We skipped playing school yesterday, since we were finishing up the birthday festivities with a trip to Monster Mini Golf. Today we went bowling, and played school afterwards -- reading an Oak Meadow story from Ancient Phoenicia, finding the area on a map, then on a map of the world, and reading the first few pages of the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History (they've apparently got two books that are almost identical but one includes Prehistory from the Big Bang, and the other doesn't -- ours, of course, starts with the Big Bang). Then we did lesson 2 of Coffee Break Spanish, watched an episode of Animal Atlas on monkeys, and made some pizza. No math today -- Joe and Sarah'll do some together later tonight -- and no gardening, which will be our normal Wednesday afternoon plan. But between the heat index and the air quality warning, we were happy to hide out in our little cave.

So far our first morning back is going really well. I let us sleep a little late, because we'd both had some trouble getting to sleep, last night, after our wonderfully busy Birthday Weekend. I'm still working on getting in my morning routine when I first get up, but I worked out and started breakfast cooking, and then we played school.

Mondays are history/maps/world culture, spanish, and nature study.

We're using Mosaic as a gentle guide for our history work, and we're also finishing up the bits of the Oak Meadow 3rd grade Social Studies that we found appealing. This morning we read the intro to SOTW, and lesson 11 from Oak Meadow, which involved reading the story of Joseph and the coat of many colors, examining the map of where the story would have taken place, then finding that area on a map of Africa, and then on a map of the world.

For spanish we're using Coffee Break Spanish, and today we did lesson 1. (I've used it for myself before, getting through a few weeks of lessons, and I like the easy 15 minute segments)

For nature study, we're inspired by the Outdoor Hour Challenge at Handbook of Nature Study. Today we wandered around our yard for a bit, talking about some of the things we'd like to plant this year, and observing the birds and bugs and clouds. We decided we'd like to learn more about clouds and about moths vs. butterflies. After we got back inside, Sarah mentioned she'd like to learn more about weather in general. And, hey, look at that -- we were gonna be starting our Weather Unit study tomorrow, anyway! :)

Usually we'll do some independent work after playing school together, but between our late start today and my looming dental appointment this afternoon, today we just shifted straight into making lunch.

This afternoon we'll be getting out all her awesome science kits and books, and picking out 10 experiments we'd like to do over the next 15 Monday afternoons -- which I'm hoping leaves plenty of time for us to choose to take the afternoon off to go play with friends or do a field trip.

Summer session, here we come!

I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted here. I know I had trouble figuring out how to use the space. I'd started out thinking it would allow family members to keep up with what Sarah was doing, homeschooling-wise, but I'm pretty sure none of them ever actually reads it. Then I'd shifted to using it mostly for myself, just to keep track of what we were doing and to reflect on how it was going, but I was self-conscious about what dry reading it must be, for those handful of folks who were reading along at home.

On top of that, I started to find my blogger reading list overwhelming -- I'd added too many political blogs, I think, and the reading list started turning into just one more Should -- so I started to avoid coming here at all. I think I'll put that on my task list for next week -- going through the reading list and culling it a bit.

Sarah and I had decided to take time off from structured learning for most of the Spring, because we were so busy with limited-time-only homeschooling opportunities like swimming and soccer, and we agreed to start back up the Monday after her birthday. I have to say, we've generally homeschooled all year long, but I can see the appeal of taking some time totally off, because I'm so excited about finally getting to use all the resources we've come across in the last couple months! I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to Monday!

I also recently refocused on my own homeschooling, and started a separate blog (What's Next?)for keeping track of that. It's great to see how all the enthusiasm I'm feeling about that project is bleeding over into this one, and vice versa.

The basic outline of our plan for Sarah's summer session is:
* Mosaic for history/world culture
* comparative religion/mythology through reading lots of myths
* Living Math
* Intellego Weather Unit
* spanish
* nature journaling, including the one hour nature journal challenge
* using a handful of Oak Meadow 3rd grade lessons on math, science, and maps
* using the documentary on NYC, watching approximately 1 DVD each week
* watching one other program each week
* hitting lots of science and NYC museums
* continuing to memorize poems and short stories
* continuing to
(I'll come back and add a resources side bar at some point soon, with links to what we've found useful)

Our afternoons will look like this:
M science experiments (with an emphasis on Chemistry)
T cooking and playing food detectives (that is, nutritional anthropology)
W research, garden, nature journal
R crafts and building
F family zine

Each of us will pick one evening a week to make some sort of presentation to the rest of the family on what we've researched that week.

Obviously it's going to wind up being a lot looser than it looks all written down, and we'll take many days off to have spontaneous summer fun.

