Stephen is baking a cake. He says he wants to be a chef, and that he needs to practise. Don't know if this is true, or if he just feels like cake for dessert. Either way, the family benefits. We're all out of cake flour, though, so he's having to use all-purpose. I hope the cake rises okay. Sophie has volunteered (begged) to be his assistant, and is whisking away like a mad thing. They're being very cute at the moment. Poor old Ems is feeling a bit left-out. That's the problem with having with three children, they tend to pair off and someone ends up left out. It's true that they all take turns being left out, but even so, it's sad.

Soph's homeschool assessment went very well this afternoon. Apparently she's reading at around a fifth grade level. And as far as math goes, she knows all the stuff that they're supposed to have completed by the end of second grade. (She would be starting second grade on August 2nd if she were going to school. And she'd be the youngest in her class).

That sounds rather sick-makingly braggy. That's the trouble about writing about homeschooling, it often comes off as insufferably smug. This past week I spent some time reading about homeschooling, and, in the process, I looked at a fair number of homeschool blogs. Some of them are relentlessly, unnaturally cheery. Shiny happy people learning all the time, with never a second of boredom or snippiness. Some of them are worrying, because the writers seem to be practically illiterate. And some are frighteningly keen on biblical discipline and family values. Those are the kids I feel sorry for : the ones who're homeschooled to keep their worlds narrow, rather than to expand them.

One of the things I want to do a much better job of this year is record keeping. We did tons of stuff that I have absolutely no record of. I'm not required to keep amazingly detailed records - I just need to keep a portfolio for the year - but I think it would be nice for both of us if we could look over what we've done at the end of the year. And I want us to do more involved art projects. We did a few, but not nearly as many as we should have.