Jamestown, the Mayflower and Colonial life. Football and other ramblings, too.

The younger boys have been working on a few writing assignments in the past several weeks. They have written reports on Jamestown and the Mayflower already. They are now preparing a three paragraph report on colonial life in America which will also be given as an oral report. Joseph often throws fits because he has to prepare an outline before he begins his writing. Aye yi yi. He has decided to write on travel in colonial America, while Sean has decided to write on food in colonial America.

We use a simple formula: pick your subject, then pick three topics within that subject. Each of the three topics will be a paragraph. Paragraphs are written: Topic sentence, middle sentences that explain the topic sentence and a conclusion that reiterates the topic sentence and may add a personal note or an extra tidbit of information. Outlines are easy! Use your topics and add keywords for A and B (or C, D, etc)

Subject

I Topic
A
B

II Topic
A
B

So far, high school seems to be going well for Matthew. Several challenges, but going well. Football season is in full swing and I hope to go out and get some pictures of him with his new team this year. It is his first year on the homeschool football league. He is a Panther! They are asking him to move up from JV to varsity because when they scrimmage the varsity team, it takes two varsity players to block Matthew. He can also sack the QB.

Sean and Joseph will start playing for High Point Little League soon. We are supposed to get a call this week. They are looking forward to fall baseball.

Our garden is still going. The other day, we picked carrots, bell peppers and a few other things and made a delicious Emeril's creamy chicken recipe with our wonderful garden fare. We've also been making apple recipes with the apples we picked at our friend's orchard on the way back from Cincy last week.

The boys had their bone marrow biopsies and we are still waiting on the results. I got their CBC results before leaving. Sometimes I just want to crawl under a rock and pretend that Shwachman-Diamond isn't real. I dream of the day they will have completely normal counts! ~smile~