Part of today's work is planning tomorrow's. So: Week's Focus: Arts and content reading (for academics); clean upper part of house, including furniture out of room currently overrun by Legos in preparation to make it a homeschooling space and move the boys' school books to their new spots in the corners of the living room, find homes for books they displace; draft weekly spending plan. Tomorrow's rough draft: school is 3 Rs, piano, art/music, fitness and prep for RPG. Dinner is lamb I didn't make for Passover b/c we ran out of time AND garlic.

Today: be joyful, kind, encouraging and creative. Ha! Tall order!!!! finish scrubbing Passover dishes, keep Easter grass from getting into our food, and generally clean this house. work on financial plan with DH, or plan time to do that exercise a lot to keep pain at bay, sleep better work on money planning, house organization

I don't know if you've seen Guest Hollow's lists? Those, or maybe the science resources for the Build Your Library curriculum (BYL's History of Science year is one very popular option), can make it more open-and-go. Just a couple of thoughts -- neither are likely to "solve" the problem, I know. Guest Hollow has optional Christian content and will not teach evolution or, I believe, an ancient earth. Build Your Library is secular and will include evolutionary and ancient-earth content.

Morning! Today: hack at the list. Prioritize art, music and next level of math for elder for school; prioritize exercise. Plan food for Passover, clean, do Greek & math myself. Reinforce toes of my shoes, think about Easter celebration.

Morning! Today: work through above list. get child profiles on the kindles get un-quarantined packages, mail away. clean groceries L. picks up. assign elder child Proverbs reading?

I've set this up for us, including the kids, and thought others might be interested. It is one COVID-relevant and helpful thing that nearly everybody can do. COVID Symptom Tracker: available as Apple App or on Google Play. The short blurb: If enough Americans share daily how they feel, even if they're well, this app can provide the healthcare system with critically valuable information.This app-based study is a way to find out where the COVID hot spots are, new symptoms to look out for, and might be used as a planning tool to target quarantines, send ventilators and provide real-time data to plan for future outbreaks. The longer blurb: The COVID symptom tracker was created by doctors and scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, King's College London and Stanford University School of Medicine, working codeveloped with ZOE – a health science company. The app will be used to study the symptoms of COVID-19 and track the spread of this virus. This research is led by: Prof. Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London and Director of TwinsUK; Prof. Andrew Chan, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Chief of the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit, CTEU Massachusetts General Hospital Prof. Christopher Gardner, Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford University Prevention Research Center. ‍‍ This app was built in the US to support the Nurses’ Health Study. This is one of the largest and longest-running scientific studies in the world with 280,000 participants stretching back to 1976. Many participants in the Nurses' Health Study are still active healthcare workers who are treating people with COVID across the country and risking their own health to help us. The app is now available to anyone in the US or UK who wants to help. In response to recommendations by Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), the app also includes questions for cancer patients and survivors, such as if they are living with cancer, what type of cancer and what treatment they are receiving. The medical community knows that individuals with cancer and those receiving anti-cancer therapy are at increased risk for getting COVID-19. “There is too much we don’t know about COVID-19 in the cancer community,” stated Stand Up To Cancer CEO Sung Poblete, PhD, RN. “This data will be invaluable to assess how best to support this high-risk community, and for cancer patients and survivors to contribute to combatting this pandemic.” Prof. Spector created and runs TwinsUK, which is a scientific study of 15,000 identical and non-identical twins that has been running for nearly three decades. As well as using the app to study symptoms in the general population, TwinsUK is using it to understand how symptoms develop with participating twins. Their research is funded by the Wellcome Trust and the National Institute for Health Research.

Thanks for the feedback! We haven't started it yet. I'm hoping to print it out this weekend and do it next week. Also: don't know if this suits all y'all's families, but our household is doing the COVID Symptom Tracker app to help provide data for researchers. It takes a few minutes to set up, then less a minute each day.

Also: today I need to have a prescription filled online. Did it!

