{Mixed Bag} :: Summer 2016 + Planning

May

I was fortunate to have been able to attend AmblesideOnline's Deep in the Heart of AO Conference this past May and be blessed by inspirational sessions with AO Advisory (like Donna-Jean's referenced here. Purchase a copy of all uploaded plenaries here!) ... as well as by a few chats with new, real-life friends. 

with Amy

with Dawn & Jen

One realization that hit me hard was that these people with kids my children's ages seemed to be much better about not only spreading a tasty educational feast before them, but also much more practical in the use of their time on lessons. During this term, I felt we were on a downward spiral, headed toward a catastrophic crash and burn. I realized I was trying to do too much, but didn't know how to cut back. I needed to spend some time focusing on this issue and be ok with not doing it all.

The Monday following the conference I was needed in completing a project here at camp by the end of the week that required lots of my time and effort. Enter "Bare Bones Schooling". I had no time to pre-read lessons or prep printed schedules. (It was that crazy!) Thus I began writing assignments in personal spiral notebooks on a day-to-day basis, which the kids said they actually liked better! Basically I assigned two readings, math, copywork, free reading, piano practice, a cleaning chore and outside play during this season.


June

Summer camping season was officially underway and my husband's work schedule, as usual, changes drastically so his "weekends" were days like Tuesday-Wednesday or the like, therefore affecting when we did lessons. In addition, Alice participated in volleyball camp:

Royal's 10th birthday was this month:

And there were a few planned activities with friends. My goal of finishing up the term by the end of the month was effectively pushed back. (I think all these outside events was God telling me to chill out and be more flexible!)


July

We were able to get away for 3 days (a rarity in summer!) during the 4th of July.

In addition, Royal attended a basketball camp, all kids enjoyed a week of Vacation Bible School, the two oldest went to RA and GA Camp (here at our facility) AND I went through a week-and-a-half of Lifeguard/CPR/First Aid/AED certification.

It's been a long time since I have had to attend class, study and take tests. I am exhausted!

We did finally finish our term on July 16 and I have seriously been re-grouping and re-evaluating how I schedule and organize lessons and general daily routines. I have appreciated Kathy Livingston's posts here, here and here (there are more if you want to rummage around in her organization posts) on how she works through her scheduling. I have taken that basic idea and translated it into something workable for our family. Basically I went through the entire term's selections and broke them into daily, manageable readings. (Each "O" is a reading session, taking anywhere from 10-20 minutes each, including oral narrations)

**Keep in mind we school 4 days per week to leave a day for Nature Study, Spanish class with friends and piano lessons.

Royal's Year 4, Term 3:

Royal has no more than 12 independent readings per week. I did a tiny bit of shuffling to ensure he stays at (or under) 3 independent readings per day.
At the end of each day we select one of the "Reading Rotation with Mom" listings.

Alice's Year 2, Term 3:

Alice has no more than 9 readings per week. She still depends on me to read everything to her.
A small amount of shuffling ensures she stays at (or under) 3 readings per day.

I also was initially inspired on including Morning Basket work from Jennifer and Celeste. The idea is beautiful. It brings us all together to learn as a family and is also a great way to help schedule for peace and unity. I am going to try Morning Basket in two separate sessions next term: 

Morning Basket I:

Utilizing "Loop/Rotation" readings and activities, we should stay at 6-7 per day during this Morning Basket block.
I imagine the poetry reading will get included with our Snack Time most likely.

To make it a bit easier in prepping for the next Spanish lessons/themes, I prepared a chart that I have printed to jot down ideas for various components of the language learning process (vocabulary, series, videos, stories, songs, activities and then copywork selections).

Morning Basket II:

This is the looping portion of our Morning Basket.
Combining Parables from Nature, Trial & Triumph and a Shakespeare play (to be done Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays on a rotation),
I can include Alice's Term 2 Parables we didn't get to and also begin to work on Shakespeare together instead of separately.

Finally, I have taken Brandy's and Celeste's Average Day Chart helps and referred to them as templates in coming up with one for our family. At this point in time, I would LOVE an Average Day!!! I long for this, but perhaps God wanted to turn me upside down and shake all the un-necessary junk out of my pockets so we could get back to a more meaningful, less burdensome educational journey.

And to finish out the month:

A little pickling using our garden produce...

...and a trip to the aquarium.

Now to finalized preparations for our upcoming family vacation.

Woo-hoo!

