End of school

This week marks the end of our third term, the end of our school year. The end of my 16th year of teaching my children.  Wow. And I'm looking at the future, and seeing 17 more. Could it be I'm half way done with educating my children? My thoughts on that feel like, but wait! Every year I'm getting better, I can't be half done. I'm finally "getting" it. I love this lifestyle! 

Last week we had a week of vacation with daddy, this week we are tying up loose ends and going to doctor appointments. The younger kids and I are finishing An Island Story, Curtiss finished The Birth of Britain today. Our chapters corresponded so we had a great discussion about Richard the Third.   

In the late afternoon I worked in the garden and picked kale for dinner. It's so tender and yummy!

While I was killing squash bugs, blasted cussed things, I found baby broccoli! In this season of having a very high need baby, sometimes weeding or harvesting in the garden is the only few moments I have in the day to find....I don't even know. Just peace or a moment to focus in a singular thing that is productive. So much as what we do as mothers is incessant and gives nothing show for what was done. That's really hard some days. To remember that loving and nurturing people is a life's work worthy of doing without day to day returns. 

Here are a few pictures of Shakespeare On The Green. Taming of the Shrew. It was very funny and we all enjoyed. 

A Good Monday

I actually did have a good Monday. And after some really bad nights around here, some sickness and some general hard parenting times, and that missing my Girl really bad that finally hit me,  that was a welcome thing.

A good friend really let me talk out some problems I've been having in parenting my two little boys, ages 3 and 5. It's so good to have friends who listen, give you lots of grace and unconditional love and great suggestions! So I am reading little people books, snuggling more, communicating better, being calmer and that is really going a long way with disciplining these little guys. Me, the CM nut (children are persons treat them as such) forgets that my little men are people and get gruff and angry and horribly tired and impatient with them. It has been a good reminder.

My two older children, 14 and 12, spontaneously decided they needed to work more independently. WOW This was great as I am feeling stretched very thinly these days, see paragraph above. They have always schooled at level together, but my almost 15yo son is in high school now and has really matured lately. His sister is not so mature in some ways and I am not anxious to rush that. Because then this happens:

Sigh. And then she will grow up too fast and move far away to somewhere cold and crazy like Minneapolis and I will miss all the long talks and coffee runs and new music she was always bringing me and drat if they don't become  your friends and then you are just supposed to live without them?!.


Ahem. Back to my Monday.  They also decided that he should pull ahead. Maybe she is more mature than I realized.

This is great. I could have pushed this sooner but said 12yo daughter can be extremely stubborn (don't know where that came from) and having this be partly her idea was very helpful. We quickly scanned the shelves for her own history and literature books, scaled down a notch, and found the perfect fit in quite a few books. Curtiss quickly pulled ahead and I am offering him a few more books I was holding back so as not to overwhelm Grace. Oh, it's beautiful.

The best son a mom could want. And totally by the grace of God, not by my parenting.

And lastly, my baby turned 4months old today! He is almost a whopping 20lbs and learning to use his little hands so well. His gift to me today? He took my face in his little hands, very systematically. So SWEET!

Wonder where he got those cheeks?

This picture really captures how he looks well!

Little somethings I am making and selling. Exciting!

Science!

We are trying something new this year for science. When Kaley was in HS we did a typical package curriculum that she did not get much out of, did not enjoy and I had no hands on or experience with whats so ever. I really wanted to do it differently for the other children coming up.

While they are elementary age, we enjoy reading natural history books, nature journaling, playing in and experiencing nature, recording the changes in our world in a book of firsts and much more, but with a focus on the natural world. We use good literature to learn, just like we do any other subject. So why did I give that up for high school? I could never figure that out. I guess I just thought I had to, for the older student to acquire the knowledge they would need for life or upper level education.

Two things changed my mind. The first was this post at sageparnassus by Nancy. We started using narration journals for science! Instead of narrating our science books out loud, we began drawing our narrations. Oh what a difference in what we learned!

The next was hearing Jennifer Gagnon speak at the Living Education Retreat on science. She said a great many wonderful things that I don't have time to narrate here, but really she made me realize, I DO like science and I AM scientific. When did I lose my love for science? And think of myself as a person who is not good at it? Hmmm, probably about the same age my daughter stopped enjoying it. Say, middle school?

A couple things that were impressed upon me there were:

*You can't know everything.
*Why would we stop using living books for science just because our children are older??
*We are a scientific family.
*I need to build deep roots in the love of subjects for my students to hang knowledge on.

