New School Year

New School Year


2021-09-05

We are a month into our home school year and Garyn has two weeks down of his sophomore year in high school. It’s been a bit of a roller coaster with some very cool things and some very rough patches…I’m looking at you high school car line (It took just about an hour to pick him up everyday from school the first week. It’s a bit better now. Barely.). A week of seminary has been logged…and I survived. Barely. This year is going to be a doozy. Garyn and I have seminary then we have to pick him up everyday. Next year life simplifies when he can drive himself to and from school. Corra has karate two nights a week, she and Naomi have gymnastics once a week, Layna has speech up in Raleigh once a week and we have our normal church activities. So we don’t have a week night evening with nothing going on. It’s a doozy. It’s good though. Garyn is in love with all of his classes, and is hoping to help start a robotics club. The girls and I loved studying biology and Japan and are enjoying the beginnings of Zoology and Antartica. Every month this year will be a new country/continent and a science discipline. Field trips have been planned and it’s going to be a pretty killer year.

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To study cells we made some out of playdoh. Genetics discussions led to creating monsters and then Corra and Naomi created an online dating site for monsters and mapped out their offspring. We picked apples and I finally canned all the apples.

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Epcot’s Japan pavilion provided us a version of sushi that everyone could get behind, not just me and Neil. Fruit rolled up in sushi rice and soy wrappers with fancy whipped cream. It really is pretty awesome. We made our own Zen gardens and Corra and Naomi jumped into koi applications for our new genetics knowledge.

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Not everyday is as fancy as the above. Naomi is plowing through a pre-Algebra course and the girls have workbooks that they love, especially Layna. Sometimes we have spontaneous painting projects and sometimes they make random balloon animal creations that then fill the whole afternoon with epic adventures. That’s the beauty of home school. When life gets crazy, we can be flexible. When their interest and curiosity is piqued we can chase tangents. It’s looking like this will also be Naomi’s last year at home. She wants to do 8th grade at the same school as Garyn and my emotions about that are mostly positive. They are complicated and sometimes I hyperventilate when I think about this being my last year with her at home…but more and more I think it’s the right step for everyone. Life is weird. And so, so great. Especially when the weather cooperates and pretends that fall started September 1st. I know it won’t last, but I’m drinking in these chilly mornings every chance I get.