Pressing On

I'm making an assumption that most everyone knows most successful people start their days early and get lots done while the rest of us are still sleeping. I have never been one of the those people. I get quite a bit done, but I have never been able to master myself to the point of getting up early.  I make notoriously bad decisions snuggled under my blankets, the foremost being that it's not necessary to get up and get going. Recently I came across a course that is supposed to help you be more productive and such, and,  without even taking the course, I knew it wouldn't work for me because one of the number one principles was getting up early. However, since it continues to annoy me that I'm so pathetic, I was still thinking about this idea and the way she phrased it: "Make your first two hours count." Let me backtrack a bit.  Since I've had this ordeal with the cancer, I've had a very hard time motivating myself to get the stuff done that ...

So, bit of a scare. What does a person with a history of cancer do when she finds a lump on her neck? FREAK-OUT.  What does her doctor do? ALSO FREAK-OUT.  (That's because I have the best doctor in the world.) A couple of weeks ago I found a pea sized lump on the back of my neck. I think that would have freaked me out anyway, since I've never noticed anything like that before. Suffice it to say, I had an X-ray, an ultrasound, bloodwork, and a call into my oncologist within the week. In hindsight, maybe a bit of overkill. The thing's all but gone now. None-the-less, it's good to have the all-clear again. Nothing showed up anywhere - except for arthritis in my sternoclavicular joint.  Yeah, weird. I wondered why I had this ever-disfiguring bone protrusion on my décolleté, which had already been ruled out as any kind of tumour. I don't wonder about very many things hard enough to get myself to a doctor's office, unless they appear to be life or death, so I just...

Another post strictly for those highly invested in homeschool.  CURRICLUM!  The magic bullet of homeschool guaranteed to quell bad attitudes, remedy skills that should have been mastered already, create eager learners, and make school FUN! Even though I know better now, it's fun to live in the utopia created by homeschool curriculum marketing for a little while as I plan school every year.  In reality I've found it depends almost entirely on your student as to whether a wonder-curriculum is going to go anything as promised. If your kid does not want to learn anything, if he/she is consumed by an incredibly narrow field of interest, or if work is not his/her forte, good luck. I've already sung the praises of Saxon math in a previous post, so I won't spend time on that; suffice it to say that it's going swimmingly again this year. In fact we don't have anything brilliantly new and exciting this year, except for "Byline" writing, which I reviewed in ...

Or can you? Due to a number of changes to our school year, we had to abandon our plan of an "Institute for Excellence in Writing" (IEW) writing class for my high schooler. Now, we have been fans of Andrew Pudewa and all he offers with IEW for a decade or more and still are, so I was very leery of taking a different direction with my grade 10'er; however I think we found a solution! This child is not so much a fan of school, but if she HAS to sit down and put things in writing she gravitates toward journalism and creating newspapers and magazines and the like. So, when our supervising English teacher brought Byline , by Clearwater Press , to our attention, it seemed like a no-brainer! She gets to spend the year writing a newspaper! The curriculum is by the same folks who produced " The One Year Adventure Novel" and  " Cover Story ", which allow students to spend the year writing either a novel or a magazine as their English class.  "Byline...

Back to School! What an over-used phrase. Every flyer, every back-lit school sign and my blog, lol.  We have started strong this year!  Possibly the best start ever.  As much as none of us wanted to pack up the flip-flops, and come inside, we’ve done it and we are off to a great start.  Why? A number of reasons that could not be re-created in other years:  My mind is catching up with my body in healing. I feel like I can take on the stress of providing an education for my deserving learners again. I, with a surprising amount of enthusiasm this year, did a lot of prep work and research, which don’t let anyone ever tell you is a waste of time - but that’s another post. This led to me feeling somewhat more enthusiastic about what we were going to learn this year and gave us a smoooooth start as we actually opened the books (which I had prepared ahead of time, like a good cooking show) Secondly, my oldest started off the year in school this year. Las...

Well, why not make blogging an annual event along with our Year End Slurpees? A whole year and more has evaporated, but not blogging was somewhat intentional. First I decided I did not want to spend any extra time on my computer during the summer and secondly, during the school year, I decided it just wasn't going to be one of my priorities as I had many other places I needed to spend my energy. A third major reason is that the computer is really bothering my eyes, so I've saved my eyeballs for school-related and other vital activities. I guess I could tack on that I have no real purpose for my blog these days either, other than just my own personal record keeping and the joy of writing. All good reasons taking time off! But I felt like I wanted to process the school year by wrapping some words around it : ) This was one of our more interesting years. I started out with four students and ended up with three. I started with two "little" girls, and ended with one. I s...

I know, I know you've been wondering, "What happened to her 90 day bible reading?  Did she flake out or what?" Well no, I did not flake out although it did take me over ninety days.  I slowed right down once I hit the New Testament since I felt like I'd read it so much I'd already been there done that. Not that that is a good excuse, but finally I got my act together and carried on.  It actually proved just as fruitful as reading through the Old Testament. So, what did I get out of reading the entire bible in (close to) 90 days? * I got a wonderful sense of the big picture of scriptural history and geography - which I thought I had before, but really didn't. For example I totally get the Israel and Judah, I get the kings, I get the exile, it's the difference between a Bob Ross painting coming together in 27 minutes and a paint-by-number over years that still looks like a bunch of different patches of colour. * I learned to really feel the flavour o...