To remember:
The moment we realized that Able Seaman Titty (in Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome) was going to be the hero of the day by unforeseen circumstances. Peals and shrieks of excited laughter, rolling around the couch with excitement because all had seemed lost and then... it WASN'T! If you've read it, you know the moment I'm referring to! If you haven't read it, you should. That's that.
Is it really nearing the end of October again? The girls are creating all kinds of drawings of mummies and vampires and Frankenstein's monster and leaving them scattered around the house. Break Week finally arrived and I've been rapidly trying to plan out the next seven weeks which will take us to CHRISTMAS!! This weekend really has to see the end of the Red Riding Hood Cape I'm making for Millie since Halloween is speeding toward us so fast.
My Auntie and her daughter sent the girls a box of goodies with blessings for Millie's healing, and I'm so thankful! I had hours of peace today as they played with reusable stickers and imagined stories. What a blessing to be loved so well by our dear ones. Thank you, Jodi and Hannah.
Here's a little chat about homeschooling and scheduling while I have a moment.
I indicated that I'd try to write a little about loop scheduling if I had a chance, so I'm going to give a quick rundown of what that is. I was intimidated to mess around with a different way of scheduling because ultimately, scheduling our school traditionally (e.g., planning out what exactly we'd be doing each day of the week) technically was working for us, the girls were learning and we were working through what I wanted to accomplish each year thus far. Only it wasn't really working, because I was always feeling behind and run down - or cracking the whip and rushing through things so we wouldn't get lost and "behind." That's not how I wanted our school days to go. Enter loop scheduling.
A. We have our daily subjects: math, spelling/phonics, copywork, foreign language, Scripture and poem memorization, poetry. Those are easy to schedule per day. But we have many books to read, and lots of beautiful rich elements to the curriculum that I felt were getting pushed aside or lost because I never had a good "schedule" for them. For example, I longed to teach the girls piano lessons last year but it never seemed to happen because I didn't have a good way to plug it into our school day, and I didn't have a lot of non-school hours to devote to more formal teaching.
B. This year I made a list of all the "Riches" (the beautiful, enriching parts of the curriculum). For the riches, I just listed them on my daily plan with a check box next to each one, so we have things like Drawing, Piano lesson, Composer Study, nature study, picture study, handicrafts, etc in a list together. Three mornings a week we spend an hour working on one of those things: whichever is next in the list to come up. We don't skip, or move on without working on each one. This has ensured that we are actually doing all I'm planning. Even in a week where we only get to our riches twice, we just do the third one at the beginning of the next week and so on.
C. As for the other subjects like history, literature, natural history, science, geography, I also made a loop but some subjects need to be included more frequently than others. Namely, we tend to have twice as many history and literature readings in our curriculum as we do each of the other kinds of readings, so I made a list where history shows up twice, literature shows up twice and the other subjects show up once. Then we just work through as many as we can in the daily allotted time for scheduled read alouds. Voila! Actually doing it this way has a) given me a sense of freedom and comfortable control instead of always feeling like I was fumbling my way through at breakneck speed and b) we are surprisingly "ahead" of where I expected us to be at this point of the year and I'm considering whether we should slow down a little here and there to make sure we're really absorbing the material, but I think we already are. The girls are making beautiful progress in piano compared to last year when I just couldn't find a chance to squeeze things in. I am marveling at the beauty and simplicity of taking the Ambleside curriculum and just rescheduling it in a way that fits our needs.
D. The last thing I wanted to mention is that even though math is a daily scheduled subject, I'm expanding the freedom I've experienced with loop scheduling into math. I realized one of my girls is really struggling to remember the math addition facts for larger single digit numbers so rather than try to get through one lesson per day, we are going to take some time to just practice rote memorization of the facts, play some math games, and take the lessons more slowly. I might even set aside the curriculum and use Life of Fred again with her for awhile. I would rather slow down and have her really know and understand the math than worry about grade level and placement which doesn't matter to me at all. She is smart and I know she can catch up, especially if we match her work to her needs.
I hope that's encouraging to you, friends. Let me know if you have any questions. I ran across the conversation in the Wild + Free podcast today that was about loop scheduling so you might listen to it here or in any other podcast app you use. The loop scheduling topic begins around 15 minutes in. It's been encouraging to me, and I suspect I'll need to look back at this post in February when I hit the homeschool doldrums. Isn't February the worst? It should be October all school year!
I feel like a genius for finally coming up with a system to help keep the kids' "town clothes" from getting ruined, lost, and torn in country living play. Do you live in a place that requires "town clothes" and "play clothes"? Or maybe church clothes and school clothes or play clothes.
I wanted had to figure out a way to keep nice clothes separate - but accessible and organized because we do need them regularly- from the clothes I have for rolling around in the dirt, because that's what my kids really look like most of the time now. Here's what I did:
My big girls have two and a half drawers each on a tall dresser that stores their clothes and also a spot in the closet for hanging items. I try not to have too many clothes for them but frankly, I love buying clothes for the girls and it's something I only get to do for a little while longer, so for now I give myself freedom to buy what I love when I see it for a reasonable price. So I took everything out of the dresser drawers, and declared one drawer for each girl as ALL her "town clothes" and one drawer for all the play clothes and pajamas. Then the fifth, shared drawer has each girl's underwear, socks, tights, swimsuits etc. It's working like a charm!
To keep it smooth, I just quickly pull out the occasional town outfit from each load of laundry (I have to sort mine and Jesse's out anyway) and put those back in the town drawer, and the girls fold and put away their own play clothes and I don't care HOW those drawers look since I never have to dig around in them in moments of stress to find the cute leggings that would match that Sunday dress! It makes packing for out of town trips a breeze too! I know I will be able to find clothing acceptable for when we speak at churches or visit family for special events! The girls seem to know not to mess around with the tidy drawers of town clothes and I think the like having those clothes ready for when we need them, and when I sorted everything originally I stuck a few "new" $1 shirts and shorts from Goodwill in the play clothes drawer so they didn't just feel like I took out all the cute stuff and left them with the boring old stuff for everyday use.
