February Homeschool Miscellany

• home education

At the end of January Homeschool Miscellany we were re-establishing routines and trying to get into good habits and making new plans.

Two of those things are somewhat working out for us.

I’m still struggling to go to bed on time x_x

There were a few unexpected shenanigans quite close together which have thrown me right off with AER and hive and training which is about normal, and in way too many cases excursion days were postponed as well.

Otherwise all the usual term stuff has gone back in alright, I signed 14yo and 12yo up for Skwirk (I’ll have to decide later if it’s worth the money as a lot of the content is still in the process of being updated now that Flash has been deprecated, they’re at least doing it as apparently both have decided they don’t like Khan Academy) and am pushing 16yo harder towards doing a few more adulting things like getting a job and/or figuring out how to monetise things he’s doing, getting his license (I’ve told him I’m perfectly okay with him taking his time on this one if he likes, though I have a feeling JJ will want him to get it as soon as possible because 16yo will be a sensible or probably slightly paranoid driver like me whereas we’re somewhat concerned about 12yo getting his when he hits that age), helping out a lot more around the house and bloody well sucking it up and doing KA because I’m making that decision seeing as he refuses to do anything else that would help me out as far as the education department goes.

We didn’t end up going on any excursions in the short month because I ended up being somewhat broke for most of it due to usual start of term fees and resupply as well as the unexpected shenanigans, but we did get some practical stuff done.

14yo found some Youtube videos or something about how to recycle paper into other paper and ripped up one of her old bullet journals to try it out.

There were grand aspirations to make an entire book in this fashion. I asked her to please write down the process for me so we could fulfil some English requirements (the whole thing also contributes to arts and technologies), and she did so after the paper dried.

So far it hasn’t been done again but as it’s a pretty involved process I guess she will have to really be wanting some extra special book before she remembers to come back to it.

I had been repairing some clothes while 14yo was engaged in the paper making activity and 12yo noticed and thought it was kind of magical, and wanted to mend his favourite shirt that had been ripped during an altercation with his brother. I hadn’t gotten to it yet so asked him if he wanted to try mending it himself, and he was keen. Seeing as he has some coordination issues, I asked if he wanted to go for the “peasant look” and use large stitching or if he wanted to try with the small needle and thread. He decided on the former so I grabbed out the biggest needle I had and the biggest thread (which I’m not sure if it’s actually thread or some purple string that ended up in the sewing box), he threaded it himself and stitched up his own shirt with some guidance.

He decided he liked the “peasant” look and was pretty proud of himself for having done most of it himself (I did a little bit at the top that was slightly tricky) and learning a practical skill.

Towards the end of the month we finally managed to kick off the World of Darkness roleplaying game involving 16yo, two of his homeschooled friends and 12yo which we’d been planning since last year but which didn’t end up happening in time due to 16yo being undecided about what he was going to play and a bunch of other shenanigans happening. Of course exactly none of them are being helpful and keeping notes on their own characters though I’m very gently trying to push them in a thatwaywards direction.

They are quite a lot of fun to game with though, very good in character acting.

Now all I need to do is the usual trying to stay on top of my own stuff and get these excursions back on track.

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License