October looms large and what have we learned? Lots. For one, we love middle school. Our children are in 8th grade and 6th grade respectively. Maybe they are more mature or maybe I am more relaxed, but things are going smoothly.
Hiking the Grotto Falls trail
With the pandemic, nobody is living their Plan A, and we are no exception. We wish we could do orchestra again, but alas, they require masks. My children cannot play violin for one minute with a mask on, let alone one hour. This is our second year of not doing orchestra and we miss it dearly.
One good thing this year is that they are taking taekwondo three times a week. It’s a sport. At their age, they need more physical activity. It is also social interaction with people of different ages, most of them students in public schools. And, of course, they learn how to defend themselves, should they need it one day. We also hike every week.
These days, we are reading the books from the National Spelling Bee list, Great Words, Great Works. Three titles or so on the list always get political, so we get a chance to analyze the issues and how the left infiltrates the educational system, seeking to indoctrinate children into loving socialism, anti-Christian sentiment, and alternative lifestyles. Parents, this is how you build discernment into your students, before they go to college and hear left-leaning propaganda from every professor.
We are also reading the Mensa for Kids classics. Sometimes it is impossible for me to preview every single detail in these books, so expect to be surprised by some of these titles. One word of caution: the diary of Anne Frank, for instance, which contains her discoveries about her own body. You might want to preview it.
