good 30 minutes looking at an electronic microscope to help me figure out if the kids could use it for Biology next year. I loved the sessions I went to that he taught.

I spent a lot of time talking to the owners of a Christian Fantasy bookstore, Realmmakers. The authors sold there are all Christians who happen to write fantasy. I spent all of my spending money for myself there, and got a couple of books signed by authors. I’m about halfway through my second book from that bookstore. I also met another fantasy author who had an amazing session on writing and word-crafting that I absolutely adored. I’ve been talking to everyone about it.

Finally, I spent a fair amount of time talking to the people from Write Shop, before deciding to buy their writing curriculum for next year to work on fine tuning my kids’ paper writing skills.

As to actual school work… The kids are working on finishing up their “What I want to do” papers, and ended up having to do a lot of revisions. A LOT of revisions.

We’re slowly working our way through English history this month, and talked a bit about early historical events.

I was home for two days, and then we drove down to Galveston to meet Jeff’s parents.  It was crazy cold. Okay, it wasn’t really cold, but it wasn’t weather that leaves you wanting to play in the water.

Or, I don’t want to. My kids happily played in the water as I sat wrapped up in a coat on the beach.

We went to Moody Aquarium again and discovered why we never go anywhere during Spring Break because it’s horribly busy, but I was able to get a recreation of a picture I first took when the kids were super little.

We also revisited the scene of our first ER visit. It was quite amusing to think of that. That’s that store in the picture up there.

 

Week 3

We got back from Galveston, threw everything out of the car, and Princess and I packed up to go on the American Heritage Girl campout. I looked at the predicted weather and saw low of 46, high in the 60s, and thought, “Okay, don’t need my super heavy coat, and the lighter sleeping bags are okay.”

THE WEATHER REPORT LIED!

While we were standing over by the fire it was in the 30s. Then it was so cold Friday night, I pulled Princess into my sleeping bag, and put her sleeping bag on top of me. Which means no one slept that night. Saturday I drove the hour to get back home and pick up a giant sleeping bag, and our big huge coats, but of course that day got warmer, not super warm, but warmer.

The girls all worked together to clear out a bunch of brush for their service project, and the park ranger was super impressed. He’d had boy scout troops working on that for months, and we got more done in 2 hours than they had in months.

Monday, Princess had an event with AHG at what I’ll call “super loud and blinky” place, so I hid out while my kids played there for a bit, then came back and was a super supportive Mom despite having a huge migraine.

The rest of the week was taken up with sewing like a madwoman for the baby shower I came up to Iowa for. I had to finish off a baby blanket, help Princess sew a baby dress, and generally get 1 million things done in the time it would take to do 1000 things (this is when I wrote the Slow Down Mama post). I may be slightly crazy.

 

Week 4 of March

Thursday morning, Princess and I headed off to Iowa. We got up to Oklahoma City on the first day and stayed the night with Jeff’s longtime friends (our second set of adopted aunt and uncle). That day Princess and I listened to A Horse and His Boy on Audible.

Friday we drove the rest of the way up to Iowa and listened to Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and then started on Prince Caspian (yes we listened to them slightly out of order).

Saturday was the baby shower, and all of our many presents were a big hit. The kids wrapped them, so it was lots of random little things spread out throughout the event.  Afterward, half the people retired back to Tara’s house and hung out there.

Yesterday, (I’m typing this up because I had to get up “early” and reschedule an orthodontist appointment for Batman) we saw Captain Marvel, which was a blast, and then played Marrying Mr. Darcy, which I’d been dying to play ever since I discovered it existed. I lost horribly.

And that is up to date with this morning, I’m now going to head downstairs since I hear people stirring about.

On the way home Princess and I stopped by The Gathering Place, which is this super amazing park and I super duper loved it and took so many pictures. SO MANY PICTURES.

Tonight, we’re heading up to Dallas, for my final trip of the month for a cool Apologetics trip. I figure there’s a very good chance I won’t get a chance to update before this comes out. We’ll see…

 

2019 Homeschooling

January 2019

February 2019