Signs of Life : The Brownie Chronicles

The older three Brownies started school the day after Labor Day.  We were thrilled the week before when our Sonlight box arrived at our door!  We haven't celebrated a real Box Day in a couple of years; we haven't started a new core in a couple of years, so Box Day felt momentous. This year, we are studying through Core F , which covers a study of the Eastern Hemisphere.  The first country we are studying is China, so we certainly kicked off with a bang!  It's been fun to study a "far-away" country we just happened to have visited for a month.  We are looking forward to the next 5 weeks exploring China! TJ, labeling brain parts while Mater keeps him company. A huge change this year has been how TJ does school.  About a year ago, I started to accept the fact that TJ had some challenges with writing. This year, I've totally revamped how TJ does school and the results have brought me to grateful tears more than once.  TJ logs the majority o

We kicked off our 2013-2014 school year by sending off the boys to TSD the last week of August. Tian is now in pre-k and Travis has started Kindergarten!  They both have excellent teachers, so we couldn't be more pleased. I have a bit of a learning curve to get through this year. I've never had a child in government-run grade school.  Now that Travis is in Kindergarten, he has homework he brings home every night. The idea of having him do assigned homework after he's been in school for seven hours goes totally against my personal teaching philosophy, so the second week of school, when the homework began, I struggled with my own attitude regarding his homework. In the midst of my exasperating about it to Ken and silently to myself, I realized I wasn't being a good example to my kids.  How can I expect them to work diligently and with a good attitude, even when they don't like what I'm asking of them, if I don't model that myself?  So, I look at the h

This blog post is written directly to my friends, family, and anyone who has commented on my blog or YouTube account this year. I'm not ignoring you!   *smiling and cringing in apology*   Well, I haven't been ignoring you, but I have been putting off replying to many of you.  Whether I've gotten emails, facebook messages, or texts, I've just had a tough time replying in a timely manner.  This has been a challenging summer to say the least, but I would say my busy-ness started months before that. I have several friends from my boys' classes with whom I've been talking about playdates for months, but they just aren't happening.  When I finally do get together with someone, it's because they were persistent in contacting me.  For you I'm grateful!  It's ironic, because in the past, I was told on several occasions that I was the friend always reaching out.  Years ago, I even remember having friends with kids about the same age as my