Our school year is quickly coming to an end and we are all twitchy with anticipation. Twitchy and snotty and grumpy. We all have head colds and it feels like it would be so much easier to just call this last week off and end school a week earlier than planned. But we press on.

The toddler wakes up ready to go. Ready to paint, ready to open Play Doh, ready to pull ornaments off the tree, all with one finger deep in her nostril. I am easily exasperated. My son reminds her of paci days gone by and sends her into a tailspin. Time out is required for both of us. But we press on.

Everybody  needs help! Including the almost 3 year old who doesn’t even have school work to do, but insists she get her books out anyway and I haven’t even had breakfast. The cat has been missing for over 24 hours, the rooster’s cage if flooded. There seem to be half-eaten Pop Tarts everywhere. The history page I assigned is frustratingly difficult, even for me. But we press on.

I eat breakfast, we find the cat locked in the storage building, we decide on a new history assignment. Then my morning glass of Coke slips out of my hand and crashes onto the tile. Glass, ice and Coke everywhere and no one to blame but me. The three year old has to run in to see what happens and skates across ice, glass, and Coke on bare feet with no injuries.

I wonder once again what’s the harm in cutting out of school one week early. But I clean up the mess, sweeping ice, Coke, and glass into the trash and refilling a fresh glass with my morning Coke, even though it is now well past morning. We press on.

Bed sheets are washing, history is finished, math done. My son reads without complaints, a whole story, a major accomplishment.

We can do this. Only a few more days to go.

This week I posted about our past experience with a Luna moth and posted pictures of the one that just flew into our house the other day.

This morning we found eggs.

I’ll keep you posted.

My favorite science resource this year has been The History of Medicine by John Hudson Tiner. I highly recommend it. It has been an enjoyable and educational read-aloud for all of us.

We have marveled over the doctor’s stubbornness to believe that simply washing their hands could prevent patient death. We were relieved when they perfected anesthesia and no longer had to amputate limbs of awake patients. And now we have learned how scientists continued experiments with the glowing tubes of light without knowing what they were looking for until they stumbled upon incredible X-rays.

Adam, the first man, walked and talked with God and had marvelous knowledge about God’s awesome creation. After the fall of man, our minds deteriorated, so much knowledge was lost. We now fumble around in the dark amazing ourselves with the simplest revelations. There’s so much we’ll never understand this side of heaven.

In our chemistry experiment we watched tiny solid beads swell, when water is added, to 10 times their size. It has to do with molecules, things we can’t even see with our eyes.

Then we had a picnic and watched ants find our location within minutes and cart off chips 10 times their size.

We are constantly amazed.

Kids’ clothes provided by Tea Collection.

I’m excited about this year. As crazy as things are, teaching three children different subjects and managing a two year old, I’m still looking forward to it.

We’ve changed our schedule up a little and it is really working for us. We start the morning with reading aloud. A bible chapter, a science chapter, then a chapter of our current read aloud which right now is Where the Red Fern Grows.

After reading time, I give them a short recess. I force them outside to ride bikes, run around, jump on the trampoline…whatever they can find.

Then I round them back up for table work. I bounce between all four: answering questions, cleaning up messes, putting out fires, for as long as it takes to get through math, history, English, phonics, handwriting, vocabulary and spelling. It’s the most hectic time of the day. When it’s over I just want to crash.

Luckily, it’s almost nap time at that point, right after lunch.

I get Tess settled down for her nap and while I’m laying with her I catch up on my Words With Friends games.

Meanwhile, everyone else is playing and then practicing music.

While Tess is napping I try to work on any blogging, photo editing, bill paying, online ordering or lesson planning I need to do.

On Wednesdays, we have a different schedule. Because we have music lessons that day, I only do reading aloud, then chemistry and art. It’s their favorite day. No math!

How does your school schedule look this year?

Boy’s clothing and girls’ clothes provided by Tea Collection.

I’ve struggled with what to do with science this year. We quit Jeannie Fulbright’s Anatomy after I had to read about the inner workings of the eyeball. That was it. I was done with anatomy. My kids can always pick that up in college. I was ready for a change. A friend told me about this thing called The Big Bag of Science (I ordered it from Timberdoodle). It comes with everything you need to do your experiments and a little guide book that tells you what to do and a little bit about how it works. I knew it would be supplemental, but fun.

It arrived today and the kids couldn’t wait to get started.

The first lesson was very simple. Tablets that fizz and turn colors in water. It didn’t take long and then the kids took it further by mixing the colors (which when I read ahead was actually something they were supposed to do in the next few lessons).

There was just one small problem.

The two year old LOVED chemistry. She wanted to do it all, hold it all and have it all right then.

She loved mixing.

And shaking and pouring.

And absolutely, under no circumstances wanted to be told no, or just a minute.

We finally tore ourselves away from all the learning to do our page on what we learned. Meanwhile, I sent little miss Marie Curie off to the bedroom to watch some Little Bear and decompress.

Later, I walked into my bedroom to discover the little scientist just didn’t know when to quit. My hairspray and two cups of water were on the rug in my room.

I may live to regret this science choice. It may be a bit too much spark for the two year old imagination.