Back to Regular Life

We've had a busy and productive school week while being fairly slow on the extra activities. By slow, of course I mean we only had our regularly scheduled items and nothing extra. The birthday and holiday celebrations are finally completed.

Through diligence, Amber is officially on track for her school hours again and even pulling ahead of the needed amount. Whew! Not that I was worried; more concerned if she were to have too many sick days later this school year.

One happy girl! Her friend in Kenya was texting. I let her off school for a few hours too. Then dinner on our way to confirmation.  Plus reading and cuddling with all three kitties.

After some mental wrangling and a great deal of research, we've come up with a plan to help Amber face high school without such anxiety as we've seen lately. I've already detailed out our thought process in a post earlier this week, but basically Amber can enroll in our local community college without testing and then transfer to the local university where she truly wants to go. As a transfer student she will not need to have taken the ACT or SAT.

This slight change in our thinking has opened up numerous additional options for high school courses. No longer do we feel the need to follow all the standard course selections. Instead we are looking and planning alternative topics in science (and possibly history / social studies) which actually interest Amber.  The number of choices are overwhelming and has us in a tizzy.

Multiple days of Finance Park and a fun IEW lesson. She loves having a TV in her play/study room.

Somehow that simple change in thought made schooling immediately more relaxing and free. Instead of trying to squeeze in all of our normal subjects, plus the needed finance lessons to attend the JA Finance Park, and her new civics / government lessons, we juggled topics each day based on her interest level. We even decided at the last minute today to change up everything scheduled and work on entirely different topics. Everything has been within the realm of her normal subjects and Amber had a highly productive week. Still our new attitude has left us feeling less constrained to stay on a predetermined  path.

Over the week Amber completed:

• Math Lessons (in Life of Fred - Advanced Algebra)
• Finance lessons for Junior Achievement Finance Park
• Civics / government assignments from two different sources
• IEW Writing assignments
• One entire lesson in Tapestry of Grace and finished the reading for the next.
• Vocabulary from her requested Latin Morphemes curriculum
• Reading and notes for her current literature book (Peter Pan)
• Several chapters in her German reader (but no grammar yet this week)
• Art homework for her co-op class

Today's workout. We love the indoor walking but the machines we could do without.

Amber did skip her time at the gym on Tuesday when it snowed in favor of at home exercises as well as all of her regular strengthening exercises at home during the week. We finally made it back to the gym today, and it completely wiped Amber out. She worked on cardio and then strengthening her legs. I tried to stop her from pushing it too far, but she is quite strong willed and now is paying the price of pushing to hard.  The rest of the day will be video lesson learning.

This weekend we plan for the regular household chores, playing more LEGO Dimensions (that game is addicting) and hopefully setup Amber's Disney Infinity 3.0 too (it shouldn't be too hard since we have Infinity 1.0 and 2.0... sheesh). 

Happy Weekend!

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