Christa

Week 13 Intentions

You all, I am really running out of steam. The last couple of weeks have been nuts. This week is overbooked with things outside of the house. I’m going to cut my losses and just plan for the bare minimum of lessons and to accomplish laundry and meals and dishes. I look forward to returning to quieter days, but they aren’t here quite yet.

Rejoice: Quiet for me, with Bible and prayer and writing something and planning. Writing morning pages and writing down a concrete plan for the day are still working together to help me focus and refocus frequently thought the day.

Relate: We will talk about Bach and Cassett with a group of friends this week, and that is going to be it for art and music. I am not going to endeavor to do any listening to Beethoven’s compostions or looking at Gainsborough’s work

Remember: However, we still haven’t mastered Psalm 1 or Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll so I suppose we should continue on for a couple more weeks. But I’m getting tired of Simple Gifts and Nothing But the Blood of Jesus, so we will put in a new folk song and a new hymn next week. I am thinking about Over the River and Through the Wood for the folk song. You know, because it shows up in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Reason: We’ll continue with math and grammar as we have been. And one boy will continue with his study of JavaScript and Electronics. I am teaching Latin to moms one evening.

Read: I’ll read aloud most days from Roger Lancelyn Green’s retelling of Robin Hood and from poems by William Blake. The younger boys will read for thirty minutes a day from books that are in our ridiculous personal library. I need to gather each boy a little pile of things that I think he will like to choose from. The Freshman needs to read 40 minutes a day from Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer if he wants to be able to complete the next composition assignment.

Record: The younger boys will do copywork and an IEW lesson. The older guy has a project to work on, and we all need to add to timelines and such.

Restore: There are plans to be at the YMCA at least twice this week, and don’t have anywhere to be in the evenings this week. That will help my sudden need for more rest since we should all get to bed on time.

Week 12 Reflections

Overall, last week was pretty good. I did make an unplanned trip to the Kansas City IKEA with my mom, and we bought a new bed that we still need to put together at her house, and some new cabinets that were assembled and installed in my dining room.

However, we didn’t get enough schoolwork done. This is one of the only downsides I have found to Classical Conversations. We needed to take a week off from school, but it would have meant sending my kids to class without their work. None of them like that, and I don’t want them to like being unprepared. So, sometimes we work when we’d rather not. My freshman finished most of his because he went to IKEA with us and had a total of eight hours in which to ride in the car and do schoolwork. The younger boys (who are in Foundations and Essentials) did the bare minimum to go to class prepared.

In reality, we are all tired and ready for the six weeks off that our campus takes from Thanksgiving into the New Year. Just a couple more weeks, and it will be here. And we’ll be grateful for all those broiling days in August when we schooled during the day and swam in the evening. (August is not kind to us Okies.)

This week we have a group activity that was rescheduled from another week, violin lessons, Lion King rehearsal, programming and electronics classes, and I am substituting for a director in my favorite Challenge level. So, we know that we will be having school on Saturday to make up for a fun day playing with Gramma. I’m OK with that. I suppose that I’d better make a plan and stick to it, though.

Educational Intentions: Week 12

Relate: We are switching artists this month. We are considering the art of Thomas Gainsborough. We’ll continue reading about Beethoven in The Story of Beethoven, and we’ll listen to the Ninth Symphony

Remember: It is time (the beginning of the month) for me to switch out the memory work for November. However, we still haven’t mastered Psalm 1, Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, the Shaker song Simple Gifts, and the hymn Nothing But the Blood of Jesus , so I suppose we should continue on for a couple more week. This is what happens when we don’t have a morning meeting four days a week. In October, we had a fantastic and busy month, but we didn’t get our stuff finished.

Reason: We’ll continue with math and grammar as we have been. And one boy will continue with his study of JavaScript and Electronics.

Read: We’ll read bits of The World of Captain John Smith, Wild Animals I Have Known, Pilgrim’s Progress, Plutarch’s Publicola, Trial and Triumph, and At the Back of the North Wind. (Short lessons mean that we’ll be spending 15-20 minutes on each of those, so that list isn’t as long as it seems like.) It is time to change poets, so we will start with this book of poems by William Blake . We need to listen again to Henry V Act 2, but we did finally finish Treasure Island. It took way longer than I planned, but the boys enjoyed it.

Record: The younger boys will do copywork and an IEW lesson. The older guy has a debate this week, and then a project to work on, and we all need to add to timelines and such.

Restore: There are plans to be at the YMCA at least twice this week, and don’t have anywhere to be in the evenings this week. That will help my sudden need for more rest since we should all get to bed on time.

Week 11 Reflections

We still didn’t finish everything that one on the list I made for week 10. But I’m ok with that. I’ll move it forward to week 12, and we’ll keep the memory work the same for November instead of changing it out. We’ll move on when we have conquered what we’ve got. The artist (Gainsborough) and the composer (Beethoven) aren’t changing this month either, so that is easy.

I am exhausted. I actually slept more than six hours last night for the first time in quite a while, and I am having trouble getting going. A goal for next week has to be some rest for me, so that my body doesn’t revolt. (I have some physical issues that flair when I am overdone and cause me pain, and my whole family would like to avoid that. It isn’t good for the mom to be down.)

