HomeSchooling
That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not alone and isolated from anyone. You belong. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Outdoor Hour Challenge. IV.
Here’s what I have learned to love about the weekly Outdoor Hour Challenge: 1. My desire to complete a goal and write a post about it has encouraged me to be regular and routine in our Nature Hikes and Nature Notes. 2. The kids look forward to Tuesday walks more than I do. 3. The regular walks have been a great excuse to take weekly photos of the kids, the yard and our school progress. Because I am joining the Outdoor Hour Challenge late in the game, I am currently working my way through the first ten “getting started” challenges before joining the challenges right where they are. But I’m…
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Outdoor Hour Challenge. III.
The Outdoor Hour Challenge has really helped direct our time spent on nature hikes each week. And since we joined the challenge already in progress I decided to take their advice and walk though the “getting started” challenges listed on the website. It’s been good advice. It’s reminded me of the hows and the whys of using The Handbook of Nature Study as our guide and it has served me well to give me direction and accountability in what I am attempting to accomplish through our weekly jaunts outside. Last week we used our words to describe what we saw and heard. On this walk I choose to combine both…
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words, not drawings.
These warm January days have been a gift. Sitting on our porch last week the kids and I were supposed to be working on our Nature Study drawings. The kids colored and drew steadily. But I didn’t draw that afternoon. Instead, I picked words over drawings. …… Blue, blue, so bright it burns. Mistletoe, woodpeckers and the sound of the mourning dove. “It mimics an owl,” London explains. And already she knows more than me. A kind of success, I think. We sit at the abandoned red table on the porch’s sunny side and even though it’s January, it’s warm and beautiful. And so so bright bright it almost burns.…
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a real thursday.
What is it about a plan, anyway? Seems like whenever you make one, it goes awry. Our homeschool’s motto is stolen directly from Charlotte Mason. I am. I can. I ought. I will. I get the first three. No problem there. It’s the stinkin’ “I will” that always throws me for a loop. It’s not the man getting me down, it’s me. This week I have once again renewed my efforts to establish a daily routine and a nearly-hourly plan for our days. (These schedules have ebbed and flowed for me over the many years of homeschooling, in accordance with our lives and the number of children running around in…
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Outdoor Hour Challenge. II.
We completed our second round with the Outdoor Hour Challenge. The week before we headed outside to begin our journey and this week it wasn’t even the least bit difficult to convince the kids to don their boots and jackets and slip outside. We are taking our hikes right after lunch so it’s a been a fabulous motivator to clear the table and tidy the kitchen in a hurry. Our assignment was Challenge #2: Using Your Words. And do you know what we didn’t do on our walk? Use our words. Get it? Oh, the irony. The assignment was to be quiet, to listen, to observe. We spent over…
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mosely. miracles. in the middle.
Can I just talk about this one for a little while? She is sweet and sharp and sensitive. Mosely is clever and brave and the only person in our home willing to kill spiders for the rest of us weaklings when Daddy’s at work. She is eight years old, a second grader and a struggling reader. The teaching of reading, the concept of words on paper, has been a struggle for Mosely since kindergarten. We both watched London catch the reading fever in full swing around first grade. And then we both watched Bergen conquer words like nobody’s business the first day of kindergarten. And there she was. Mosely. Middle.…
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Outdoor Hour Challenge. 1.
I’ve been using the Handbook of Nature Study as a reference guide for as many years as I have been homeschooling. And our family has been compiling nature journals and keeping nature notes and taking nature hikes as a routine part of our school work. Probably about a year ago I linked from a friend’s blog to the site of a homeschooling mother who uses the Handbook of Nature Study to inspire her family and others to take a weekly Outdoor Hour Challenge. You can explore the website yourself (and you should) but the basic idea is for a family to go outside together once a week on a nature…
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good words.
“After all, what is the chief sign of feeling old? Is it not the feeling that we know all there is to be known? It is not years which make people old; it is ruts, and a limitation of interests. When we no longer care about anything except our own interests, we are then old, it matters not whether our years be twenty or eighty.” -from the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock
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a little educational facilities tour.
The School of Keigley has officially reopened its doors after a brief hiatus. (Still trying to rename our school, by the way. We think we have settled upon a better name option, but all parties involved have not come to complete agreement yet.) New calendar year, new location. And let me just say, despite the lower indoor temperatures, I love our little school room. The color is bright (turquoise) and the space is large and we can make a mess and shut the door without cleaning up when it’s time to eat dinner. I’m still working on some finer details and have quite a bit more art to display on…
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My New Favorite Title.
Last week it was eighteen first graders in Bergen’s Class. This week it was seventeen four-year-old’s in Willow’s co-op class. The day was long but it was really oh-so-sweet. What a privilege it was to watch my child interact with her tiny peers. To see her serve as the helper and offer all of her classmates a squirt of hand sanitizer as they headed to lunch. To eat lunch with her at the same table and to feel her wee little hand pat my hand as I walked by her seat. I was the helper, of course, so my task was to help. To help paint seventeen small hands with…
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lessons learned
Yesterday I volunteered at the kids’ homeschool co-op. I was a helper in Bergen’s first grade class. 18 first graders. One very rainy day. No outside play time. This is what I learned. Surprisingly, I really like a large group of first graders. They were funny, unpretentious, happy and kind. Clorox wipes remove magic marker stains from school tables. Super grateful for this when Boy in the Orange Shirt decided to color his two-inch Russian nesting doll with eight markers crammed into his fist at once. A six-year-old can almost run faster than me. We played race games in the gym at recess. I wasn’t letting her win. I was…
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you look great today.
This woman has no idea how her words affected me. She’s basically a stranger to me. Monday mornings are the busiest mornings of our week. It’s our home school co-op day and that means a substantial shift in the morning routine for us. Six kids need to be out the door and in the car by 8:15. (And in a non-home school world, 8:15 is no biggie. I hear you. But in our world – it is.) Prior to the departure of all six children there are lunches to be packed, shoes to locate, homework to be accounted for, breakfast to be served, children to be clothed and some surprise…
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even at the week’s start . . .
I just feel so busy lately. So pressed for time. Stumbling to the bed every night, too tired to wash my face or to finish a chapter of my current novel. Neglecting e-mails and phone calls and forgetting friends’ birthdays and kids’ extra assignments. Not always seeing these little men for the wonders they actually are. Exhausted, yet endlessly feeling as if I somehow did not get enough done. As if I should somehow stay up later, do more, work harder. It has been a tiring season of life. Soccer. School. Preparing for a move. (And by preparing I mean, thinking that I should be preparing, trying to purge possessions…