This is the first time we'll have been this structured since we experimented with Oak Meadow first grade. I'm both excited and intimidated at the prospect. I've also got mixed feelings about this much structure, philosophically. But we seem to thrive with a fairly structured, predictable schedule, so I'm committed to jumping in with both feet this summer, paying lots of attention to what is and isn't working, and adjusting things as necessary in the upcoming seasons.

Today was Country Day -- the kids did reports on India. Sarah originally was going to do Hindu mythology, but instead her report turned into a bit on the nature of mythology itself, and a bit on the variety of religions in India, and a bit of an overview of Hindu and Buddhist mythology and folklore. And I'm so proud of her I could bust -- until this month she'd been preparing the whole report on the computer every month (with a little technical help from me), doing a slideshow and recording her own voiceover. This month, though, she told me she didn't need my help with the computer, that she was just going to give the presentation herself, live. She got a little stage fright, at the last minute, but she totally overcame it, and she did an awesome job, even with all the unfamiliar names to read. She read clearly and steadily, and was utterly awesome.

I cooked dal and plain basmati rice, and there were some really delicious samosas and some excellent dairy-free khorma (also lots of other things, but those were the only ones I tried).

Then we swung by A's place so she and I could get in some banjo practice. We're going to be playing in a small open mic situation in, oh my *God*, less than 2 weeks. We're doing well, but the anticipatory stage fright's a real pain in the ass.

Recent highlights:
Friday was the wrap party for the science club. They rocked their presentation on thermometers, back in early December, and last week they celebrated with fun snacks, a couple hours of play, and a little bit of conversation about what they want to do together next. Friday night we had a few friends here for the first Sacred Song of the year. It was an experiment, to see how Friday nights would work, but I think we're gonna go back to Sundays -- it was just too stressful trying to get home in time to clean and cook for company, and rush hour complicates things for anyone coming from a distance.

Sarah and I are solidly back into our school schedule. Right now we're doing the third grade Social Studies from Oak Meadow (a Waldorfy homeschool curriculum) exploring myths of different ancient cultures (in preparation for getting back into Story of the World, a history of the world written in storytelling style), studying agriculture and various food systems, doing Living Math (history/anthropology of math), lots of practical math (creating and analyzing polls, making change, measuring things, etc.), studying the history and ecology of NYC/the lower Hudson Valley, and working on copywork (spelling, grammar, handwriting) and memorizing a poem. We had been focused on nature journaling, but we haven't been keeping that up since it got so cold that neither one of us wants to go outside. We'll start back up with a garden journal when our seeds arrive.

Starting in February, we're switching over to Story of the World, an Intellego unit study on the weather, and continuing with NYC, Living Math, and various kinds of practice work. Oh, and being food detectives, studying our favorite meals. Next year I think we may be buying a whole curriculum based around Geography. Sarah seems to like the idea, and I think as long as we both remember the curriculum is a collection of suggestions, not requirements, it'll make the homeschooling organization a hell of a lot easier.

We're also planning a Doll Festival party at the beginning of March.

Bad Mom morning -- well, early afternoon. Sarah was struggling with some homeschooling stuff, I got impatient, she got even more frustrated and tense and afraid of doing it wrong, we butted heads, she felt awful, I felt awful, the whole thing just sucked.

But I called a break so we could both get ready to go out (we were meeting Joe for dinner in Hoboken), and after a few minutes I asked if she wanted to talk about how she was feeling. She did, and she was so brave and so clear and well-spoken about what she was feeling, and I managed to stop being an impatient taskmistress long enough, and also managed to stop kicking myself for making her feel so bad long enough, and somehow managed to say enough of the right things to make it better. And then we rushed out into the cold to meet Joe and have a really nice, cozy, family evening out.

I hate that she takes it so hard when I get impatient or grouchy, but I'm so damn impressed with both of us, that we were able to stop in the middle of the conflict and fix it, and figure out what we can do differently next time.

The rest of our New Year stuff is going well -- I'm back on track for exercising and eating reasonably well (with the exception of last night's belated holiday visit with my grandparents -- I think I ate half of grandma's special potato salad myself!), we're making slow but steady progress on our ToDo lists, and on the family/household lifestyle changes we've been wanting to make, and my music's coming along nicely. I'm still dealing with some existential angst, and some frustration over how very domestic I've been feeling, though. I wish I was feeling more adventurous and bold and interesting than I am, right now, but when it comes down to it, I'm just... not. Instead I seem to want to spend my time crocheting and baking and decluttering and playing music and curling up under blankets with my dear ones. Maybe more of a sense of adventure will come with the Spring.

