When Your Brain Hits That Proverbial Wall

The end of each semester is usually crazy for us. Trying to get everything with the Cooperative tied up with a pretty bow can be time consuming, mind boggling, and just plain exhausting. This year added to my plate is directing the spring musical. This is something completely new to me (in the past I have always run sound, etc) and sometimes I feel like I am failing miserably at it.

Yesterday at practice we were blocking the last 20 - 25 pages of Peter Pan. I got about halfway through it and my brain just stopped functioning. I couldn't remember what I had visualized for a certain part and hit a brick wall. That means 35 high school students standing over my shoulder waiting for me to get it together. My co-director recommended starting over and watching the flow of the scene again and it would come back to me. It did pretty much come back to me but still I felt like a failure. Trying to direct so many moving pieces at once sent me into a tail spin and my brain hit the proverbial wall. This is not something that comes naturally to me.

I am full to the brim with information in my brain and simply cannot add anything else at the moment. I have multiple plates in the air all spinning and something is bound to fall and shatter. I'm just hoping it won't be Peter Pan. In the following three weeks we have to build a stage, get lighting and sound figured out in a new location, multiple rehearsals, recital night for everything else we do at the Cooperative (art show, choirs, puppets, ballroom dance, and elementary drama), two Peter Pan performances, get the stage back down and put always until the fall semester, spring formal, parent packet information to the parents for fall class registration, continue homeschooling my own daughter, tutoring three 5th graders, review products for The Crew, and simply running a household.

Believe me when I say I am not complaining, because I love the Cooperative and everything it entails. I'm just hoping that I can keep going and finish strong. Prayers would be so much appreciated to finish the semester strong and let the students shine like they always do, not for their own glory but to show the community what God can do when he brings families together, working together to create something special.

Creativity Abounds

Mermaid's Treasure Chest

 

I just wanted to brag on some of our high school art students from the Cooperative. Each student was given a small brown paper bag with the same items in it. Their job was to create something using those items and they could add to it as well from their own stash of supplies. What they all came up with was just plain amazing.

Angel

Birthday Celebration

Tire Swing

Bird house

Water Wheel

Campfire

Dock

My husband who is the teacher of this class has taken all the entries to some artist friends to judge the most creative who will win a gift card. I will definitely post the winner when I know.

STEM Challenge Monday - Only on Tuesday

 

Each week I try to do some type of STEM challenge activity with the girls. Usually Monday is the day but occasionally for one reason or another it gets pushed back to another day. This was one of those weeks. I made the girls what until after lunch for this one.

 

For this challenge you will need a rubber band, string, and 10 plastic cups. The object of the activity is to tie the strings onto the rubber band and work as a team to move the cups into a pyramid formation. It took the girls a few tries to figure out the logistics and the best method of moving the cups.

 

Once they figured out that the rubber band needed to stay on the very tip of the bottom of the cup in order to get it back off easily while stack - they were able to build a pyramid quickly.

 

They were able to build a pyramid twice while also learning how to work together.

Some Favorite Links as of Late

I read many blogs and absorb so much information from them on a weekly basis. Quite frankly I think I spend too much time reading blogs and not enough time reading books, but I digress. Here are a few posts from around blog land that I felt were interesting or taught me something or made me think.

How to Get Your Interest-Led Learners Back on Track

I have often dreamed of running our own library for homeschoolers out of our home which is why I am constantly purchasing used books. Not sure if that will ever happen, but this link for little libraries outside your home is another thing altogether.

5 Tips for Running a Little Free Library

Current favorite sermon series from Andy Stanley

Northpiont Online Messages

Homeschooling Through High School Series

10 Things I Did Right Homeschooling High School

These are just a few things floating around the web that I thought might be interesting to others, especially those homeschooling high school age kids.

