School

This month has been a little out of the ordinary in our homeschooling routine.  Let's call it the school of life...but very educational.  A week of language immersion camp (aka Xiao Chen comes to spend the week with my kids while we are away), a close up study in history, geography and politics (aka our trip near a bordering country) and most recently, a lesson in forgiveness ( I will get to that in a minute).  We are finally back to a little routine, in that we are back to daily math, reading and handwriting. I don't have a game plan yet for when we might finish in the summer or maybe we will take breaks but keep going on slow weeks..who knows.  Here is a little glimpse from our school mornings.

Working on math...coloring a pattern. Bennett loved that assignment- right up his alley.  Colors are his favorite and he can spot a pattern or anything out of the ordinary from a mile away.  This boy is observant!

Austin working on handwriting.  This used to be his most frustrating subject, but he has improved so much and sometimes even likes it now.  They have to do handwriting and math at opposite times, since they both usually need help with math but handwriting they can do pretty independently.

Of course Lucy cannot be left out of school time.  On good days she wants to color or sit in her highchair with something to entertain her.  Then there are the bad days...when it is hard to get through more than 30 seconds without an interruption from Miss Busy.

The lesson in forgiveness you ask? So Sunday after church we went to lunch with a friend and near the end Austin comes running over to our table crying, angry and I could tell something hurt, saying Bennett had pushed him.  So as is not unusual Austin and Bennett had some argument and Bennett pushed Austin, who fell backwards and bumped the back of his head on this pointed shelf in the play area (why it was in the play area remains a mystery).  I could see blood on his finger and leg and suddenly in drops on the floor.  It didn't take too long to discover a gash on the back of his head.  After a bit, we decided maybe we should get it looked at and oddly enough we happened to be only a few blocks from the international hospital (pretty far from our home and church). So we went.  He needed 3 staples (why not stitches I don't know) and was pretty brave about it.  Poor Bennett...he was pretty aloof at first but when we got home he just sobbed for about 30 minutes.  He felt really bad and of course had no such intended consequences.  But Austin shared the lollipop we got him after the whole thing with Bennett and I think our recent SCripture reading of the story of Joseph seemed to hit home.  So he is fine, but will get the staples out next Sunday or Monday.  Hopefully that will not be too much of an ordeal.

Chris kept saying he looked like a Teletubby... He had to wear this "hat" to keep the bandage on since he has so much hair.  Thankfully they did not shave the spot.  It is a bit unnerving to see these staples sticking out of his head, but he says they mostly do not hurt now.  Brave boy!