Homeschool Update- Learning Continues Without CC and Through Summer

We are still doing some homeschool work through the early summer. 

In the photo above, both girls are doing their Latin. Adele is following my old Challenge A guide from Classical Conversations, but she's going much slower through all the same content. Avril is following my old Challenge 2 schedule, but we are also tailoring the work so that she does less Latin everyday. 

The girls are not in the same Henle book, but they enjoy working together, fellowshiping or commiserating as they work. Their attitude towards Latin depends on their mood and/or how hard the new material is at any given moment. I come in and help as needed, but Avril is often Adele's go-to helper. They work fairly independently, but I check their work at least a few times a week to make sure it's progressing and correct. 

This was the first year in twelve that we did not join a Classical Conversations group for support, so we did not have to follow their timing. For this year, we followed my old CC guides, but we made changes as often as we wanted to, and we usually took longer to finish everything. 

Sometimes, I feared we were not making good time, but as the year went on, I realized that those CC schedules for the schoolwork are, in fact, arbitrary, imposed on members because of the need to help community function. 

One of the real positives of homeschooling without Classical Conversations has been that we have the freedom to finally do what is absolutely best for us as far as timing goes. Who says you have to be done with your science fair project in one-two months? One real benefit of taking months to complete the project is that the science research, experiments, and conversations have gone on and on, and they became a more natural part of our everyday lives. How is that a negative? 

So taking it all slower was decidedly positive for everyone even though, yes, we are still working into June. But no one cried this year (including me) because they had too much CC stuff to do in one week along with all the other things our family was trying to do. 

Now, as we finish with math books, geography plans, or biology texts, the girls just stop that subject altogether until fall, so their school days get lighter and lighter as we go further into summer. By July, the girls should be done with everything, and we should enjoy a nice break through a few weeks of July and early August until we start again with next year's work. 

Next year will look very different. I don't plan to use my old Challenge guides as a base like I did this year. I'll be venturing into making my own plans, combining my favorite CC resources with many other excellent resources to make my own plan.  

Land of Hope

Listening on and off for several weeks while I was getting ready in the morning or cleaning house or cooking, I just finished the audio book of Land of Hope. 

This was recommended reading for my graduate class on Democracy in America at Belmont Abbey, but I was too busy reading and rereading the required primary sources like De Tocqueville and The Federalist Papers to read/listen to this during the term. 

However, with summer comes leisure time to luxuriate in reading all the books I don't have time for in the school year. 

Part way through this narrative, it occurred to me that I was really, really enjoying it. 

I also really, really enjoyed A Patriot's History of the United States, listening to that three times at least.  

I believe I like history as a narrative. It's as interesting as any novel, and why shouldn't it be? All the same interesting things happen, but in history, they have really happened. 

Now that I am done, I find I may like this narrative even more than A Patriot's History. 

This text seemed to be more critical of America's bad decisions, but nevertheless, respectful of America and how complicated the issues were. Therefore, it seems more balanced and honest, and I really appreciated that. 

We've used A Patriot's History in our homeschool as the text for America History, but I may use this in the future.  

I have a host of books on my to-be-read list, so I don't think I'll restart this book again right away, but I definitely want to listen again. 

I cherish the accumulated knowledge of the flow of America history from one age to another, one President to another, and throughout the major events in the timeline until today. 

A better knowledge of this country's history makes our present, problems included, so much more comprehensible and the future much less fearful. 

Father's Day 2025

Father's Day 2025 Itinerary

We attended church. 

We lunched on leftovers, napped, read quietly, etc. 

We went to Wayback Burgers for dinner. 

We saw the live-action remake of one of our top five favorite family films, one we can all quote.

(It was awesome, so moving at times, it was like seeing it for the first time.)

We overheard the girls discussing the film, enthusiastically comparing and contrasting, for hours. 

Great Pond

We met up with a few of our precious homeschool friends at a local pond for a swim date. Moms visited in a bunch. Kids visited in one big bunch or many smaller bunches. My heart is full, because of the people who God has given us to walk with through this season of life. 

 

David Copperfield

I love Dickens, and I think he was a genius. I've read A Christmas Carol, Hard Times, and A Tale of Two Cities. I've read A Tale of Two Cities at least three times. His characters, good and bad, stay in my head and their presence there shapes my heart. So I'm taking a portion of this luxurious summer to read David Copperfield. I tried to read this tome a while ago, but found it too sad in a season where I couldn't handle any measure of more sadness, so I put it away for a time. Now, I am a few chapters in, and I am really enjoying it, even though it is just as sad. But I am already enjoying hearing the masterful Dickens tell another story and introduce me to another cast of characters that will stay with me forever. 

Vero Beach May-June 2025

 

We took our annual trip to Vero Beach to visit with Dwayne's mom.  We've done this for more years than we can count, and we always make new memories and reinforce precious, old ones. 

