Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Life, Homeschool, and a Forks Teaser

This is the 5th first sentence I've written for this blog. I do that a lot. I try something; it doesn't work. Then I try another. Fail. Rinse and repeat.

I feel like my writing is a little sub-standard at the moment. I'm pretty exhausted. These past couple weeks have just wiped me out. And I've spent the last 2 days pouring over school books, trying to catch up with my studies (because the 1st week I didn't have the books, the 2nd week I went to Forks, the 3rd week I spent all my spare time packing, and the 4th week we moved in and our car broke down on the way to school). I am a painfully slow reader, but I'm getting there. And I feel pretty confident that once I get caught up, keeping up will be fairly easy.

Hanging out with my favorite people.

Jermaine has been helping out a lot with homeschool. He's such a good teacher. By the time he leaves, I'll be caught up with seminary and have time for homeschool and my school everyday, but right now he's absolutely a lifesaver.

Here are a few Sadie School projects we've been working on:

  • She wrote a poem the other day in the car. Rather, she thought one up, recorded it on my phone and then wrote it down when she got home. Next, she'll type it up and share it with you. :)
  • We've been reading through the Chronicles of Narnia together. I read a chapter every night - and two nights ago we finished the first book, The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. We're reading Prince Caspian now. It's especially great fun because I do all the accents. 
  • We have several workbooks going. BrainQuest has a workbook with a bunch of subjects. She did a lot of work with US geography today. We have a couple of Sylvan books - one for math and one for language arts. She's been working on long and short vowels in the one, and basic multiplication in the other.
  • I got a Gifted and Talented workbook, too. It's main purpose is to foster critical thinking. She is very smart, but often lacks confidence and asks questions to which she already knows the answers. I had her open the book, and without any instruction from me (there were instructions on her sheet), she was to fill out the first page. It happened to be on synonyms. I was really proud - she easily read the instructions on her own and knew what a synonym was! She got a lot of the answers correct -and what she got wrong was because she didn't know the meanings of the words. 
  • We've been practicing handwriting, penmanship and basic grammar. She, like me, tries to write too fast and gets sloppy.
  • We are working on a project helping Polaris Project come up with a party guide for people who want to host events to raise awareness about human trafficking. We are going to create a short video together explaining what trafficking is and how people (and kids!) can help (and stay safe!).
Heh. I had planned on writing about day 3 in Forks. That hasn't really panned out yet. I think . . . hmmm. Let's do a teaser instead:

Sunday

We woke up Sunday morning just feeling right. Fully relaxed, the day stretched out wide in front of us. Andrea had gotten up early again. Unfortunately, it was officially raining in Forks (finally). She didn't mind, except that there was, of course, no sunrise. I woke up around 7:30. I then came to the revolutionary conclusion that I was born to be on West Coast time. This explains why I'm happiest waking up here in Maryland at 10am and going to bed around 1am. When I have been on the west coast (the 3 times anyway) I've woken up gloriously early and felt sleepy before midnight!



Anyhoo. We wafted down to breakfast. This particular morning we were greeted with an invitation to enjoy French toast stuffed with apples and walnuts - and we did! I drank deeply my coffee from their pretty handthrown ceramic mugs (the best part of waking up). Bill, our host, informed everyone that high tide at 1st Beach was at 9:30am - and that that was the best time to go. We decided to drop everything and head over there, something neither of us normally have the luxury of doing. We borrowed raincoats from the Inn and headed down the road . . . 

To be continued. ;)


PS. If you think that you might die before I finish the rest of the writings about Forks (and you want to read about it before you do), take heart - Andrea finished all of her blogs! She, as you know, has a tendency to be one (or five) steps ahead of me. Hanging out with her for those few days and then going back and reading her blogs (that were, although they recorded the same events, very different from mine), I realized something. God has given her the gift of details. He's given me the gift of the big picture. I can tell you what it all means; she can tell you everything. Jermaine is a details person, too. But in a much different way, I think. He looks at the specifics for the beauty he might find in the little things. Andrea looks at details (as I look at the big picture) in a more practical way - to discover what it means and what we have to do next. None of these ways are wrong; all three are beautiful. And I feel blessed to have gained this bit of insight (especially about myself - I think it will help guard against certain frustrations that I have commonly faced to know that I am not, by nature, a woman of details (although, as I'm sure you've seen, I use them to get to the big picture)).

Huh. That was quite a long PS. Thank you for reading my blog. ;)

1 comment:

Jermaine Walker said...

Actually, my way is the right way. I looked it up. Your way is second.