It has been a week of crossing some finish lines after difficult races, and encouraging others while fighting my own discouragement. Sounds like a typical week in the life of a homeschool mom, doesn't it?
The Details
House Happenings...
No big cleanout yet, but I am growing a bit anxious about whether or not I'll be able to get rid of enough of the "stuff" that is cluttering up my house before the window installers arrive! We're going on a camping trip, and the windows go in about 4 days after we get home. Between the tear-out, installation, and then staining/finishing of the interior wood panes, they'll be working for a week, I think. Probably we'll just keep the camp cots and mats and bags out and sleep in the basement until it's all over with, LOL! Guess it's not a bad time for a camping trip afterall!
Homeschool High School & College Notes...
On Thursday morning, 9am, Nathan and I arrived at the college for his final exam in the 5 week INTENSIVE English Composition II course he undertook this summer. At 9:30am, he walked back out, a FREE MAN!!! We have since learned that he got an "A" on the exam, and an "A" in the class!
The other class he took this summer, also through the college, was Geometry. It was a "flexible" learning course, meaning there was no classroom, no teacher...just himself and the textbook. Most kids have a hard time doing math that way...but for a homeschooler, it just seemed normal! (Wow, they can get a book and teach themselves stuff! Remarkable!) This class allowed 7 weeks to get through the entire text book, which covers what a typical, year-long high school geometry class covers. We left for our Mexican vacation during the first week, and though Nathan did some math during that trip, it slowed him up just a bit (the ocean was wayyyyy more fun than geometry, even for a guy who loves math). So, I urged him, and he agreed, to take an "incomplete" in the class. It's a very allowable option for this type of class (it was on the course outline and syllabus, that's how we knew about it!), and all he had to do was complete the final test by the end of the Fall term...which is in December! Nathan was so wiped out from that English class, I didn't know if he'd be able to complete geometry before we left for camping. Turns out, he will finish the last lesson of the last chapter tomorrow (Saturday)! He plans to take the chapter test (in the book, they use them for practice before going in to the college to take the exam that counts) during the drive to our camping trip, study a little bit each day on the camping trip, and then take the last exam the day after we get home. So far he has an "A" in that class, too...he figured out that he needs to get a 78 on this last exam to keep his "A." So between that and the fact that he has, technically, until December to take that last test, the pressure is officially OFF this kid!
Bryan, on the other hand, has to keep slogging away at the schoolwork, non-stop, until he graduates high school in December. He is happy for his brother, but it's been a week where I've needed to encourage him a lot since there's just no end in sight that's close yet. It's all good stuff, it's just relentless. I believe, with all my heart, that I will be happier than he will be when he finally completes the high school classes!!! This has been a long haul.
Bryan and I have decided that when he completes this first semester of Communications/Speech class, which will be in a week, that rather than going on to the next book in that series alone, I'll take a look at it and pick and choose some assignments from it, and then we're going to hit the dyslexia "working strategies" and therapies HARD as he begins his college courses. It'll include brain integration therapies (Dianne Craft), spelling strategies for dyslexics, and testing and evaluating color overlays for improving reading ability.
He will be taking speech again at college (required for his degree), so my goal has been to take this dyslexic guy, who struggles at times to get the thoughts in his head to come out of his mouth as words, and walk him through his first few public speaking assignments, gently coaching and correcting, and training him how to cope with the difficulty that his dyslexia causes. But the therapies we do really make a big difference...we just have to do them. And they take time. So they will become part of his "communications" course-work; they DO improve his communication!
The Kline Creek Farm agricultural staff and volunteers (of which Bryan is one) showed the sheep once again at another county fair on Thursday morning. I couldn't be there because I was taking Nathan in for his final exam...*sniff-sniff* ... so no pictures this time! But Bryan said that his supervisor felt that their showmanship was much better than last week, so they did great, but the competition amongst the sheep at this fair was harder, so the sheep didn't do as well.
My Creative Side...
Nothing happening. Truly, nothing! I am a creative lump of clay, waiting for action. Have just been too busy this week!
Kitchen Happenings...
Been making meals ahead of time for the camping trip...my freezer has ziploc baggies filled with yummy camp goodness in it! One thing that we'll make is campfire eclairs, they are sooooo yummy! It's just crescent dough that you wrap around a 1.5 inch dowel rod then roast like a marshmallow (takes 5 to 7 minutes...patience!); once it's all golden, it slides right off the dowel rod, and into the hollow you squeeze vanilla pudding (I put it into a ziploc baggie then snip off a corner to make a "pastry bag"). Nummm nummm!
In the Garden...
My Friday FarmGirls at Heart post yesterday tells it all...
Where the Lord and I Walked This Week...
Nathan and I enjoyed Ecclisiastes 12:12... "Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh." He can smile upon it now; Bryan has weary flesh! I so want to just take a break from encouraging, from driving, from pushing and checking work, from all of it right now...but I know that this is my last semester with Bryan in high school, and then I will no longer be his teacher. Satan often gets to us when we are sooooo close to something so amazing, so Heavenly, so much bigger than we can even realize because we allow that devil to cloud our vision with discouragement and with weariness. How often have I been like a person wearing a blindfold, trying to find my way around a room, grasping at air, reaching for my desired destination, and then turning away to go another direction trying to find the desired end, completely unaware that I was just inches from it, and had I only kept going one more step, I'd have been there?
That's how homeschooling high school can feel sometimes. I know we are soooooo close, and that God has us in the palm of His hand. I just have to put those blinders on, like the kind they put on horses so they can't see anything off to the side that will frighten or distract them; put those blinders on that block out the world's shouts of, "give up, it's too much, you can't get it all done!" Walking with Jesus is sometimes a happy hop, skip, and jump...other times it's one foot in front of the other, trusting the One who holds my hand and leads that He will see this good work which He began until the Day of its completion. I don't have to make it happen. He'll do it. I just have to follow and obey.
Blessings,
Lori