I know there were more. But here was another that happened in chatting after the conference. It was pointed out that at Charlotte Masons schools, they did not focus on one science topic per year, ie: biology one year, chemistry the next etc. The studied multiple branches of science at one time. That really got me thinking. And I decided I was going to try that!

So this year we are reading multiple science books: 

The Way We Work  for the study of the human body.
The New Way Things Work for physical science
An Edwin Teale book for natural history
The Wonder Book of Chemistry , my 14yo loves this book
Along Came Galileo for astronomy and a biography

Some color on the blueridge

These are our first term selections and I have some more I'm investigating for second and third terms. I'm really excited about a book I found on the periodic table. I can't believe that I am! I am learning SO much with my students.

The starlings are beginning to murmerate

The first chestnut tree I've seen in the mountains

I have really wanted to do a post about nature study for a long time. And this is really not one. It is one of my favorite aspects of this CM lifestyle. I think when it really became wonderful for us is when I stopped sending my children outside to do it and started taking them outside with me as I did it. I began keeping a nature journal. I don't record as often as I should, my hands after all are often full, but it is a treasure to me now.

I had a friend recently ask me how I knew the names of so many plants and things.(I really don't)  I explained that if you just learned one new species on each nature walk you took, think of what you would learn and know over a lifetime. That is my goal, for myself and my children, each walk to learn to identify something new. And when I really know it is when I have recorded it in my journal because the mind only can know what it tells itself. That's how we process. So that brush drawing or sketch is really my narration of what I've learned and then I never forget it.

On the Blueridge Parkway

One of my favorite nature study lessons. We were possum sitting for friends.

Narration after all is what we all do when we are excited about something, have had something big happen in our lives or we are upset. We "vent", "share" and "process" with others.

Sliding Rock. It is amazing how the river bed becomes just this rock. Only my brave children slid down!

Curtiss loved it.

I wish this wasn't blurry. Ladies Tresses. Isn't it neat?!

Here is a cicada Ben found right as he was ready to shed his skin.

Climbing out

Wings plumping as the blood gets flowing. It was truly amazing to sit and watch it all unfold.

Our goal is to be out in nature one half day and one long day each week. It's been a total fail lately. Or if we do get out, we don't journal. Ok, well a fail in the last couple weeks. We do have a 9 week old. I am learning instead of beating myself up for these "failures" to just keep plodding along or I just tend to want to give up. It's just too rich to give up on! So I will keep fighting the chaos that can ensue when you are trying to get nine people packed and out the door, I will keep guarding and carving out the time. Because the fruits of what we have succeeded in are just too rich to not continue to pursue.

Why?

 

Music and Art in Schools

by L. Winifred Nicholls
Volume 14, no. 7, July 1903, pgs. 535-537

In dealing with the question of art, it is the same idea which I should like to keep prominently in the foreground,the aesthetic value of the subject. A school of 300 girls cannot turn out 300 gifted artists, or 300 brilliant players, I am not sure that it would be an unmixed advantage if it could! but it can turn out 300 girls ready to take an appreciate interest in the best music, and the highest art, and this is what it ought to aim at. Every good school ought to feel it a serious reproach to its system if a large proportion of the girls leave it with a greater appreciation of a comic-song than of a sonata of Beethoven, or a keener interest in Comic Cuts than in a gallery of Old Master.

At the start of each school year I diligently sit down and choose three artists and three composers for our study. One of each per term. We start out great, and really enjoy our bi weekly picture study. We usually start each day listening to selections by our chosen musician. We may read a biography about either of them or I’ll just give a little biographical information each week as we go. It works just fine. So why is it, when the going get tough in this real life family of ten, that this is what gets dropped?

Why do I even bother? Why is it even a part of our home school? You can’t be tested on it. Young adults don’t need it to be accepted at college. It isn’t one of the three R’s.

When children have begun regular lessons (that is, as soon as they are six), this sort of study of pictures should not be left to chance, but they should take one artist after another, term by term, and study quietly some half-dozen reproductions of his work in the course of the term…We cannot measure the influence that one or another artist has upon the child's sense of beauty, upon his power of seeing, as in a picture, the common sights of life; he is enriched more than we know in having really looked at even a single picture.                                 vol 1 pg 309

But the people themselves begin to understand and to clamour for an education which shall qualify their children for life rather than for earning a living. As a matter of fact, it is the man who has read and thought on many subjects who is, with the necessary training, the most capable whether in handling tools, drawing plans, or keeping books. The more of a person we succeed in making a child, the better will he both fulfil his own life and serve society.   Vol 6 pg 3

These are the things I need to hear from Charlotte when the going gets tough. I need to be reminded why I am doing more than the three R’s, why I care, why I work so hard at this when public schooling is free and effortless. No, art study or composer study can not be measured by a standardized test or even sometimes by a narration. I have had a very scanty narration of a book or picture at one time only to hear or see later how much that very thing affected the formation of who my child is.

