School and Fun

Foil Hat!

Things are moving along pretty well for our start of the year. We are finding our groove and things are going smoothly. This week we took a break from the new routine to go to a concert given by the king of the non-conformists. My husband and I have been fans of Weird Al since we first heard him on Dr. Demento so of course we have raised our children on a steady diet of musical parody. When we saw that the Mandatory Fun tour was coming within easy driving distance, tickets had to be purchased for the whole family, including my adult daughter and her husband. This was EM's first concert experience and he had a great time.

As far as schooling goes, I made a decision to buy a few more books for our literature study this year. I had already purchased Lightning Literature's Mid to Late 19th Century American Lit book for JT from a friend a few years ago. When I started looking through it, I decided to go ahead and buy the Early to Mid 19th Century Student Guide and the teacher's guides for both books. Then I started looking at their 7th Grade Literature program for EM and decided it would be a great fit for him. I bought the student guide directly from Hewitt Homeschooling but found a copy of the student workbook on Amazon for a little less. I'm still hoping to buy the teacher's guide without paying full price, but don't know for sure if I need it until I see the student books after they arrive. Sometimes I find the teacher's guides don't offer much more and I can figure out answers on my own. When I buy math and science books, I like to have the teacher guides so I don't have to figure out all the answers on my own. I don't always want to have to read all of the textbook to check their work. One nice thing about the Lightning Lit teacher's guides is that they give you a nice schedule for your student. I found that the 7th grade schedule is available as a free PDF download so as long as I can figure out answers on my own, I shouldn't need to buy that one.

Next week the boys are going to the annual Fire Safety Camp for three days so we will once again have a shortened classroom schedule. The following week we should be up to full speed and be able to continue with that until we take our two week vacation in October. There will be a few days of schooling during the trip, but mostly it will be a true vacation for all of us.