Category: school journal

This was a week on which we originally planned to do no schoolwork at all – Spring Break. We were going to lay around and read and play with friends and have a few adventures. But then no work was done during Show Week, and most of the boys had the flu the next week, and we got behind. This is one thing that I don’t like about having our Classical Conversations Community day driving our curriculum. We need to go at the same pace as our classmates, so if life happens, we must play catch-up. Most of our fun week got postponed until May. We went on a few little adventures, but mostly, it was a work week.

A few people have told me that I sound too perfect when I write here.  I want to be clear to anyone reading – I make a lot of mistakes, and I am fairly open about them. However, I am writing these entries to celebrate the little victories that I forget so easily. They aren’t for anyone else as much as they are for me… because I get bogged down in not being enough for this job. There things that we don’t get to and the things that I laid aside because I didn’t have the energy for them and the days that chronic pain left me stuck on the couch when I wanted to take the boys to the park. This is a journal of successes. I’ve made a billion mistakes, and through those mistakes, I came to the methods and systems that are working in my house at the moment. One thing that does work is jotting down the successes so that they aren’t lost in my sea of failures.

Rejoice: I made it to the Y a couple of mornings, and I did most of my Bible study for the week, but I also slept in a little several times. The boys were still resting up and recovering from the flu the first part of the week, so I still had a little morning quiet with my coffee.

Relate: We did go on a few adventures – one to a favorite used bookstore and one to the newly remodeled Central Library. Both involved coffee and books (which make me very happy), but in both places Josiah and Gideon found things they enjoyed. We joined a group of friends to see Hidden Figures, and we also saw friends at science class. The boys played outside a lot.

Remember:  We sang memory work twice this week, and the memory master review month has started.

Reason: Very little math was done here. I actually excused Micah from several algebra assignments so that he could catch up in other subjects. He will have to finish Saxon Algebra 1 after the school year ends.

Read: I did a lot of reading this week. Some girls that I tutor are obsessed with a new series that I hadn’t heard of. It wasn’t good. I don’t recommend it, but I’m glad I will be able to discuss it with them. Micah finished The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Josiah finished The Hobbit and started on The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Minecraft Mods Programming . Gideon finished Men of Iron and a pile of picture books. Together, we continued on in Robinson Crusoe and The Good Master.

Record: I didn’t write. Gideon didn’t write. Josiah did his IEW assignment. Micah finished a LTW essay about Born Again and outlined a comparison paper.

Restore: I hung out with Jon after we put the boys to bed, watching TV and reading and being together. It was a good week for us. We went on a date this evening and enjoyed the beautiful Oklahoma last day of winter while we ate on the patio of a restaurant we hadn’t been to before. (It was 85 degrees and sunny and breezy.)

Margin Report: This was a good week for fitting in some reading and writing and piano that I missed the last few weeks.

It wasn’t the week that I planned, but it ended very well. About the time I hit publish on last week’s post about Lion King, both Micah and Gideon woke up from their necessary naps with fevers. They joined the ranks of their friends with the Post-Show-Week flu. It lasted five days.

We missed our community day on Monday. (I left them here napping and watching a movie and ran over to teach a little Latin, but that was it.)  On Tuesday, they watched another movie while I went to Costco to buy produce and chicken. I came back and made an Instant pot of chicken broth, which became much appreciated chicken and noodles. On Wednesday, I left long enough to host the National Latin Exam (which Micah missed, but he wasn’t too disappointed.) On Thursday, we all laid around and rested and read. On Friday, they were back to normal, so we saw some of our people at debate prep. We had missed them.

Saturday was our campus’s Protocol Event (Where I caught Micah and his buddies dressed in suits and looking so grown up. We took the Challenge 1 and 2 students to dinner at a local restaurant, and then we went to hear the Tulsa Signature Symphony perform Mozart’s Requiem in D minor. It was a beautiful piece. We looked up the lyrics online and followed along with the Latin. Even the students who are behind the pace of their Challenge guide had no trouble understanding the lyrics because Mr. Henle includes a good bit of church vocabulary a long with the never-ending slaughtering of the Gauls.

Rejoice: I had a major goal this week of staying well, so I gave up my morning hour and slept a little longer. I didn’t go to the Y at all. But since the boys were low-energy, I still had a little Bible study and reading time with my coffee.

Relate: I did a lot of reading aloud and some movie watching, made many small amounts of comforting foods, and conquered the kitchen chores and the laundry. I yelled at one boy for not putting his Kleenexes in the trash can. That started a giggle fest because the trash can was literally right next to him, and he was still piling them on the couch.

Remember: We did no singing this week, and therefore we did no memory work. We did still listen to stories at meals, and the younger boys did some Foundations memory work with the app on their iPads.

Reason: We did no math or Latin or English Grammar this week. Unfortunately, that means that our sick week became our Spring Break. That’s a bummer.