Weekly Wrap Up - The Week of Not Much

 

On the Home Front

 

Well, not much. I was sick Sunday through Wednesday. Grace plugged along with her school work as much as she could without me and helped with the house and animals while I was laid up in bed. There was a lot of catching up on TV episodes and laying around recovering from a lingering stomach bug with many an animal in my lap as you can see in the picture above.

 

My tutoring students didn't get to come all week but I did send some work home with them. The pictures below depict some of the activities they worked on last week. I took them outside to work on a sketch derived from one of our review products. The next picture shows the girls working on their Orphs of the Woodlands story and activities which is another review product. Both products will have reviews coming up in the very near future.

 

On the Cooperative Front

 

This is where things get really tricky. I had to miss practice on Tuesday because of the above stated illness. Luckily my partner in crime (co-director) was able to handle all the details of the next scenes in blocking Peter Pan. The next 4-6 weeks will be insane trying to build a stage, handle sound, figure out new lighting equipment, finish all practices for Peter Pan, Recital Night, Variety Show, Spring Formal, Parent Packet to go out with new classes for the fall, and so much more. We had another practice on Thursday that I was able to attend. Then last night (Friday) all the teens of the Cooperative got together for an informal dance. Think some ballroom, some fast dance, some slow dance, the chicken dance, line dancing, and even the limbo. Kids had a great time.

Teens getting ready to start the Virginia Reel last night.

 

This is learning What Makes a Brave Man Brave on our make believe stage made out of tape dimensions until the stage is built next week.

Portfolio piece for Dave Raymond's American History

 

Grace is plugging along with her academic load. Spanish and Literature classes will be finished on April 30th. Hoping History and Biology will be done by the end of May and Math in the beginning of August. Grace handed in her application for a work study program this week to an animal hospital for the summer. She is pretty excited about this one. Looking at maybe two full days a week and if they like her and she likes the work continuing on through the school year.

 

 

 

What Being Sick has Taught Me

Lately I have been struggling with administering such a structured school day to Grace that it leaves very little time for anything else. Of course some of that does fall on her and making her school work a priority that doesn't stretch throughout the day. As I have mentioned before in my opinion homeschooling high school just isn't fun and some days is pure drudgery. I want her to be passionate about something. Sometimes that passion revolves around art but over the past six months not as much as it once was. I have also talked with a close friend that unschools and have tried to get a beat on what that actually looks like on a day to day basis. I have tried something similar to unschooling in the past but it just didn't work for us. Most days Grace isn't very motivated to do anything, but today things were a little different. You see, yesterday afternoon I came down with the nasty virus that is going around our community. Grace had it a couple of weeks ago. Mondays are usually hard school days trying to get as many subjects finished as possible, but today would be a little different. Grace is not only getting some of her schoolwork done but she is having to be me. That means taking care of laundry, washing dishes, taking all the dogs in and out to the bathroom, watching over the puppies, and so on. I didn't have to ask her to take care of these chores for me she just stepped up and did them. So all this rambling is really my way of saying even if she didn't get to a lot of her schoolwork today - the day was not a bust. She stepped up to the plate and did what needed to be done to keep the house running smoothly while I was up in bed trying to get better. Life Skills 101. It is okay to step back and just live life because they are learning something every day. Just because they didn't open a book doesn't mean it wasn't a good day of education and life building.

What I Needed to Hear When I Needed to Hear It

 Sometimes you come across an article or blog post that just immediately speaks to you. This is one of those blog post series that you wish all your homeschool friends and beyond could read. So that is exactly what I am doing - sharing a blog post that speaks to me on so many levels. This link is to the third part in the series and I am waiting very impatiently to read the 4th and 5th installments. You can obviously find the 1st and 2nd if you are so inclined. I wish I had started out homeschooling this way and had the guts to continue it in high school. I have read this blog for years and she always writes something thought provoking and instrumental in our homeschooling life.

A Goal Driven Curriculum - fimby

If you have the chance to check this out and also go to some of her past posts you won't be disappointed. Happy reading!