Wow, I'm sucking at the montly recap, aren't I? (and to think I once aspired to a *weekly* check-in!)

(how long has blogger had this new layout?)

 Homeschooling's going phenomenally well. We're still doing Mosaic for history and world culture, and now we're using a combination of Life of Fred, The Good Time Math Event Book and the Living Math reading list for math, we're continuing to read as many myths and folk stories as we can get our hands on, we're using The Fallacy Detective for logic/critical thinking, using Coffee Break Espanol for Spanish, and using a combination of The Story of Science, How Nature Works, and our nature walks for science.

Story of Science can be subtly snarky about pre-Christian* religious beliefs, IMO -- not offensively so, but enough that I find myself changing a few of the words as I read aloud, because the author's snarkiness distressed Sarah. We have many non-Christian friends and non-Christian beliefs ourselves, and while I notice the author's slightly condescending attitude toward some of the beliefs that pre-date modern scientific explanations of natural phenomena, it doesn't really bother me, but it deeply distresses Sarah. It's easy enough to change or skip over a few words here and there, since the rest of the book works well for her.

 (*ETA: writing "pre-Christian" doesn't get it exactly right. Basically, the author is, IMO, dismissive of various ancient religious beliefs (which aren't exclusively Ancient, as many folks today hold the same basic beliefs, but she's talking specifically about Ancient History), but she's dismissive of them in a way that I think few authors, even freethinking/nontheists, would be dismissive of more mainstream religious beliefs. Yeah, I disagree with those explanations of natural phenomena, too, but you can disagree without being a jerk about it.)

Sarah likes an extremely imaginitive, story-based approach to pretty much everything. We stumbled across a book that seems to be a good fit for her for science: The Story Book of Science (Yesterday's Classics), and picked it up for Kindle (she has one on loan for about another month).

We had another talk about our homeschool approach, today. I realized how quickly summer was approaching, and wanted to hear her thoughts on whether to take a break for summer and try a different homeschooling approach (still using a rhythm to the day, but replacing our current "playing school" slot with projects or unit studies or what we call "unschooling time" (basically each of us doing whatever quiet independent work we feel like doing, that day)) or to take "vacation" for a week or a month or the whole summer. She's still thinking about it, but narrowed it down to continuing our current approach (playing school most mornings after breakfast, but regularly choosing to skip it in favor of getting out for a field trip or playdate or just reading companionably side-by-side) or else taking an unschool/project approach to our current rhythm to the day. I can't decide if I'm relieved (I'm really looking forward to finishing up the Ancient World together, our current reading's a lot of fun, and I'm also really curious to see what a project-based approach would feel like) or disappointed (I'm curious to see what a summer vacation would feel like, and what we would wind up doing with our time).

Highlights of our last month include: learning about New Zealand for Country Day -- her presentation was on how humans settled New Zealand (humans started out in Africa around 160,000 years ago, and didn't settle New Zealand until around 800 years ago!) and we made a Pavlova (delicious meringue dessert) -- attending Canal Immersion Day at the Canal museum in Easton PA (took a ride down the canal, used blacksmith tools to make her own S-hook, learned the geology of mining, learned about simple machines, learned about buoyancy and got to pull the boat by hand, learned about daily canal life), learning about Egypt for the last Country Day (Queen Hatsepshut), Bear Mountain Zoo with my parents, finished up bowling league for the season, duct tape class at the library, board game meetup at another library, Sarah's having a great time with the art class she's taking at The Messy Artist -- it's a little art theory, a little intro to different art techniques, and a lot of hands-on exploration. She's also reading non-stop (mostly long series about adventurous girls, and then a couple Rick Riordan series), watching lots of cooking shows, Mythbusters, and My Little Pony, going to Pokemon League, and continuing to slowly explore the baking book she got for Christmas. We made a yellow layer cake, last night, and it came out really delicious -- a basic, not-too-sweet but very tasty cake.

She's made huge leaps forward in terms of her comfort with dogs and with chatting with new people.

This summer Sarah wants to spend a lot of time on physical stuff -- bike riding, roller skating, learning to skateboard, wiffle ball, soccer, frisbee, building stuff for the backyard, and she also wants to practice more practical skills so that she can do more stuff for herself (I think because we're raising a single child, she's had to do less for herself than many of her peers have had to learn to do, and we're all just starting to notice that).

We're continuing to use the Zenhabits habit-building approach, Getting Things Done, Flylady, and a Waldorf approach to the day to shape the life we want. It's going pretty well. We aren't making as much music or having as many friends over as we'd like, but I'm pretty happy with where we are in the process.