I did finish the new Flavia de Luce book, and that was lovely.

Week 10 and Break Week Reflections and Intentions for Week 11

So, the week before our break kind of went … and we didn’t make it through anything except the bare basics for my younger kids and about half the assignments for my Freshman. And I just went with it. We did some other projects: shopped for prizes for Laps for Little Ones to help our friends at the Little Light House and completed some cultural studies with friends.

I suppose the good news about that is that we will cover the stuff I planned for last week this week. My Freshman will play catch-up and also accomplish this week’s work (including debate prep). However, I am pretty tired from our trip, and I hope for some time on the couch with books and discussion and maybe a nap.

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We spent our break week on the front range of the Rockies with my brother and his family. We soaked up the mountains and streams and relaxation. We shopped and fished and walked and slept and just hung out together. And we ate a lot of really tasty stuff like pot roast at home and ice cream at Lik’s. Yum. Yum.

Now we are home, and we miss my brother’s laugh and my nephew’s giggle and my sister-in-law’s quiet presence. But we’ll see them at Christmas. Until them, it is back to schoolwork and tutoring and cooking and cleaning and Mt. St. Laundry.

During the twenty-four hours we spent in the van coming and going, I finished up four books that were just for me (several of which I had been reading bits of here and there forever), and that was fabulous. The first one, I had laid aside two years ago (The Lost Pearle), and like all Lamplighter books, it turned a good tale. Pearle was forced to marry an evil man, and she worked her way out of that and back to a good one. I read a new release that started out interesting, but had a ridiculous ending, and I am not even linking it (Everything, Everything). I finished up The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown, which spoke to me, a recovering perfectionist, about being worthy of love and acceptance in spite of my mistakes and brokenness.

I also completed a review copy of Ann Voskamp’s The Broken Way, which was a poetic read about how our brokenness is healed not through holing up and waiting for God to heal it, but by continually giving hope to others in His name. We are all our own form of broken, and as we serve others, God uses that very brokenness to help them find healing. He heals us in the process. While I wish this book pointed the reader even more to Scripture for these facts, I have experienced these truths in my life.

I also started Alan Bradley’s new Flavia De Luce release, Thrice the Brindled Cat Hath Mew’d, which is a rollicking good time. I’m looking forward to our Drop Everything And Read moment today, because I’ll get to see what happens next. (If you haven’t met Flavia, you should. She’s a twelve-year-old chemical genius with a knack for discovering dead bodies and for solving their murders. She has a quirky and macabre wit that I find highly entertaining.)That was our Fall Break. Now it is over, and we are getting back to normal. (I hope.)

Educational Intentions: Week 10 and Break Week

Thank goodness Break Week is coming quickly. I am exhausted. Here are the plans, which will be carried out over the next two weeks, along with a few adventures I’ll record later.

Rejoice: Quiet for me, with Bible and prayer and writing something and planning. Writing morning pages and writing down a concrete plan for the day are working together to help me focus and refocus frequently thought the day.

Relate: We are switching artists this month. We are done with Rembrandt for the moment, and we’ll look at the art of Thomas Gainsborough. And We’ll continue reading about Beethoven in The Story of Beethoven, and we’ll listen to the Ninth Symphony

Remember: We have new things to memorize this month, including Psalm 1, Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, the Shaker song Simple Gifts, and the hymn Nothing But the Blood of Jesus (those links are all to YouTube videos we’ll watch at some point).

Reason: We’ll continue with math and grammar as we have been. And one boy will continue with his study of JavaScript and Electronics.

Read: We’ll read bits of The World of Captain John Smith, Wild Animals I Have Known, Pilgrim’s Progress, Plutarch’s Publicola, Trial and Triumph, and Treasure Island. (Short lessons mean that we’ll be spending 15-20 minutes on each of those, so that list isn’t as long as it seems like.) It is time to change poets, so we will start with this book of poems by William Blake . We need to listen again to Henry V Act 2, and when we finish Treasure Island (still hopefully this week), we’ll start on Robin Hood.

Record: The younger boys will do copywork and an IEW lesson. The older guy has plenty of work to do for an upcoming debate, and we all need to add to timelines and such.

Restore: There are plans to be at tae kwon do at least twice this week, and I’ll teach Latin for moms one evening. I’m also going to book club one evening. But I need to finish the book first. At least I am almost done…

Week 9 Reflections

No pictures this week. I forgot to take any. We were fairly successful in completing the educational plans for the week. We did have a few adventures, planned and unplanned. But most of the activities I had laid out got done anyway.

We had a laundry emergency that demanded a visit from our favorite appliance repair guy. (That we have had enough of these issues to have a favorite is another story for another time.) He restored the function of the washing machine, and we continued in our quest to conquer the mountain of laundry that accumulated quickly. We also lost a couple of hours to getting new tires put on the van on another day. But it was absolutely necessary, and so we had lunch at Costco one day.

