Spring-Summer Schedule

The boys did their annual testing last week which means we are now enjoying a new daily routine.  We will continue homeschooling through the summer with a focus on reading, math and nature/science. 

We always start our days with 'Morning Cards' which is an old name for our morning routine from years ago.  The same activities still get done - get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth and feed the animals - but we no longer have the cards to remind them what to do next. 

After Morning Cards we have ten minutes of Silent Reading for all of us.  Before this week, the boys did not have any requirement for reading to themselves.  I love to think that one day we can start our mornings with an hour of Silent Reading.  That seems such a peaceful and inspiring way to start one's day, sipping tea on the porch with the birds' chatter as our background noise.  Ahhhh.

We try to do our individual lessons in the morning, before the day gets away from us.  I work with each boy on learning to read and on math.  We just started a new math program this week and Armand has been exclaiming all week how much he loves math.  The program, Math-U-See, was recommended by the woman who did their testing.  So far it is working better than anything I've tried before!  It is 'mastery' based as opposed to 'spiral' which was what we had been using.  This means one topic is presented and taught thoroughly before a new topic is introduced.  The whole first book (supposedly a year of work) is single digit addition and subtraction.  The second book is multi-digit addition and subtraction.  If all goes well, I hope to finish both books by the fall of 2014 so they will be starting the multiplication book at the start of 3rd grade.  We are also working our way through a course called Living Math Through History which involves me reading aloud to the boys from a variety of books about how math came to be.

For learning to read they use All About Reading.  They are near the beginning of Level 2 and will be finished with it right around the time Level 3 is released in the fall.  Armand raves about this program and I do too since he is doing so well with it.  He shows signs of having dyslexia but since starting this program five months ago, his reading ability has gone from not reading at all to reading at grade level.  Elio was reluctant for formal lessons all this year and preferred to teach himself to read.  That worked to some extent; he was reading much better than Armand a few months ago but his progress hasn't been consistent.  Elio asked to started of All About Reading recently and I'm sure it will be good for him.

Our nature-science study will focus on monarch butterflies, local birds and nocturnal animals.  We're going to see an IMAX film about monarchs this coming week and then will read 'An Extraordinary Life', a book about the monarch migration that I adored reading to Noah so long ago.  We are making a butterfly garden and are buying two monarch eggs to hatch into a caterpillar and then a butterfly.  We will be creating a silk painting of a butterfly using a DVD from the Creating a Masterpiece series.  I've heard such good things about this series and I can't wait to try it. 

We are selecting a bird each week from my list of 30 that I mentioned in my goals post.  Last week we started with the Eastern Towhee.  We read the chapter about towhees in The Burgess Bird Book for Children, listened to their calls online, talked about the towhee nest we found in our yard a few years ago, and demonstrated their funny way of pulling up leaves to find bugs.  The boys would look and listen to them when we were outside and we found several last week.  We still need to draw a picture of a towhee in our nature journal and write some sentences about what we have learned.  I have several books about birds I have selected to read over the summer: An Owl in the House: A Naturalist's Diary, Adopted by an Owl, The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds, Nests, Birds and Eggs, and we'll re-read the biographies The Boy Who Drew Birds: A Story of John James Audubon and For the Birds: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson. I've though of getting the Birding by Ear CD but I haven't decided on this yet.  We have three pairs of birds nesting in our yard right now - bluebirds, cardinals and Carolina wrens - so we have plenty to keep us engaged and learning and will focus on one of these each of the next three weeks.

And lastly for nocturnal animals I plan to read a sweet late-19th century book called Among the Night People.  We will take time to catch fire flies, try to attract some moths with a bait made in our kitchen and take a few night walks to listen to the night sounds.  We have a pair of barred owls nesting nearby and I would love to figure out exactly where they are.  We hear them calling during the night, sometimes right in our yard it sounds like, and Elio has woken to listen to them a few times.

For the first time in the history of the world...

Armand and Elio are sleeping in their own beds underneath their own Guatemalan quilts!  Armand received his as a gift from Donnie when he was a baby, and I bought Elio's when I visited Guatemala with Noah and Eiley when Elio was three.

 

 

We spent the weekend making a bedroom for the boys to share and they have now slept in there for two nights.  Below is a photo of the room.  Dialga, the bearded dragon, is in a cage above the art organizer to the left.  The art table has been used non-stop the past few days now that it has been cleared of Elio's stagnating clay projects.  The dresser is holding all the boys clothes, one drawer for Armand and two for Elio (who needs a supply of both cool weather and warm weather clothes all summer).  Their bunk bed is on the opposing wall - the upper for Armand and the bottom for Elio and Arria! 



 





As I was rearranging the master bedroom now that the twin bed has been removed, Elio said 'Our lives will be changed forever, won't they, Mom?'  I asked him what he meant.  He said now when he gets into my bed he'll have to get in the middle.  He used to sleep on the side when the bed was pushed against the wall.  He said he remembers a monster used to run its fingers up and down Elio's belly when he slept on the side when he 'was a kid'.  Now I know why he is so terribly afraid of sleeping on the outside of a bed when we go to a hotel!  He had never told me of that monster before. 

