Sooooo, wet on wet watercolor painting is still my weak spot. It's so strange, because every time I get training or coaching on it, the pictures come out beautifully, but then when I try to put it into practice, everything is so very runny. I'm thinking that tonight's probably was paint that was too thin. Hufflepuff and Evil Genius painted Thursday. When HRH painted on Friday, I'd thickened the paint a little bit and tried to be more cautious about extra water and it seemed to work better. I'm probably too stingy with the paints because of the cost, but I also tended to have this problem when I was teaching at LCG, and the paints there were all mixed by people who knew what they were doing.

I started next week's lesson plans on Thursday. This is WAY ahead of my usual schedule. Didn't get as far as I wanted to tonight, but I have a few of the specifics sketched out. Tonight I'll finish the rest. (Because if I post it here, then it has to come true, right?)

Waiting until Thursday to have Evil Genius put his form in his book made some difference, but not as much as I'd hoped. There was still frustration boiling up, and expectations of perfection. We're going to keep following that rhythm, though, and seeing if we can make it work.

HRH is really enjoying grammar right now. We're highlighting nouns and verbs in her main lesson book stories. She's finally reading independently again. It took a full year after she left public school for her to want to pick up a book or write something on her own. It amazes me, because she burned out after kindergarten, and this is a kid who would happily do book work eight hours a day if I let her. I could go on and on about that, but I won't.

Hufflepuff is learning how to outline and cite sources for a research paper. I discovered that I have to brush up on how to cite websites, since the internets were a very different place in the mid-nineties when I was in college. Her handwriting has improved so much in the past year. I think her discovery of creative writing has a lot to do with that. She can type very fast, but there isn't always a computer available when she gets ideas, so she's been keeping notebooks. I need to get her writing cursive, though. That's one of those smaller lessons that falls by the wayside when Wild Thing starts getting restless and we have to bring everything to a quick end.

I guess that goes on the list of wrinkles to be ironed out.