Keeping up with the educating and the homemaking at the same time is harder than it sounds like it would be. Since we are at home more than the average family, we make more messes at home, we eat more often at home, and we simply live here more. Our appliances seem to break more often, but they are also probably used more often.

A major downside of my week was discovering that I had been deceived by one of my kids. We’ve dealt with the issue, but the road to rebuilt trust is long. We’ll continue to develop his conscious, and he’ll be a good man when he is older because he got caught and redirected. But in the meantime, he needs prayer and a lot of oversight. It will be a long couple of weeks over here as I work my way through that.

Our much more fun adventure of the week was a trip to the state fair. We went and visited a friend who had chickens entered in the chicken show, and we walked around and looked at all the art and photography and exhibits. We sat in cars in the exhibit hall, played all of the pianos, and the kids ate some junk food. It was a good local adventure.

Educational Intentions: Week 9

I am grateful that this week should be a little less crazy than last week. We have four of five days that will be our normal, and I get to be home most evenings, which bodes well for my household. Normal is good.

Rejoice: Quiet for me, with Bible and prayer and writing something and planning, because filling out that daily index card list is working well for me.

Reason: We’ll continue with math and grammar as we have been. And one boy will continue with his study of JavaScript and Electronics.

Read: We’ll read bits of The World of Captain John Smith, Wild Animals I Have Known, Pilgrim’s Progress, Plutarch’s Publicola, Trial and Triumph, and Treasure Island. (Short lessons mean that we’ll be spending 15-20 minutes on each of those, so that list isn’t as long as it seems like.) It is time to change poets, so we will start with this book of poems by William Blake . We need to listen to Henry V Act 2, and when we finish Treasure Island (hopefully this week), we’ll start on Robin Hood.

Record: The younger boys will do copywork and an IEW lesson. The older guy has an essay to complete on The Scarlet Letter, and we all need to add to timelines and such.

Restore: There are plans to be at tae kwon do at least twice this week, and two will have a golf lesson one evening. We’ll see what other rest and family fun we come up with. I know I have several books to finish.

Week 8 Reflections

That was a pretty good week. We did manage to do most of what was planned, but that was somewhat miraculous. There were a couple of things that got canceled, and I also spent a couple of days fighting a migraine. Migraines stink and make me rather cranky, but they do make sure that I stay home. As long as we are home, things get done.

One thing that I did differently this week was to help my high school freshman put all of his work into both his planner (creating daily lists of work for each school day) AND onto a schedule for the week, assigning each subject a block of time on each of the four days. I’ve resisted this forever (more on that later), but do you know what? It worked. He knew both what he needed to do and when he needed to do it, and he didn’t need me to tell him what to do. That is a fantastic thing because I can only keep so many to-do lists in my head. If his is on paper and assigned to hours, I don’t have to think about it. Decision fatigue avoided again!

Because we all had all of the work due on Monday done and packed on Friday afternoon, we went to Science Museum Oklahoma for the day on Saturday, hence the pictures.

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Education Intentions: Week 8

This week, we will spend one day at Classical Conversations, one morning at the dentist, one afternoon celebrating beautiful things with our Charlotte Mason friends, and a morning at programming and electronics. I honestly don’t know if we can do it all, but all this stuff doesn’t usually happen on the same week. We’ll do our best.

Rejoice: I will be starting my early mornings with scripture, writing morning pages, and often a walk with my neighbor.

Relate: We’ll cook, clean and eat together several times a day, and apparently there will be plenty of time for conversations and audiobooks in the car.

Remember: We are aiming for reviewing our memory work four days this week. I have one kid who needs to memorize a paragraph from the Declaration of Independence, and two kids planning to recite Hilaire Belloc’s “Rebecca who Slammed Doors and Perished Miserably” next week in class. We have all been assigned to memorize the first few lines of the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish. One kid has a new violin piece to learn and needs to be familiar with the first Chorus speech in Henry V, and one needs to learn all of the songs from Lion King Jr.

Reason: We plan four days of math and four days of grammar (English or Latin depending on the student). One also has homework for his electronics and JavaScript classes.

Read: We’ll read about an hour a day silently, broken into chunks. That will include reading the assigned ready for the older kid and free reading for the younger boys. We’ll aim for most of our ongoing read alouds. We’ll read bits of The World of Captain John Smith, Wild Animals I Have Known, Pilgrim’s Progress, Plutarch’s Publicola, Trial and Triumph, and Treasure Island. (Short lessons mean that we’ll be spending 15-20 minutes on each of those, so that list isn’t as long as it seems like.)

Record: The younger boys will do copywork and and IEW lesson. The older guy has an essay to write on The Scarlet Letter, and we all need to add to timelines and such.

Restore: The beautiful things we’ll look in this week include Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony and Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait. For me, this will include reading and teaching Latin to some moms. I will also be intentional about being home most evenings. For my boys, this means having free time after lunch (for the younger boys) and in the late afternoon and evening (for the big kid). It will mean going to bed on time.

It is going to be a crazy week…. the second one in a row. Next week, we have more margin, and I am grateful for that.

Author: Christa