I had the absolute joy of visiting an art museum in Minneapolis with my adult daughter a few weeks ago. We went to see an exhibit of Rembrandt. We were both very excited. We spent three hours only looking at that exhibit. We went slowly, savoring each picture, whispering to each other about the nuances of light and color, wondering what the picture would have looked like without age, learning what makes a Rembrandt and how it is different from the works of his students. My heart was swollen with the delight that in adult life that this is who she is! She wasn’t there with me for “school” or to humor me. She was there because she is the kind of person who loves art.

When we walked out of those rooms, into the echoing hush of the rest of the art museum we tried very hard to look at some more art but finally we threw up our hands and admitted our hearts and minds were just too full. We had looked so completely and had studied so long that we were quite satiated. The feeling was very similar to looking at the delicious pecan pie on Thanksgiving day, but knowing you can not fit one more bite into your tummy.

Kaley loves all kinds of music and art. She likes the top 20. I wasn’t perfect ever at doing picture and composer study with her. But she has always appreciated what I did teach her. This spurs me on. I am encouraged this year to have a full year. To do all three of our artists, all six paintings each term, and to learn our composers music each term. Having a child that has graduated is a blessing and a curse for me. I reflect on her education and see so many things I did wrong, that now I would do differently. But a blessing because my work with her has made me a better teacher for my students now. The more I teach, the more this is a life, the more my children are fitted for life, not a career, and the more I see them care.

My point in writing this post is to share that these subjects are important and to keep me accountable to do them all year! I will share here what we do and when and how it goes. Above is our artist for term one, Jan Van Eyck and his self portrait, Man in a Red Turban, is our first picture study next week. I am excited to see what my students think of it. I love his expression!

How October Finds Us

Well, the weather has been lovely. Fallish but not too chilly. We did finally start the wood stove when we had some nights that left us with frost on the ground. I've enjoyed 3, yes 3, drives up to the apple orchard and Lake Lure, getting lots of varieties of apples and some cider that was pressed before our eyes.



We have been plugging away at school, enjoying walking through modern history. I myself have learned a lot about the rise of communism, Castro and the Bay of Pigs, apartheid and segregation, Vietnam, JFK and MLKJ. As much as I have always loved history, I sometimes wonder if I was asleep in class. Or maybe just a product of my educational system of not having history as a story with ideas to hang facts on, rather just dry facts with no life.

We are currently reading out loud: The Hobbit, Miracle of Maple Hill, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, The Yearling and just finished Sounder. All lovely books. I have never read Roll of Thunder and after the first page we were all captivated. What an excellent writer! After the first few paragraphs, Benjamin ( who had been most affected by learning about segregation), said, "Hey! I think they are black!" I loved that they discovered this without me telling them all about the book first.

We happened to read about apartheid in South Africa before we read about segregation in the south and when we did read the later he was very upset. When we read about S.Africa it was another country, and perhaps seemed far away. But segregation was going on when his grandparents were his age, in the US which is supposed to ensure freedom to it's people. We had a lot of great discussions. I'm afraid we don't have any close friends who are black. I struggle with that, I feel like we are still segregating ourselves somehow. We would never do that intentionally but we really do not know any black families that well. Well, we did have some very sweet friends who were black that were from Africa. They were and are very dear to our hearts but it got to where I never thought about them being black. They were just who they were, we didn't see our skin colors when we saw each other. How it ought to be. They taught me a lot about Uganda and Africa.

We finish up our first term next week, wrapping up our study of modern history till we cycle around to it again in a few years. We start ancient history the second term and we are all looking forward to that. Curtiss is most excited about Archimedes, a kindred spirit for him.

So, the end of October finds us expecting a new little person at our house! Most exciting to everyone. I am so happy with how all the dates have fallen out, God is so good. For the first time, we will have a baby in the summer, which means daddy will be home for an extended babymoon! This thrills my heart. Even if this baby were as late as Max, Mark would still be home for at least 6 weeks. Oh joy! And no lesson plan worries for either one of us. We are all hoping for a little girl and we may even find out ahead of time. We have never done that!

