School is Over

The homeschool school year officially ends today. Last day of classes was yesterday. I would have it officially end in Feb. or March but the state tells me when it starts and when it is over. They're pretty lenient in other areas so I will be grateful I get to keep my child home and schedule my school year accordingly.

G is now done with public summer school and the district paid him $40 for his attendance. I can't say that I wouldn't be tempted to take him out of school every now and then over the summer if it weren't for the cash incentive. G gets to keep $10 and tithe on that. He's starting to figure out that tithing means less for him. I'm trying to explain that the $10 is HIS but he can choose not to honour God and steal from him... his choice... He's still going to bring his dollar to church but actually I think this is progress for him. It costs us something to put God first. He really wants $10 instead of $9. By giving that dollar in the offering he is putting God before how he "feels" and what he would like to do.

The other $30 will be to bring all the kids out to lunch or something next week. We are all going to do fun things for homeschooling next week. For our Social Studies lesson next week, we'll expand on the Bob Jones lesson (learn your address and city) and do some telephone work. What do you say when you call someone? How do you look something up in the phone book? Patrick is nearly 14 and I heard some amazingly bad phone skills from him when he called the library to see if his books were in. He was very friendly and polite, but had no clue the order in which things were to be said in the usual "phone script" we all use if that makes sense. So the person on the other end nearly hung up thinking it was a teenager playing a prank. Patrick also tried looking up the library in the YELLOW pages and wondered why it was not there.

We'll be doing a science unit on pets and go into the pet store to look at animals. We'll look up the animal we want for a pet and do a research project. Actually I'm looking for, say, a picture of a tiger and three sentences from Elf. Maybe even less from the Emperor. But it will be fun for them to find out how to take care of the animal they pick for their project. They sure are not bringing any real animals home. Ever. I have made that very clear to the boys for about forever and they haven't tried it yet. I know about every other parent gets snuckered into a new dog, llama or whatever follows them home from school, because they don't have the heart to say no. Watch me: NO!

It also helps the situation to say, Patrick is allergic to dogs and he is probably allergic to whatever animal you're thinking of as well... and it's the truth. He is allergic to about everything but peanuts. Bad enough we have this cat, though, who sheds on everything and wants to sit on the furniture like us. I would not mind *so* much if it weren't for the fact that she doesn't tuck her tail in when she sits. I can't say I dislike the cat personally. She is more my nemesis, constantly plotting what to sit on next or trying to manipulate me into feeding her or letting her upstairs so she can put her bottom on my beautiful couch that is pictured several posts back.