Ten on Tuesday

Random style...

1. Noah officially starts his final semester of high school today. I'm not sure if that should have an exclamation point or a sad face, lol. Regardless, it'll be good to get him back to having classes. He's been on break since December 12, and five weeks is a bit long.

2. I think we've finally got Asher situated in the right parkour class. He tried a couple of the "obstacle" classes to start but has now switched to the "acro" track and is happier. (He did enjoy the obstacle classes and was great at them, but they didn't offer him the same challenge as the acro classes where he gets to flip and spin, lol.) 

3. If you keep a calendar/planner, do you keep them from year to year? I've been cleaning out my office and have a stack of planners and binders full of planner pages. They're utilitarian, not scrapbooky, and I'm trying to convince myself it's fine to toss/recycle them. The only reason I might need to keep them, I'm thinking, is that they provide a record of our homeschooling. Technically, though, I also keep homeschooling records on the computer...they just aren't day-to-day sorts of records. 

4. We finally ordered a new sectional! Our present one has been pretty much dead for a couple of years. We were going to replace it two Januarys ago before Asher's black belt promotion, but that didn't pan out for various reasons, and then we just didn't get around to it because, honestly, this one is still fairly comfortable--just way ugly. By "dead" I mean that most of the "leather" has peeled completely off...leaving just the bare underlayer and spreading tiny bits of the couch all. over. the. house. Also, a couple of the sectional pieces have been broken for years. ;P In any case, the new one should be delivered tomorrow and is fairly close to what we're replacing...so nothing hugely exciting. (Another part of finally doing this was finally accepting that what we need is simply a replacement that fits most all the same criteria. We'll shelve our actual wish list and preferences for later...when boys are grown.)

5. Relatedly, we're debating whether to keep some of the sections of this old couch for the boys to use in the basement where they play video games and then will have our garbage providers pick up the rest. (FYI, if you're local, yes, your garbage providers will pick them up for a fee.)

6. Now that First Lego League is over, Micah is finding himself with extra time in his week. We're looking for things to help fill that and are going to start with learning some basic French before our trip this summer. Any recommendations for learning tools are welcome! (At this point, we're not really looking for a full course and all the trimmings...just conversational/travel French.)

7. In other homeschooly news, I've also been working on revising Asher's biology plans for the spring semester. We still very much like the biology curriculum we chose and its approach, but he's finding the subject matter for spring too detailed and not compelling to him. (It covers each phylum of the animal kingdom individually for most of the semester.) So, we'll go more broad but use the same approach...I'll just have to write up the questions and quizzes and such. Working on that.

8. Asher will also be switching one of his electives with the change in semester. He's finishing up History of Science and will start an elective on An Introduction to Architecture. Similarly to biology, I'll use that approach (of presenting him with questions that he then needs to research and report back on before being quizzed rather than presenting him with a textbook or specific lesson that's already put together) and just need to finish pulling that all together. For this one, there will also be more hands on projects and the writing of papers. (Last semester, the focus was note-taking so he had to summarize each chapter.)

9. Yes, I know I haven't posted my word of the year yet. I'm working on it. :) 

10. I finally took a first round of senior pictures of Noah over the weekend. We have a couple we really like. We'll be going again when we have more light/time. I have a decent camera and such so we're not bothering with professional portraits...which suits Noah just fine. ;) I remember senior pictures being such a big deal when I was in high school. I suppose it really shouldn't surprise me that they're definitely not a big deal to Noah, lol. 

How's your Tuesday going?