Weekly Wrap-up: Soccer week

While everyone else is starting school up, we're still in summer camp season. This was soccer week.

Let me tell you about these cleats.

My boy signed up for a township soccer league last year, but he had a bad season; he was sick through most of it and missed all but one game. This year he opted not to play - too many other things going on - but wanted to go to the soccer camp he'd attended last year. I wondered about the cleats. Was I really going to have to buy cleats for one week of use?

There was no way last year's cleats could fit. We'd had to buy new sneakers, church shoes, and hiking boots. Still, just before he left for Scout camp, I had him try them on. I knew he was going to say they were too tight.

To everyone's surprise, they fit. He outgrew all his other shoes - why not these? I asked him if they'd seemed loose last year. Not really, he said. Maybe a little... I checked again - are you sure they fit? I didn't want him complaining of sore feet on the second day. They were and are fine.

God stretched the shoes. That's the only explanation I can come up with.

Oh, but he's complaining about his feet hurting anyway. It's not the shoes, he says, but the wear and tear from Scout camp and now soccer camp. His feet may never be the same, he says.

We dipped our toes into the homeschool waters by doing some math review. We usually don't need a lot of review because we usually don't take the whole summer off. This was the first year we took such a long break. My boy feels some motivation/pressure this year to bring himself up in math. I attribute that to his involvement in robotics club - not because he's lacking any skills needed for it, but he's around mostly older boys and he's seeing the difference.

(This is one of the great things about homeschooling. He would be going into 8th grade if he'd been in school, and would be in the junior high robotics club if his school had one. But his group has both middle- and high-school kids in it. I love the large age range and the fact that there are older boys for him to look up to.)

We don't buy many DVDs but after enjoying the Planet Earth series (received as a gift a few years ago), we eagerly bought the newest David Attenborough set, Life. With everyone exhausted after four hours of soccer, we have been enjoying this.

For some reason my children chose the reptiles episode as the first to watch so we spent most of the hour going "ewww" and "gross" and making other noises of disgust. But they also got a kick out of the pebble toad and the pygmy gecko which led to a little googling which is another reason I love homeschooling.





See more weekly wrap-ups at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.