Hi, it’s me…

…I’m still here!

Today we are finally back to our normal routine after two weeks of all sorts of activities and events. It feels nice.

During school hours today, we started reviewing all that Abigail has covered this year to see what she has actually *mastered* and what we can continue to work on over the summer. She has accomplished quite a bit this year, but I want to make sure that most of what she has learned has stayed put in her brain.

I also started my planning for the next school year today, which translates into lots of time sitting in front of the computer – poring over articles, online catalogues, eBay, Amazon, booklists, etc. (My head is starting to hurt!) I’m amazed at all the choices out there for excellent curriculum and books. I try to keep it simple, though, and not get too crazy looking into every homeschool curriculum out there. We’re going to try and use Ambleside Online’s Year 1 curriculum for Abigail this year as a general outline for her schooling. Hunting down all the books on the booklist has been a challenge, though, as many of them are quite old. At least I’m starting early. As the garden takes off and I get closer to the arrival of our new little one, I know that I’ll be less inclined to be sitting here working on school planning. So, now’s the time.

I’d better get back to work before Jonathan wakes up from his nap!

Hope you’re having a nice Monday.

School days

Oh, how blessed I am that I can be with my children as they learn things for the first time!

To watch them concentrate, reason and attempt…

to watch their eyes light up as a new ideas brighten their minds and things begin to click…

or to share the treasure of a special book with them for the first time…

…is such a wonderful opportunity!

Just passing this along…

Every month I receive Steve and Teri Maxwell’s “Dad’s and Mom’s Corner” newsletter by email. They often give me much food for thought, but I thought that this month’s letter from Teri to moms was particularly helpful.

She covers the subject of teaching children how to study the Bible. By sharing what they do with their own children, Teri gives plenty of ideas and tips for successfully leading your children into personal Bible study. One thing I appreciate about Teri’s monthly newsletter is how she offers her advice in such an encouraging manner.

I hope that you will find the article as helpful as I did!

January Mom’s Corner

Reading challenge

Dan and I have a pretty rigorous curriculum planned out for our children as they get into the older grades. It involves a great deal of the reading of “classic” works. Many of these works are ones that I did not read growing up, even though I was a voracious reader.

I still love to read, but since having a family, I’ve had less and less time to devote to serious reading. Most of the books that I read now are on the topics of education, social issues, motherhood or the Bible. Many of these types of books have a rather limited vocabulary and don’t cause very much brain-stretching.

Therefore, I’ve decided to challenge myself to some serious reading. (By serious, I mean, reading that may require me to have a dictionary nearby as I read.) The way I see it, I figure that if I start now, then perhaps by the time my children are in their later school years, I’ve read at least some of the books that I’m going to ask them to read.

 

I’m using this “100 great books” list as a starting point for choosing books. [A great article on why children [teenagers] - or anyone, for that matter - should read “great books” can be found here.] I’m also adding other books that are on other “classics” lists.

I started my challenge about 2 weeks ago. Here are the books that are on my short-term list. I decided to start out with books that are of interest to me, not just choose random books from a list.

• David Copperfield  – Charles Dickens (complete)
• Brave New World  – Aldous Huxley (complete)
• Of Plymouth Plantation – William Bradford (reading)
• Paradise Lost - John Milton
• Democracy in America – Alexis de Tocqueville

To offset the brain strain, I’ve also been reading the following:

• Endangered Minds: Why Our Children Don’t Think - Jane Healy, Ph.D.
• The Courtship of Nellie Fisher series  – Beverly Lewis
• Heidi – Johanna Spyri (our current lunchtime read-aloud)
• Swiss Family Robinson -  Wyss (our current family evening read-aloud)

As I attempt this reading challenge, I’ll let you know how it goes. If any of you feels like joining me in reading some “hard” books, let me know! I’m going to need all the encouragement I can get.

First week: finished

Today marks the end of our first week of school for this year.

What a week!

