The big picture of the littlest big town.

So here is a question for you, how do you keep the "big picture" when in the daily trenches of homeschooling?

There are good days and there are bad days. There are days we are excited about learning, and days we just want to make a nest and forget about it. There are times I feel good about the educational path we have chosen, and times when I question. Overall homeschooling is good, I feel like this is what we are suppose to do as a family, what my kids need. I wish I had all the answers and alot more patience. I like to make plans but I also know plans are made to be broken in the name of doing what our family and our kids need. I long for stability, I pray for it.

Sometimes the best thing to do is to step back, look at the big picture and breath in the awe of it!

I thought THIS was an excellent article and THIS too!

While I am not a big fan of all the moving around we've been doing it does lend to some great field trips we would have otherwise never seen!

Riley was recently learning about fresh water biomes, now we have a house full of beach babies with the exception of transplant Dan and our Connecticut babe so we headed over to Lake Tahoe! It is relatively close, we had to buy chains which was a little crazy (after living in New England and never needing them)! It was beautiful, the kids tasted the water to prove it was indeed "fresh" (I am hoping they did not get some weird twitching disease). We learned that most of the pines up there are Jeffery pines, but there are also Ponderosa pines! We are looking forward to going again when it is warm!

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We are finishing up our Oak Meadow books with the boys (Fern still has a bit more), and then the boys and I will be working on a few things that they need extra work on, things we did not get to, and things we just plain want to do! Since getting here and s-l-o-w-l-y unpacking I threw up my hands and simplified things. If you remember when we started this year I had grand ideas for Family Studies along with our Oak Meadow, I also choose not to do a couple subjects from Oak Meadow but to incorporate those in our family time. Well I have just stuck with our Oak Meadow and so we have been actually doing and enjoying our school time as I am not so stressed and busy (aka: overwhelmed). :) When pondering about this I recently thought of the Conference talk by Elder Oaks, Good, Better, Best. All the things I want my kids to learn are good, but sanity is even better!

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Oak Meadow is having their Spring Sale through the end of the month, every year I procrastinate and think I'll get a better deal on Amazon or Ebay. But really it's not that much better and lately it seems that there is less and less to find. I really do prefer to buy used books for many reasons, but with the new editions being near the same price of the old and the thought of less run around for me... I think the sale will win out for the first time. It is also nice to think of having the new books all summer to become familiar with, and just yesterday I found some of the chapter books on Riley's reading list at Goodwill for .65 cents each! 3 more to watch for!! Oh and we found this AWESOME book store this week (scroll down to the photos-just the store)!!!

Well we are officially official!

Now just to remember to be official with Fern in a couple years! :) ~ I have never been a real structured P.E. curriculum kind of gal, I don't plan any. There always seems to be a little built into our other learning activities and if you know my kids they are plenty active! Up until our move here Riley was taking Jui -Jitsu and loving it too bad there is not a studio here. :( We also enjoy hiking as a family or even just going for a walk around the neighborhood. But this week we have an all new kind of P.E., the gas-is-really-expensive kind! In our effort to reduce our gas consumption and therefor cost the boys and I rode our bikes to the co-op 2 miles away and back to get a few odds and ends we needed. And then today the kids and I (and our trusty wagon) made our way to the grocery store on the corner, 1 mile away to do a little shopping, poor Fern had to walk all the way home as there was no room for her, Leili, and the groceries!! :) That is my kind of exercising, puts $ in our pocket, we get something done, & it wares out my kids!!

I have all my paper work for this new state all completed and sealed in an envelope. Now to go to the post office and send it registered. Whew! Glad it will be done soon, although I will have to do more once Fern is 7.

I also figured we should get back to it, and since I had everything out doing my paperwork I started planning to get back to regular schooling Monday.

But I found a funny thing when I opened our Oak Meadow books. When I was planning last August I knew we could not buy new curriculum books, and we still had lessons to do from our last curriculum books so I just went with what I had. Well I found yesterday that we only have 4 lessons left for each of the boys! A few more for Fern as I started from the beginning of her book. So I guess the plan is to finish in the next four weeks and then to fill in and do a little extra fun learning and finish Fern up as well. Now yes that means that Riley never got to do the "4th grade" book this year but I think that I will just plan on buying the 4th grade curriculum for the fall (OH HOW NICE TO BE ABLE TO BUY THINGS WE NEED AGAIN!!), but continue to consider him in 4th this year and 5th next year. Because really does it matter?