Well, I was gonna sit heavy in judgement, but if it is the tea leaf's fault ... 😉 Honestly, I could use a leaf or two of that stuff! Though I'd have to down chamomile like no tomorrow as an antidote, I suppose, to sleep all night. Or take something like whatever you took to get some sleep. I suppose this is not the time to develop any new dependencies. Okay, never mind about the tea leaves. The moon was incredibly bright, was it not? It has that storybook glow, with sharp edges and shadows that remind a person of noonday. Hope to add more later, but for first thing: no news until I've done today's list. DH will tell me if there's anything urgent, which is unlikely for us in Northern California, and I need to be functional. So: off to bushwhack the to-do tangle of the week's list! And let whatever grace the good Lord can spare me run through and into my dear ones and this precious, overwhelmed world. PS: enjoy the lake for me. We have a summer lake we visit -- family in the Northeast, and on a lakefront in New Hampshire -- and my father used to take me fishing back in Florida. I hope that your family is blessed and restored, with glassy surfaces or shifting wavelets & reading and sketching aplenty.

CHOLL is wonderful. The selections didn't work well for my boys for some reason -- they just didn't enjoy the novels at all -- but she has done such a good job, the titles are excellent, AND it is free: a labor of love.

My child was 11 or 12, I believe. The younger is 9 now, we won't try it for a year or so I should think.

I tried it with my elder, but he knew way too much astronomy to benefit: he hated the assignments and it didn't have new information for him. I do plan to try with my younger, though, who is to history what his brother is to science (and vice-versa).

You can find it on their home page: it looks well-done. I was concerned that it might trigger anxiety, but reading through it I think it is more likely to allay fears & lend a sense of understanding and comprehensibility. A world-view reminder: Pandia Press' products are based on empirical science and are not faith-based.

Well, THAT took me forever! Sorry. Here's the recommendation: Cosmic Menagerie. It was a gift from a relative. Another book, with more reviews and by the same author, is Atlas of the Universe -- this one is on my wishlist.

Morning! Starting by whacking at what we missed yesterday. 😉 Which is enough to keep me busy a while.

I used MP literature guides to get my elder up to speed (he had an extreme regression across the board after his grandfather died several years ago) and now, in late middle school, we are using WTM booklists. Some books we pair-read (Gawain was one), others I assign, and ones that he detests I let him sub out -- there aren't many of those, he doesn't esp. love literature but he is willing to try. The WTM work is much more demanding than what he'd have done in MP, even though it is essentially read-and-discuss for us right now; we're just beginning to add in the written summaries/analyses. I find that the high school reading lists are where one sees the payoff for the WTM earlier years. MP schedules several impressive classics, but I think the reading and the analysis in WTM's rhetoric years dramatically outstrips what MP is doing; you can look over the WTM rhetoric stage reading & writing and see if you agree. OTOH, WTM has none of the often-helpful hand-holding of programs like MP, Mosdos, CLE, etc. We are also using, occasionally, Figuratively Speaking: ideally we'd be more regular with that. Some of the concepts and nuances are tricky for my elder, who is a much more STEM guy by nature, so for him the explicit training in literary terms seems valuable. ETA: my elder still gets a bedtime story -- he's 14 years old -- Tuesday through Thursday nights. At the moment we're doing "Wizard of Earthsea"; before that, a chain of alternating Asimov's Robot & Foundation novels with Pratchett's Tiffany Aching, Mort & Granny Weatherwax books. I think this helps immensely with his reading comprehension and is great for general knowledge and good discussions, though I'm not sure I could swing it if our family were much larger.

Morning! I'm going to work at the week level here. This week: M-F Daily (big letter means done, little letter means we did SOMETHING, dash means we missed it) Bible/Shakespeare/Homer: __ Th W T M, math: __ Th W T M, language review: __ Th W T M, reading (focusing on literature, esp. for elder): __ Th W T M, writing: __ Th W T M Exercise for me, incl. yoga + strength + aerobic: __ __ __ __ ---, and for boys incl. DareBee and RCAF xbx: _i_ __ __ T --- Work in boys' rooms: __ __ W T M, on their desks: __ __ __ T M, do at least one round of upstairs cleaning: __ __ W --- (T), FlyLady zone work: __ __ W __ (T), outside chores at least one round: F Th W T M Piano: aim for 4 10-minute practices per child, plus some for me: __ __ _iii_ t m 10" of either drawing practice or art/music history study: F _--- --- --- m Read-aloud at lunch: __ Th W T M E-mail one person to check in & offer help if appropriate: __ __ __ --- M, and one person to thank them: __ __ __ --- --- Have spending in online budget program, have a financial plan for the next few weeks. Draft a school plan to start middle school (for younger) and high school (for elder) in September '20. We'll have to triage, but my original plan for a start in December counted on a certain level of predictability that we can't meet at the moment. So I need to ensure that the boys are on target, and not plan to be able to accelerate them over the next year. focus on: math, literature for elder esp., history & science reading + content, memory work especially. set some checkpoints/touchstones at the end of each month. Begin to organize plans for work on the house, especially have a short list to work from. Also: organize for Passover meal on Saturday, Easter celebration Sunday.