{Mixed Bag} :: What We've Been up to Lately

Lots of happenings over here in Beracá Valley the past couple of months...

~Royal got his much-anticipated puppy. He has been wanting a dog for some time, and his grandparents surprised him at Christmas. It's a Blue Lacy, the State Dog of Texas. Read about this impressive breed here and here if you're interested!

...............................

~My littlest munchkin is growing up! We celebrated 'Manzo's 4th birthday at the end of January with a blueberry muffin breakfast and Star Wars light saber cake later that evening with family :-)

...............................

~As we were working one afternoon at the dining table, a cardinal crashed into our window. Royal went out to inspect and determine the bird's state. The cardinal must have been pretty dazed because he was statuesque for a good 5 minutes, just blinking his eyes and slightly turning his head. Notice our dog sitting so close as well!

...............................

~Alice had received a cornhusk doll kit for Christmas. We worked on putting this project together a couple of afternoons. She turned out really cute for our first attempt!

...............................

~We have been reading Madam How and Lady Why in our Year4 lessons. It has been interesting all the connections to nature we are making: chines/ravines...glens/valleys, metals, etc.

Little "chines"

We figured this clump of dirt/clay has iron in it due to the rusty colored layers

...............................

~One Saturday we attended a Feather Fest event, which included making pinecone bird feeders, native plant seed balls, observing birds through the park's new bird blind, and learning more about raptors.

...............................

~And a wet walk this past weekend. It has been unseasonably warm here this winter in Texas, with very little rain; however, this Sunday was wonderfully wet! We went on a family hike at our favorite state park and just reveled in the warm showers, getting completely soaked in the process! I was reminded of how Charlotte Mason encouraged us to get outdoors even in "imperfect" weather conditions and found this wonderful quote of hers on the subject:

A mere time and distance tramp is sufficiently joyous for a wet day, for, taken good-humouredly, the beating rain itself is exhilarating.

-Vol 1, p88 

~And I leave you with another fun, rainy-day image... 

My Valentine and I were blessed with an afternoon kid-free, so we were able to enjoy the last day of the Caillebotte exhibit at our art museum.

...............................

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.

I hope your New Year has gotten off to a good start as well!

{Mixed Bag} :: What We've Been up to Lately

I have completely fallen off the blog-wagon the past few weeks. I think it has been a combination of variables: new friends, the addition of piano lessons alongside the addition of hosting our friends once a week for Spanish co-op, volleyball season and then buckling down to get a bathroom remodeled and functioning before the holidays. Oh, and then me just trying to read more for my own personal growth and enjoyment. (This is a habit I am trying to re-instill.) It seems that since my kids have entered the world, my reading habits dropped off the face of the earth for several years. Eek. Embarrassing, but true.

We are just finishing up Term 3 of Years 1 and 3 and will do Exams next week, so I will list a few of the things we've been doing these past few weeks and hopefully get back into a better routine of including a post here and there on a weekly basis or so. I am always so impressed with some of you ladies who manage to do so much with your family and find time to share everything you are doing!


September

:: After twisting Alice's arm to try volleyball, she ended up loving it from the start. It was a lot of fun and brought back quite a few memories and emotions from when I used to play "back in the day". 

:: Family camping trip down river. We felt like Lewis & Clark for the one mile we ventured downstream to our camping spot ;-) 

 It really was fun packing our things on the boat and roughing it for a night of primitive camping. We even had a copperhead scare right before bed. Thankfully Royal saw the snake and knew what it was. He came a-screaming "Copperhead! Copperhead!" Dad, fortunately, had brought his weapon of choice just in case and took care of things right quickly. Besides that, we enjoyed hearing coyotes howling in the distance as we lay in our tent trying to get to sleep. 

It was somewhat creepy, but since they were across the river, I felt a little better. I really don't know how frontiersmen and pioneers lived like this day in and day out. I am thankful for an insulated house with running water and modern conveniences for sure! I do have to say, though, it was amazing watching the full moon rise that night, as well as the sunrise the next morning. Beautiful.

:: Birth of a Monarch!

















October
:: Some cool nature observations just outside our doors at home ... 

a yellow-bellied sapsucker:

a little brown skink:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  & a green frog of some sort:

:: Handicrafting in preparation for Christmas gifting

:: Another camping adventure, this time a trip with truck and trailer to a state park in northeast Texas. A gorgeous place. We got to see loblolly and short leaf pine trees, red maples, sweetgums, sassafras, eastern redcedars, bald cypress, boxelders, smooth sumacs, ferns, beauty berries, eastern gray squirrels, a downy woodpecker and massive caterpillars that kept falling from the treetops (found out later they turn into Imperial Moths)  ... most things we don't see just 4 hours away! Amazing.