With our new schedule in hand, we started out with high hopes. I’ve learned so much from the writings of Charlotte Mason and I’ve been eager to try her ideas out. She didn’t believe in beginning a child’s “formal” eduacation until age 6, so we are not starting the Ambleside curriculum until next year. However, I have lots of things planned for this year, including lots of great books, poetry, scripture memorization, nature study, general music lessons (and piano for Abigail), hymns, practical math, and handwriting. Basically, this is an extension of what we already do, we’re just being “official” about it.

 

Among the many ideas that C. Mason advocated, one that I particularly like is that the lessons for all of the elementary grades are to be short – 15 minutes for each task. I’ve noticed (no doubt C. Mason did, too and this is why she advocated it) that the girls do better when we don’t drag out each task/subject. Often, we’ve ended at a point where they want to read more, but we just have to wait until the next day to find out what happens! Dan has received an earful each night this week as the girls have recounted all that they have learned. I’ve learned some things, myself! It’s been fun.

Everything didn’t go perfectly with my new schedule however. For one, all the children got sick this week! (You’ll notice that I didn’t mention this as something I was looking forward to during the fall season!!) So, I had an especially clingy baby to occupy while we tried to learn. Also, even though I planned lots of “flex time” into the schedule, I didn’t quite plan enough. Another thing that didn’t go quite as I had planned was that Jonathan can’t always be counted on to be good when we want him to be!  

Oh well. I’m thankful that I have my schedule typed up on the computer so I can go in and make changes easily! Overall, things went much better that I hoped they would and the important things – spending time together loving each other and learning – actually took place.

Here is a sketch that Abigail did of two of our specimens from Monday’s nature walk.

[The brown fuzzy thing and the black dot next to it are an oak gall and a gall wasp. We had always wondered what they were when we had walked down the trail in years past. We cut one open and now we know!]

After a week of learning new things and mommying sick children, I’m ready to relax this weekend! How is the school year going for your family?

A full week

Hello! My week has flown by ~ how about yours? I thought I’d pop on here and share what’s been going on by way of random, short paragraphs. I really do think about “real” topics these days, too, I just don’t have much time to sit down and put them into coherant posts at the moment.

• Dan was home again all this week, so things have been different around here. We haven’t seen too much of him, however. He’s been working hard on the chicken barn almost every day. It sure has been nice to have him come inside and eat lunch with us, though. Also, I’ve been able to go out there and talk to him whenever I have a spare minute. He’s such a hard worker!

 

• I can’t believe that one of my best friends AND my sister delivered their babies within 2 days of each other, even though their due dates were an entire month apart! As you can imagine, I had some IMPORTANT visiting to do this week.  Two cute little girls…awwwww. It’s so exciting to see how the babies are fitting into their respective families. One of them is the 6th child and one of them is the 1st child. What a difference! It’s so exciting to have your first baby, yet so challenging and at times, frustrating!!

• Everyone asked me if seeing the newborns makes me want to have another baby soon. Although I really enjoyed holding those tiny ones this week, I’m really enjoying the age that Jonathan is at right now. Even though he IS getting into lots of trouble lately, he’s so much fun to interact with.

• I’m so pleased with how our garden is going this year. We haven’t had any rabbits or deer yet this year and we’re wondering WHY?!?! We think that maybe the cats are helping to keep the rabbits away and the close proximity of the garden to the dog run may be helping with the deer….I hope, I hope! Here’s a picture of the lettuce and swiss chard I picked yesterday. The amount of lettuce you see here is equal to about 4 bags of salad from my grocery store, which would cost about $12. That’s not even for organic, yummy leaf lettuce – just the regular cut romaine! I can’t believe that I didn’t do this sooner because it has been so easy to grow! We eat so much salad around here that’s it’s really worth it. A packet of lettuce seed is less than $3. Crazy!

Here is what our garden looks like right now. The big spaces between the rows close to the camera are where the squash and pumpkins are supposed to grow (if I train them correctly).

