Semester 1, Week 5

What I’m Reading: An Experiment in Criticism by C.S. Lewis
I don’t know what prompted me to finally read this.  I’m so glad I did.  I thought it would be a very difficult read.  While there were parts I didn’t understand, I got the gist of what he was saying.  I think it also helped inform my view of grace on other’s reading (and entertainment/educational) lives.

What I’m {nature} Journaling: Spring is quieter than usual in the backyard this year.  I am not planting my usual wildflower garden or attempting vegetables.  The puppies are too busy exploring every nook and cranny and below every nook and cranny.  We cut down our only tree in the fall.  Our backyard is a bleak mire of mud and weeds.  Sad, rather.  BUT in the midst of the bleakness, there are small reminders of life.  Many of our native weeds are flowering.  I have spotted grape hyacinth, orange fameflower, baby blue eyes, and sweet William.  I also saw the first hummingbird of the season the first week in April (later than previous years). That is still the only day I have seen a hummingbird at the feeder.  I assume I won’t see as many due to the loss of our mimosa tree and complete lack of flowers.  

We also watched the eclipse.  It wasn’t quite as amazing at 2017 since we weren’t in totality.  However, it was still really cool to watch it get twilight over the hour.

Co-op

We had class day four.  I pulled double duty assisting in my son’s first class and then teaching his second class.  It’s a watercolor class, so it was pretty easy finding a project for us to follow.  The kids painted a coneflower.  I loved all their interpretations and color choices.

Fourth Grade Highlight

The major highlight of the week was finishing The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis.  This was the reigning favorite of mine when I last read the series.  I still really liked it, but currently The Silver Chair is my new favorite.  My son also really liked this book.  He says it’s one of his favorites right now, but I don’t know if I unduly influenced him or not.

Kindergarten Highlight

All is going well in the kinder land.  Spring is a pleasant time to be outside picking all the weed flowers!

Mom Highlight We’ve had kinda a crazy week.  I’ve had more requested of my time and attention than usual, but I know it’s a very temporary season.  And today I finally have a little respite.  When I have these times, I do my best to maintain a routine and set aside time for reading or knitting as a bit of rest. The downside of these times is that I usually start reading too many books at once because I have a shorter attention span.

Semester 2, Week 1

What I’m Reading: Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution by Natalie Bober
I don’t think I meant to read this book in its entirety, but I did and I liked it.  I’ve checked out a pile of pre-reading books from the library in my usual fashion of seeing what’s available and if I’m going to assign them for next school year. As usual, I’m having difficulty settling on what we’re going to do for history and science.  Even though we follow Amblesideonline in many ways, we’ve gone another route in those subjects in the past.  However, I do skim the books from the list that I’m able to find.  (Sorry, a little tangent there…no need for planning notes here.) Abigail Adams was an enjoyable way to read more about her life.  I’ve read snippets of her relationship with John Adams, but I’ve never read any other books about her.  This was a great biography that wasn’t too detailed to make it boring but also not lacking in substance.  I was able to get a full picture of her character and hopes for her husband, family, and herself.

What I’m Commonplacing: “You only care about the things that you can use, and therefore arrange them in the following order: Money, supremely useful; intellect, rather useful; imagination, of no use at all.” E.M. Forster, Howards End, Warbler Press 2021, p 25 

Co-op
We had our second class day.  My daughter’s classes are about holidays and animals.  She’s having so much fun.  I liked my son’s storytelling class and hearing all the stories the children came up with.  His second class is watercolor painting. I subbed in one of the youth classes.  Nothing like feeling really old than when you realize you haven’t had many conversations with teenagers since you were a teenager…a looooong time ago. (My job was easy.  I only had to be the adult once. They’re self-sufficient.)

Fourth Grade Highlight

Math went very well this week.  I didn’t have to teach any of the lessons, and we only had to review four problems total. 

We finished The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis.  I loved it!  I didn’t remember anything about my first reading of this book.  I loved everything about this book especially after everything I’ve learned through the House of Humane Letters and The Lit Life podcast. 

