Wing'in It: June and July

Scotty's impersonation of Cousin It. He's had a bang trim since this shot was taken...

I am incredibly behind in my blogging. I still have our last day in London to blog about...but a lot has happened since mid-May...and now it's the last day of July. Someday maybe I'll get caught up. I'll get a start on it today.

When we came back from Colorado we were all very, very tired. Part of it was physical...the long international flights and the eight hour time difference. Those things can really mess a person's body up.

We did this a lot for the first few days we were home.

A bigger part of it, especially for me, was emotional. The trip was a strange one. We were happy to see family we hadn't seen in a long time but because we were saying goodbye to Mimi it was incredibly sad. Things didn't work the way I was hoping they would and...well, I knew it was going to be a difficult journey and it was. I wrote something about the loss of Mimi and that trip on my writing blog. I know some of you have read it. If you haven't and want to, the link for it is here:

http://jcwingblog.blogspot.de/2013/06/the-power-of-good-book.html

It seemed to take several weeks for us to find our rhythm again once we'd come back to Germany...and we'd lost nearly a month of school time by then. I just couldn't focus after arriving back home from London knowing that Mimi had fallen again and anticipating the news that she'd passed...and then it was the process of getting ready to fly to the states and attending the funeral and the gloom that I felt afterward. We kicked it into high gear again in mid-June and worked hard to make up for lost time. It's a good lesson for the kids. Life happens. Schedules get bumped around and we have to reorganize. It's also the beauty of homeschooling...in a huge way, it's tailor made to fit each individual family, however I am one for structure and am adamant about keeping up. That's what June and July have been about and we've done very well.

June started off hot and muggy. Here are the kids beneath my favorite tree in Krickenbach.

When we lived in Colorado, the rules for testing were at the end of third, fifth, seventh and ninth grades. Then the PSAT and the SAT tests in high school. Maya tested at the end of her third grade year in Colorado, but when we moved to North Carolina the rules changed. Homeschooled students in North Carolina are required to test at the end of every school year. I actually like this better because it helps me as a teacher know exactly how the kids are doing overall and I like that the they are familiar with testing. There are many nationwide standardized tests that are approved through the state of North Carolina. I chose to use the P.A.S.S. test that is purchased through Hewitt Homeschooling. It stands for Personalized Achievement Summary System and has been approved by many states for the purpose of state reporting. I administer these tests but I play by the rules. I read the directions, make sure when they are done that their marks are solid and dark and otherwise get out of their way. I don't answer questions nor do I read any of their questions and the only marks I make on the testing sheets myself is to fill in the date the tests were taken. It's hard not to be there for them if they need help. It's insanely hard, but I want accurate scores so I step away and let them be. Testing generally takes two to three days and then I package them up and we ship them off the same day they finish. Then we celebrate.

This is a park in Linden. This slide was a bit hot, but still pretty fun.

Mylee's a bit big for it, but she still gave it a go once.

She's not too big for swings, though. Look at Scott's hair fly!

We took a road trip to Heidelberg. Heidelberg is where Steven and I go to decompress. We both love it there. Scott has given up trying to keep all of the places we've visited straight. He asks, "Is that the place with the bridge monkey?" Yep...the bridge monkey is in Heidelberg.

I see three bridge monkeys in this shot.

There will be a post about Heidelberg...someday...perhaps even soon. We'll see what happens. :)

The kids with Elfie's roses on the 4th of July.

We made another cat friend this summer.

Isn't she beautiful? We actually don't know what her real name is...but because she loves to play with the ivy growing on our terrace and because she's got such pretty green eyes, we've named her Ivy. There is a retired Army guy that lives on the corner of our street. While walking home from playing basketball one afternoon, Scott and I stopped to speak with him and he said that Ivy eats at his house. She was there that day hanging out on his porch. He thinks that she actually belongs to a family that lives on the street next to ours but she visits all over the neighborhood. She loves Scott. Scott is a magnet for animals. He's a little Dr. Doolittle. All animals love and trust him and she meows for Scott at the door when she comes to see him.

Can you blame her? I've never seen a more handsome boy in my whole life.

Ivy hanging in the shade on our terrace.

This year we wrapped up our studies by the end of the first week of July. We tested during the second week and took the third week off as a break. We slept in, we took another road trip, this one to Baden Baden, and we watched movies and participated in the library's summer reading program. Then on July 29th, we started it all up again...only this time we have a kid in high school and one in middle school. Yikes. How did that happen...and so soon?

