I took Ada back to the doctor today. Her throat is still infected, worse than before.  We had to miss homeschool co-op because she was awake all night with a fever yet again.

Rosie is as grumpy as she’s probably ever been in her life!  Her nose is still stuffy, which is unusual for her.  Must be an extra crappy cold.

Ada still acts cheerful, despite being sick and never sleeping.

Here she is on her bird watching perch this morning.  Her shirt is off because she spilled grits all over it a few minutes prior to this picture.  They are also all over her pants, but those hadn’t been ripped off yet…

We’ve had one small bit of spring cheer.  My grandma brought us some bird seed cakes and a big metal hook to hang them on.

My grandpa, who just died in October, loved bird watching.  I used to watch birds with him in their backyard all the time as a kid.  A few months before he died he gave us his bird books, three of them.  Special memories.

We haven’t ever had any luck with bird feeders at our house here before because the squirrels always monopolize the whole thing and scare the birds away.  Rosie recently saw an episode of Curious George where they feed the squirrels peanuts in the shell, so she decided maybe if we feed the squirrels every day then they will leave the bird seed alone.

Wouldn’t you know, it seems to be working!  Rosie has named the squirrels and now feeds them a handful of peanuts every day.  Well she actually thinks there’s just one squirrel and she’s named him Cyril.  I’m not sure if it’s one squirrel or several that look alike.  Anyway, she sets out a pile for them, then returns throughout the day to count the peanuts to see how many the squirrels have eaten.  We now have very happy squirrels in our yard.  Or one very happy squirrel named Cyril.  Happy at least until my cat Andora beheads and eats it.  That will be a traumatic day.

The squirrel(s) haven’t bothered the bird seed any longer!

Today the girls spent every hour we were home glued to the window.  This morning every time a bird would land they would scream with excitement.  Finally I convinced them (and by them I mostly mean Ada) that this was scaring the birds away.

We saw three different types of bird today, which is a lot considering it’s still freezing cold outside.  The first type of bird I didn’t ID.

Rosie didn’t see that bird, so I didn’t look it up.  It only stayed for a split second, I could barely even get a look at it!

The second visitor was a black capped chickadee.  We saw two together at one point, but usually just one came at a time.  Our bird book told us that they live here year round, and that when they fly they look like they are riding waves in the air so you can always pick them out in the sky based on their unique flight pattern.  We were able to easily see them flying way off in the distance after learning that fact!

We also read that chickadees like to fly up, take one seed, then fly up to the top of a tree to eat it in a safe place.  That explained why the chickadee kept coming and going quickly!

I took these pictures through my living room window.

This afternoon we saw a bird I’ve actually never seen before.  It took us a few minutes of looking through the bird books to ID it.

It’s a tufted titmouse!

The bird books told us that the tufted titmouse means “small bird” and the like to hunt with black capped chickadees!  They don’t migrate, they stay here year round like the chickadees.  I wonder why I’ve never seen one before.  Maybe I just never noticed.

The tufted titmouse is very inquisitive.  When it heard Ada it climbed down on the ground and peered up at us in the window and peeped hello.  Apparently they will also take fur from a sleeping cat to use in their nests.  That would be a funny sight to see.

We were also able to hear both of the bird calls.  The tufted titmouse says, “Peter, peter, peter, peter!”  We’ve been hearing that one a lot first thing in the morning and never knew what bird it was.

Tomorrow, if Rosie is less grumpy, we’re going to draw and water color the birds we’ve seen out front in our nature notebooks.  Rosie is keeping a check list of them in one of the bird reference books.

I’ve been trying to get Rosie interested in The Burgess Bird Book, but so far she’s been bored by it.  I was hoping to read through it with her this spring.  Hopefully this bird feeder will make it more exciting to her.  It’s a fictional story about a bird couple, but it has true bird facts in it.  It’s a very good book!

I am so incredibly ready for nice weather.  Despite being sunny today it was only 35 degrees out.  I keep checking the 10 day forecast hoping for something good, but all I see is a lot of rain and 40′s-50′s for temps.  Depressing.

I can’t start a bunch of seeds right now because I don’t know if we’re going to move or not.  I guess if we don’t move I will just buy started plants from the Amish later in the season.  More expensive and sort of less fun, but not a terrible option.

I am going to do a few 2 liter green houses with the girls if we are ever well enough to plant them.

Some early flowers are starting to sprout outside despite the cool, wet weather.

Maybe one day it will actually be warm out, and we’ll have some kind of plan for moving, and we’ll no longer be stuck in this germ filled limbo land.

We had our first day of the Charlotte Mason homeschool co-op yesterday.

