Homeschool Wrap-Up

Last week was The Week of the Bad Cold, in which Thalia got stinkin' sick with a cold.  Which made the   difficult Kinetic Physics problems closer to "impossible".  Rick was out of town (Rick typically helps her with this), I was busy with other stuff (one of the rats had surgery, subsequently started picking out the sutures and bleeding all over the place, so I was running around in the cold, rainy night amassing gauze pads and various other first aid supplies), plus we were supposedly getting ready for her costume party.  Oh, and going to the doctor to talk about vaccinations and malaria drugs for the trip to Dominican Republic next spring.

All of which is to say, not a whole lotta schooling going on.  Although Rick got home late Thursday night,  the Physics DID get done (with 30 minutes to spare!)(the teacher sets a time by which all answers need to be entered online), and turned in.  And Notgrass history got done.  But Jensen's Format Writing and Lial's Algebra 2 suffered.

In the meantime, Annabeth had a crash course in rat first aid, googling how to stop bleeding (since I was out running an errand in the cold, wet, dark night, and Thalia was too sick to help).  On a more mellow note, she also kept up with math and English -- history suffered from neglect once again.  She continued to use Mango French on our library's website.

Then, of course, the weekend, which included the afore mentioned party.  And then Monday, which was Halloween.  We skipped Monday night classes in order to Trick or Treat, since that seemed a higher priority at the time.

After which, of course, it was back to Physics, although it was somewhat simpler this week.  And working AHEAD in Notgrass, since next week is going to be busy.  And playing catchup in Lial's Algebra and Jensen's Format Writing.  We ended up splitting the Dave Ramsey session on insurance into 2 parts/2 weeks , as it's a pretty information-packed segment of the book.  

Fall Formal was this week, which is sort of the homeschool answer to homecoming celebrations, but without the football game.  It takes place at Andre's on Telegraph, typically on a Thursday night.  This year Thalia thought she would make a simple Little Black Dress (counting the construction towards a half credit of Practical Arts), and then buy a pair of fun shoes.  After all the falderal of last week and the weekend, though, it was apparent that the black satin languishing in the laundry room wasn't going anywhere very quickly.  So I cut it out Tuesday, and slapped it together Wednesday.  We went to the mall Tuesday night and found shoes:

I think she wanted something gaudier, but gaudy costs more money, and this is what Charlotte Russe had in her size.  Those heels put her up over 6 foot tall.

Of course, she gets ready over at a friend's house, and refuses to bother taking pictures.  So far this is all I've got of the dress, which I swiped off of someone's Facebook (as I did the above shoe picture):

She assures me that there are better pictures on another friend's camera, but that friend is currently in Kansas City for a robotics competition.

And this week Annabeth did RightStart Geometry; got ready to take another test in Shepherd's Life Science, except we can't find the test book, which was probably stuck away somewhere during the whirlwind housecleaning before the party last weekend; missed her WriteShop class so we could take the rat BACK to the vet to find out if that lump developing under the incision was an abscess (hey, we have cats, and that's what an abscess on a cat looks like -- but on a rat that's just had surgery it's a hematoma ... I wish they would've told me beforehand that seratomas and hematomas are an option).  By the way, we don't have to take her back to have her stitches removed since she's already removed all of them with her teeth.  Also, Annabeth has been reading about St. Francis in her sloooow trip through Pandia Press Middle Age history.

Also, Annabeth is the lead in a Christmas musical at church, and is tagging along to Thalia's voice lessons so she can spend a half hour working with the director on inflection and acting.  The play is a takeoff of the old Dragnet series, and she has the Joe Friday part.  She was thrilled to learn that they'll be costuming it in a 1950s look rather than a Bible-story look (she loathes Bible-story costumes, but the 1950s look puts it reasonably close to Captain America, and she's hoping to base her costume on Peggy, his girlfriend -- she asked if she could dye her hair and wear the bright red lipstick).

Plus, a couple of nights ago while fooling around with  Amazon.com's new book-lending feature for Kindle (which we've decided is pretty lame, by the way), she discovered a free copy of Black Beauty.  She's captivated by it.

Plus Scouts was this week, during which they supposedly learned something or other.  Thalia's troop was working on collages as part of finishing up one of the old badges.  Annabeth's group was working on a Journey, which is fairly insipid.

Earlier in the fall I read the blog by some young woman who was homeschooled in Missouri, and is quite opposed to homeschooling now because of the social isolation.  Um, yeah, right.  I could use some isolation right about now -- maybe I'd be able to write up a nice report of all the actual schoolwork we got done rather than all the running around we do, and rabbit trails we wander off on.

More Homeschool Weeks-in-Review at www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com.