Mixing it up

Hah! I typed this all up on my phone and went to load pics.  I had to change my privacy settings and didn't get it saved.  Two full rambling paragraphs and som more fluff gone.  Oh my!  So I don't know everything I was saying, but wanted to make a few points.  First of all, I feel like my home school mom confidence level increased this year.  I don't feel trapped in the subjects.  I put the history project grade in the "art" tab in my grade book today.  I have felt like we weren't getting any art in last year, but we did these projects.  Why not score them in art with a "excellent, satisfactory, needs improvement, unsatisfactory," grade rather than try to put a percentage score on it.

By the way, the wire above his head is not connected to anything.  That's another long story.

We went the extra mile on this and covered the brooch with foil, then colored it with Sharpie markers.

Another thing resulting from my confidence that gave my OCD a run for its money is I'm letting my kids do worksheets orally and skip problems in math.  We are doing discussions rather than quizzes every time in history.  Spelling isn't graded, though it is a separate subject for us.  If they've already learned something and can explain it to me effectively, it's ok to skip the lesson.  When I did a few placement tests and found my kids slightly above grade level, I relaxed a bit.  I can do this!

Well I'm sure whatever I typed before was just as random as this with more words, so that's all for now.  I hope to post more regularly this year.

Our new classroom should be ready by next week, so I hope to be able to post about it soon!