Life's little interruptions...

Sometimes, when you are going along at full speed, making progress, life happens. One of the positive positives about homeschooling is flexibility. We had planned to have school on Labor Day and save our day "off" for later when the new baby decides to make her appearance, but something came up that changed our plans.

We will not be doing school on Friday, either, as a few of the kids and I are planning to leave for a family reunion out of state. (Dad and the other kids will stay home and take care of the livestock while we enjoy a couple of days away.) This means that we only have three days left to do school this week, so we have two choices: We can do three days of school this week, or fit five days of schoolwork into three.

Since all of the kids were at their desks yesterday morning, ready to do school, we discussed our options and took a vote. The majority ruled, and they voted to do longer days on Tuesday and Thursday and finish two days of school work on each of those days. It works.

So yesterday, I got the opportunity to rub shoulders with some other homeschool Moms and compare notes. One of them is doing My Father's World - Creation to the Greeks with her children and they are thoroughly enjoying their days as well as we are. We shared our methods of recording attendance and book lists and suggested ways to organize our portfolios. Iron sharpens iron.

According to the calendar, the first day of Autumn is still a little over two weeks away, but thanks, in part, to Tropical Storm Lee who decided to take a little trip across the country, we are enjoying more Fall-like days this week. The mornings are a little crisper, the nights are nippier, and the afternoons are nice and enjoyable. The stanza of the poem we studied in our 6th grade English class today seemed very appropriate...

A haze on the far horizon,

The infinite, tender sky,

The ripe rich tint of the cornfields,

And the wild geese sailing high --

And all over upland and lowland

The charm of the golden-rod --

Some of us call it Autumn

And others call it God.

From Each in His Own Tongue, by William Herbert Carruth

Also, before I close this post, I'll give a report on our Monarch Project. So far, three of our caterpillars have entered the chrysalis stage, and two caterpillars are still munching away on fresh milkweed. It should take 10-14 days for beautiful butterflies to emerge from their life changing cocoons. We are (trying to) wait patiently.

The chrysalis on the right (above) has just changed from a caterpillar this morning. You can still see the stripes as it has not turned into the green jeweled chrysalis as the ones in the back have.

You may notice the black object to the right of the caterpillar on the left in the bottom photo. It is not a fly - it is the caterpillar skin our new chrysalis removed as it took on its new form.