It's been a long few months. I'm happy spring is here, even if the weather isn't cooperating and it still feels more like early April instead of early May. We're working on mostly wrapping up our school year. Only a week and a half of school left, then we leave for vacation. After that it will be back at it but lightly.
Sweet Pea will have at least one more physics module to get through and history to finish up before she leaves for camp for the summer. Rosie Jane will be home for longer and will be working on math all summer when she's home. Algebra is really kicking her butt and we've already talked about her working on it all summer. I really think if she takes the summer off, I'll have to start the book over again in the fall with her.
The girls and I have already talked about next year and both will be home again. At this point, Sweet Pea has no choice and after we start next year, neither will Rosie Jane. It's very difficult to enter the public schools here once you've started high school at home. Probably the biggest disappointment about Rosie Jane not going to high school is that she won't be able to play golf for the high school team. I'm going to look into whether she can play on for a Christian school that has a girls' golf team. She's pretty good and I think with more coaching she'd be really good and could easily get a golf scholarship to college. I'm going to have to keep working on that one.
Besides finishing up the last bit of school, we also have to get in our year end testing for the state as well as figure out when Sweet Pea can take the CLEP test. Much to do as we wrap up another school year.
05 May 2013
19 April 2013
Sports, part ii
Back to sports. Between my husband, my dad, and I we've managed to introduce our girls to two pretty expensive sports. They do love them though.
First snowboarding (and skiing). Sweet Pea LOVES all things snow and snowboarding. Bob took the girls to the mountain for the first time several years ago. Sweet Pea decided that she wanted to try snowboarding while Rosie Jane took to skiing. Rosie Jane will ski, if it's not too cold, the sun is out, and she's in the mood. She goes often enough that we rent skis for the season for her from the local ski shop. She was pretty reluctant to head to the mountain this year for some reason, then went one day and got a wicked sunburn. It was a beautiful day towards the end of the season, the sun was out, and it was warm....and I totally didn't think of sunscreen. After that day I made sure Sweet Pea had some in her gear bag.
Sweet Pea is the fanatic (said lovingly). She has loved snowboarding since the first time she went out. We rented her a snowboard for several seasons and bought her one last year for her birthday. She's finally stopped growing and has shown a continued interest so we knew it was a good investment. Last winter, we looked around for a snowboarding team and decided that the best one was the one at Massanutten Resort. Where we live, no ski area is close. The mountain she really wanted to go to has a ski team but no snowboard team. Massanutten has practice two nights a week plus both Saturday and Sunday. They only require attendance at one practice a week but we try to make it down to both weeknights plus Saturdays.
Last year was our year to figure out the snowboard team and also the competitions. She joined USASA, the snowboard association and competed in boarder cross. This year, we took another step and as she did well, she got invited to Nationals and competed there. She did well at Nationals and loved her extra day of snowboarding in Colorado. Looks like driving to snowboarding practice and competitions will be something that I'm doing for the next few years.
And then there's golf. This is Rosie Jane's passion. Many members of my family, including my dad and Bob, play golf. It's totally not something I'm interested in playing but she really does. A few years ago, I looked around for golf lessons and found that there's a First Tee Program here in our county. This is a great program because it combines teaching golf with life lessons. As the players move up through the program, the golf requirements get harder and the life lessons are deeper. Once they reach a certain level, and she's almost there, they can go to summer camp and get invited to tournaments.
Golf is one reason we thought about putting Rosie Jane into school for high school. Where we live if you homeschool, you can't be on the high school team. We've decided to keep her home, which means that it's going to be harder for her to play and get noticed by colleges. She's just going to have to work hard so she can go to the golf camps and tournaments sponsored by First Tee. One good thing is that there is plenty of money out there for female golf players for college. Now we just need to find her some (female) friends to play with so she'll keep her interest up.
So that's our sporting life, dance year round, snowboarding (and skiing) in the winter, golf in the spring/summer.
First snowboarding (and skiing). Sweet Pea LOVES all things snow and snowboarding. Bob took the girls to the mountain for the first time several years ago. Sweet Pea decided that she wanted to try snowboarding while Rosie Jane took to skiing. Rosie Jane will ski, if it's not too cold, the sun is out, and she's in the mood. She goes often enough that we rent skis for the season for her from the local ski shop. She was pretty reluctant to head to the mountain this year for some reason, then went one day and got a wicked sunburn. It was a beautiful day towards the end of the season, the sun was out, and it was warm....and I totally didn't think of sunscreen. After that day I made sure Sweet Pea had some in her gear bag.