I LOVE curriculum! I love searching for it. I love buying it. I love putting it together. The more organized I am, the smoother our days go and the more the kids learn.

Last year, Maya got a taste for Shakespeare when she read Julius Caesar. She'll be reading Romeo and Juliet this year...but not until later. What kinds of things are on tap for the kids this school year? A whole lot!

Scott is studying human anatomy and genetics this first quarter and Maya is taking Physical Science for the year. In addition to Romeo and Juliet, Maya will be reading To Kill a Mockingbird and just started with The Hobbit. She's also begun a quarter long study of poetry and will be reading works by Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Li-Young Lee and Percy Bysshe Shelley just to name a few. She'll also be comparing works of poetry with a few famous paintings such as the Mona Lisa, Starry Night and The Birth of Venus. Scott just started reading Louis Sachar's Holes and next quarter will read Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. There's algebra and geometry going on as well as both U.S. History (for Scott) and World History (for Maya). The three of us will be continuing our German lessons and Maya decided to pick up French as well. (Good thing I have some background with that one!) Both kids are jumping back into the piano once more and Scott is now taking an extensive online art course.

Right where Scott is sitting in this picture is where his art desk now stands.

Tons of awesome art supplies!

It's a pretty cool website. If you're interested, you can visit by clicking on this link:

http://thevirtualinstructor.com/

We paid for a year long subscription and this quarter Scott is taking the Secrets to Drawing video course. I'm sure you'll see some of his artwork posted here in the not too distant future.

We've been in school now for three days. This is our tenth year of homeschooling! (It gets better and better every year.) Scott mentioned that he would love to take an art class. Then Maya said she'd really like to learn French as well as German so we decided as a group to add an extra class to our day. We sat down and the kids helped me figure out their schedules and we have it organized so that I can be with one kid when the other is unlikely to need my help throughout the day. We added something else for this year, too. We get up at seven and go for a walk to start our day. I brought along the camera yesterday and today. Shocker, huh?

This first picture was taken on Rosenstrasse which is the street just below ours. If you look up near the top of the photo you can see horses up in the field above Linden. They are only there in the spring and autumn and when it isn't too hot in the summer. I've waited all winter to get a shot of them.

Click the photo if you'd like to enlarge it.

There is a path between Rosenstrasse and our street which is Hirtenstrasse. That path is behind Maya in the next photograph. (Our house is right there, too. It's the white one.) The hydrangeas above are planted along this path. So pretty.

And this morning I took a few pictures of the kids as we wound our way through Linden.

This is the Protestant church in Linden.

Today we treated ourselves to treats from vending machines on Hauptstrasse, (Main Street). I got three little trolls with crazy hair; one pink, one yellow and one blue...because you can never have too many little troll dolls, right? Both Maya and Scott bought themselves sticky bats. They are called Fledermaus. They also bought gumballs. They looked like miniature round watermelons. They were walking around town before eight in the morning chewing watermelon gum. Am I a great mom or what?

I love this photo. It makes me smile.

Our day is a lot longer this year. We get up at seven for our walk, then school starts at 8:30. We have four 45 minute classes, (15 minute breaks in between) and then have lunch between 12:15 and 1:15. We come back for three more 45 minutes classes, (again with breaks) and end our school day at 4:00. After school the kids go and workout, (we have a circuit set up in our basement complete with a treadmill, weigh machine and punching bag) or they go and play basketball at the court here in Linden.

We don't have a traditional school year. A lot of people think it's odd that we begin our classes in July but we started a year round school year back when we were in North Carolina. There are a couple of reasons for this; one is that in North Carolina, taking an extended break in the summer time when it was too stinking hot to be outside seemed a little dumb. We did a lot of outdoor swimming, but otherwise, it was just too hot to do much else. Another reason is that our kids like to be engaged. Even with a million extra-curricular activities, a stretch of time longer than a few weeks just bores them. They get cranky. They get on each other's nerves. They get on my nerves. :) We do what works for us. We split the year into quarters with two weeks off between them. We also take an extra week off for Thanksgiving (because Scott's birthday always falls during that week). Usually we have time off at the end of September, the end of December, the end of March and the end of June with that extra week thrown in at the end of November. We are in school for forty weeks instead of the public school's thirty six. If we get sick, we're still okay...and if we decide to take a trip for a few days, that's okay, too. It works for us and we like it.

I will eventually, (hopefully soon) get our blog caught up. Until then, here are the kids' official back to school photographs.