Thursday 9/20

Woke around 6:45. Very tired. Everything seems so emotionally exhausting. It's my own beloved family conspiring unintentionally against me. I didn't get to sleep til almost 12:30 a.m. If you are anemic you simply can't stay up that late at night and expect to hit the floor running in the a.m. But they are night owls and I guess I'm supposed to adjust not them. On the other hand I have lots to do so I need to get up early to get things rolling or to have any time to actually think without being interrupted. Because I am interrrupted every waking moment usually.


Anyway, got up and worked on Play of St. Francis. H got up showered and then went off to Mass and Spanish. W came down and started practicing guitar. I asked him if he could please practice in another room but he ignored me. So I got irritated with him.


Got everybody else up except B who refused to wake up. W had math homework to finish so it was just S and J for rosary. Rosary was good though.


Had breakfast but it was getting late and J still had math homework and tutor was coming at 10. So I didn't read aloud.


Circle time, B misbehaved and got sent upstairs, truncated circle time! Started spelling with S but he had bad attitude. Patiently worked through spelling with him. B came back down. We did mental math which they both enjoy. I gave B a problem assignment. I wrote number sentences on whiteboard and then drew houses with the no. 6 and no. 7 in the attics. She had to draw the houses in her ML book. Then she had to try to place the right number sentences in each. She did about half and then wanted me to do the writing portion while she figured out which house.


Meanwhile S and I went through LLATL lesson and learned about synonyms and adding -ing and -ed. S was bored but tolerated it fairly well until the end.


J was busy daydreaming upstairs and had only completed 1/4 of math lesson by the time the tutor arrived. Tsk, tsk.


S is hungry early so we'll eat now. Then we are going to try to find true north. And also he wants to read more Wayside school to me. B is busy drawing pictures of people doing gymnastics. S is still smarting from yesterday's gymnastics class. Sigh.


12:17 ate lunch. Went outside and tried to find true north by putting stick in ground and measuring movement of shadow. A bit bungled because when we went out 20 minutes after noting the first shadow, the sky had clouded up and there was no shadow. But smart Josh ran in a got a piece of printer paper and put that down under the stick. We could see a faint shadow with that. So now we know what true north is and we know which way to point our gnomon on our sun dial.



I signed up for a postcard swap on the Unschooling Catholics yahoolist. We have to get a bunch of postcards and mail them out by 10/10 to the other participating kids. I started to read Book of Marvels but B and S were too into gymnastics so I stopped. It was about the highest waterfalls in the states and world.



J is doing Latin right now. Copying over declensions. B and S are upstairs playing. W just finished with math tutor and I don't know where he is. H stayed in the library after her Spanish class because she has to look at video stuff for the class. Another test next Monday.



I need to do prep things for the clubs.

5:15 Finished prepping for clubs. Whew that is taking a lot of time and energy. I didn't quite realize what I had signed off for when I said I'd coordinate these two groups! But we had a good meeting. One of the moms gave a lovely presentation on the Seven Sorrows of Mary Chaplet. The craft was quite lengthy so we wound up not practicing the play. However, we did get the parts assigned to the different children and we know whose going to be presenting each meeting between now and Dec. 6th. So it was good. Sean got the part of St. Francis by chance. I felt bad that the moms would think I just rigged it. Then B was jealous because she wanted to be St. Claire but another girl got that part. Some tears on her part. Sorry, babe! Came home and immediately sent out an e-mail to all the club folks. So now I don't have to think about that for another two weeks!

Tonight we are just having Pizza for dinner. I'm going to relax. Tomorrow we'll do a bit of school in the a.m but then we are going to meet some Waldorf homeschoolers at a park. After that we have library books to return. Then tennis in the afternoon. I am going to take a moms tennis class. That should be very funny, as I am not athletic in the least and it is a bunch of overweight, out of shape moms trying to play tennis, except for one who is in shape and actually plays tennis for fun! She'll wipe us all off the court!

This evening - J practice piano, read King Arthur, start Beorn the Proud. He is totally into this Pendragon series right now. Also, maybe I can read Book of Marvels over pizza. Also want to read to H and W, Sophie's World. Rick is still reading S Encyclopedia Brown books and I'm still reading Surprise Island/Boxcar Children to B.