Closer

bee hangout

Spring has finally come! At least, mostly. We did have a crazy, not-in-the-forecast, snow storm Sunday afternoon into evening. Monday morning, the inch or two that accumulated quickly melted, and my crocuses popped open to welcome the bees.

On our classroom calendar, we are down to 18 days of school remaining to reach our required 180. I've been encouraging the boys to spend as many hours outside as they can, even taking some of their work out to them, so they could work in the fresh air.

This week we started our last unit study for the year, health. We will be focusing on chapter one, "Your Health and Wellness," of the Glencoe book, Teen Health, Course 1.  This unit will last the five remaining weeks of our study this year. Each week we will cover a separate lesson from the book, supplementing with online activities tied to the textbook on the Glencoe site, as well as BrainPOP videos and quizzes on related subjects. The study focuses on the idea that your total health is influenced by three different aspects; physical, emotional, and social health. 

This week I also had a great conversation with JT's future Spanish teacher. I called her to discuss whether he should start with the school's Intro to Spanish course or move right into Spanish 1. After I gave her some background about JT's schooling, she decided he'd do just fine starting with Spanish 1. It turns out she homeschooled her three children until they reached high school. She is very excited to have a homeschooler coming to her classroom next year. I am so thrilled to know JT's first classroom experience after six years of learning at home will be with a woman who understands homeschooling from the inside! We talked for about half an hour, sharing our experiences. She shared a few good websites to get JT up to speed with the students who took the Intro to Spanish class; myspanishgames.com and quizlet. She uses both in her classroom regularly. The quizlet site has the complete list of vocabulary words found in the textbook, Descubre, used by her Spanish 1 class.

I also spent a little time this week doing preliminary work on organizing the portfolios. This may be the earliest I have ever started that project. I want to get as much of the work out of the way before our last day of school because May will be a busy month. Our last day of school will be at the beginning of the month. Our meeting with our evaluator is on the 21st. That sounds like plenty of time to get things together until you throw in a trip to Maine. I would rather not have portfolios on my mind while I am relaxing along the shore. This could finally be a good enough reason to keep me from procrastinating.