Welcome to the Weekly Wrap Up. You can join others at the Weekly Wrap Up at Virtuous Foundations and at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Our homeschooling week can be summed up in three words: driving, drawing, and algebra. We spent time with driving practice with the older two, algebra practice with my 9th grader, and time in drawing class too, in addition to “regular school work”.

Driving

I never realized how stressful it is to have new drivers in the family.

This may actually be more stressful than potty training, and I was pretty stressed out during that time.

I’ve had to bite the bullet and just make myself drive with the kids so they can get more practice. Does anyone else struggle with that? Anyone? I know they need to practice driving, but I feel like I need a drink by the time we’re done (and I don’t drink).  A friend of mine was joking around about creating a support group for parents of new drivers. I think there’s a market for that.

Both of them are rather skiddish drivers still, but that comes from inexperience. The driver’s ed teacher drove with them quite a bit, but now it’s my turn to drive, drive and drive some more so they can get their licenses. Because my dear daughter is over 18, she can just take a road test, but she’s still working up to that. We have a list of things that are going to be on the test that she has to practice, but dear husband and I both decided she needs to get more confident and be less of a “nervous nelly” behind the wheel. Not easy, as I am a nervous nelly when she’s behind the wheel. LOL My son has to drive with me for 50 hours, including 10 at night, to practice before taking Segment 2 of the driver’s ed. This is a new Michigan thing known as the “graduated driver’s education” program, and it’s mighty expensive and complicated. Most likely, he too will wait til he’s 18 and just take the test.

Last night, I went grocery shopping with my son (they trade off who drives with me for the grocery trip), and he did most of the driving until it became very dark and rainy. These are things you take for granted if you’ve been driving a while, but dark and rainy rural roads, with deer everywhere, are pretty scary to a new driver. I told him I’d drive home, and then had to eat my words. I cut my hand on the trunk of the car (we’re not sure where, but it was very sharp) and had to detour to the urgent care center, just 2 days away from getting health insurance again. I paid for the stitches, but I was too cheap to shell out $200 bucks for a tetnus shot. We just don’t have it, so hopefully I won’t get tetnus.

Drawing

On Monday, we had art class with Mr. West of Christian Art for Kids, and they drew this elephant and baby. As a fellow artist I’m always blown away by how simply Mr. West gets the kids to draw complex drawings with ease and with incredible results. I keep nagging on him to make more DVDs.

Even big kids love to use crayons, it seems, as they broke out some crayons while working on maps for history. I recently reviewed WonderMaps by Bright Ideas Press, which you can read about here. We have gotten much use out of it, too.

Algebra

There was more algebra going on in our house this week, with both my 9th grader (who is in Algebra 1), and my 7th and 8th graders (who are doing pre-algebra). I’m not sure if I even want to wax eloquent over algebra right now. Thankfully, between my knowledge of Algebra, and those MathTutor dvds I bought, we have all of the bases covered. I can’t stress enough how much we love the Math Tutor DVDs.

Faith Bible Institute

The older kids and I are taking Faith Bible Institute through our church still too. This past week we all agreed that reading about the kings of Israel and Judah is a frustrating thing because they are (mostly) quite dense, making the same mistakes as the king before them with the same results, and usually dying a violent and bloody death all because they wouldn’t humble themselves before God and seek Him alone. I confessed to the kids that I read all of my Old Testament reading for the week’s homework in one day, just because I find it too depressing to read 1 & 2 Kings and 1 & 2 Chronicles (Except for the good bits with Elijah and Elisha). Then I was convicted…by God…about the fact that we may not make the same mistakes with the same repercussions as the Kings, but we do get our eyes off of God and onto other things and other goals, and looking away from God for happiness, joy, and fulfillment. Ouch. What are you pursuing more than you pursue God? It’s a convicting thought.

Problems?

I need to ask a question. Is anyone having problems with my shopping cart? I am not seeing any errors when I use it, and no one else I know is having trouble, but I’ve noticed that most people leave mid purchase according to google analytics. I want to make sure there’s no errors going on, before my big fire sale in a few weeks. I usually don’t know about problems unless someone tells me :-).  I’m thinking of switching my shopping cart system over but I’m not sure at this point. If you have any thoughts on that, let me know.

So, how was your week?