Read: I think I did more reading than anyone, but I didn’t actually finish anything. We did start reading Kate Seredy’s The Good Master (aff. link) as a read aloud, thanks to a suggest from Dawn. The younger boys read a stack of picture books while they were lounging around under blankets. Micah listened to The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and to a module of Exploring Creation through Physical Science thanks to Audible.

Record: I recorded a little in my journal and Bible, but that was about it.

Restore: We are thrilled that only two of us got really sick and that all of us are healthy again. But our spring break is gone. We’ll see if we can finish up things in time to have a little one next weekend.

 

Last week, the boys participated in Courtyard Theater’s version of Disney’s Lion King, Jr. It was excellently done. As much as possible, the work of the production was done by students. Make-up, masks, props, lighting, sound, costuming… they did it all with guidance and hard work.  Micah worked on lighting, and Gideon was a wildebeest. It was a fantastic week.

We were completely out of our routine, and all that happened last week was the production and some reading. We finished King of the Wind, which was a fabulous read. No one did any math or Foundations or Essentials or Challenge work. We’ll be working this week and next, though I am canceling some assignments because we also have a few projects to do that require a spring break.

I’m working on the next six weeks of Morning Meeting posts. I don’t know if they help any other families get a good variety in their morning, but those posts guarantee that I get the things done that I want for my family easily.

 

It is amazing how fast habits get ignored when life’s routines are broken. We’ve spent most of the last two week re-establishing habits that were broken during my 96 hours in Denver with my mom. It took us a full week to put our routine back together, and most of break week was eaten up doing schoolwork that should have been done the week before. This coming week is show week for Lion King Jr, and I am working on what to delete from the schedule to accommodate the added responsibilities outside of the house. Also, there is a birthday in our house this week. We might skip Morning Meetings entirely, but they will be back next week. Perhaps I can get ahead in compiling a few week’s worth of ideas again

Rejoice: I was quite tired and slept in more mornings that I should have. I’m working to get back to getting up an hour before the boys because I need the morning quiet and prayer time that I have been missing. I need the rest, and I need exercise, and I need prayer. Getting all of that in before the boys get up is hard.

Relate: Jon spent a good chunk of his week working towards the Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism Conference that he hosted on Saturday. The boys and I spent quite a bit of time hanging out together while he took care of that. I went to a large annual local book fair and brought home some treasures. We finished Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library and started on Marguerite Henry’s King of the Wind (aff. links).

Remember: We had three successful Morning Meetings and one in which we all walked away before we finished after an argument at the table. Bad days happen. We moved on into the day, talked about it later, and did the work the following morning.

Reason: Math, English Grammar, Latin all done. We missed Chess Club because of a commitment, but the boys are looking forward to returning to it.

Read: There was a lot of reading. Josiah and Gideon realized that they are now behind in their Million Word Reading Challenge because they re-read a bunch of stuff that they had already read instead of starting something new. They enjoyed themselves, but now Josiah is halfway through Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Gideon is reading Pyle’s Men of Iron (aff. link).

Record: Both Josiah and Gideon finished a longer writing project (the Knights essay from IEW Medievals). Micah worked on a short story, a 1AC about the electoral college, and a research paper about police dogs (all long term projects). I wrote nothing, hence the lack of blog posts. But I did generate a short list of things I’d like to write here. It just might have to wait until the semester is over.

Restore: We resumed our habit of reading at bedtime, and Jon and I have still been ending the day with a half hour or so of Netflix. I have not given myself the brain space and journaling time that I crave, but that’s a work in progress.

Margin Report: We prepared for this week of having more hours dedicated outside of our home by staying home more than usual. Micah and I both wanted more time at home that wasn’t dedicated to work, but Josiah and Gideon need to be out with people more than Micah does.  This is a constant balance to strive for in our house. We are three introverts (who love our people but need some alone time to recharge) and two extroverts (who need more people to recharge). Sometimes the little extroverts have to make do with just each other. And sometimes those of us who would rather put on our headphones and hide from the world have to put on our big kid pants and deal with people away. Constantly, some of us are stretching and growing.

This will be short and sweet because I am typing it on my phone while laying on a hotel bed in Lakewood, CO. 

We had a good but abbreviated school week. My mom and I ran up to Denver for the weekend on Thursday for my nephew’s birthday. And we are going to zip home tomorrow. 

Monday was our usual crazy. I worked with the boys on Tuesday, and it wasn’t fabulous. There was a mutiny. I wound up eating chocolate in my closet. There was a little school work done, and chores assigned for wasting my time with whining. Eh. Some days are like that. 

We worked together on Wednesday with more success. They worked hard with their father on Thursday so that they could spend Friday at a friend’s farm doing meaningful labor. 

And I had a lovely weekend with my mom and brother and his family. I am going to puzzle out assignments for my Caesar and Cicero classes on the way home tomorrow.