9 weeks!

When it comes to school, that's a magic number. I remember growing up that everything was about the "9 weeks". "The first nine weeks", "the end of the nine weeks", the "last nine weeks".

The school year was divided into 9 weeks, for a total of 36 weeks and approximately 180 school days.

This coming week is our 9th week this year. I feel like its a milestone. Our 8th week wasn't fantastic because Samantha felt a little under the weather a couple of days and didn't do schoolwork, which meant at a minimum that we wouldn't be doing History and Science, because she does those subjects with Michael. After that it was pretty easy to give Michael a day off, or an easy day, because Samantha was already "down for the count".

So, we will complete our "First 9 weeks" this week. This has been the best nine weeks we've had homeschooling, in terms of productivity. Our family schedule and lesson plans are really keeping us moving. My kids are like me in that they like to check things off a list - so I'm giving them lists.

The kids are also doing more chores, because I put those on the weekly schedule. All of our bathrooms are getting cleaned each Friday, and the front hall and family room and both sets of stairs are being dusted each Friday. The kitchen floor (supposedly) gets swept every day. I'll add more in as I feel like they are comfortable with these. Right now, they still drag along and it takes far too long to do them - who would have thought you could spend 30 minutes cleaning the toilet and the sink in a bathroom!

Our fall sports seasons are getting close to winding down - a couple of weeks left. Samantha scored a goal today in her soccer game - the first this season. She was quite excited. Michael has had some great outings in baseball (3 innings pitched, 7 strikouts) and some only ok outings. But he's hitting the ball well and staying focused, so we can't ask for much more.

Michael earned his Blue Stripe belt in Tae Kwon Do. I just downloaded photos so I'll post some later.

Our nephew Gavin visited with us for the night last weekend so his parents could go to a High School reunion. Mike took them to play putt-putt golf and they all had a great time!

Emma is loving preschool. She got to do a "Me poster" that talked all about her and we put some photos of her and her family on it and she colored it with colored pencils - she was excited to use colored pencils. When asked her favorite place to go, she said "Home" :). We talked a little more and it became "Preschool" and finally it was "Walt Disney World". We stuck with that one. Who can blame her!!