Weekly Wrap-Up

Mid-March: we're heading into the final stretch of the school year now. As usual, I haven't accomplished all thing things I imagined, especially doing art every Friday. We've done it three times. Three.

And it's Friday again, and art is not on my agenda.

But I do feel that one big goal is being met. Duncan has adapted well to working more independently this year—his eighth grade year. I've noticed a big change even since December. My goal for my kids is that they are doing all their work with minimal input from us by their sophomore years. It's worked well for our older two, but Duncan has seemed to need me more to sit beside him while he does his work. I feel encouraged now that he'll meet that goal, as well.

I've also noticed an improvement in his French this past month. He really struggled with pronunciation up until now, but suddenly he is really getting it. His teacher at our co-op is French, and I always imagine him shuddering at the butchering of his language. I'm hoping he'll suffer a little less now as the kids figure it out.

I'm teaching German to a small group of high schoolers, and it has been fun to revisit both French and German. It's a bit confusing sometimes to work with Duncan on his French and then prepare my lessons in German. Surprisingly, I have found that I remember French (3 years in high school) better than German (junior year in Germany plus 2 years in college). I think I slept through my 8 a.m. German class in college, and while I learned to speak fairly well while in Germany, I didn't learn proper grammar, conjugating, etc. Kind of like Rosetta Stone German—enough to get by, but not necessarily all there.

In other news…

Duncan got Star rank in Boy Scouts. He only has one rank left to go before he can start working on his Eagle Scout project!

In my World Lit/geography class, one group did a presentation on Africa. We had fun doing tribal face painting as part of it.

My co-teacher in tribal paint.

My brother came to visit, which means that my precious nephew Kollman came to visit. Everything pretty much stops around here when Kollman comes to visit. Is there really anything more important?

 

 

While my hometown in upstate New York is under feet of snow, my yard is absolutely full of daffodils. I love Tennessee. Everyone is complaining about the little snap of cold we had this week, but heck. I just see these:

And tonight? Well, if I had a bucket list, I'd check a big one off tonight. Here's where Randy and I will be.

Next week: spring break! We were hoping to go to Florida, but that didn't work out. So instead I'm hoping for nice weather for some hiking and a chance to do serious spring cleaning.

Linked up with the Weekly Wrap-up