Dear Elio

A few weeks ago Elio got hit in the head with a bamboo stick while playing with friends at the Botanical Gardens.

I was talking with my friends when it happened and Armand came up to tell me Elio was bleeding.  I didn't think much of it - expecting just the usual scraped knee kind of bleeding - but when I got to him his whole face and hands were covered in blood.  I had no idea what the injury was but just pressed my shirt against it to stop the flow.  Whenever I tried to look there was too much blood to see what was going on.  Eventually I got a glimpse of the injury and with great relief I saw it was only an inch long.  I had not experienced a bleeding head injury before and had no idea how prolific they were! 

The children were so kind to Elio, offering things to help him feel better like clovers.  The mothers were so kind to both of us, finding me water and gauze, giving me emotional support and encouraging me to take him to the doctor right away.  Armand was able to stay Gardens with a friend while I took Elio to be seen. 

The two nurses said they thought it would require stitches which terrified Elio so much he just shut down and they were worried he had a true head trauma, but as soon as the doctor said he could use glue to close it, Elio was fine.  An hour later we were home and Elio went straight to the backyard to see Arria and ride his bike.  Elio had a pile of get well cards from his friends who were with us at the Gardens which he loved reading though and to cap it off he refused to wash his bloody hands because he liked 'looking like a vampire!' 

He is all healed now and we are just trying to keep sunscreen on the scar this summer (difficult for a sunscreen-averse family) and we have a camphor-based ointment that is supposed to help with scar healing.

Mother's Day 2013

Mother's Day started with a beautiful breakfast spread prepared totally by the children.  We had French toast, scrambled eggs, two kinds of sausage, fresh strawberries and a lightly sweet strawberry smoothie.   Delicious!  A bouquet of red flowers had been picked from the yard and was tied with a ribbon.  The table was set and everything was ready to eat when they called me from bed. 

In the doorway between the rooms (in the picture above, above my empty chair), the children had made a Mother's Day banner and each hanging streamer had a note saying something they loved about me.  It was all so thoughtful and lovingly planned.

a close up of some of the streamers

We usually go on a hike or bike ride for Mother's Day but this year we decided to plan a fig tree sapling given to us by Stefan's family. Our fig tree is a grandchild of the fig tree Joe's family had growing up.  Since sunny spots are so rare in our yard, we had to remove part of our gravel driveway to make a place for the tree.  We all worked together to dig up about 5 inches of gravel, sifting it through a screen we made and returning the dirt to the pit we dug.  The tree is now snugly in its new home and the beginning of our front garden transformation has begun.

making the sifting screen

our fig tree is planted 

As the children were putting together the screen frame I marveled at what a perfect family moment it was.  We were all working together for the benefit of the family, music playing on the boom box, jokes being laughed over.  Times like that are perfect mothering moments for me. 

I was excused from the final hard work of digging-sifting-planting to go clothes shopping, though I found more things for the children than for myself.  And to end the day, Noah made a delicious dinner for us on his new grill - Italian sausage, onions, bell peppers and grilled toast.  That grill, a 16th birthday gift for him a few weeks ago, has been as much a gift to me as it is for him!

2013 Homeschooling Goals

At the end of 2012 I spent a day setting a vision for the upcoming year in many categories of my life: personal, homeschooling parent, mothering, wife, and homemaker.  I wrote an overarching vision statement and then created specific goals I wanted to meet this year in order to help create that vision.

Below is my vision for homeschooling.  I keep making small changes to it as I re-read it but this is today’s version.

I want to be an inspiration for my children to learn how to think in an integrated, holistic, creative manner.  I want them to feel confident and excited to tackle anything they set their minds to.   I want them to know how to bring their ideas to fruition.  I want them to have a broad base of knowledge as context into which they can put new ideas and a deep base of knowledge on any subject they desire.  My real wish is for them to be passionate about things.  That takes care of most everything.

Here are the specific goals:

1. I will write 50 blog entries.

How does writing a blog help with educating my children?  Simply, it keeps me accountable to myself.  It requires I spend some time thinking about what we want to do and compare that to how we actually spend our time.  And that is our journey to arête. 

2. I will write two comprehensive assessments (in January and August) about Armand and Elio. 

In Leadership Education lingo, this is called the ‘six month assessment’.  I’ve been doing these for about three years and have found them to very useful and also a wonderful way to document what the children are like at different points in their life. 

3. I will volunteer alongside Armand and Elio for 25 hours at PORCH.

PORCH is a volunteer local food distribution effort.  One Monday a month we take donations from our neighborhood to a local church to combine with donations from other neighborhoods for an average of 1,000 very full paper bags of food.  For the past four months, Armand, Elio and I have been staying to help sort the food and we find it to be a fun, energetic and easy way to give to the community.  If we volunteer 10 times this year, we’ll have contributed 25 hours to helping our local hungry population.

