1.
We are on a Spring Break of longish sorts, by plan and by circumstance. We are learning many things: listen to your body when it is sick and just rest some more; welcome unexpected family guests; patience while preparing the earth for spring planting when the weather fluctuates as much as it does in north Texas.
2.
Today is the Feast of St. Joseph! A burst of feast day food and fun in Lent for all of us. It is an old European Catholic tradition (Italian?) to bake special bread today. For the hard-working breadwinner St. Joe in our family, I am going to make the super-easy bread he loves that is so very appropriate for him: beer bread. :)
3.
We have a couple new horses: Joker (a blondish POA) and Rocky (another LARGE QHOA, "traded" the one we had for him).
Men and horse names... not my husband 's names, in these cases.
4.
We are planning a LEGO birthday party for this weekend. Need to do some research & send some texts. And plan for Homeschool Group at our house even sooner. We want to do something to celebrate the election of Pope Francis! Habemus Papum!!
5.
Speaking of on-line research, I am obsessed with homeschool research right now. This is how I think through where we are, where we're going. We are at a new juncture- everyone home, lots of growth in good ways, honeymoon phase over though. Ha. I find myself slowly but surely relaxing, dare I write it- tending toward "tidal schooling," as Melissa Wiley dubbed it. That seems a natural rhythm to me, one we have already somewhat followed with longer Christmas and Easter breaks than traditional school and more work in the hot summer months. However, it has been an ebb & flow that I have chosen. I'm starting, trying to listen to the kids more about schedule, curriculum choices. I'm starting to stop trying to please the everyone in my head, including the Homeschool Nay-sayers by trying to have the best of both worlds and give over to the sometimes messy, organic life that is homeschooling several children. And I mean several, Miss Mary wants to DO so much already. Girls.
6.
My thoughts are that there remains so many needs to balance and that remain in tension (creative tension on good days, stressful tension on bad ones): littles/bigs, busy days/quiet days, run-around days/home days, home life/school work, marriage/school work, directed lessons because I do know more of what they need to learn/kid-centered fun learning because, well, they respond to this better.
7.
For us, Montessori learning has always been an answer to many of the learning tensions. So, I am researching that again, to incorporate more for the bigs again, too. I've added several links in the sidebar. And for the littles, we are slowly using the NAMC Primary Curriculum & materials in-a-box I posted about. Lots of great stuff there... Something entirely new to us is an idea from a friend to have the boys lead a couple of our subjects by being the ones to decide what we need to read for discussions, what projects to do, etc. As I write this, I feel like we already do that with the fun projects for history & science, I guess I'm thinking to do this even more and with even more subjects. It would be fun to have one of them come to me to tell me to do my reading for tomorrow's discussion.
No comments:
Post a Comment