Good afternoon! Today is a get-through sort of day. Piano; touch base in maths, languages, finish watching Pride & Prejudice with the boys (they are loving it, hurrah); exercise all around; work on new budget; plan our week, have boys make cards for our friends. Chores, read-alouds before bed. Daily school this week: math, languages incl. tiny bit of French, memory work, writing, reading. Bible.

G'afternoon! My brain is super spacey. I could use some structure, and there is surely enough to do. Exercise boys me School prep prep next week's schedule(s) incorporate MP stuff, esp. geography work on memory binder do my Greek grade elder's Greek, both children's piano theory practice a bit of piano myself -- try new technique book House plan week's meals when to do Passover? Friday night? boys put laundry away few rounds of house cleaning, incl. organizing our food work on Covid chores work on budget, home organization programs Outdoors (where it is raining) do something outside anyhow. Pull ivy when it lightens a bit? Well, I'll tackle some of that stuff. It'll keep me out of trouble 🙂

Good afternoon! Today's schedule: as little as possible 🙂 Keeping up with piano, some classical music history, bit of American art; lots of time outside; catch up on my lists from earlier in the week, above; exercise; dinner (roast veggies, bread rolls, and leftovers; maybe some dessert); let my thoughts wander a bit and find the shape of what of what we're moving into, get an intuition for what we should be working toward.

@Mommyof1: just so glad to hear from you! Congratulations on keeping school going, with such lovely literature and Bible too, + hoping the best for your family in general. More when my head's a bit settled ...

Morning! Today's stuff: Get to yesterday's "misses": listen to a contemporary music link; work on history of classical music; exercise all around. School: languages, math, and science (at least READ science); contact online teacher RE summer lessons Home: Couple rounds of cleaning; prep. for finance "meeting" with DH and have a rough budget with goals after our meeting; hack away at Covid list I wrote yesterday; straighten out our food closet/freezer a bit and figure out good purchases as we slowly stock up on essentials; work on finance day 2, finance challenge 1, cleaning day 1 and day 2; back computer/tablet up. Garden: water clover, weed, spend a few minutes planning hedge with focus on edible/bird-friendly/pollinator plants, spend few minutes planning the children's gardens, find a spot for some little food crops: we have lots of oak trees and are on the shady side of a hill, which makes it interesting, but have had luck with cherry tomatoes and also beans and salad greens. Try to move from a place of joy, enthusiasm and hope.

🙂 It is kind of exciting when stuff you want to use gets out of quarantine. Today: School: light. Keep our toes in math, languages, and piano; focus on music education, incl.: some classical music history; some American art history; and watching one of the videos we have that a piano teacher sent to us (these are pretty cool, she's showing the boys contemporary compositions -- @Critterfixer: possibly y'all would get a kick out of the Ping Pong Concerto, and it is short'n sweet; if you'd like more musical distractions, I can post all her links). Covid-19: work on 3 or 4 things from my to-do list: contact F. to offer help; respond to RPG group e-mail; set up supplies for a card-making/letter writing station with boys; order filters for homemade masks; begin a notebook for planning; short list of things to prepare spare bedroom & bath for quarantine; draft school necessaries for next year; draft home necessaries; Life: order contact lenses; find first day/week of financial planning & home cleaning plans; extra credit: implement day 1 finance, day 1 cleaning Exercise: boys; me. House: sheets; round or two of cleaning; have boys work in rooms and on desks, outdoors make sure new clover is watered. Dinner: take-out tonight.

Morning! Today: WTM school, more or less, with piano, languages and exercise. Dinner: roast chicken, cornmeal biscuits, salad and cut veggies. Clean some windows, wash some sheets AND remember to dry them. ETA: okay, sheets tomorrow. 😉

Afternoon. So, so busy here! For school today we hit some languages, math and piano. To do: finish piano, exercise. For tomorrow's schedule: RPG level-up/prep; languages, math, piano, some history and memory work; more as I think of it.