It went very well!  The only downside was they actually intended for me to be the helper in the 4/5 year old class and not Ada’s 2/3 class.  Ada wouldn’t stay in the 2/3 class without me.  To be fair I had promised her we would stay in the same class together.

I tried leaving her in there and she just stood in the same spot and sobbed silently.  So very sad!

She came in the 4/5 class with me, which was fine because she speaks in full sentences and she’s pretty big.  She wears 4t and is almost fitting into 5t.  The 4/5 class is doing the same activities as the 2/3 class anyway.  I’m not that concerned with her being independent at this point.  Rosie was the same way at age 2-3, and now she is perfectly happy to go off without me to her classes when she doesn’t even know a single person there.

Ada had a good time! We went on a nature walk with the 2/3 class and found an empty bird’s nest.

(Hesitating as to whether I should share pictures or not.  Hopefully it’s ok, especially since there are no names attached!)

 

Their expressions are funny.  Everyone is frowning because of the cold wind that started gusting, even though it was 60 degrees out.

The kids observed how the nest was built with twigs, grass, and trash then pasted together with mud.

They were disappointed that there were no eggs inside.

We also decorated Valentine’s Day hearts made out of salt dough.  All the kids are gathered around picking ribbons to put through the holes to hang their hearts.

iPhone picture of Ada with her hearts:

We planted herb seeds in mini green houses made from 2 liter bottles.

 

 

 

We also played with play doh, had lots of free play time, read a book, ate lunch, and did some other activities.

It lasted from 10:30-2:15, but it went by quickly.

The big families in our group really impress me.  Several families have four, five, or six kids.  (They are normal families, they don’t dress alike in homemade clothes or anything like that.  They just believe children are a blessing and love their families.)  All of the kids are so sweet and well behaved!  It’s nice to find a group of people that I might fit in to.  I’ve never fit into any of the other homeschool co-ops we’ve tried out, for various reasons.

 

Rosie enjoyed her classes also.  Surprisingly her favorite thing was drill.  She loved doing burpies.  They also got jump ropes meant for gym classes (vs. toy jump ropes) and they were personally sized to each kid. Rosie was thrilled to “learn how to jump rope for real” as she put it.  They did relay races too, which she thought were so fun.  She also loved water color painting in nature study.  They studied pear tree clippings this week and learned why and how trees grow and then lose their leaves.

At lunch had an older kid be a lunch buddy to each younger kid so that the kids all had someone to sit with and talk to.  The older kid helped the younger kid open their food and clean up.  This turned out to be a great idea.  Everything went so smoothly and the little kids were thrilled to have lunch buddies.  I think some of the kids talked so much they forgot to eat!

After the little kids were picked up from our classroom at the end of the afternoon I went to the gym to get Rosie and she was having a blast playing with a new friend.  She didn’t want to leave!

She spent all afternoon telling me the fun things they did.  Both Ada and Rosie were totally worn out last night!

I don’t have any pictures of Rosie’s classes since I was in class with Ada all day.

 

I’m feeling really good about our decision to do Charlotte Mason homeschooling right now.  I loved it before, but it was lonely figuring it out alone.  Most other homeschoolers we’ve met just do curriculum workbooks.  That is definitely not for us.  Charlotte Mason focuses on literature, history, and growing a love for lifelong learning.  Honestly I’m surprised it’s not more popular among homeschoolers.

Boxed curriculums seem so boring in comparison, at least to Rosie and me. It feels like Charlotte Mason (and the similar Classical Conversations style) is learning in 3d, where as plain old curriculum is so flat and 2d.  The books we read come alive and I enjoy reading them along with Rosie!  Ada enjoys them too, she is obsessed with the history books and actually remembers the thingswe read…at least a two year old version of it.  You should have seen the look on my parents’ faces when Ada started describing Hammurabi and his mean code in great detail at dinner one night.  Hahaha!  Egypt studies have also been a big hit around here, as was Sumer and cuneiform writing.

The way the history is intended to work is the main stories from the beginning of history through the present are studied with living books (first hand accounts, biographies, first person fictional stories based on fact, museums, the Usborne Book of World History, A Child’s History of the World, and so on…) but with CM style there is no emphasis on memorizing the dates.  You create a general timeline by drawing a picture and writing a sentence summary for each section you study to keep as a reminder.  Once the child is older, usually starting in sixth grade, you start over again at the beginning of history, but this time you remember the dates and the greater details.  It’s easier to learn the in depth details the second time since you’re already familiar the general events.

We learned none of these things in public school, at least not in elementary.  We may have mentioned the Egyptians, but we never really studied them.  We did one year of world history study crammed into one year somewhere in high school.  I remember it involved a lot of coloring.  Rosie is going to know SO MUCH MORE.  It’s unbelievable.

