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!