Sweet Pea is the fanatic (said lovingly). She has loved snowboarding since the first time she went out. We rented her a snowboard for several seasons and bought her one last year for her birthday. She's finally stopped growing and has shown a continued interest so we knew it was a good investment. Last winter, we looked around for a snowboarding team and decided that the best one was the one at Massanutten Resort. Where we live, no ski area is close. The mountain she really wanted to go to has a ski team but no snowboard team. Massanutten has practice two nights a week plus both Saturday and Sunday. They only require attendance at one practice a week but we try to make it down to both weeknights plus Saturdays.
Last year was our year to figure out the snowboard team and also the competitions. She joined USASA, the snowboard association and competed in boarder cross. This year, we took another step and as she did well, she got invited to Nationals and competed there. She did well at Nationals and loved her extra day of snowboarding in Colorado. Looks like driving to snowboarding practice and competitions will be something that I'm doing for the next few years.
And then there's golf. This is Rosie Jane's passion. Many members of my family, including my dad and Bob, play golf. It's totally not something I'm interested in playing but she really does. A few years ago, I looked around for golf lessons and found that there's a First Tee Program here in our county. This is a great program because it combines teaching golf with life lessons. As the players move up through the program, the golf requirements get harder and the life lessons are deeper. Once they reach a certain level, and she's almost there, they can go to summer camp and get invited to tournaments.
Golf is one reason we thought about putting Rosie Jane into school for high school. Where we live if you homeschool, you can't be on the high school team. We've decided to keep her home, which means that it's going to be harder for her to play and get noticed by colleges. She's just going to have to work hard so she can go to the golf camps and tournaments sponsored by First Tee. One good thing is that there is plenty of money out there for female golf players for college. Now we just need to find her some (female) friends to play with so she'll keep her interest up.
So that's our sporting life, dance year round, snowboarding (and skiing) in the winter, golf in the spring/summer.
13 April 2013
Driving
I'll get back to the sports later. Right now I've got driving on my mind. Sweet Pea is finishing up her behind the wheel class and will have her license TOMORROW! I'm really excited, for both of us. She'll be able to get to Bible study and work by herself, and for me it'll free up about 4.5 hours a week that I don't have to drive her anymore.
Right now I was hoping to find an easy Excel report card that I can use. I need to make up one so she can get the good student discount on her auto insurance. I don't usually give the girls report cards, I just tell them how they're doing and they have a pretty good idea anyway. I do tell them their year end grades. Anyway, I can't find anything useful for high school that I can just plug and go and email to our insurance agent. Guess I'll work on something this weekend so he can add her on Monday.
Here's to safe driving!
Right now I was hoping to find an easy Excel report card that I can use. I need to make up one so she can get the good student discount on her auto insurance. I don't usually give the girls report cards, I just tell them how they're doing and they have a pretty good idea anyway. I do tell them their year end grades. Anyway, I can't find anything useful for high school that I can just plug and go and email to our insurance agent. Guess I'll work on something this weekend so he can add her on Monday.
Here's to safe driving!
08 April 2013
Sports
Our family has never been big into the typical organized sports so I'm amazed at how much of our life revolves around the seasons and the sports that come with them.
Neither of our girls were much interested in soccer. I really enjoyed playing soccer growing up and played for a high school team so I hoped one of them would play. We didn't really encourage soccer when they were younger since the games were on Sundays, which is church and family time here. When they got a bit older and games were on Saturdays, they were busy with other interests.
Swimming is another sport that never took that I loved. I swam at our pool in the summer and for the high school team for four years. They both learned to swim at the homeschool swimming lessons at the county rec center and did well. For a few summers we belonged to a pool and the girls loved going and playing around but weren't interested in joining the swim team.
So what have they done instead??
Dance Both girls started dance when they were little. Sweet Pea took ballet, then added pointe when she was old enough. She really enjoyed it but had to quit when she started having ankle problems. She went to the chiropractor for her ankles and they finally decided that it was best if she quit. She still misses dancing. Rosie Jane started with a ballet/tap class, as she got older, it was just ballet, then she added jazz, then she dropped jazz and took Irish dance for a few years. She was really good at Irish dance but didn't want to practice but at the level she was getting to, she really needed practice outside of class. So she dropped that, at our insistence, and went back to ballet, adding jazz again and lyrical. As she got a few years older, she's added modern and pointe. I really like the studio they've danced at, it focuses more on dancing for the love of dance rather than competing or building professional ballerinas or dancers.
