Brakes! Brakes!

     The brakes have really been applied around this homeschool in more ways than one.

     Joy has a driving permit now. Gulp. Her first adventures around town were... interesting. But she really was getting better after each main trip. MhonciaDad and I would discuss progress and decide what the most important skills she needed to work on were and really hit those when we were out with her. She's got the basic driving around city streets pretty much down pat now. Parking is our next challenge.

    And homeschool took a big screeching stop when I left for a couple days and brought Grandma back with me. Joy kept the homefront running and used her managerial skills to dole out cleaning jobs for all the younger kids while I was gone. Valor came with me to get Grandma out of the hospital and help pack her up. She can't be alone for now, and it's still too cold up north to migrate this snowbird.

   The first week I dropped everyone's schedule back to math, literature, Spanish, religion, and a house job. Some days we didn't even get all of that checked off. Now we're on week two, and trying to take practical steps to keep our summer from having a ton of school in it. I added one or two subjects for each particular kid to that list. We're choosing particular subjects to compact and get finished for the school year. Honor and Grace finished their chemistry. Now Honor's trying to get all his geography finished. Faith is doubling and/or tripling her science lessons. Joy is changing gears for geography and setting the Harmony Fine Arts schedule aside in favor of Runkle's one semester physical geography course. No one has a full-size schedule, because 1) it's not feasible right now, and 2) it's easier to wrap up subjects with larger blocks given to them. We're hoping to keep scratching off subjects altogether until we're down to a basic summer schedule, which is pretty much that first week of Grandma's visit.

    Grandma doesn't think she can handle our desert summers though. So when it's warmer up north, and the north family is ready for Grandma, we'll help her migrate.