In preparation for our Shakespeare play, we read through the Lamb’s version of As You Like It. It’s one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, so I look forward reading through it with my son. Z

We started reading Clyde Bulla’s story of Wagner’s Das Rhinegold.  We enjoyed the similarities to The Lord of the Rings. We’re also listening to short selections of the opera.

Kindergarten Highlight

We finally finished reading Mrs. Piggle Wiggle.  Both kids seemed to enjoy the stories. It was a good, nostalgic experience for me.

I’ve been sneaking in a Bob book every other week to introduce new sight words and to work on my daughter’s skill of sounding out words and blending sounds on her own.  She prefers the Bob books to our reading lessons. 

We had perfect weather this week to spend a lot of time outside.  It perfectly coincided with our neighbor’s school break. 

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that we’ve been following the lessons on Children of the Open Air on YouTube.  We’ve been doing it for quite awhile now.  We’re going very slowly through our progression of the videos.  My daughter came in yesterday showing me the hand signs for sol, la, and mi.  It was super cute, and I’m glad that she’s learning from the videos. 

Mom Highlight

After being really slack and laid back in our (non)routine, we are back on track getting up early with mornings free of tv and full of responsibilities and starting on school early freeing up our afternoons for outdoor time. The day that I didn’t enforce our new routine, school took all day.  Being the responsible party is work!

Semester 1 Exams

We made it! *huge sigh of relief*

I did not know how exams would go this time.  Our semester has been so spread out that I wasn’t sure how much my son would remember. He did so well, and I am so proud of him.  I don’t if it’s because I kept better track of what we learned and asked better questions, if he just remembered everything, if he’s getting the hang of exams, or if spreading out the academics benefited his mind.

All of our memory work celebrations went very well.  My son was able to recite all of the Scripture and poetry passages from memory with no problem.  We had a great time singing all the songs and going back and reviewing last year’s memory songs too.

All of the exam questions were from the Bible, The Chronicles of Narnia, ants, fairytale retelling, history books, and recalling lessons from art lessons, engineering, and nature observations.  He also had to demonstrate tying a knot, wrote out a passage from Chronicles in cursive, and painted Raphael’s “St. George and the Dragon.”

Semester 1, Week 13

What I’m Reading: Dracula by Bram Stoker
Over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the new year, my husband and I listened to Dracula and the accompanying podcasts by The Literary Life Podcast.  This is most definitely a book I would NOT have read of my own choosing.  Sometime last year, we (my husband and I) had a lengthy discussion about his reading/education of Frankenstein in high school versus my recent reading/education of the book.  Wow, what a difference.  This sparked interest in Dracula as we repeated this conversation.  We both decided to set aside our perception of the book to read it together.  We were changed by this tale of the dragon, the princess, and the hero. We had lively discussions and praiseworthy revelation. You should read the book, but you should also listen to the podcast.

What I’m {nature} Journaling:  Friends, it’s cold outside.  We did walk in the cold, but I didn’t write a single thing down about it my nature journal! I felt like we had neglected our insect portion of our journals this semester, so I had the kids find an insect from a book to copy into their books. I was excited that my son read through a lot of the insect book as he chose what to draw; usually he’s rushing through his nature journal assignment.  I had plans to do the same, but again, I didn’t write in my journal.  I guess I need to pick up my resolve.

