What I’m Reading: The Rosemary Tree by Elizabeth Goudge
While I would not say this book is one of my favorites, I’m really enjoying all the connections I’m making to other thoughts in my mind. In the first part of the book, Daphne is finding refuge in a rock and thinks about the hymn “Rock of Ages” and what the writer must have been going through. We are learning this hymn right now, and I have been thinking it through for the time we’ve been singing it. Over the summer, I started going through the names of God cards we would be learning and was leaning heavily upon God as refuge and strength. The concept of God as Rock and Refuge reflected in the characters and their places within The Rosemary Tree has popped out at me. Margary makes a rock connection too in chapter 8 as she sorts through John’s stamps. She says, “All this wealth of affection made a solid rock like a fortress, a place very like There” (p174). I haven’t been commonplacing other quotes in the book since there have been so many nuggets, and I have been reading the book in such small chunks as I grab at time. All of the characters have referenced their need and struggle for refuge and strength.
I would also say that this book is incredibly slow. It’s very full of character, place, and thought description. That’s typically not my favorite aspect of literature. I didn’t want to give up on the book, so I read some Goodreads reviews. One was particularly helpful in saying that the book got better a third of the way through. I’m now halfway through the book. Not having the energy to do more than sit outside, watch birds, drink coffee, and read a book was good for pushing me to this point. I’m now eager to pick up the book to see where it takes me.
What I’m {nature} Journaling: A Late Harvest
My peppers are finally fruiting, but they are so much smaller than I expected. I planted red and purple bell peppers. One purple pepper fell off early last month. I tasted it, and it was terrible. This week I harvested three red peppers and had to throw a few out that were rotting. I can’t remember if I said that I have also harvested Gold Medal tomatoes. I haven’t had a very plentiful harvest, but what I’ve picked has been so delicious. Yellow tomatoes of any kind are my favorite.
Co-op
We had our first co-op class day. I’m teaching finger knitting to second and third graders. Most of them got the hang of it. We are in an awkward space for a class that requires me to give verbal instructions to a lot of kids at once, so I’m hoping to do better with that at our next class. The first class was all about casting on, knitting, and binding off. A lot of the kids made their chains into necklaces. I think the class was successful overall because my son can now finger knit without much assistance from me.
Third Grade Highlights
We have completed half of our first term! Hooray! We did it, and I think we’re on the right track. By the time we reached midweek, I came down with a cold. BUT I was NOT about to let it hold me back from completing a full week well. And well we did. We had a completely full week of every commitment, activity, and school subject.
I never get tired of hearing my son say he loves to read. I needed to take a lot of voice breaks on Wednesday and Thursday, so my son was at the ready quick to read to me. He is reading American tall tales as part of his literature this year. Since we already read many of these when he was in first grade, I am finding picture book versions for him to read aloud to me. This week we took turns reading Pecos Bill by Steven Kellogg. I might be enjoying these tall tales even more than my son. I was retelling stories from Paul Bunyan to anyone who would listen, and now I have Pecos Bill on my mind! I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned here how much I love western American history. We’re reading so many good things to fill my heart.
Needs Improvement
Friday felt like a mix between a Monday and a Thursday. Friday started out well, so we ventured outside to enjoy the beautiful morning. I was able to fit in some reading while the children played. When we came in, I made myself a cup of tea to sooth my throat as I anticipated our morning lessons. My daughter noticed my cup of tea and insisted she needed a cup of tea. I said that I would be making tea and poetry for us later that day, but that wasn’t good enough. She NEEDED that tea NOW. I acquiesced thinking we could do a light morning snack to simplify all the prep and clean up that normally goes with tea and poetry. I made a small pot of tea and a slice of cinnamon toast for the kids. When it came time to serve the snack, my daughter was upset that she didn’t have a special treat plate with a piece of candy or handful of marshmallows. I explained that this was a light snack. My son went eagerly looking for more cinnamon toast, but, again, this was a light snack, so I only made one slice each. He asked for cereal. Between the two of them, they drank 2 ½ tiny cups of tea. My tea was cold by the time I got to drink it. So between the complaints, interruptions going to the kitchen, and cold tea for myself, I have decided to gain more control over a similar situation happening in the future.
Our Monday/Thursday Friday story doesn’t end with cold tea. It continues.