So in the mean time, in the here and now, we are dealing with morning sickness. Well, I deal with the physical part, the rest of the family deals with the fall out of a sick mom. School we do with me semi prone on the couch, some of school is not getting done, housework is done exclusively by the children and dad and cooking as well. I don't go into the kitchen much. My survival plan is: lots of protein, low carbs (they make my blood sugar take a roller coaster ride), frequent snacks, a walk a day and lots of grace. That last part is hard. I tend to get really frustrated and down on myself for what I can't do. I am doing better this time than ever, just easing into the day and allowing myself to lay low. Part of that is all the lovely help I have now. The kitchen is always clean and I don't have to do it! I tend to perk up in the afternoon, so I walk then and try to enjoy the respite to prepare for the next wave. No fun, but this too will pass. And then it's all much better.

A Sample of Our Week

After lunch is our read aloud time. Ben, Maura and David chose books to read to me. It had become my favorite time of the day. Well, one of the favorites! Ben is doing so well. He was a late reader, but is doing quite well now. Each of the children has liked a different sort of book. Ben loves anything historical or about horses.




We are possum sitting for some friends on vacation this week. Thrilling for the children! Grace is their main caregiver since Kaley is so busy, working at Willow Tree School and going to college. She is doing a great job. Kaley does take the midnight and sometimes 3am shift.




Also a built in nature study to our nature study. This is Curtiss favorite of the four, the only boy, he calls him Tiny Tim or Timmy since he is the littlest.





We did nature study from our own back yard this week. This is lady's thumb, very pretty. And of course we sketched the baby possums.




Not from this week, but I love this picture so added it. All seven children (Max on Curtiss's back) enthralled that the pond at Crowders Mtn had been refilled. All these were taken with my phone, which is not a great quality, but is the way I caught some bits and pieces of our life.

School Time

It’s school time here and we are all starting to settle into a groove. Daddy is back at teaching and so far, so good on his school year. Kaley is very busy with her own school year, not only as a full-time student at the community college but as a teaching assistant as our local Charlotte Mason school, Willow Tree. It’s an adjustment, not seeing her as much, but it’s good and I am so happy for her. Now we greet two people at the end of the day and hear their adventures and share ours with them.

Kaley, with Jack, on a recent visit to MN

I was afraid I was over ambitious when I made our school schedule and lessons plans but I am finding it is going very well. And this is why…

…all I have said is meant to enforce the fact that much and varied humane reading, as well as human thought expressed in the forms of art, is, not a luxury, a tit-bit, to be given to children now and then, but their very bread of life, which they must have in abundant portions and at regular periods. This and more is implied in the phrase, "The mind feeds on ideas and therefore children should have a generous curriculum." Vol 6 pg 111

The beauty of Mason is that in our school we have about fourteen books going, in addition to math, handwriting, copywork, dictation, reading aloud, Spanish and Latin for Curtiss BUT that breaks down to reading for 30min or so of three to four books a day and is very manageable. I think the amount of books is what really threw me when I first began homeschooling. It seemed impossible to school that way and still run a home and take care of babies or toddlers or both. I found that frequent readings and doing different subjects between each reading to get us moving or use a different part of the brain is very refreshing and stimulating.

For me it was important to also not think of school time as something I put in a box from 9-12. It is okay with me now if we are doing school until 3pm. It is part of our life, the atmosphere of our home, our focus and purpose of how we live out our days. That was very freeing, and really, we still are done with school in the early afternoon. But it is the conversations that we have that are my favorite thing about educating my children. I am so thankful I am doing it.

I absolutely love how Charlotte Mason compares the ideas we give our children as an education to food. So all these books and ideas are the feast I am laying before them. Like Thanksgiving every day! We take a little here, a little there so we don’t get too full all at once but what a buffet we have laid. Yum Yum! Not just meat and potatoes here, but a rainbow of colors, delicacies of exotic kinds with a side of favorite comfort foods.