It is encouraging and exciting to think of being finished before too long! The light at the end of the tunnel is MOST WELCOMED! And it is so exciting to think of buying school supplies!! I am such a nerd!! :)

Well we have not gotten quite back to regular schooling yet, but we have been finding a little time to do a little formal learning! Riley has grumbly been working on his cursive, yes we live in a digital age why would kids need to learn cursive?? Some schools have stopped teaching it, but sorry babes in our family your not getting out of it!! I think it is still a valuable talent and so I continue to annoy my kids! :)

Jake has been VERY interested in watches and telling time lately, so the other day when I got a lovely quiet hour with Jake we sat down and he learned how to tell time! He did AMAZING and we had tons of fun together. Today we bought the coveted first watch! It helped that he LOVES to count by 5's, now he has a reason to do it all the time!

*cool clock stamp from Lakeshore, I bought it way back before Riley learned to tell time! I TOTALLY scored at Goodwill last week in the book department! I went to get some good books to donate to a kids shelter in town, but I found a few that needed to come home with me too! :) I found this set of Beatrix Potter books, they are not all there, but there are plenty of good ones! Today we read Mr. Jeremy Fisher! I love that one!! I also found The Twits by Roald Dahl, I love his writing. The boys and I finished The Twits last night, they loved it. I also found old copies of Cricket Magazine from the 70's, I think I may go back for more! Talk about making modern kids reading look like "twaddle", "twaddle", "twaddle"!! ~ Did I type "LOVE" too much today or what!? Better than hate I guess!!

Just a quick post! We are on hiatus from school due to moving and settling, new state, new laws, new, new, new! I'll be back!

And the SPRING Rhythm of the Home is up! Hooray!!

(Jake making a cloud)

This can be a hard time for most homeschoolers, cabin fever, spring fever, burn out... It is funny for me I usually feel a renewed desire to read about homeschooling and asses how things are going, whats working whats not. Then I pin Dan down for the "how's schooling going" talk, he has alluded me so far... I'll get him soon!

So things are working pretty well, Riley (always the one who has been more of a challenge to school) is getting older and I am wondering if he is needing things a little different. It is also difficult with him because he is getting older and needs more Independence and more interesting (deeper?) material, but although he reads just fine he does not enjoy it. He is also not a big fan of much writing. I know these things will come, and I am ok with letting him develop on his own terms. But how do I meet his needs in the mean time? He has no patience for me to read his assignments to him, but needs something.

Jake is awesome, he loves "reading"! And most of his assignments are fun for him to spend time with me and feel good about what he's accomplished. But boy is he a wiggly guy! It is a good thing he is not confined to a desk and chair for hours everyday!!!

Fern is SO opinionated! We have always started our school time together doing some rhymes/fingerplay/singing, but lately she has refused to do this. Not bad or anything just weird. She has also taught herself most of the lowercase alphabet, I have not introduced it and usually don't until first grade. She has her own way! :)

Leili, well she is lots of fun, but we have mostly started doing a good amount of our school work when she is sleeping! I'm sure you can imagine why. She just LOVES to do anything the big kids are doing, and they just LOVE her (except when she is stilling on their drawing stealing their crayons).

This got a little long winded, so I'll end with a couple links!

New Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival is up!

Two great articles from the Thomas Jefferson Newsletter this week too!

Riley painted these pictures when we were learning about our area's natural resources. He chose to paint an orange tree (he is LOVING all the local citrus), and the beach (who does not want to visit San Diego Beaches)!

Yes, school does still go on even when I don't take pictures or blog! :) Leili has become a little more challenging during our times when she can not be included, like say when we are using the microscope. Leili loves to get on the table when we are working! But luckily she is also now starting to enjoy somethings that are conducive to school time, like "reading" books, and coloring. She does not color much but is happy to join us at the table and hold crayons!! :)

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Next?

Science, kitchen style!

So what happens when bread gets forgotten?

Look at the up close of some of the spores on the underside of the bowl, cool hu!!
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School is going pretty well, we have taken a week off here and there for fun on the fly kind of learning! The planning I did during the summer has worked well, and if all goes as planned we should be starting our second quarter with the new year!
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There is the Winter Edition of Rhythm of the Home up (great stuff for Solstice, and lots of other things). And the new Oak Meadow Newsletter is up, I have not read it yet!!