I generally keep our Fridays light so that we can been done by lunch or shortly after lunch. If you looked at our schedule, it was very light even with moving two of our Wednesday/Thursday activities to Friday. Not the case this Friday. We were delightfully interrupted to go on some errands and were rewarded with a milkshake and fries on the way home. We picked up school where we left off because we only had fun things left. Except, you wouldn’t think they were fun because my son was more interested in playing (which he normally does ALL Friday afternoons). We finally finished school around 5. Could we have just ended our day after lunch? Yes. But we’ve been looking forward to all the fun things that were on our list. Do I still consider the week done well? Yes. Even with our Friday challenges, we each had moments of fun and fullness. My children and I aren’t going to have happiness written across our faces at each moment of every day. While I do well to balance our days with learning and leisure, we still have the human factor of distraction, illness, and any other negative descriptive word. I did not give up on laying the feast. We had fun reading our poems. We had a great watercolor lesson about yellow.
I do think I might need to lay out a timetable for Fridays so that we are more orderly especially the weeks when I know my husband will be ready for family time earlier in the day. Our Fridays are usually so laid back that we might stay on track better if we have some laid out expectations and plans.
Another change we are making this week is removing some tv time. We are now going to limit morning tv time to two weekdays being turned off by 8 (no matter what time my daughter wakes up) and a shorter time on the weekends. We are constantly being asked if we’re going to watch anything, if we can watch something, etc. While I love having a morning babysitter to give me time to wake up, I’m willing to make some of my own adjustments if it means more creativity time for the kids. Perhaps this will help all of us in masterly inactivity!
Preschool Highlight
My daughter can now say her full name. She stood before her Daddy to show off her knowledge of her full name and then how to spell her first name. It’s very cute! She’s also obsessed with shapes this week. We use popsicle sticks and yarn to make the shapes. When we visit the art museum, we use our hands to make the shapes and look in the paintings to see if we can find the shapes. While we were driving around, she was very busy asking what the shapes are and listing the ones she knows. Again, so cute!
Curriculum Spotlight
I use a restaurant menu for our hymns, folksongs, Bible verses, poems, and memory work. I rotate those pages every six (school) weeks. I found that when I was trying to go along with a monthly rotation, we were unable to learn anything well. Six weeks seems to be the magic number because we’re usually comfortable with all the material by week four or five with my son leading us for the remaining time. I usually look at the AmblesideOnline rotation to see if there’s anything we’d like to use, but I also keep a list from a few other places. We are learning Rock of Ages, All Hail the Power of Jesus Name, He Leadeth Me, Sweet Hour of Prayer, I Stand Amazed, and O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing. We are also learning On Top of Old Smokey, Oh Susannah, Goober Peas, If I Had a Hammer, Whoopie Ti Yi Yo, and A Sailor Went to Sea. I choose Old and New Testament verses that can be found in our readings for that six weeks. I also pick one or two poems for us to memorize that goes with the poet we’re reading through for the term. Right now we are memorizing “Little Fly” by William Blake. The kids always get excited when we get to the poem we’re memorizing on the day we read it at tea and poetry. At this point I rotate the memory work after we memorize it which is different each time. We’ve memorized the New Testament books of the Bible and are currently working on the Old Testament books. We only do memory work once a week (or sometimes more while we’re looking for our Bible reading for the day).
We are following the AmblesideOnline rotation for composers this year. We aren’t doing anything particularly special for our listening/learning time. I have decided to save myself some time by using the YouTube links they’ve provided. I have previously looked at what is available at my library and listened to ALL of it. This year I’ve divided the pieces into shorter listening times over the term. I keep a note on my planning page so that I know how long our listening will be for the day. This has been incredibly helpful. It’s also been nice to watch the musicians since we haven’t taken the children to the symphony yet.
We have moved on from our short weeks of bird study to wildflower/flowerless plants/nature math/mushrooms nature study. We are taking 10-12 weeks to study these topics. I was not planning on spending a lot of time on wildflowers or flowerless plants unless we see some worth talking about on our nature walks. However, our local library has prepared two different kits that are appropriate for us to use during our weekly nature study. Right now we’re watching beans sprout (after we read about how plants are fertilized and seeds/pollen move with animals, insects, people, or the air). This is a term 3 topic for AmblesideOnline, but I moved it to our first term. We see more wildflowers on our nature walks during this time of the year. We also see mushrooms galore. I think that mushrooms are a great bridge between us talking about wildflowers this term going into our study about rocks and minerals in the next term. I have also been wanting to study nature math and felt like this was a good way to fit it into our full schedule. It does seem like quite a variety of topics, but I think that these are practical topics for our immediate environment as we transition into a new season.
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