Horses Sweet Pea has loved horses since she was very little. When she was about 2 she wanted to learn to ride horses. That's a bit too young, but when she was 5 we started looking around for lessons for her. The stable that's down the street from us took students when they were 9. I really wasn't sure I'd be able to hold her off for that long and was fortunate to find somewhere else that would take her at 5 years old. The preschool she went to took a field trip to a local farm and the owner was doing lessons. I talked to her and in the spring, Sweet Pea started riding. She started taking lessons one day a week, we later added a second day as she got older (and her legs were actually long enough to reach the horse and not just the saddle), then came an opportunity to buy the horse that she was using at the time for her lessons. She still owns that horse and loves it; they both can be stubborn so they're a good fit for each other. She eventually stopped taking lessons (the owner moved on to other things), but still rides two or three days a week and now works at the barn two afternoons a week to help pay for the board. She loves her horse and did one or two local shows but has decided competing on horses just isn't for her. I have to agree. She doesn't really fit into the horse world. She wants to preserve her love of horses and is afraid if she has to work so much and deal with the pressure of competing that she would lose her love of riding. She wants to be able to enjoy having a horse, jumping on it and enjoying the ride.
Next time, snowboarding and golf, the seasonal sports that they love.
Neither of our girls were much interested in soccer. I really enjoyed playing soccer growing up and played for a high school team so I hoped one of them would play. We didn't really encourage soccer when they were younger since the games were on Sundays, which is church and family time here. When they got a bit older and games were on Saturdays, they were busy with other interests.
Swimming is another sport that never took that I loved. I swam at our pool in the summer and for the high school team for four years. They both learned to swim at the homeschool swimming lessons at the county rec center and did well. For a few summers we belonged to a pool and the girls loved going and playing around but weren't interested in joining the swim team.
So what have they done instead??
Dance Both girls started dance when they were little. Sweet Pea took ballet, then added pointe when she was old enough. She really enjoyed it but had to quit when she started having ankle problems. She went to the chiropractor for her ankles and they finally decided that it was best if she quit. She still misses dancing. Rosie Jane started with a ballet/tap class, as she got older, it was just ballet, then she added jazz, then she dropped jazz and took Irish dance for a few years. She was really good at Irish dance but didn't want to practice but at the level she was getting to, she really needed practice outside of class. So she dropped that, at our insistence, and went back to ballet, adding jazz again and lyrical. As she got a few years older, she's added modern and pointe. I really like the studio they've danced at, it focuses more on dancing for the love of dance rather than competing or building professional ballerinas or dancers.
Horses Sweet Pea has loved horses since she was very little. When she was about 2 she wanted to learn to ride horses. That's a bit too young, but when she was 5 we started looking around for lessons for her. The stable that's down the street from us took students when they were 9. I really wasn't sure I'd be able to hold her off for that long and was fortunate to find somewhere else that would take her at 5 years old. The preschool she went to took a field trip to a local farm and the owner was doing lessons. I talked to her and in the spring, Sweet Pea started riding. She started taking lessons one day a week, we later added a second day as she got older (and her legs were actually long enough to reach the horse and not just the saddle), then came an opportunity to buy the horse that she was using at the time for her lessons. She still owns that horse and loves it; they both can be stubborn so they're a good fit for each other. She eventually stopped taking lessons (the owner moved on to other things), but still rides two or three days a week and now works at the barn two afternoons a week to help pay for the board. She loves her horse and did one or two local shows but has decided competing on horses just isn't for her. I have to agree. She doesn't really fit into the horse world. She wants to preserve her love of horses and is afraid if she has to work so much and deal with the pressure of competing that she would lose her love of riding. She wants to be able to enjoy having a horse, jumping on it and enjoying the ride.
Next time, snowboarding and golf, the seasonal sports that they love.
01 February 2013
January
In homeschool circles, January is a dreaded month. Of course if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, from what I hear it's the beginning of the new school year so there's lots of excitement over new books, new classes, etc. going on there. Up here in the cold north, Christmas is over and it's a long stretch of cold, dark days before there's another long break. It's more of the same (usually) as far as school goes, nothing new or exciting.
I usually don't mind January too much. It's good to get back to a schedule after a week plus off for Christmas. We're pretty busy in January, trying to get to the ski slopes for some winter fun so the month seems to go by pretty quickly. Once January is done, for the last couple of years, we have Christmas with Bob's family to look forward to in mid-February and the girls and I take our annual vacation to visit his sister in New Hampshire at the end of the month.
