First Week

This is our eleventh year of official homeschooling.

Well twelfth or thirteenth if you count the preschool homeschooling years.

Or seventeenth year if you start the homeschooling count from birth.

So there’s not as much fanfare about the start of a new school year anymore.

You just open the books and get started.

The books we chose to open first were our new Math books.

We’ve finished the Singapore Math series so we’re starting on a school text.

I was a bit worried about the changeover as school texts aren’t as supportive of parent tutors,

so I spent ages on the weekend going through the Math, making sure I understand the week’s lessons.

But when we opened the books and started the exercises, it was simple.

Despite being a publisher known for high standards, it’s got nothing on Singapore Math.

We simply had to plug and apply the new learning.

There was hardly any stretch and strain for our brains like we are used to with Singapore.

And the whole exercise was finished in less than 90 minutes.

Because I was expecting a lot more adjustment with our Math text,

we didn’t dive fully into the language component of our curriculum this week.

We just slid back into some sentence diagramming, copywork, Logic and written narrations.

We’ll add essay writing and Latin next week.

However, we did dive head first into a big box of fabulous books

…of course.

(I’m also trying to improve our narrating habits this year.

And Karen Glass’ latest book will help a lot with that.)

We also worked through a number of Arduino projects this week.

If you haven’t tried your hand at Arduino electronics and coding, we’d recommend it.

Our boys really enjoy it.

This project uses a light to activate a motor connected to a little fan.

In addition to school, we had a number of appointments to squeeze in.

We had a doctors appointment, a car service appointment and a plumbing appointment.

It was unfortunate that they all fell in our first week of school, but, sometimes, that is life.

Yes, our main toilet was sick and if your main toilet is sick, you can’t have guests over.

So this had to be attended to immediately.

Oh and our printer died!

I think it was rather rude that it waited until the day before school started to die.

No one needs to be researching new printers and new ink systems the night before school,

but that’s what I was doing.

Below is our new baby.

Our first multifunction printer and I’m already in love with it.

We haven’t installed the ink system yet as we’ll wait until the original ink cartridges run dry

and then install it.

This week was also sprinkled (okay, drenched) with book parcels arriving at the door.

(Aus Post – How come things arrive in big batches like this?

Do you hold them back until the pile is big enough to bother delivering?

I’m not complaining.  I love the big piles.  I’m just curious why it happens so often.)

These were the books that arrived this week.

Did you spot the imposter?

No, I did not order that book.

Book Depository made another mistake.

(Do you remember the book debacle of 2017?)

I actually ordered this book…

and received the book below.

:O

The book went into the bin.

On a better book note,

I read “Jasper Jones” this week.

It’s an Australian book that is commonly read in grade 9 and 10

but I found the reading experience to be a bit of a roller coaster ride.

One minute I was offended and the next minute I was impressed.

One minute I’d resolved not to like the book and the next minute I was declaring that I liked the book.

And there were a lot of moments when I questioned whether I ‘should’ like the book, given all of its indecorum and difficult themes.

(It doesn’t hold back on the foul language.)

But, by the end of the book, I’d determined that I liked the book and that there was value in reading it.

Now I’m reading “The Librarian of Auschwitz”.

It’ll be a totally different reading experience.

So, that was our week.

Now I best go and plan our second week.

I have Math to preview and essay writing videos to view.