I have always planned on having something better to use as math manipulatives than our plastic pattern blocks but just never saw anything that clicked....until! I saw someone use wooden acorns! So I searched and finally found unfinished ones for .65 a piece, not bad. Then I painted them this week 15 green-ish, and 15 brown. They will be so much warmer in our hands then plastic (ya'll know how I feel about plastic right?!)!!

I LOVE the Oak Meadow math, they use the stories about the four gnomes like many Waldorf curriculums and acorns just fit right in with gnomes and squirrels and such!! In THIS pdf of an overview of the first grade curriculum on page 10 there is a continuation of the gnome story, introducing King Equal if your interested. And I found another mama's short explanation of the gnomes that I thought was really well written:

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- Plus wears green, is kinda chubby, moves slowly yet is lucky at finding things, is kind-hearted and he always collects extra jewels/acorns/whatever to share with his friend Minus.

- Minus wears blue, is sorta skinny with holes in his clothes and sack - I don't think it is Waldorf but I gave him a sort of monkish, kind and holy demeanor. He constantly drops things out of his sack, but I always took the story farther - like the dropped acorn becomes the last one that a squirrel needs to feed his family of babies; or the dropped jewel ends up buying dinner for a poor family, etc.

- Times is quick and light & weightless like a flame - usually wears yellow - and he always tends to find things in groups of the same number.

- Divide wears deep red color and is very wise. He tends to help everyone divide up the jewels equally among the king's knights or divide up the acorns evenly among the squirrels - each family getting the same amount. (Remainders are fun for Minus to think of kind things to do with.)

-King or Queen Equal is your child. They get to use the acorns, the gnomes, and other things to help them find answers - at first just helping count out the manipulatives, but eventually on their own.

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I think I will make some little gnomes to help us in our math too, sorry Dan another trip to the craft store!! :)

Ahh, the many faces of homeschooling!

Isn't it GREAT!!!

The most recent Oak Meadow Newsletter is out, I really enjoyed the article about boredom (I could write my own story about the neighborhood ditch!), and the craft looks fun!

Two weeks under our belts, only thirty four or so more to go! Whew!! Sorry I have tried 3 times to get this photo the right way to no avail, so twist your head to the side!

Here is just a little peek at the books we've been enjoying!

And finally our year on paper...

We have some really great books to help us with all this fun learning, some we own already, a couple we bought, and of course what is a homeschooler without a library card!!!
Riley is still a little bit tough to get him to read. He does well when he reads, he just does not enjoy it much yet! So right now he is working on The Boxcar Children re-done into a "graphic novel" (look it up if you have not seen one there crazy)!
Jacob is doing so well on his "word families" aka: beginning reading! And he is working so diligently on his writing that it is greatly improving!!

Sweet Fern, well many of the stories used for introducing the alphabet are the Beatrix Potter stories, Fern loves them and I love them!! Oak meadow has provided a Kindergarten story book with them all in it, but our library has those cute (and expensive) mini Potter book set. And it is just too fun to hold a cute little book, so we checked a few out!

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You should be able to click on these and enlarge them to see them a bit more clearly... I am always happy to share let me know if you want any more info!!

T.G.I.F.

Happy Weekend!!

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Fall Rhythm of the Home is up!!

New Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival

Where are you?

We are 17 days away!

From starting our new school year!

I am still feverishly getting organized, I am working hard to keep our buying down but I do need to buy a couple books and main lesson books, guess I better get on that! :)

But here are a couple links I thought I'd share! Here is one I found off Lindafay over on Higher Up and Further In about a Great Books Curriculum, I am interested in reading this site, our college used a great books curriculum and we really liked it. Should be an interesting reading.

Also there is a new Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival up! Yea!

Hope your last days of summer lovely!

How is your Fall planning going?

Easy as pie? Hard as stones?

I am somewhere in between, reading sites like THIS and of course THIS. Looking at our Oak Meadow stuff, last year was a hard year so we will not need new Oak Meadow books. Our math, beginning reading, ABC's, and language arts will be from there. Our History, literature, nature study/science, artist and composer study, & habit/character development will be mostly Charlotte Mason inspired with some mama inspiration! :)

Many of the subjects will be learned with the whole family! But I have not put any planning on paper, I am still in the brain/reading part of my planning.

