The first week of summer has gone by so slowly! It's heavenly!
Rose Bud has been treating herself to the luxury of doing nothing. She's read about 10 books already. Other than running each day, she just lies around. And she earned it. Her report card came. A 4.0 for her first year of high school. She definitely takes after her dad. Whereas I slouched around in high school and put in a valiant effort the night before a test or paper was due and got good grades, he studied and planned and organized and budgeted his time and got straight A's. She is a budgeter and an organizer and a planner and a worker.
Today she went to volunteer at the food pantry. And she works 4 nights this week. Other than that: lying around.
Daisy and Pepper are doing homeschool-lite. They each have Bible, Math and Science every day. Daisy is also keeping up with her Spanish. For science, they are working together through a botany book and really enjoying it. One day this week they got out the cutting board and sharp knives and dissected a flower. They pulled out the microscope and Rose Bud helped them look at an onion cell and some of their flower parts (having just come out of Biology, she's a microscope expert now--more than I am anyway. It's been 25 years!) Today they made a flower out of Sculpey clay and are baking them. They are also keeping nature journals.
Daisy is working on her latest short story, The Orphan Boy. She won't share more than that until it is finished, but every day when she works on it, she wriggles and exclaims, "I can't wait until it's finished so I can READ it!" We had a little virus scare with the PC the other day, so now she's backing it up on a flash drive.
Pepper spends the rest of her free time playing with Charles, the runt chick, or Alexander the Gray, our $300 barn cat. Or her brothers. Or the dog. Or the pigs.
Banana Boy has summer school these two weeks, along with summer classes at his dance studio. In summer school, he's doing a Reader's Theater class, a class where they bike a mile out of town and then read a book and eat a snack, and a class about knights and castles. At his dance studio, he's taking two classes, acting and voice. He is in heaven!
Summer school is nice for him because he's getting familiar with the school building, the teachers and some of the kids for next fall when he goes to public school.
Yesterday when he brought his castle home (made from toilet tubes and a pizza box, he got all the wedding people (Playmobil) knights and princesses out and set everything up.
Sunshine is homeschooling with me and it takes 2 hours every morning. That is going great and his reading is really taking off, but he's still adjusting to the new schedule, or lack thereof. He's fine while we're doing school, but then free time hits and he doesn't know what to do. Especially with everyone else involved in their own projects, he kind of has no one to play with.
Today we're going to sign up for the summer reading program at the library and bring home a boatload of books.
Oh, and I almost killed the dog today. She is such a mellow and quiet thing, never fusses. She rode along to drop BB off at school. She sits in the middle seat of the van (the only time she's allowed on any furniture). So Rose Bud (who drove) and I got out of the van and Chaya snoozed away on her seat. Neither of us thought of her. A little over an hour later, I was looking for her and was calling and calling her outside. She has this nice habit of hanging out at the pigpen, licking the pigs. She didn't come and didn't come. Suddenly, I remembered she'd ridden in the van with us. And there she was, still sleeping on her seat. She was hot, though, and thirsty. Luckily, it's only about 70 outside! Poor Dogger!
