We just spent 14 hours at J's dance competition. It felt a lot quicker than it was. Her numbers won 2 golds and a hi-silver. They also won for best costume and best choreography in their division (mini). Pretty cool.

She had an awesome time hanging out with all her friends all day long. I was a bit worried about her "socialization" at first, especially because MIL keeps asking about that. I don't worry anymore because she is with her dance group 2-3x a week and all day long on competition days (every 2-3 weeks). All these kids get along amazingly well - there are about 20 of them - and the ages range from 8 to 12y/o. I think they're all a great bunch of kids. Very caring, very positive, and are good influences with very involved parents (who are also great!). This kind of peer interaction is way better than what J had at school.

I planned out our whole homeschooling week. I'm staying with the Charlotte Mason approach and yet I want to keep things as child-led as I can. We'll see how that goes. Copywork, Literature/Narration, and Math are done every day. History, Nature study, library, Geography, Picture study (artists and paintings), Music study (music and composers), Science, Drawing, Handicrafts, Piano, Spanish, and journal writing will be done 1 to 3x a week. Since J currently prefers some structure and planning (I guess because she's used to that) that's the way we'll go. I made a schedule for each day of the week. Eventually I would like to just have one list of all the subjects and let her choose what she wants to do and when. By that time she will have a good sense of the way she would like to approach each subject on her own.

The superintendent's office says they never received my IHIP. Great.