Schooling Update

I'm consistently inconsistent with my son, but things are still going back to the basic plan (mostly) when life is such that it works to go back to the basic plan: math, Bible/religion, copywork, social studies reading (history stuff), lots more literature going on this year... It's good.

But I haven't gone so far Charlotte Mason-style that there is a rigidity. There is still lots of flexibility and openness. For example, I knew my son wasn't completely enjoying the ancient history book I got for him, so I supplemented with some readings from The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia to provide something a little different. It's also been a great book for any supplementation--short pieces that fit well with what we're looking at for France and England, too. I will also print off interesting articles related to our studies (or random science things, like this article about Mars). AND he's started reading something other than comics and How to Train Your Dragon books: The Hunger Games. I finally let him watch it, he loved it and his sister and I kept commenting on how such and such was explained more in the book, so that's been his free reading lately.

For my 16yo, there has been some progress in the depression/stressed out area. I have to remind myself that it's not going to be an overnight fix to change her way of thinking. Things have greatly improved after I told her this weekend that before Christmas, I just see 2 things that really need to get done: her unit 4 math (she did the test yesterday and everything seemed to be fine; much better than the usual Monday morning meltdown) and get her current social studies unit done (she has a paper to finish and a unit test to do). Once those are done, she has the rest of the time off until January. But her mind is so used to being stressed, it switched to focusing on other things in the future to be worried and negative about. *sigh* Baby steps, baby steps. :)