Anyone know of a 3-4th grade workbook-ish history program or something? Or any history like that that's largely independent? Completely secular, of course. So far Broccoli's history for this year is random books from library and random documentaries, which is good enough, but he gets bored, so, something to do while I do stuff with Celery would be good.

Y'all are doing a good job ignoring this thread.

I guess this is why he picked the name Storm Lake Middle School...

And, the first moaning and whining has already happened. Yep, got that genuine first day of school feel. ? Why is it that whenever I change a program because Celery hates it, he hates the new program even more? Anyway, I'm sure he'll get used to it.

First day of school! Okay, not really. But it sorta feels that way because we're back in the US, mostly over the jetlag now, it's Monday, so we're getting in the groove with normal school work as opposed to the things we were doing while abroad.

FutureLearn and similar are great as kind of like unit studies for older kids. I never got into unit studies, but, he's enjoying this format.

Celery finished colonizing Mars (well, the FutureLearn course, anyway). He's now working on Young People and Mental Health and on World of Spies. This afternoon we're going to the Airborne Museum, because we watched A Bridge Too Far a few months ago. Next weekend they're also having parachutists actually jumping out of planes over the heath, so planning on going to watch that as well.

I guess that makes me not an Ogre... unless we get Renai to write some educationalese for that - I'm sure there's lots of subjects that can be covered in Legoland.

Did I mention we'll be going to Legoland on Monday on the way home to NL? It's a secret - the kids don't know yet.

Definitely this. I'm sure there are less messy methods.

Oh, and we couldn't even see any of the mountains this morning because of the clouds... just a white wall of clouds. The mountains are really close, fwiw. It's starting to clear up a bit, but, rain.

We're roughly halfway through week 3 of colonizing Mars. Since it's supposed to keep raining today, we might finish all of week 3 today (the estimated workload for a week of that course is 3 hours/week, but Celery is doing all the readings... I still think it maybe adds up to 3 hours because he's a fast reader, but, 3 hours of Mars in a day is a lot). Broccoli was whining about not knowing what to do this morning so I gave him the 4th grade Brain Quest workbook to do, and he actually did several pages. Usually trying to give him the workbook convinces him to read a book instead. He's forgotten most of the 7 times table, sigh. Spring and summer have been such a mess, got very little done, but I'm trying to get some education in them, even though our district doesn't officially begin until after Labor Day. Did I mention I hate mental illness, including depression? At least I'm doing much better now. Oh, and yesterday we managed to buy some more English language books in Imst. Not a whole lot of choice in what to get, but, we got some stuff, because the kids are fast readers and had already read everything (well, Broccoli hadn't read Harry Potter yet, but he said he didn't like it, so, I figured he can wait until he's a bit older - Celery had read it like 3 times already though on this trip). And we went to the Ötzi-dorf. Wasn't much to it, but the kids liked the playground and saw some stuff about how stone age people lived. I also bought the kids new backpacks - Celery's was still a Hello Kitty backpack he picked out before starting 1st grade, and it was starting to get rather worn out, and Broccoli's Pokémon backpack was almost as old and one of the zippers wasn't working properly anymore. Celery picked out a black backpack with "American Tourister" written on it... lol. I think the backpack Broccoli picked out looks pretty neat too. Both seems sturdier than what they had too.

Celery is halfway through Colonizing Mars. He's also spent a lot of time in the sandbox today. We're having a rest day today (from hiking, that is).

Never heard of a Viehschied festival, so, no? We hiked too far today and now I have blisters on my little toes. All good otherwise.

We're in Austria. We went on a hike yesterday where there were some taxidermied animals along the route (some birds and some rodents), and a witch's cabin, and a little water playground. Celery is terribly behind on colonizing Mars in the meantime. ? Either way, things are going well.

I'm at my parents' house, have a cold, didn't sleep on the planes and kept waking up last night, so my reading ability is about zero.

My therapist thinks I have PTSD, and is making me read "The Body Keeps the Score". The book is intense at times.

Btw, I don't think the previous two posts are related causally. Other than maybe the anxiety being bad enough to ruin my attention span, and also bad enough to make my other meds not effective enough.

Fun fact: I think I'm a nicotine addict now... despite having smoked zero cigarettes in my life. Nicorette chewing gum however is great when you're crazy anxious and you're supposed to drive places so can't use too much klonopin or alcohol. Sigh. Allegedly they're studying nicotine for depression and for schizophrenia, so, it's practically a medication, no?

I have like zero attention span these days, which is why I'm writing like one thing per post. Maybe I'd finally be able to use Twitter... I used to think Twitter was insanity, because usually I write anywhere from paragraphs to essays.

They really should bring back post numbers. I think there's a lot more posts I'd have to pad to get to the next page...

Oh, and when I said "leaving for NL today", I meant Broccoli, Celery, and me. DW is staying home because jet lag etc makes her bipolar worse (and she's STILL off meds).

MIL showed up randomly 2 days before his birthday, and it surprisingly was almost completely drama-free (wife had blocked MIL's phone number, but ended up unblocking it and they're okay again now, more or less).

Oh, and Celery finished that online babysitting course from the Red Cross and got the certificate.

Leaving for NL today - going to spend 5 weeks with my parents (mostly at their house, one week in Austria).