I think it's actually March that I don't like so much. Our fun vacation is over, ski/snowboard time is pretty much done, and it becomes a long slog for us to get through March and into April. We'll take a day off here and there but don't usually take a spring break. The plus side of that is finishing early - usually by the end of May or early June - but the downside is the long time between our February vacation and the end of school. At least by mid-April the weather gets really nice and school can be done on the deck or at least with the windows open (one daughter finds doing school outside very distracting).
I usually don't mind January too much. It's good to get back to a schedule after a week plus off for Christmas. We're pretty busy in January, trying to get to the ski slopes for some winter fun so the month seems to go by pretty quickly. Once January is done, for the last couple of years, we have Christmas with Bob's family to look forward to in mid-February and the girls and I take our annual vacation to visit his sister in New Hampshire at the end of the month.
I think it's actually March that I don't like so much. Our fun vacation is over, ski/snowboard time is pretty much done, and it becomes a long slog for us to get through March and into April. We'll take a day off here and there but don't usually take a spring break. The plus side of that is finishing early - usually by the end of May or early June - but the downside is the long time between our February vacation and the end of school. At least by mid-April the weather gets really nice and school can be done on the deck or at least with the windows open (one daughter finds doing school outside very distracting).
16 January 2013
Celebration day tomorrow!
Tomorrow will be a day to celebrate, Sweet Pea is going to be finishing Algebra II. She's really enjoyed Life of Fred Advanced Algebra and will be moving on to LoF Geometry on Tuesday next week. She's already told me that she's got to get through Calculus at home (not sure I'll be able to help her with that!) because she must find out how Fred became a teacher at Kittens University at 3 years old.
Life of Fred is an interesting math series. It tells the story of Fred, in all his brilliance, and what happens in his life. The good thing about it is that it shows math in real life situations, although how some of us would ever end up in those situations, I don't know. It's also a math program that doesn't lay things out for you in detail. He gives you enough information to figure out the problem but in a way that really makes you think and work things through (and I have to say that I really like the name of the publisher - Polka Dot Publishing).
In other math news, Rosie Jane is going to be finishing her pre-algebra book next month and I've already got the algebra book ready to go. She's using a different book, LoF didn't work as well with her. She needs more...hand holding, shall we say and Teaching Textbooks is working well for her.
Life of Fred is an interesting math series. It tells the story of Fred, in all his brilliance, and what happens in his life. The good thing about it is that it shows math in real life situations, although how some of us would ever end up in those situations, I don't know. It's also a math program that doesn't lay things out for you in detail. He gives you enough information to figure out the problem but in a way that really makes you think and work things through (and I have to say that I really like the name of the publisher - Polka Dot Publishing).
In other math news, Rosie Jane is going to be finishing her pre-algebra book next month and I've already got the algebra book ready to go. She's using a different book, LoF didn't work as well with her. She needs more...hand holding, shall we say and Teaching Textbooks is working well for her.
07 January 2013
Back to School
Today was back to school after Christmas break. We enjoyed out time off, spending time with family and at home for Christmas, then a trip to New Hampshire for some skiing/snowboarding. Now it's time to hit the books that we didn't think about for two weeks.
Considering that we haven't thought about school for that long, it went well today. I figured out where the girls were in most subjects, we still have a missing book and missing instructor's guide, but otherwise things went pretty smoothly. Looks like advanced algebra will finish up next Friday (which was the plan) and she'll begin geometry the following week and pre-algebra will be finished probably early next month and algebra will follow. I think I've timed things that history will be finished up before our vacation in May and the rest of the subjects will just be put on hold until we return or possibly for the summer. The only thing that may need to be finished up when we get back is physics since I borrowed the book and will need to get it back to my friend if she needs it in the fall.
So day one back is off to a good start, hopefully the rest of the week will go as smoothly especially since snowboard practice starts this week (for us).
Considering that we haven't thought about school for that long, it went well today. I figured out where the girls were in most subjects, we still have a missing book and missing instructor's guide, but otherwise things went pretty smoothly. Looks like advanced algebra will finish up next Friday (which was the plan) and she'll begin geometry the following week and pre-algebra will be finished probably early next month and algebra will follow. I think I've timed things that history will be finished up before our vacation in May and the rest of the subjects will just be put on hold until we return or possibly for the summer. The only thing that may need to be finished up when we get back is physics since I borrowed the book and will need to get it back to my friend if she needs it in the fall.
So day one back is off to a good start, hopefully the rest of the week will go as smoothly especially since snowboard practice starts this week (for us).
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