Blogs

We now have the kids writing in their own blogs as well. This is very touch and go at the moment, but it's part of their writing skills. We are working on what exactly to write on the blogs at the moment, I want to leave them as much freedom as possible, but I also want them to write how they feel about things. So far they have been very general with their entries. Last night I was able to get Auna to write a bit more on how she felt about the episode of Penn and Teller that we had watched that struck her the most. So we are getting to that point little by little.
I tried to explain to them that I did not just want an hour by hour recall of their day, but that I wanted to hear about what they had learned and what they enjoyed or disliked every day.
It does help me too. For instance they have been great about just getting to work and getting everything done throughout the week, and while this makes me very happy, I've also learned that they find it extremely boring. Now there is not much I can do about them being bored doing homework sadly because they definitely have to get it done. But it does make me think about what I can add to their schooling that will make it more interesting and fun.
So far we have done a lot of things that they would not have done at school, but we are missing a few things. Some experiments that we talked about but haven't gotten a chance to accomplish quite yet (lemon batteries) for instance. I also was not able to get the citric acid to make the bath bombs with Auna.
During the summer this will all get a lot easier since we will be able to get out of the house and do a lot more fun things. I think we are all getting a bit of cabin fever as well which doesn't make any of this any easier.
How do you keep older kids entertained through school? I don't think there really is any way. I remember being bored myself getting homework done, but it just needed to get done no matter what. We are not ready to do complete unschooling as we want the kids to be able to take notes and do homework later on when they get to college. So I guess they will just have to suck it up, just like most of us did.