J worked in her Bridge workbook today. She did exercises on present and past tense verbs, helping verbs, lines of longitude and latitude, world hemispheres, some multiplication and 5-digit addition and subtraction, a word-find on Alaska terms, and a math problem involving map coordinates, highways, and cities of Arizona. She seems to be enjoying following the schedule. She likes to have me next to her while she does work. I guess she still likes me to tell her how well she did. Maybe it gives the work more meaning that way. I would like to see her engage in this kind of learning for herself more, not just to feel she's crossing something off a list.

K is very excited about her birthday being in 2 days. Tomorrow at school, about 10 of her friends will be surprising her with gifts. They have been hinting about it all week. I know she has lots of friends there and I know she loves everything about school, but I still feel she'll be better off at home. If she stays in school, she will most likely lose touch with all of them when they all go to different high schools, anyway. There are dozens of high schools to choose from around here. I asked her if she'd like to take a day off here and there to go on outings with J, W, and me. She was all for that. I plan on doing lots of fun things over the Christmas vacation. I really want to expose her to other homeschoolers her age from our h/s group. I need her to come to me with the decision to homeschool. The more I mention it or allude towards it, the more she hates the idea. We'll see what happens by January.