For the summer we have been reading Michelangelo by Diane Stanley along with a picture of his works (the David this week), we also started the Bard of Avon also by Diane Stanley. I am planning to also begin reading The Scottish Play, (Macbeth) from Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit. I highly recommend reading LindaFay's articles on reading Shakespeare! I LOVE Shakespeare!!! I am dreaming of going HERE!

Summer has just started and we have our summer nature basket started. We have a nature basket instead of a nature table these days hopefully someday it will morph back into a table. We spent the evening of the Summer Solstice at the beach where we picked up a couple new things for our basket. Yea for summer!!

On another note with all the upheaval and homelessness we are schooling through the summer as we are painfully behind, life! So hopefully we don't get too much sunny day fever and we actually do get some work done! :) So stay tuned!!

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And the BEACH EDITION of the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival is up! Looks like good reading!

~ The Reading Mother ~

by Strickland Gillilan

I had a mother who read to me

Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea.

Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth;

"Blackbirds" stowed in the hold beneath.

I had a Mother who read me lays

Of ancient and gallant and golden days;

Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe,

Which every boy has a right to know.

I had a Mother who read me tales

Of Gelert the hound of the hills of Wales,

True to his trust till his tragic death,

Faithfulness lent with his final breath.

I had a Mother who read me the things

That wholesome life to the boy heart brings-

Stories that stir with an upward touch.

Oh, that each mother of boys were such!

You may have tangible wealth untold;

Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.

Richer than I you can never be -

-I had a Mother who read to me.

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We're reading The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, what are you reading?

A couple weeks ago the local library had an Family Art Day! We went not knowing what to expect, free for all art? No they had stations and a theme. The theme was Mexican Folk Art (to go with the museum exhibit), so we got to make corn husk dolls, paper flowers, and masks. The kids had tons of fun and I think it added a couple more things to our bag of tricks, we would make them again at home (the kids want to for Day of the Dead decorations). Here is Jake making his paper flower, they were beautiful! THIS set is similar to what they had for us to use,ANOTHER and HERE is directions to make your own corn husk doll!

And the new SUMMER edition of RHYTHM OF THE HOME is up!! I love to read these!! :)

I know you can not see it, but Leili's shirt says, "Nature is my classroom! Homeschooling Rocks!" It was a sweet hand me down from a good friend. :)

As there are seasons in our year there are also seasons in our lives, and this season has been rough on our schooling. Don't get me wrong my kids are learning plenty just different. During times like these I am thankful for the unmindful occurrence of ending up in unschooling play groups. It helps me remember that my kids are always learning, always. So while I juggle a baby and deal with the unrest of unemployment and homelessness, I try to find comfort in knowing that this is just for a season, all too soon we will have a good rhythm and be getting a little more book learning in. Oh but as I have learned from so many cherished unschooling friends, we will leave room for the natural learning that takes place in the home. Isn't that why we homeschool?? :)

There are two Charlotte Mason Carnivals up! I can't wait to read them both!! One is a Walk in the Desert (did you see ours on our Nature Blog?), And the other Carnival Here!

I have been teaching Fern many "action songs" as they are called around here this year. And one of my favorites from when I was a kid is "Popcorn Popping On The Apricot Tree", my parents even planted a couple apricot trees outside my bedroom window! So on our recent road trip to Grandma's I was blissfully reminded of this song as it seemed her whole yard was blooming!

It seems to me that kids just don't know rhymes and songs like I did. (Unless you count the Dora theme, I don't) So I have tried to be consciously teaching my kids Mother Goose rhymes and other classic children's... knowledge? Is that the right word? Anyway here is a little popcorn popping for your enjoyment!

I have recently gotten a little bit creative with Riley and his school work. Don't get me wrong, I want to challenge him but I don't want to suffocate him. So I change things to pique his interest and draw him in. For example... Instead of making a list of thins that come from trees, I gave him my camera and asked him to take pictures of things that come from trees. He then drew a picture of it in his main lesson book.

And here is a fun project, after reading a story about a family moving west to homestead we got out Grandpa's Lincoln Logs and made a homestead of our own! Too bad all our little animal figures are in a box somewhere that would have been fun!!

Really I have taken to heart the TJed phrase of "love of learning not hate of learning", Riley knows how to write, he is pretty good at it but he just does not enjoy it. If I force it what will I accomplish? Not much more than squashing his enjoyment of learning and damage our relationship. He will write, he will learn to push himself. But he needs to first learn it is worth it!