4. I will have 8 classes in each of the following topics before June: soap and lotion making, stained glass making, cooking and baking , and native plant landscaping.

These aren’t official classes but instead reminders for me to introduce topics I have intended to but keep getting put off.  I used to make soap and stained glass projects before the boys were born and I have been craving to do both again.  The cooking and baking class is simply to remind myself to get them into the kitchen more often, especially when we are making things they love to eat.  The native plant class has turned into learning about carnivorous plants and making a raised bed in which to grow them.  This is a very strong interest of Armand’s.  We’ll also start a butterfly garden this spring. 

5. I will be outside and active for at least one hour on all of our homeschooling days.

When I took Armand to his well-child appointment this year I thought to myself how wonderful it would be if his doctor said he needed to spend more time outside.  He didn’t say it but I realized that my little imaginary conversation meant I really wish to be outside more and want it to be deemed as important to daily life as learning to read or cleaning the house.  I want my family’s health to be my number one priority this winter-spring season.  Homeschooling allows many luxuries for my family, one being that we have full control over our schedule.  We have no excuse for not living healthfully – long nights of sleep, lungs full of fresh air, plenty of hiking and biking and playing ball, sunshine on our faces, lots of healthy food, little stress and lots of laughter.  We can do it all.  I just need to learn how. 

6. I will attend three live performances with Armand and Elio.

I have two events already planned at our local Arts Center – Jabali African Acrobats and Ballet Folklorico Mexico.  These are small events and they look great.  I want to also take them to a large event but I haven’t found the right thing yet. 

7. I will teach Armand and Elio to identify by sight and/or sound 30 birds.

Canada Goose, Mallard, Great Blue Heron, Black Vulture, Turkey Vulture, Red-Shouldered Hawk, Red-Tailed Hawk, Mourning Dove, Great Horned Owl, Eastern Screech Owl, Red-Bellied Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Blue Jay, American Crow, Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Nuthatch, Carolina Wren, Eastern Bluebird, American Robin, Wood Thrush, Gray Catbird, Northern Mockingbird, Brown Thrasher, Eastern Towhee, Dark-Eyed Junco, Northern Cardinal, Common Grackle, American Goldfinch, and House Sparrow. 

8. We will study artists Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, and musicians Antonio Vivaldi and Richard Wagner before June.

 

 

 

A Photo to Cherish

I have very few photos from my childhood and many of the ones remaining haven't been taken care of properly.  I have recently started scanning all my old photographs, those from my childhood up to Noah's and Eiley's early years.  You can see the damage forty years has done to this photo.  There is tape on it and several places where the image has peeled off.  I'm happy to be scanning the photos in the hopes that they will last a lot longer in digital form, but there is something magical about having an old photograph to hold in your hand.  This is the earliest photo I have of me with my dad.  I love to see us looking so young and happy. 

I love you so much Dad!  Happy Birthday!

Goodbye to 2012

We had a very quiet home-based holiday season this year. No traveling, no guests, and Joe was home for 2 1/2 weeks thanks to his first teacher's winter break.  It was different, and it was lovely.

My children wanted to have a Christmas party so I tried to find a way to engage them with their friends without an emphasis on more gifts and cookies.  Happily our homeschool group decided to come together to provide gifts for a family in need.  The family we were matched with is a single mother parenting her five children, ages 10 years to 10 months including a special needs 3 year old.  The mother doesn't work and doesn't speak English.  Each family in our group bought gifts from the provided wish list and we hosted a party at our house for the children to wrap all the gifts.   After the visiting, wrapping and eating lots of cookies several of us delivered the gifts to the family.  Her children were lovely.  As we were putting the gifts under their tree, her 10 year old boy thanked us and said 'I'm sorry we didn't buy gifts to give to you also' to which Elio replied 'You can next time'.  :)

Our plans for an evening bonfire with friends on the Winter Solstice were cancelled due to freezing temperatures and a high wind advisory.  We stayed home and opened a few gifts from relatives, as this was our 'Christmas Eve' with Noah and Eiley, but we didn't do anything solstice-y.

The next morning we celebrated Christmas Morning, Take I. 

my favorite Christmas photo of three of my kids

In the afternoon, Noah and Elio built a fire in a small metal bucket to roast marshmallows.

Christmas was spent at home as a family of four.  Here are the photos of opening gifts on Christmas Eve...

Armand opening card with 25 dollar bills to buy plants for his garden.

 

 ...and Christmas Morning. 

 

We spent New Year's Eve at home also, though not fully by choice.  On the 29th Armand came down with the flu, and Elio followed suit on the 31st. 

 I didn't mean to photograph Armand crying. I was lying between the boys on the bed and when I turned to take Armand's picture, he started crying.  I took his temperature after this and it read 105.3.  They are both mostly recovered and (knock on wood) no one else has gotten it.