Week 22 ~ Highlights of Our Week

In my last post, I talked about homeschooling high school through a crisis. A question was posed about reporting requirements in our state. Here in North Carolina, we are required to do a standardized end of year test, record attendance and maintain vaccination records in the home. We are considered a small private school and have to follow the rules for private schools in our state. All of the course work and credits for high school graduation are recommendations instead of requirements and are up to the discretion of the school principal 9 (my husband). We follow the credit requirements of our local high school but create our own course work and determine what we feel our children need to learn for each subject. Our local high school requires 22 credits including 3 math credits (4 if university bound), 4 English Credits, 3 science credits, 4 history credits and a concentration in something for 4 years. Our daughter's concentration is dance and theater and our son's concentration is fine art. Both of our children will be graduating with more credits than required because of our personal requirements and their interests. All this makes it possible for our family to follow our style of recording.

Accomplishments this Week ~

Anne attended 17.5 hours of dance classes and rehearsals this week. She is really feeling good about her classes in Cecchetti ballet and feels almost ready for the Level 5 exam in June. She also was cast in the spring show, The Mystery of the Seahorse (based on the book, The Sign of the Seahorse) as Pearl Trout. She is very excited to have this role. Lastly, she was cast as an understudy in the 40th anniversary show by the dance studio's Adult Company that the dance studio is putting on in June. She was told that she would most likely dance at least one dance in the show. She is delighted.

Anne is rapidly reading A Gathering of Days by Joan Blos and is working her way through the math book, Life of Fred Decimals and Percents. She was feeling a bit shaky on percents and needed a quick review.

Both kids spent two hours on their Conceptual Physics course this week. We used our standard textbook and videos and were still a bit confused by the math involved with the law of inertia. We watched the first physics lesson in the crash course series and got a bit more understanding. I have a feeling that physics (even Conceptual Physics) isn't really going to be my children's thing and that is okay as long as they have exposure and a general understanding.

Dean is one page away from being done with his current consumer math book. I resisted bribing him with a soda or some other treat to finish the book today. He did three pages and will finish the book on Monday. For his next book, he decided to stick with Robert Louis Stevenson and started reading Treasure Island. So far, he likes it even better than Kidnapped.

Dean completed three more countries (Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria) in his geography books and read most of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa.

Anne did lots of sign language practice. I can't tell you how delighted she was when her teacher gave her a pop-up book, The Little Mermaid, to translate into sign language to sign to the class next week. It is fun to see teens delight in a children's book. She also gave another tutoring session to her ballet teacher in sign language. She is doing very well and enjoying the process of tutoring.

Anne also just adores her job at the consignment shop. She comes bouncing out to the car each day with a new story to tell about a customer or a cute kid that came in or how you have to rip the arms off the mannequins to change their clothes.

I took Dean and his girlfriend on what I hope will turn into a bi-monthly art field trip. This week we planned to go to a glassworks artist studio and watch a demonstration, but when we arrived we found out that they were closed this week for maintenance. We will have to go another week. Luckily, we live in a very artsy town and there are dozens of galleries. We went to ZaPow! that was right around the corner. It is a graphic art and illustration gallery that hosts dozens of artists. I told the kids to find two booths that they especially liked and give me a talk about why they liked it and what kind of art was displayed. I also told them about my two favorite booths. They had a wonderful time and didn't want to leave after an hour.

I am sure there were more accomplishments and they are written in my handy lesson planners, but I can't currently tell you what they were.

Valentine's Day ~ We kept this day very simple this year to save money. We need all our pennies and dimes for traveling right now. I made my husband homemade Biscotti, and he bought me a little brass school bell from a thrift shop for my bell collection. We bought the family the board game, Code Names...Harry Potter Edition.

The little bell is the new one.

Blessings, Dawn