More Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

It Happens All the Time In Heaven ~

It happens all the time in heaven
And some day

It will begin to happen
Again on earth---

That men and women who are married,
And men and men who are
Lovers,

And women and women
Who give each other
Light,

Often will get down on their knees

And while so tenderly
Holding their lover's hand,

With tears in their eyes,
Will sincerely speak, saying,

"My dear,
How can I be more loving to you;

How can I be more
Kind?"

The place where you are right now
God circled on a map for you.
Wherever your eyes and arms and heart can move
against the earth and sky,
the Beloved has bowed there.
Our Beloved has bowed there knowing
you were coming.
I could tell you a priceless secret about
your real worth dear pilgrim.
But any unkindness to yourself,
any confusion about others,
will keep one
from accepting the grace, the love!
-- Hafiz


**********************

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving — it doesn't matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.

-- Rumi

I mean to post more often, thinking it would only take 10 or 15 minutes a day... But those 15 minutes are so often and so easily taken up with bass playing, reading, crafting, cuddling...

Last week Joe and Sarah started a math adventure Joe created for them -- the adventures of Stitches, the pirate teddy bear -- that involves arithmetic and code-solving and clues... Sarah's having a great time with that. They've also been reading Harriet the Spy together.

Sarah and I worked on our family magazine, on learning to sew dresses together, on baking, on crossword puzzles, on sudoku... Read some Story of the World, some Dr. Seuss, some magazines. We watched Schoolhouse Rock and the second National Treasure movie, and played games (Munchkin, Life, Apples to Apples). We also met with friends who are interested in doing school with us, this year, and made some plans together.

The rules we're bringing forward from last year:
* the Stop rule (treat others with respect and compassion; listen when others ask us to stop something that's affecting them)
* treat others' property with respect
* do not unreasonably restrict anyone's movement or speech
* no feet on tables

We decided to stick with mediation first for conflict resolution, then interrogation (which will, apparently, involve straight-backed chairs and bare lightbulbs!), then JC (judicial committee) if mediation fails, and to use facilitated discussions for our decision-making process, instead of formal meetings.

We've got a huge list of classes and activities we're planning to do together, this year. I'm *really* looking forward to it.

I asked Sarah, if we could do anything with our weeks, what would she want them to look like?

The American Museum of Natural History, Liberty Science Center, going to the park. Playdates with friends, field trips with friends. Making hot cocoa and brownies and cuddling up together on the futon. Dancing, definitely. Make music. Watch movies together. Lots of parties.

What does she want to learn?

Math, Science. Cooking, Sewing. More imaginary road trips.

During playschool we read:
Amelia Bedelia and the Surprise Shower
Bread is for Eating (a simple story with gorgeous illustrations)
The Way To Start A Day (lovely and magical, like everything by Byrd Baylor)

We talked about how we can celebrate sunrise and printed out a calendar that lists times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset, as well as the phase of the moon. We decorated it and stuck it on the wall.

We made cards and wrote them out to send to friends and family.

We baked challah bread and brownies, and had sandwiches and dip and spaghetti for lunch, while we watched Schoolhouse Rock America as our "and a movie".

Sarah did some more writing for her homework (finishing up her card to K) and some math (from her Time and Money book). I did some physics problems for my homework.

Our daily rhythms -- a good place to start

A number of folks have been curious about our homeschooling activities and how we spend our days. Keeping track of these things here and then just giving out the URL seems to be the easiest way to do that. Figured I'd start at the very beginning, with a quick runthrough of what our days tend to look like.

Every once in a while, Sarah and I sit down and talk about what we want our days and weeks to look like, and about what activities we want to include and what sorts of things she wants to learn. Then we work out a daily rhythm that fits all these things in, put it up on the wall, and do our best to stick to it until the next time we reconsider our goals. (Or, as Sarah said when I asked her how to describe it, "until we do it all again!")

A lot of this will be changing once the co-op is really underway, I expect. But in the meantime, this is more or less what our days look like:

* Wake up and cuddle
* Solo time (Sarah usually watches TV, I usually putter on the laptop)
* Breakfast
* Sweeps (tidying up) and getting dressed/brushing teeth/etc.
* Play school (we sing a few songs, each pick a book or story to be read aloud, and do a project together)
* Snack
* Assign ourselves homework and fill in our daily plan
* Relaxed, expansive play (the phrase is from when we were doing Enki - basically I putter, do housework or gardening or practice the bass, and Sarah does her own thing nearby)
* Lunch and a movie
* Rest/Quiet Time
* Afternoon Adventure (baking or gardening or sewing, or getting out of the house)
* Practice work and a snack
* Expansive play
* Settling time (Sarah and I have some focused time together right before Joe gets home)

Then Joe and Sarah have some focused time while I finish making dinner.

Almost none of our days looks exactly like this. Every day has at least one exception or surprise. But this is the rhythm we return to, time and again, to guide our choices.

Huh. Blogger lost my entire reading list, apparently -- it tells me I'm not following any blogs.

We're home from 2 days at Lake George, a sort of classic summer vacation, for me -- wave pools, arcades, mini golf, ice cream shops... I'm rested, vacationed, and incredibly tan (for me, which mostly means a significant increase in the freckle population). I made progress on my crochet projects -- both of which have been making me very happy. It feels so good to have something to work on, to look forward to, to watch the progress of, without the stress of deadlines or other people's needs/expectations. Just me and my pretty blue filet crochet... :)