School Days

Madelyn and Logan are plowing through the school year and it is hard to believe that evaluations and end of the year testing is quickly approaching in April. There are many late nights of planning, grading and organizing the kids school work as well as full days explaining, guiding, training, challenging and encouraging them in their work.  I can say, some days can be down right challenging and tiresome but today has been good. I mean good.  Today we started out by watching a video (I will post at the bottom) that created an avenue for a deep conversation about sharing their faith personally and even an opportunity for me to hear about some recent challenges they have had sharing their faith with friends. The conversation has continued throughout the day during their studies and it has been a productive day. Today I have seen growth in Logan by working with integrity, managing his time wisely and working ahead because he was enjoying his assignments. Several people have asked what a typical day looks like so I snapped a few pictures over the last few days and thought I would share. 

Many, many days and nights the table is covered with agendas, calendars, projects, reports, papers to grade and books.  I took this picture late last night as I was putting dates on the calendar for book reports, research projects, daily work for the week and placing work in the portfolios. 

We have attempted several times to create another space in the house for a "school room" however all the books seem to migrate quickly to the kitchen table. We start out the mornings together with Devotion/Bible, Current Events/Civics, Creative Writing/Journaling and additional activities as they arise. 

  

Madelyn will retreat briefly to her room to work at times when Logan reads orally. It doesn't surprise me that she has her science book in this picture. I really think she has already read it from cover to cover. Can you guess what her favorite subject is?

Throughout the day in between studies or after school work is complete the kids stay busy exploring many different interests. Logan has been working and perfecting his skateboard wax. (It certainly stretches me allowing a messy kitchen in order to encourage innovation.) The wax has been a hit at the local skate park and he is working with a few buddies on a project. He was so focused he didn't even notice that I was taking this picture. 

Madelyn has already started working on planting seeds for her cold crops. She has been studying and watching several documentaries about gardening and nutrition. I just asked her what her favorite documentary is currently and she said, "GMO OMG" on Netflix and she would suggest everyone watch it : )

The kids continue to participate in the Cornell lab of Ornithology as citizen scientists. They observe our feeders, record data and enter it on the Cornell website every week. Madelyn ran out of the house hardly dressed to capture this picture of a Red Tail Hawk yesterday.  

Learning new skills and.....

How cool are these leg/boot warmers?!!

Even though Olivia goes to school, learning continues to occur throughout most evenings at home when they are not filled with activities/club meetings. We haven't had a TV in our living room for years and we have found that our kids usually hang out in the same room we are in so without the TV many creative activities occur spontaneously. 

Ohh and here is the video we watched this morning. Perhaps this might be a resource for you to use as well to encourage conversations