Somewhere along the route, the girls had Crispy Cream doughnuts for the first time in their memory. They were appropriately awed. As proof, when one daughter was taking her third bite of her first Crispy Cream, she said something to the effect that, "This is the new best day of my life. Everything about this moment is perfect, etc." 

Ironically, at that moment we were sitting in the parking lot of some run down gas station that could have been the scene of any Flannery O'Connor story. I was looking around furtively to make sure we weren't victims of a crime, while Dwayne was risking our lives for a bag of ice for the cooler. This daughter didn't notice her surroundings at all, however. Such is the power of hot, fresh Crispy Cream. It can make a Heaven of Hell. 

The girls snacked on this dozen doughnuts throughout the day in the car, and I made no protest, because vacation. That's when I got the picture above of Avril in her new Buckies sunglasses, writing fiction on her laptop- her favorite pastime, with a half-eaten Crispry Cream, living her best life. 

We always drag the kids out of bed to take early morning beach walks, as is our tradition. 

Over the course of the first few days, we put together a 1,000 piece puzzle with all the scenes from Homer's  Odyssey. One day, we worked for hours while listening to the musical Epic, which is based on The Odyssey.

Later in the week, we started a 2,000 piece fairy puzzle that we finished the morning before we had to leave. 

I take hours everyday to just sit and read when we are at the Vero house. Actually, we all read for hours. And we were so thankful for rainy days this trip, so we could just snuggle up in sweatshirts and blankets and read more without guilt that we "ought to be at the beach." 

I finished Phantastes and wrote some brilliant quotes in my commonplace book. I started and finished The Princess and the Goblin. (I am making it a goal to read all of MacDonald's books this summer.) I also read through most of Lonesome Dove on this trip. My soul loves summer, since I can take so much time to enrich it with reading. 

 

We bought a Parcheesi board game for the beach house and left it behind, so others who come to visit can play it if they want, and so maybe we can play it again on another visit, too. Parcheesi is basically Sorry with a few notable differences including individual dice cups. I'm of the opinion that every game should have dice cups now. 

We also played Ticket to Ride, a board game we bought for the beach house a few years ago that we don't have at home, so we always look forward to playing it in Vero.  

We enjoyed lots of afternoons on the beach. 

The weather wasn't perfect. Some days, it sprinkled rain on us. But even a bad day on the beach and better than a thousand days elsewhere. 

Avril got a watercolor book at the Vero book store and tried several of the exercises in her free time. She brought everything for watercoloring, but forgot her brushes. It was a glorious moment for her Grandma to be asked, "Grandma, Do you have any paint brushes?" Dwayne's mom is notorious for keeping things "just in case," so she got great joy from supplying the paintbrushes Avril needed, and we all enjoyed that moment with/ for her. 

We each enjoy time sitting with Mom in her living room quietly reading and talking. I've got pictures of the girls with her on this couch all through the last decade. 

There's a new pool table at the beach house, so the girls and Dwayne played a few times everyday. 

We like to go to the thrift stores in Vero. One of my favorite things to do is find obscure, old cookbooks. I actually learn a lot about cooking and baking by simply reading each recipe in detail, step by step. I also find some awesome recipes. One of these cookbooks has recipes for butter beer and Captain's grog, so those will be fun to try on special occasions. 

A final picture taken on the road trip back to Connecticut

We're so thankful for summer leisure, beach days, board games, puzzles, books, and lots of quality time with Grandma. 

How to Make Homemade Vegetable Broth

 Into two crock pots, I put zucchini, carrots, onions, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, whole garlic cloves (and cilantro steams, because I happened to have them on hand. Instead of throwing them away, I put them in the broth.) I used all the small pieces and ends of vegetables I had saved and froze from the chopping at the start of meals. I also put in some fresh, whole vegetables I had in the fridge. I filled the crocks up with water and put them on low for ten hours. 

At the end of the time, I let the broth cool a bit, strained the cooked vegetables out, discarded them, and poured the broth into pitchers in the fridge. I am freezing the broth into Souper Cubes, so I can store them in the freezer until they are needed. This vegetable broth will be perfect for our curried chickpeas, a dish we make once a week and eat over rice for lunches. I also used some of this broth mixed with beef broth in a beef stew, since the beef stew had many of the same flavors as the vegetable broth- garlic, onion, and carrots, etc. 

Making my own vegetable will save several dollars per meal, because I won't have to buy boxes of vegetable broth from the store. Note: My whole family remarked at how good this broth smelled, and we know it will taste great. I make chicken and beef broth all the time, but this is the first time I've made vegetable broth. Until now, we didn't have any recipes that called for vegetable broth, but now that we are eating more healthily, we eat a few meals that need vegetable broth consistently.