:: bathroom tiling & grouting

:: and most recently a Little House in the Big Woods production to perform for family members. This was all Royal's idea. He went through the first part of the book and picked out the parts he wanted to include, typed them up and I printed them out. He recruited our friends to join in so as to have lots of characters: Pa, Ma, Mary, Laura, Jack the dog & Uncle Henry - both played by Almanzo :-) - and a wolf! A baby doll was used for Baby Carrie.

So, besides our regularly scheduled lessons, we have been enjoying life and living fully in it!

Thanks for stopping by for a visit :-)

The Switchman

Many are the plans in a person’s heart,
    but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.

Proverbs 19:21

I begin each school week with high ambitions to accomplish much. Sometimes, things derail, or rather the Switchman puts us on a different track. I think that is what happened to us this week. But I am fairly certain it turned out more fruitful than anything we may otherwise have done.

Our usual Day 1 (Tuesday) was scratched because Daddy had an extra day off and I was still recovering from the weekend's birthday festivities for Alice (now 7!)

Wednesday (this week's Day 1), we managed to get everything done in a timely manner, with just a few minutes to spare before three friends arrived for their first Spanish lesson. Royal and Alice joined in with their friends while Almanzo napped, and we had a fun time of singing and playing and acting out things in the foreign language.

Thursday also went well. It was a shorter day, lesson-wise, so we got everything done. This afternoon, Royal decided he wanted to sew some buttons on his pajama pants to make them look like thermal underwear or something (like in the olden days), so I let him. The plan for his handicraft was to do some leatherwork with his Grandpa this evening while Alice was at volleyball practice... Well apparently Grandpa was watching a show on the Alaskan frontier and so the leatherwork didn't get touched. Royal enjoyed it, of course. (And it just fueled his desire to be a backwoodsman when he grows up).

Friday for some reason didn't work out to be as efficient and we ended up having to postpone a couple of lessons (Parables of Nature and A Drop of Water) because we were running behind and needed to get to our first piano lesson by 2:30. Oh, and Almanzo refused to nap today. But I was able to coax him into at least staying in his room to play until I went to get him. (I think we must be transitioning into the age of no-daily-naps soon, sniff-sniff).

The first piano lessons went great and the kids enjoyed them. This is really a God-send and I thank the Lord for sending us our new friends and neighbors. Our kids play well together and we both homeschool. I bought our keyboard from them, and now my friend teaches our kids piano in exchange for me teaching her kids Spanish. Sweet!

Saturday we had early volleyball games. My plan was to return home to do a regular day of school; however, the weather was SO glorious, I just couldn't bear to be inside at the table. I sent the children outside for the remainder of the morning to play and explore until lunch. As it happened, they chanced upon a wonderful patch of milkweed vine with a number of monarch caterpillars! 

I toted the nature journals out there and had a little impromptu nature study, talking about the visual difference between a Queen and a regular Monarch caterpillar. 

Alice's sketch

Isn't this just the cutest sketch ever?!?

We saw 2 Queens and one Monarch. The children wanted to bring one inside to our habitat, but as we already have one, I wanted to leave the others to enjoy their natural surroundings. I suggested we just go check on them every day. After lunch, however, Royal came rushing back to me and said the fire ants had eaten the two Queens! Fantastic. So this evening I wanted to go poking around some more out there to see if I could spy any more. Fortunately I did, and this one (also a Queen) was so tiny! I think I even found a couple of monarch egg sacs deposited underneath one of the milkweed vine leaves.

During Almanzo's nap today we did get a little school done; however, due to our morning adventures and discoveries outside, we fell far short of a full day of book-learning. But really, I am ok with that ... especially when Royal makes his own written entry in his Nature Notebook alongside his drawing and later tells me that Nature is his favorite thing and how glad he is that we don't live in a city.

Royal's sketch and entry

I have been reading a bit of what Heather over at Bent Leather has been writing this week (and in this post particularly) ... and after today's experience outside, I am further encouraged that women, children (amateurs) can take away so much more from the world of science if they are actively curious than they can from whole volumes of scientific material produced by the experts.

------------------------------

What blessings have you experienced from a week of "failed" plans?