Rosie has a different small dresser and all her play clothes are in her drawers as always - I just took the town clothes out and folded them into the cupboard of that same dresser.
No more overstuffed drawers, no more yelling-frustrated mom trying to help a child find a clean unstained, unripped outfit when it's time to go to town or pack a suitcase! Such a small change but with a daily impact: I love not having to send a child back downstairs to change when they inevitably come up in the morning wearing the adorable new outfit from Grandma on a day they're going to run like banshees through the field or dig in the garden or become covered in sap from tree-climbing...
Do you have this same problem? Have you found a different solution that you like better? If not, maybe you want to try this simple solution!
I loved watching Rosie walk wide-eyed into the dining room on the morning of her birthday and light up at seeing her new tiny bicycle on the table. It took her about two seconds to figure out how to ride it. She is so determined to be a grown up and asks about once every day, "Mommy, do I look like a Mommy?" or says with a note of deep longing in her voice, "Oh I wish I could be a grown up." I guess that is the fate of being the littlest of three girls, but I tell her I am so happy she is still my little girl. I tell her I'm happy she is four, smiling and sincere as can be, but in my head I'm saying, "NO! Four!? Where has my baby gone and where did this big grinning smart running jumping climbing child come from?"
She tries to skip over picture books and look at chapter books instead; she can't read a word, but she flips through the pages for ever so long as if she was really reading. Well, she can read at least one word: Rosie. She's been writing her name for months now and it's precious. She loves to play outdoors and can hardly sit through our little Bible reading and hymn every morning before she is itching to run out to the tire swing and have a spin. And oh how she loves her aunties and uncles and cousins! We had such fun visiting with Auntie Holly that weekend. My girls adore her and I think if they could live with Holly they might choose to. My mother-in-law made that amazing butterfly cake for the birthday celebration we had when we were in Spokane; isn't it cute?
Happy birthday, my darling Joy-Joy. I am so thankful for all the cuddles and laughter and smiles and beauty you have brought into yet another year of my life.
Millie turned six this week and we had a little celebration one afternoon with friends for her birthday and for Rosie's four year old birthday (which is this Saturday!) Millie is getting so big, beautiful, and wonderful! As a gift, Lyddie made her sweet little coupons for "free" things - "15 minutes snuggling together," and "20 minutes reading together," and "you choose the tv show we watch" and "Give this card to Lyddie to have your bed made for you," and other things like that. I had to laugh because she was so excited for Millie to open her present but once open, she kept reminding her, "You can use this ONE time," just to make sure she understood that it was a one time only thing.... until she changed her mind and said she could use each one twice. Rosie gave her a piece of paper folded up with a pen inside. My precious girls! I wish this darling innocent joy in gift giving would stay for a very long time and that they will not become self-conscious about it all for a few years at least.
Millie has always been so determined; if once she sets her mind on something, she will accomplish it and won't stop trying until she succeeds. This is a wonderful thing (most of the time)! Jumping rope is just one of these things, so we gave her a beautiful wooden-handled jumprope on her birthday. My other favorite gift for her was a Matryoshka (Russian nesting) doll we picked out in beautiful blue. Each doll is painted holding something different: a teapot, a tea cloth, a tea cup, etc. I might steal it and keep it for myself, I love it so much.
Happy birthday to my dearest Millie... the birthday pictures are still coming since Rosie hasn't had her turn yet! Then I might sleep for a week after three-in-a-row birthday plans and preparations.
The Lord will fight for you; you need only be still. Exodus 14:14 -- Our memory verse for this week.
Spring break was a much needed change last week! I was so thankful for a little time to rest, work in the garden, and visit family for a couple days, and plan and prepare for the rest of our school year. I can't believe we have only eight more weeks before we change things up for summer break. How glad I am that I have a game plan for the weeks ahead. For several weeks I have been reading Happy Times in Noisy Village by Astrid Lindgren and this morning we finished it. What a delightful read! In our "morning basket" time I try to choose a selection that Rosie will really appreciate, like Beatrix Potter, along with a few different longer books, like Noisy Village or Winnie-the-Pooh. We have been loving Life of Fred during this morning time as a fun addition to our math curriculum, and I've kind of been developing our own Spanish curriculum using picture books, songs, and occasionally videos. That's been a challenge but I finally am happy with the direction we're going for now.
Do you plan for the summer with your kids? I think we might continue with a few things that feel "fun" - Life of Fred which they rejoice over, maybe Spanish so we can continue to move ahead a little bit, and lots of reading that I might need to prepare in advance for, since our library's selection is very mediocre when it comes to really good children's literature.
The girls come in with handfuls of kale (which overwintered) from the garden and discovered some carrots that were frozen in the ground all winter so they dug those up and have been chopping them up into their own "salads" with the kale. The carrots are fine but they look slightly shriveled and totally unappetizing to me and I just laugh. In the garden everything is coming up: lettuce, spinach, radishes, carrots, bok choy, onions, peas... my potatoes are still under the earth with no signs of life but one of these days I know they will make an appearance.
My "Love and Joy" cross-stitch sampler was finished today, just in time to start a new spring sampler! We dyed eggs with friends and I caught up on laundry and started some chick eggs in the incubator just for fun. We'll see if they hatch! Apparently I think 18 chickens isn't enough for us, so why not try for half a dozen more...I'm sure I'm crazy. But why not be a little crazy if it makes life more fun, right?
