Riley Says:

Just finished another fun week of homeschooling.  That makes...8 weeks.  So far, my favorite subjects would be Japanese, Choir, Library days (but that's not technically a subject), and the Life Skills lessons we do on Fridays.  Not that the rest (except MATH!) are bad, I just thought I should narrow it down.

I try to make a point of getting up reasonably early each day (around 7:00 a.m.), so I don't finish my school work too late.  I like to have time for free reading, television, etc.  Depending on the day's agenda, I try to ease into my school work by starting on the things that take less effort.  Usually that would be my daily reading of an adventure novel (which is supposed to help me with my writing class).  Then, I usually get math (:( ) out of the way.  Truthfully, math hasn't been that bad so far, but it's still not my favorite subject.  After those, I get to the harder stuff, like science experiments.  Next, I move on to any videos I need to watch.  Typically, I wrap up my day on the computer learning Japanese.

On Tuesday mornings we go to the library where, in addition to checking out books, I attend Sign Language lessons.  It's a little hard--I don't think I'll ever be fluent--but I'm learning :)  So far I can fingerspell the alphabet and sign "I want orange juice."  After class is over, mom lets me browse the comic books before we pick up any school-related books that are on hold and head home.  If I have a music piece I'm listening to for Fine Arts, we'll listen to it in the car.

On Fridays, I have Choir and Life Skills.  Choir is really fun!  I'm learning how to sight sing and our current song that we're working on is "My Favorite Things" from the Sound of Music, which is one of my favorite songs!  Today, we decided on a name for our group--The Northern Lights.  I think it's a really interesting name.  I've never actually seen the Aurora Borealis, but I imagine it is really beautiful.  Hopefully our singing will be too!

After Choir, we usually head to the grocery store to buy the ingredients for Life Skills.  Right now, we are mostly focusing on cooking, but I imagine I'd like to learn sewing at some point, too.  Sometimes the lessons are related to something I'm working on in other subjects, but I personally prefer the ones that involve baking (cakes...cookies...pies)!  I'm getting really good at following recipes and two weeks ago, I baked a batch of oatmeal cookies almost entirely by myself.  Today I made thumb print cookies completely on my own!  When we do Life Skills class, I'm always the one who picks the recipes, of course.  That means it usually involves my favorite foods.  But sometimes mom makes me try other stuff.  Once I pick a recipe, I have to make a shopping list, try to stay in budget, and figure out what order to cook things in.  Sometimes I also get an impromptu lesson in skills like "Going Out Even Though It's Raining!"

I find that I'm a lot more calm now than I ever was in public school.  Mostly due to the fact that the timing is flexible.  Even Mondays are bearable now that I don't have to spend them at school.  I don't really miss anything about being in school.  I really like the fact that I have a say in what I'm going to be doing on each day and that there is not so much of a rush to get things done just for the sake of not having homework.     Mom's doing ok as a teacher, especially because I've know her literally since I was born.  She kind of gets me.  Of course, I still have to do math.  And she makes me do ridiculous things like diagram sentences and estimate percentages when there are no numbers!

So in closing, I'd like to say that homeschooling has been one of the best decisions I've made and I hope I can continue!

Sayounara!