Travel: We do not have co-op this month (minus a mom meeting), so we are filling our time with travel and appointments (and another illness…).  We have traveled around the southern states.  It’s been cold.  It’s been beautiful.  It’s been great getting home to snuggle in the warmth. We especially liked our extended stay in North Carolina as we visited the mountains.  The kids enjoyed the toy stores.  I enjoyed the Battery Book Exchange in Asheville and bought some lovely editions of Penrod by Booth Tarkington, The Dean’s Watch by Elizabeth Goudge, and The Santa Fe Trail by Samuel Hopkins Adams (we just finished up one of his other Landmark books, The Erie Canal).  I was happy to find all three.  I have an original of Penrod and Sam that was my husband’s grandfather’s book.  Finding a hardback edition of Penrod was a special find for me even though it wasn’t a first edition (I’m only into collecting for reading’s sake). I bought the Elizabeth Goudge book since I have a new interest in her.  I read checked out The Rosemary Tree from the library a couple years ago after several podcasts mentioned it.  I was so moved by the book that I ended up buying one on my Kindle so that I could take my time reading it.  Her writing is so perfect as a before bed read.  I’m trying to shift over to more physical copies of books this year that this was my favorite find of the day.  I waivered in buying The Santa Fe Trail.  Now that we have access to all the Landmark books through our living library, I’ve been holding off on some of my book buying.  I have already read The Tree in the Trail with my son.  It’s such a great book for explaining the Santa Fe Trail that we don’t need to read anything else.  However, I was thinking I may read the book for myself when it’s time for me to read The Tree in the Trail with her in a couple of years.  Even though the Landmark books are written for older children to teens, I find that many of the stories are captivating, far less dry than history books written for adults, and tell very compelling stories.  I was more convinced to buy this edition since it was in perfect condition, had a dust jacket, and was a good price. 

Fourth Grade Highlight

We finished The Erie Canal by Samuel Hopkins Adams. His grandfather helped build part of the canal, so he had firsthand access to stories and letters and did other research to write the book.  Parts of the book were rather dry.  I read the highlights of the book aloud to my son so that he would get a general overview of who, what, why, and how.  We read this because my history plan of choosing Discovery biographies from our living library was thwarted during an extended illness.  We’ll go back to my original plan during the next semester as we will have full access to the library again. I do have a small pile of TBR Landmark books in my son’s TBR, so we may still pick one of those up before the end of the school year.

We finished reading Hans Brinker by Mary Mapes Dodge and then watched the movie.  I always have my son draw a picture of his free reads for his notebook.  He mixed in a little Star Wars delivering the silver skates as the prize.  Definitely not a true rendering.

We’ve started The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis.  It is so good so far.  I read this book in college, but I don’t remember anything about it.  I do think it’s one that took me a long time to read the first time because I didn’t find it interesting.  Total opposite this time!

Kindergarten Highlight

We finished reading the first Betsy-Tacy book. I’m enjoying this series.  It’s fun having a chapter book series to read with my daughter.  When my son was this age, we read the robot in the wilderness series and the Ralph mouse series.

Charlotte Mason Arithmetic is going slowly and I’m not sure how well but still on track as we haven’t given up. Phonics has picked up a little as my daughter is recognizing certain words as we’re driving and from a book she checked out at the library this week. She also received some kindergarten workbooks for Christmas to keep her busy when she’s asking for school but I’m working with her brother.  The scissor skills book is especially nice as she colors, cuts and then creates new art work with the glitter glue and stapler she also received.

Mom Highlight

We’re almost there, folks. I can almost see the end of our semester.  I’m about to plan out our exam questions and need to print out our second semester family folder.  If we take zero breaks we’ll finish school before Memorial Day.  I know that won’t happen, so I’m feeling more positive (as in happy and in full knowledge) that our completion in June won’t be so bad afterall.

Semester 1, Week 12

What I’m Reading: The Living Year by Richard Headstrom

I spent a day or two of each month in 2023 reading a chapter from this book.  I looked forward to reading it each month and imagining myself out in nature.  I also became more aware of what to look for myself as we went on our daily walks.  Such a good read, and I’m still in a bit of disbelief that I’m enjoying nature so much. 

Co-op

Half of week 12 happened in December and the other half in January.  The kids wrapped up the first half of co-op with a Christmas party.  They had an ice cream party and made Christmas ornaments.  My children are basically self-sufficient now at parties, so I was helping out at the hot glue station.  I did have to step away for a little while to get my daughter settled, but otherwise, I was giving myself glue blisters.

