Oh, yeah...

It worked!

What a fun, sticky, mess!

The kids all wore swim suits, while my white-shorts-wearin' self stood a safe distance away and used my zoom to snap pictures:












Afterward, everyone ran through the sprinklers and rinsed off. It was great afternoon of silliness stickiness summer fun science!

Cool, carbonated...

explosive! Diet Coke and Mentos!

We're on our way to a friend's house to do this:





(If you can't see the video click here.) Doesn't that look like way too much fun??


I'll let you know how it goes!

Summer School

Are you doing summer school? No, not your kids, you! I suppose I could call it "Teacher Inservice," or "Continuing Education." At some point, many homeschooling moms go "back to school" in one way or another, I suppose.

I've hit that point. I'm in" summer school!" I've got a pile of curriculum, and I can't simply pull it out in August and start school, going page by page through it with my eighth grader, seeing it for the first time myself. No, I've got to study. I knew this day would come, and here it is. Actually, I thought it would come later- like high school. The fact is, high school has come earlier! (Some of the courses she is doing for eighth grade, like many of her publically and privately schooled peers, will count as high school credits on her transcript.)

I realized this year (7th grade) that it was increasingly less helpful for her for me to blankly stare at the page or fumble around for answers when she had a question. I realized many times that it would be better for me to have somewhat of a more "working knowledge" of the material she was studying, so that when she hit a hitch I could answer her more quickly and efficiently. Up until now that "knowledge base" was easily accessible in my mind, either due to what I have studied or taught in the past or just what most "educated people" know. Now, it's pushing the limits of what is easily retrievable from my memory. I've got to stay ahead! For some, this less of a challenge than it is for me, I'm sure. I need to look ahead at her work for this year, not just for planning purposes, but for familiarizing myself with the material. (And it's okay! I know someone who taught was hired to teach a calculus course in a highly-sought-after school district near here last year, and guess what she studied all last summer? You guessed it!) So, it's certainly no more than what would be required of me as a public school teacher, at any rate, and it's at my own pace.

Here's what I'll be studying this summer:

• Martin Cothran's Traditional Logic I course on DVD

• Teaching Textbooks Algebra I (Yes, I need a refresher course in Algebra! And now it actually seems kind of fun. :)

• Veritas Press Omnibus I, secondary reading list: Chosen By God (R.C. Sproul), Till We have Faces (C.S. Lewis), ( The Narnia Books are on the list, but I just read these last year with my son, so I won't reread them), Isaiah, Jeremiah, The Minor Prophets (We are not starting the primary reading list for Omnibus I until 9th grade, so I'll be reading through those books next schoolyear and summer)

• Once I buy it, BJU Space and Earth Science (Grade 8)
  
  

Though I haven't worked out any sort of "schedule" I will be starting this week going through some of the material. Just this morning I watched the introduction to the logic course. I won't do it everyday, though I'll stick some of the reading in my bag for the poolside. I'm looking forward to it!

Ni How-dy!

I'm back! I've mainly been updating my other blog (and my husband even posted there in my absence!) as I usually post only homeschool-related "stuff" here, but I just wanted to let anyone who mainly checks here know that we are back from China. I did a quick turnaround and spent a few days in Maryland with my cute husband, and now we are back! I was so excited on the plane, knowing that I was coming back for SUMMER. NO SCHOOL! The kids are excited, too. (Surprise, surprise.)

Ever the homeschooler, I had my current issue of The Old Schoolhouse and Practical Homeschooling magazine with me, as well as the new Veritas Catalog. (25+ hours of travel time, you know!) I also made curriculum decisions and shopped for books while I was there. My daughter is really wanting to pursue Chinese for her foreign language credits for high school, and I prayed specifically before we went that the Lord would show me whether this was "doable" for us or not. I feel that the Lord has shown me that this is definitely something she can do, as she used what she's learned from just a few tutoring sessions as well as what she's learned so far in her Chinese in 10 Minutes a Day book. (I have found this to be an excellent resource, available for several languages.) I feel like God is really enabling her in this area. She spoke really well, enough to get us around town, order in restaurants, and bargain for "Coach" purses. (The quotation marks are because I'm not sure how "real" they are. But they look real...enough. ;)

Our friends had Chinese Made Easy, a series that their company recommended, but by midway through the first book the students are to write Chinese. Uh, I don't think so. Both of my friends kids are fluent in Chinese, but I think that comes from 8 years of living there and one-on-one tutoring more than from those books. Also, they speak it fluently but don't write it. Anyway, the answer key in the back of the CME book is all in Chinese, so I couldn't navigate it very well. For now I think we'll stick with our Pimsleur Mandarin cd's, add in Rosetta Stone Mandarin, and I'll stay on the lookout for some workbooks in Pin-Yin (English characters- since there are only 26 letters as opposed to over 800 characters!)

One of the other families there is moving back to the states, and sold me their set of Joy Hakim's History of US books for 150 yuan (less than 20 US dollars!) That was worth finding room in our suitcases for! I had it in my Amazon.com cart for over 100 dollars, so I was glad to find those.

So... we are back. We are looking forward to some down time this summer while I make preparations for school to begin again in August. I love planning, so once my mind gets back in this time zone I'll be digging in.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and for so many of your prayers and emails while I was gone. You are such a blessing to me!