Off To A Slow Start

This week started off a bit slow.  On Monday we slept in and had a long school day.  I know it doesn't look like it from the blog, but we spend 3-4 hours most days doing school work.  The benefit of homeschool is that we can be flexible and so on a day when we have a longer outing planned we will spend less time doing school work.  To the dismay of the children, we usually make up that time later in the week with a long school day.  Most days start with writing journals and then we move on to math, reading, writing, language arts, and science.  We've gotten into a pretty good routine but it still sucks the life out of me.

Luke's teacher gave us online access to a
program called Razz-kids.  It has been great
for Luke.  He can read leveled books (like the
books from the take home library) and it tracks
his progress.  He has moved up a level since
we started it.  He even asks if he can get on and read.

Libby working on language arts.  Libby's teachers have also
been very helpful and provide us weekly email updates.
You can tell from the table that things get really messy.

It is France so we are required to
take occasional pastry breaks.

Enjoying a pain au chocolat.

I've been doing a mythology unit with Isaac.  I had him write an origin myth (i.e. how zebras got their stripes or why are there stars in the sky) and then turn it into a comic strip.  He wrote about where the Eiffel Tower came from.

Monday night three students came over to babysit and Chris and I went out to dinner.  We ate at a delicious restaurant in our neighborhood.  It was great.  The kids had fun and we had a much needed break.

Tuesdays we usually do a long school day since Chris is gone teaching until about 3:30.   This week the students had an extended travel break which means they had a few days off of classes and were allowed to travel outside of France.  Eighteen of the 26 students were traveling and nearly all of them came to our apartment at some point on Tuesday to print train/airline/hotel/attraction/whoknowswhat tickets.  We had students at our house off and on from noon until 10pm.  We are here for study abroad and not a vacation (too bad) so that is how it goes, actually I've really enjoyed the students and I like having them around and I'm glad they feel comfortable at our apartment.  The kids love them.  We are really lucky to have a great group.  We haven't had any problems and they have been nice to the kids and a lot of fun.  Some of them like to hang out at our apartment so that they can be in a family setting, or maybe it is just for the free wifi!

Isaac taught us how to play "4 on a couch" at the last dessert night.
Of course these are BYU students so many of them already knew how to play.

Corrupting our children with One Direction videos.
They also like to nap on the couch.