Fourth Grade Highlight

We finished reading The Christmas Compass and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  I ended up adding in Hans Brinker in hopes that we would finish it before our Christmas break giving us time to watch the movie.  My hope didn’t become a reality, so now we’ll be finishing up the book next week and hoping to still have the movie in our possession (we checked it out from the library).  We had a Chronicles of Narnia movie marathon with all the versions.  Super fun way to wrap up 2023.  My husband also bought us a special box of Turkish delight as a Christmas gift.

Needs Improvement

Now that I know how far we got (or didn’t get, rather), I’m able to gauge where we’ll end our school year.  So that it’s not going way into the summer, I condensed our week 16 exam week into 2-3 days.  I also completely removed week 16 of the second semester.  I also removed history for the last two weeks of this semester (this provides margin and lines up better with when we can visit our living library again).

I have some final plans that need to be made (or printed) for next semester.  I’ve also pulled up all the books I have for first and fifth grades to start planning next year.  Its hard to find a balance between high expectations and the reality of wanting to fill our days with experiences, people, and real life hands on fun and work.

Kindergarten Highlight

Once again I’m seeing a lot of interest from my daughter in learning but also that growth in her brain where she has to decide if she’s okay with stretching in harder things. She made some connections in phonics over Christmas but had some dread in doing her lesson when we sat down for school after the new year.  She received the next several books in the Betsy Tacy series, so I like to hear her excitement in listening to a chapter book.  She’s also building in excitement in performing piano and ballet.

Needs Improvement

Splitting up the school week was good on one hand because it let us ease back into a routine with what was leftover needing to be done.  On the other hand, I feel like my thoughts in the wrap up are far more scattered, and I know I’m forgetting things I wanted to mull over.  I think I’m mostly wondering how we’re only on week 12 and have 18-19 weeks left.  I do remain hopeful that we can finish this semester by the end of January.  Can we do it without cutting back on all the things?

Semester 1, Week 9

What I’m Reading: The Tempest and Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

The Shakespeare saga continues.  I read The Tempest in high school and remember liking it but no spectacularly memorable moments.  I liked it this time around too.  Now that I’ve read A Midsummer Night’s Dream aloud with my son, I think that community reading of Shakespeare might be my favorite now.  I have the same feelings about Twelfth Night.  One thing I’ve been enjoying about my reading through the plays are all the quotes that are so prominent in our culture.  It’s been fun placing them in their proper context. 

Fourth Grade Highlight

My son started his third Marguerite Henry book.  You may remember how much I loved Brighty of the Grand Canyon last year.  My son is listening through Justin Morgan Had a Horse.  I am anticipating our crazy schedule and Christmas books, so I needed him to read something kind of short.  I typically read or listen along during free reads, but this year, my son has upped his independence and takes his reading to his bedroom.  I guess I’ll just have to up my pre-reading game and read everything before him.  (Or maybe not, I enjoy children’s literature but more so when I’m sharing it with my kids).

We also started The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis.  Chapter three left us hanging, so my son was eager to start chapter four.  I told him he could read it if he did his written narration covering both chapters.  He opted out and waited a day. (He listens to a chapter and narrates to me that day.  Before we read the next chapter, he narrates the previous chapter to me again, and I write it down.  Every third chapter, he writes his narration.  Since we’re finished with Shakespeare for the semester, and I want to complete this book before Christmas, I’ve added a fourth chapter to the week and shifted narrations to every four chapters.)

Big week over here.  My son finished Saxon Math 3.  Now that I finally have a bigger scope and sequence in mind for Saxon, I don’t mind going slower through new concepts.  Math 5/4 will be a change in format.  I want a little bit of a transition before jumping straight in.  We are going to do a little extra Charlotte Mason Arithmetic and timed math facts practice for several days.  I think there will be a couple weeks of adjusting to the new (for us) format.

