Selfish woman...

Been out surfing the blogosphere for a few days now, and I'm starting to feel selfish. Not sharing enough.

School ends for us on Friday. The Boy is finishing up a year of Calvert School. It was a good year, but in retrospect, rather uneventful. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. His last year of public school (two years ago) was rather, umm, eventful. And not in a good way. But this was just, well, there.

As I've been finishing up Calvert's 160 lessons and 16 review lessons, I've been slacking on The Girl a little. She hasn't minded much.

I know that The Girl slacking off sounds bad, but actually, it's very good. The Girl tends to get bored with her limited diversions -- drawing, watching PBS Kids, and talking to her small stuffed toys -- so she likes school. 365 days of the year! For fun, outside "school", she has started doing crossword puzzles and multiplication tables. Yes, you heard me, multiplication tables. They all have different tunes, and are sung as loudly as possible. The sixes are done to the can-can: "6, 12, 18, 24; then 30, 32; then 36 and 48 and 54; that's eight!" She brings me the white board and markers. I "get" to write the equations first, then she writes the answers. We are so close to having the frickin' things down that I'm getting giddy.

Anyway, I'm hoping that The Girl takes a little break this summer, just to give me a break for a while. I have needs, too, you know! I need to paint the living room, I need to fix the garage shelves, I need to build a new end table for the bathroom. NEEDS, I tell you!

I've also been collecting stuff for next year. Bwaa-haa-haa!! The Boy is in for a shock. He's spent the last year complaining that school is boring. To be honest, if I have to teach "food webs" again, I'm going to scream, so I kind of hear where he's coming from. He studied grammar that he already knew, phonics that he already knew, and some science that he knew and some he didn't. He wasn't all that interested in learning about the other regions in the country. He read a few books he liked, a few that he tried not to like, and a few he loved. Turns out The Boy loves Nordic sagas. Who knew?

The best thing we got going this year wasn't even in Calvert. It was Writing with Ease by Susan Wise Brown. She contends that first they have to learn to think in sentences, learn to put words on paper, and THEN write down their own thoughts. The Boy buzzed through about half of book 1, then started on book 2. We're learning to summarize text now. It's been very useful to his scattered thoughts. Yayyyy!

I know that no one wants to know what we're going next year, so I'll probably post it later. ;) Lots of exciting stuff!