Unschooling Moments of the Week 1/28/11

Sunday - Hannah left for Rome!  She's keeping a blog on her semester there, which is fun to read.

Monday - Well, let's see, where are my kids?  Oh yes, I've got one in Rome and the other four went to the March for Life.  Will and Josh with the parish youth group, Sean with his friend and family and Becky with her friend and family.  I had planned to go but instead went into DC to visit my aunt along with two of my sisters.  We still don't know when  my aunt will be coming to live with us, or even if she will be coming to live with us.  The situation was very bad but is beginning to improve, maybe!  Everything's up in the air.  The kids had a great time at the March and managed to survive the bitter cold.  But everyone, including moi had the grumpies at the end of the day.  I wound up going to bed at about 9:30.  I think all this stuff with my aunt is making me tired!

Tuesday - Latin class was fun.  We are studying for the National Latin Exam and it's just plain fun!  Josh is also enjoying his Biology class.  This class and the last they've been talking about evolution from both an evolutionary point of view and from a creationist point of view.  He's finding the whole thing fascinating.  Will sat down and taught Sean about fractions while we were gone in the a.m.  Becky went to art and then wound up playing at her friend's house.  In the evening Josh went to his 4H project on alternative energy.  They were trying to make biofuel from yeast, water, corn syrup, sugar and leaves.

Wednesday - I left early in the morning to accompany my aunt to her follow up surgery appoint at her doctor's.  The doctor took a look at her other leg (the one she's still got!), saw how swollen it was and immediately called the vascular surgeon.  He made us go over there to get a Doppler test of her leg.  We wound up being there for 5 hours.  We got in and they did the Doppler and immediately announced she had to go to the hospital.  Meanwhile a huge snowstorm had hit the city causing the worst traffic jam in ages.  People took hours and hours to get home.  Many people abandoned cars.  It took us two hours to go from the doctors office to the hospital.  It should have only taken about 15 minutes!  It was horrible.  Rick met me at the hospital and we had to sleep there overnight in the waiting room.  My aunt is doing okay, though.  Will held down the fort at home.  No school but they did watch movies, play videogames, read books, eat and sleep!  Thank God the power didn't go out.

Thursday - made it home around 10:30 a.m.  The boys were out shoveling snow.  Becky was making a snowman.  Sean had spent the night at his friend's and gotten as little sleep as I had.  His friend's house had lost power, so he came home to our house.  They played pretty well most of the day, but towards the end, due to fatigue Seano got pretty grumpy.  Finally the friend's dad came to pick him up.  I took a nap and finished reading my book that had kept me company during my night at the hospital.  Cleaned up the house some.  Read The Story of the Romans David Copperfield and Hitty, Her First Hundred Years aloud.  Rick read from The Begger Queen.

Friday - For some crazy reason school is still cancelled.  The bio teacher follows the schools closing policies, so even though we could easily get to her house, Josh had no bio today.  However, he did have to study for a take home biology test.  He also did Geometry at Kahn Academy and on line Driver's ed.  I read Bible History out loud -a cleaned up story of Susannah and Mathematicians are People, Too about Blaise Pascal.  Sean wanted to read the I Hate Mathematics book instead of doing Saxon.  So he did, about probability.  Becky just wanted to do more math on the white board, so we did that too.  Sean wrote a summary for WWE and did a little bit of cursive.  Sean made up a very funny way to remember the present tense of the verb 'to go' in Latin:  Uh oh! (eo) Ees eet ee-moose? (is, it, imus)  Eet ees! (itis), Grunt sound (eunt - spoken so it sounds like you've just been kicked by a moose!).  Josh, Sean and Becky went to gym class where they had fun.  I thought Becky had a sewing project meeting but no one was home when we arrived.  Instead Becky and I went home and did the rock candy experiment in the book Science Experiments You Can Eat.  After starting off our rock candy we wanted to see the difference between sugar and salt crystals.   This led me to get our microscope out.  Josh, Becky and I had fun looking at some old prepared slides of bamboo, feathers and hair as well as salt and sugar crystals.  Sean, Will and I all watched Unit 15 of Discovering Music about Russian music.  Incredibly fascinating, though Will already knew a lot about it.  Rick read more of the Beggar Queen out loud.

So looking back it was a very busy week: Hannah departure for Rome, the March for Life, my aunt's health crises, getting stuck at the hospital by a big snowstorm and then a very full, rich learning day today.  Very long, tiring week!