We haven’t been able to make it to our living library either due to our schedule or our librarian’s schedule, so I’ve had to make some changes to our history plan.  I decided to get The Erie Canal by Samuel Hopkins Adams.  It’s from the Landmark history collection.  While I know we would have access through our living library, we needed something now.  I do have quite a collection of other history books we could be reading, but we happen to be singing “Erie Canal” as our folksong, and my son was asking questions about it.  I’m quickly prereading several chapters ahead so that we can get started reading it next school week.  We may skip over some chapters for time’s sake, so I want to read through to see what is the most important.  I’m eager to get back to reading through the Discovery biographies through our living library since that is my primary objective for this school year.

We had two special field trips this week.  I had “field trip” listed on our school board one morning, and my son objected.  He said we were going to Daddy’s office to have fun.  I, in turn, informed him that it was a field trip to his place of work, people would be busy working, and we were to be on our best behavior.  I enjoyed myself.  The kids, I’m not sure.  We did learn that we need to do things like that more often so that the kids can work on their manners of holding questions till the end and not pouting.  The next day my son got voluntold to take a field trip to the dump with his dad.  It was educational!

The delightful part of the week? My son made us a pastry for our tea and poetry.  He enjoyed baking it, but he wasn’t a super fan of the cream cheese.  I really enjoyed it, and it was fun to see the puff pastry rising.

Kindergarten Highlight

My daughter is at a precipice in learning.  She’s eager for new challenges but also feeling the stretch of growth.  She has had several lessons now in blending sounds to read words.  It’s a challenge for me, so we’re going very slow.  I guess that’s the good thing about having one who went before her.  I know that she will eventually catch on.  It’s the same in math.  She has moments where it’s easy and others where she doesn’t quite understand what’s going on.

Semester 1, Week 8

In loving memory: Princess Iris Poopy Pants crossed the old doggy rainbow. Iris, a dog that did not smell like a flower and snored like a freight train.  Always hanging out in the background – and especially thought that if I was the floor for any reason it must be because I wanted to rub her belly. She loved laundry, space heaters, and spots of sunshine. She had the sweetest floppy ears and beagle howl.  She successfully caught an electrocuted squirrel, blackbird, and chipmunk.  She warned us of a snake, mice, all the chipmunk holes, and many imminent (yet imaginary) dangers.  She could always sniff her way home to the front door.  Her best tricks were playing dead, rolling over, and dancing.

What I’m Reading: Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan Henry and The Way into Narnia by Peter Schakel
Not only have I been reading a lot of Shakespeare this year, I’ve been reading a lot of Tolkien and Lewis inspired books.  I’ve had Becoming Mrs. Lewis in my TBR pile before but removed it.  I added it back to the list after some good recommendations.  On one hand, I’m glad I read it because it inspired some other reading and some thoughtful ideas.  On the other hand, it has left me mulling over some other thoughts about knowing too much about authors or wondering what is true and what is not and how that also impacts my opinion of the author.  On the hand that I grew, I mulled over the sinful nature of us all and the grace and redemption we have in Christ.

I’m glad to have read The Way into Narnia.  I liked the special attention given to each of the ideas and publication in the chronicles series and the annotations for each book. I will not be using much of the information in my teaching/reading with my son, but I did find all of the book useful in my own readings of the books.

What I’m {nature} Journaling:  Autumn leaves.  I’m taking a weekly photo of the same beautiful tree we see on our neighborhood walk. The first week seemed like such little change.  Four weeks later, the tree is vastly different in its once very green to now very red. 

Co-op

The fourth class day was the most successful yet, but it was not without its bumps.  I spoke with one of the other moms after class.  She is teaching a similar class for preschool, so it was great to exchange ideas regarding ages/stages and the possibilities for older 1^st-3^rd grade. 

We also had a park day.  The weather was amazing, so I was surprised only four families attended.  It was great for the kids though because they had a great time with the kids who came and everyone played together – mostly tag. I also had a nice time talking with the moms and getting to know them a little better.

Fourth Grade Highlight

My son finished reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konisburg, Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare.  I’m happy that my son is so excited about all his reading this school year.  He is always eager to read the selections.  It was really fun reading Shakespeare aloud.  My son usually read the lines for Theseus, Puck, and Bottom with a few lines here and there of Demetrius and Lysander.   

