Sweet Girls

Katie had a friend over today for a nice long playdate! They had lunch (pizza, milkshakes, chocolate crinkle cookies, because I am the nicest mom in the whole world... sometimes!) and spent the whole afternoon playing dolls, having tea parties, and splashing around in the pool. It was great, and very peaceful for me!

Travis and I did some school stuff, and then I spent some time looking at homeschool planning posts on Facebook. And I Found something marvelous! As I've said, I have Travis's high school courses roughly planned out (to the extent of knowing what programs we'll be using for what subjects each year -- not exactly detailed plans!), but twelfth grade science was still up in the air. I was hoping to find something "computer-y, even though his interest is really in making videos, rather than programming (which seems more "useful" to me). But Now I've found something Better!
I already had The Great Courses "The Joy of Science," taught by Prof. Robert Hazen, "earmarked" as one to use somewhere in high school, and I figured we could read Hazen's Science Matters along with it. But today I found out that Hazen has written a textbook that could go with the videos, The Sciences: An Integrated Approach, and even more delicious, Great Ideas of Science: A Reader in the Classic Literature of Science.  Now doesn't that look like a fun course? It ties all the sciences together, uses primary sources, and has a real professor who knows what he's talking about to teach!  And it is far enough down the road that expense is no object!

Now tomorrow, of course, I'll have to get back to the business of planning for this coming year. I did read Jacob Have I Loved today, which was on my "maybe" list for my writing class. I need eleven books or short stories for them to write about, and I'm not having the easiest time finding books that fit the historical period (not an absolute necessity, but I'm trying for it), have at least some literary merit, contain issues/situations that would offer grist for persuasive or comparison essays, and are comprehensible and interesting to boys ages 13-15. And possibly (hopefully) a 16 year old. Anyway, Jacob didn't make the cut. It was interesting (though the main character was pretty unsympathetic), but definitely not a boy book. So far I've got Fahrenheit 451 (which I didn't care for but I think the boys will find lots in it to write about) and Our Town. Also Bradbury's short story, The Sound of Thunder, probably Tuck Everlasting (they've read it, and the choice about immortality thing would be easy to write about), and a whole list more "maybes." Which I need to get to without too much more delay. I think it will be a good weekend!