• The blueberries are starting to come in! We’ve been salivating over those berry-laden bushes for weeks now, just waiting to taste that first ripe berry. The girls have been enthusiastically picking for the past few days. Last year, they did not have the self-control to pick any without eating them all. This year, they’ve actually been gathering a good amount to share with the entire family! Of course, they are still eating quite a few, too.   (By the way, did you know that cats will eat blueberries?)

• I read two books this week: For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay and A Charlotte Mason Education by Catherine Levison. They gave me much to think about as we try and choose the best style of education for our children. For the Children’s Sake in particular, was very thought-provoking, not only about education, but about the way we interact with children in general. I would recommend that all parents read the book! I’d like to write more of my thoughts on these two books in the near future, so if you haven’t read them, stay tuned for that!

Have a wonderful weekend!

In the process of…

• Overhauling my recipe files
  It seems that many of the recipes that I’ve collected since we’ve been married are no longer applicable to the way I cook now. Many of the recipes have ingredients that I no longer like to use (like Cool Whip) or ”exotic” ingredients (like mango nectar) that I rarely purchase.  Don’t get me wrong – I love my fancy and delicious recipes!!! It’s just that I don’t have many recipes for basic cooking – the kind that I could do if I only wanted to use foods that I grew/raised myself. So, I’ve been putting away some recipes for special occassions/company and searching for new recipes.

 

• Going through the children’s clothing
  We have been SO blessed with people giving us their slightly used children’s clothing! We’ve hardly had to purchase any clothing since we had Abigail 5 years ago. It’s amazing, though, how much we have accumulated over those 5 years!! For some sizes, we have more clothes than we could use for triplets! I hate getting rid of clothing that’s in great shape, but at the same time, the boxes of clothes are taking over our storage space. I have entire Rubbermaid storage bins marked 0-3 months (girl), 3-6 months, 6-9 months, etc. The girls didn’t even use some of the clothes before they outgrew them. I’m trying to find the balance between having the wisdom to hang on to what we might need for future children and gluttony. Does anyone else have this problem? (Again, I admit, it’s a great problem to have! Too much!)

 

• Cataloging our books
  Call me a dork, but we’ve accumulated so many children’s books, educational books, biographies, gardening books, etc, etc, etc, that we can’t keep track of them all. I don’t plan on implementing a Dewey Decimal system (at least not yet ), but I’m hoping that an Excel spreadsheet might help me out a bit.

 

• Planning for “real” school this fall
  This past year was full of learning in a very unstructured manner. Abigail has made great strides in reading and handwriting and we have read books, books and more books on a great variety of topics. However, Dan desires that I be more systematic and keep records of what I’m teaching once each child reaches what our state defines as “school age”.  I’d like to have things planned out in advance as much as possible for the next year so I don’t have to spend lots of time each weekend planning for the upcoming week.

 

• Learning about gardening
  Even though we had a vegetable garden last year, it was a very uneducated attempt. This year, Dan is really getting into the scientific aspect of growing things, from testing the pH of our soil, to what types of organic material to add to the soil for nutrient deficiencies, to different mulching techniques – so we’ve been learning alot! I planted some new types of foods this year, too. Nothing teaches you about how to grow a certain type of plant like actually growing one.

 

• Reading…
  John (Bible)
  The Big Book of Home Learning by Mary Pride
  Liberal Fasicm by Jonah Goldberg

What are you in the process of right now?

Living science

Using the scientific method with young children:

1. Observe and describe a phenomenon:

Mommy, look what I rescued from Pepper’s (the dog’s) mouth!

2. Ask a question:

Is it alive?

3. Construct a hypothesis:

If it is  alive, then when we put it down, it will probably walk away

4. Test with an experiment:

Put the turtle down in a safe place

Return a few minutes later and…. he’s gone!!

5. Draw a conclusion:

He must be alive after all!