Kindergarten Highlight

My daughter has now learned up to 4 in math and plus, minus, and equals.  It’s fun watching her concentration and excitement as she learns “big kid” math.  She has also reached “Y” in phonics, so she will start blending sounds next week as we wrap up with “Z.”  I had quite a hard time explaining blending sounds to my son, so I plan to watch a little YouTube to help me with my task this time around.  I’m hoping for smoother sailing, but I’m prepared to take it slow. 

We had a lot of extra margin in our days by spreading out the school week this time.  I really enjoyed our slower afternoons filled with outdoor time.  While my son still had independent work to complete, I was able to sit outside with my daughter.  While she waited for her brother, her “bored” time was filled exploring the leaves on the bushes.

Inspiring Ideas

We spent time talking about World War 2 and laws in America this week.  As always, we are doing our best to teach our son to explore and pursue his ideas on his own.  We talk through any questions he has and do our best to show him what resources he can look at and use on his own time. We hand so much information over to him during school, but we are making strides to hand over independence without it being overwhelming.  We want him to know that he can take small steps to achieve his goals.

Semester 1, Week 4

What I’m Reading: Gather by Pam Barhill and Heather Tully
I have been waiting a long time for this book to come through the holds system at the library.  It was worth the wait.  I have struggled with motivation for school this year due to the life change of both children completing the preschool portion of their childhoods.  While I’ve been looking forward to so much of big kid life and all the things that my children are going to learn this school year, it hasn’t made the transition easier.  We started school anyway in August to get us in a routine, to work out any kinks we might have in curriculum choices or in time management.  We reached Labor Day weekend having accomplished my goal of finishing at least three weeks of school so that I was able to evaluate our progress.  I like where we stand, and I’ve set reasonable expectations and goals.  On the other hand, I’m still on a personal struggle bus sorting through other life challenges.  I took the majority of Labor Day weekend to sit outside and read and regroup.  Gather was a perfect read to kick off the weekend.  I was able to complete the book in very short amount of time.  I was encouraged by the essays and photos. 

Co-op

We had another park day with our co-op.  The kids had a good time.  My son learned a little about kickball this time around.  My daughter branched out in a small way by playing with a first grader.  One thing that is prevalent in our homeschool group is introverts!

Fourth Grade Highlight

A big highlight of week four was finishing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Reading the book was great, and we made it extra fun by eating Turkish Delight and watching the BBC tv movie on YouTube. We will be starting Prince Caspian next.

My son is enjoying his free read of “Farmer Giles of Ham” by J.R.R. Tolkien.  I read it again over the weekend to reacquaint myself with the story.  While I don’t require narrations of free reads, I do keep asking him what part he’s at to hear how much he likes the story but also to check his progress.  I like to hear that he’s mostly understanding what’s going on since I feel like it’s a little bit higher for his reading level (but not for his comprehension level if I were to be reading it aloud to him).

Shakespeare was super fun this week as we have reached the scene where Bottom acquires his donkey head from Puck.  My son thought it was funny that his name is bottom which led me to explain another word for donkey.  I didn’t go into a full explanation of significance of all the other characters’ names, but I do find my own enjoyment in what I’ve learned.

Tea and poetry still gets the kids excited every week.  I’m pretty sure it’s the extra treats that I serve with lunch on that day.  We have slowed down considerably in Hiawatha because it’s much lengthier than I expected.  However, we will plug along and get through what we get through for the semester. 

Kindergarten Highlight

Another great week of playground time.  I delegated one of the visits off to Grandma, which really helped out. 

My daughter had her first piano lesson, liked it, and has been asking when the next one will be.  Right now we’re just doing lessons without having her do practice time during the week.  I’m going to see how this goes for now since I know practice time would be time consuming on my part.  I’ve always required it of students, even very young students (but with parental responsibility).  Now that I’m the piano teacher and the parent and the school teacher, I don’t know if I’m up for balancing all of the responsibility.