In devising a syllabus for a normal child, of whatever social class, three points must be considered:––
a) He requires much knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient food as much as does the body.
(b) The knowledge should be various, for sameness in mental diet does not create appetite (i.e., curiosity).
(c) Knowledge should be communicated in well-chosen language because his attention responds naturally to what is conveyed in literary form.
As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should "tell back" after a single reading or hearing: or should write on some part of what they have read.
A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-reading of passages, and also, by questioning, summarising, and the like. Vol 6 pg 154-155

School Schedules

It's that time of year! I've been to the revitalizing annual Childlight USA conference, we have had some lovely short vacation time and a break from structured schooling. The children finished up our combined and tweaked school year based on year 5 of amblesideonline, although a few term 3 books carried us into the summer months.

So now we begin afresh. There is something to the newness of creating a new schedule for a new year. Every year is different as each year the children have grown in different ways. This year Maura joins the big group. Last year was her first year of formal schooling and Kaley graciously tutored her for me in between her internship for most of the year. That gave me a chance to work with the 4 other children as a group and chase toddlers while Maura was able to receive lots of fairy tales and stories that are special to a first year of school. That worked well for us last year. I don't know that it will ever work out that way again. This year Max and Josiah are older and play more quietly while we are reading.

So this year I have modified year 6 of ambleside for 5 children ages 7-13. This will be a transition year for my 13yo. Each term he will be adding more independent work. Next year most of his history and literature will be separate from the younger children. There are certain subjects we will always do as a group, such as: Shakespeare, Plutarch, geography, poetry, nature study, composer and art study as well as some reading aloud.

I delight in getting books in the mail, hunting down used books and mapping out our days. I do tend to pile a lot on our plates and sometimes have to pare down. I think of the first schedule I make as my most optimistic attempt. If life flowed gently and easily this is what we would do. I try to hold it lightly in my grasp as I know some of it might not work or might need to be tweaked. That just has to be okay. I do feel it is important to have a broad liberal curriculum. Just as we need lots of variety of healthy foods for our bodies, our minds need lots of ideas to work on.

The most challenging thing for me about scheduling our year was not choosing books or deciding which subjects to teach but how to teach such a spread of ages without burning myself out. I appreciate Charlotte Mason saying how much easier it was to teach a class of children on the same level as a few children all at different ages and levels. The hardest thing for me is meeting everyone's needs and not wearing myself out. I love what I do! I don't want to get burnt out. I like to think of our home school as a one room school house. Because it is! But somehow that helps me plan it out a little better. Maybe I'm still pretending I'm Laura Ingalls...



Maybe more like this:



or this:



Minus the victorian clothes. If you stopped by, I'd probably be in capris and flip flops. With sumatra coffee in my hand. And I'd make you some, too.

Summer

Summer around here means lots of daddy time! We are doing a lot as a family and have had family in town. I have also been reflecting and gearing up for our new school year. The Childlight USA conference in June has given me many ideas to chew on. My biggest idea is remembering that my children are people, fully formed and Image bearers. That is such a big idea! It affects our whole family life and the spirits of our children greatly. Do we talk to them, treat them and act with them as people? Or are they less than? Second class? Of course they do not have equal privileges as adults but they are due respect as persons.

People are too apt to use children as counters in a game, to be moved hither and thither according to the whim of the moment. Our crying need to-day is less for a better method of education than for an adequate conception of children,––children, merely as human beings, whether brilliant or dull, precocious or backward. CM vol 6 ch 5

The second big idea was getting out of the way of ideas and the children. I know these things! But I desperately need to be reminded of them. The conference is rejuvenating for me every year in so many ways. For school but also for me spiritually. All these big ideas change me as a person as well.

"We hold that the child's mind is no mere sac to hold ideas but is rather, if the figure may be allowed, a 'spiritual organism' with an appetite for all knowledge. This is its proper diet with which it is prepared to deal and what it is able to digest and assimilate as the body does food-stuffs."
"Such a doctrine as the Herbartian, that the mind is a receptacle, lays the stress of education, the preparation of food in enticing morsels, duly ordered, upon the teacher. Children taught on this principle are in danger of receiving much teaching but little knowledge; the teacher's axiom being 'what a child learns matters less than how he learns it.'" CM vol 1 ch 7
I have been greatly enjoying a new water color set I bought for myself. It is a travel set and I can keep it in my purse or a backpack. I have done so many more dry brush paintings in my nature journal. I am slowly getting better. I would like to find one just a wee bit smaller for each of the children.
Here is mine


This is the one I am thinking about for the children

I am finding that having good quality supplies is so important to the way we not only feel about our work, but also how the children see that they are perceived. They feel valued and that I see their work as important when they have quality supplies. We also value their work more and are careful with it and save it. What treasures we are building!