Happy New Year

We had a wonderfully cozy time over Joe's delightfully long Winter vacation, curled up reading our many new books and spending hours watching our new DVDs together (Leverage Seasons 1&2, Despicable Me, Karate Kid, Twister, Justice League Unlimited...).

Yesterday I was still fighting off some bug that'd been menacing me for the last few days of our vacation, and we had the pleasant surprise of having Joe home with us for an extra day, so we barely even dipped our toes into the waters of the New Year. Today, though, we're jumping in with both feet!

Sarah and I talked over the vacation and agreed that it works better for both of us to do a more extended play-school time in the morning and then just have the afternoons free for our afternoon adventures, instead of trying to stick to a daily rhythm all day long. We wind up either missing out on or rushing through the afternoon routines more often than not, or not being able to fully enjoy our afternoon adventures because there's the sense of Stuff To Do hanging over our heads. And, really, the shorter sessions were part of a daily rhythm that was aimed at the attention span of a much younger child, and we wind up missing out on one of the joys of homeschooling, the luxury of letting ourselves get lost in a book or a new pastime. I don't think we should have any problem shifting into a more intense morning followed by a totally free-flowing afternoon.

Over the break we also all sat down together and wrote up 5 year goals, 1 year goals, and immediate More/Less lists (more board games, less time on the computer, etc.) for the whole family, and I'm hoping to start implementing our plans this week.

I've been working for the last few weeks on my intentions for the New Year, and I had a pretty clear sense of what I want to welcome into my life this year, the transformations I want to cultivate. Last night or the night before, though, I realized that I've been leaving something out.

So for 2011 I intend to welcome Boldness, Health and Fitness, Increased Competence at Getting Things Done, Music... and a more intentional, consistent Spiritual Practice. I like having 5 intentions. Not a round number, but a good one.

I also have a wonderful, slightly ambitious list of projects for Winter 2010/2011. A nice mix of crafts, home improvement, self-improvement, and long-overdue chores.

This week we're reading through The Bill of Rights together, finishing up _River of Dreams_ (a book on the Hudson river), a book on Shakespeare (_Shakespeare For Kids_, I think it is), and _The MixedUp Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler_. I'm finishing up reading _Getting Things Done_). And Joe and Sarah are reading _Ivy and Bean Break The Fossil Record_.

Happy Solstice, folks!

I don't post here as often as I'd like to, because I keep waiting until I have the time or energy or motivation to write something profound or philosophical, and less like a laundry list of what we've been up to, this week.

But, frankly, I don't think I'm looking for this journal to be particularly philosophical. I like being able to look back and see what we were up to, last week, last month, last year...

So, this past month:

We hosted Country Day, the geography group Sarah belongs to. The host chooses the month's theme, and she chose Slovenia (the country my grandfather's parents came from). It was an awesome day. She did her presentation on Slovenian folklore and mythology, and we both learned so much. I made ricet (barley soup) and made a failed attempt at apple potica (a rolled cakey dessert), people brought so many delicious foods and the kids gave so many interesting presentations. That night I went out and got myself some peach schnapps, which I had with the delightfully Slavic leftovers, and relished the sense of connection with so many of my foremothers.

The lego league team finished up their research on thermometers (the focus they chose, within the biomedical engineering theme chosen by the organization), put together their presentation, and presented to the judges at the local Lego League science fair.

We had another Country Day, with the theme of Japan, and I brought cold summer noodles (rice noodles with a really tasty, simple dipping sauce and some quick cucumber pickles) and Sarah gave a presentation on hinamatsuri, the Japanese doll festival. Aside from the usual computer presentation she puts together, she also did a little diorama example of what the traditional doll displays look like at the festival.

On our own, Sarah's working on typing, spelling, math, and drawing, and we're exploring ear training exercises, to pursue her musical goals. And we're continuing to read about NYC, the Hudson River, and Shakespeare (she was very taken by the adaptation of Midsummer Night's Dream we went to see last Spring, and we've been reading children's book versions of a few of his plays), and slowly filling in the Inventions timeline on our wall.

Joe wrote an awesome adventure for us, and is leading Sarah and me through it. She's a math mage, and I get to be a kickass monster hunter. She and Joe are also working their way through many books together -- the Bunnicula series, The Mouse and The Motorcycle, and the three of us are starting _The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler_.

Last night, during our Solstice celebration, we had the chance to explore how wax candles work, how flames work, how solstices work, and how lunar eclipses work, while staying up all night, singing, reading aloud from Pratchett's Hogfather, watching movies, watching the eclipse, crafting, making pizza together, eating brownies, and weathering the long night together.

I'm looking forward to a relatively quite couple weeks, just getting ready for Christmas in a laidback fashion, visiting with friends, and finishing up reading the books we currently have out of the library.