I’m loving it too–learning all kinds of new things along with her!  And it’s not hard.  People seem to think you need to be a genius to homeschool or something.  All you need to do is read the books, discuss, be organized enough to have school supplies and time each day to read together, and have fun learning.  When Rosie gets older I plan on having her take chemistry and upper level math classes at one of our local universities–they let homeschoolers take classes there and one county even offers them for free to advanced high school students!  The Kahn Academy online also has all kinds of tutorial videos on advanced subjects.  The best part is my kids will have the freedom to take classes based on whatever their interests are.  If Rosie is interested in being a scientist she can get started on all the advanced science classes we can find.  If she’s interested in being a history professor she will be able to focus on that.  Freedom to succeed!

A lot of universities now have programs to attract homeschool graduates.  I think admissions officers are noticing that a lot of these students do really well.  The University of Kentucky specifically recruits homeschoolers, and they are a pretty good school.  They have excellent medical, dental, and teaching programs.  (And you know what? I am not that concerned about my kids going to college.  In today’s world a college degree does not always mean a great job, as a lot of our generation have discovered the hard way.  I want them to be able to go to college and succeed if that’s what they desire, but if they want to do something else (vocational) then that would be fine with us too.  I just want them to be happy.)

 

Now with all that being said, I’d better get up off the couch and get us dressed because we’re about to be late for Rosie’s speech therapy…at public school.  Our public school system here is considerably less than excellent, but the speech therapist is pretty awesome.

 

Side note: 15 weeks pregnant today! I can’t believe I’ve made it this far.  It still feels surreal. I feel what could be the baby fluttering around in there sometimes, especially by my left hip bone area.  Always over there for some reason.  I haven’t felt any real huge definite movements on a regular basis yet.  I should any time now, I guess.  I know I was feeling Ada and Rosie moving quite a bit by 16 weeks.

We’re going to find out if the baby is a boy or a girl soon!  I don’t have a date scheduled yet, but we’ll probably find out at 16-18 weeks.  Sometime in the next few weeks!  Maybe that will make this seem more real. Everyone keeps saying they hope it’s a boy, and assuming we were trying for a boy because we have two girls.  Honestly I would be thrilled to pieces if I had a third little girl.  I love my two girls quite a bit.  I’m a little afraid of having a boy–all that boy energy bouncing around!  But you know either way I just want a live baby.  What’s between the legs isn’t exactly a deciding factor in my level of happiness at this point, especially after experiencing a loss.

 

 

I need some kind of possum repellant spray.

These ugly beasts (or Tools of Satan as we jokingly call them) are terrorizing my backyard!  They have ripped the heads off of a few hens over the past few years, and they love to steal eggs.  This past summer they ate an entire nest of duck eggs that were close to hatching.  Poor Mama Duck was panting and paralyzed with fear in the corner next to her nest under the chicken coop.

The most troublesome part is that my dogs go insane over them!  Abby, my black lab mix, is very protective of the chickens and ducks.  Last night she got up and kept whining at the door.  She has an unresolved diarrhea issue, so I rushed to let her outside only to find that she didn’t have to poop.  She went and laid in the rain and mud between the chicken coops and slept there for a few hours until the middle of the night, when she got up and started barking her head off. I can’t leave her to bark all night in our neighborhood.  She has a loud piercing bark, I think she’s a shepherd mix.

I went out in the dark, pouring rain, and sticky mud in my pajamas and boots and marched across the yard to discover two possums up in the tree above my brown chicken coop.  Abby was freaking out because she couldn’t climb the tree to murder them.  Usually my coonhound Hank will corner them and Abby will rip their bellies open and kill them, but last night Hank was in his new crate asleep inside.

We got Hank a new crate that has a different kind of latch on it he hopefully won’t be able to bust open.  I’m so exhausted from his antics–running away by climbing the fence, destroying trash and stealing food.  He’s super sweet, loving, cute, and bad.  Very, very bad.  I’ve spent the past seven (!) years training him to be a good dog and he’s come a very long way.  He sits, stays, and lays down on command.  He’s house trained.  He used to pull on your clothes an rip them, knock you over, and poop in the floor and pee onthe walls.  (No wonder he was returned to the shelter, right?)  He will even reliably walk off leash with you now.  He just can’t help his hound beast ways when it comes to taking himself for a run, ripping open and rolling in trash, and eating any and all food/vomit/poop he can find.  Truly he needs to be out running with a pack of other hound beasts chasing game or something.  I have a theory he was a failure as a hunting dog because he’s terrified of gun shots and thunder.

Anyway, back to the possums.  It’s not legal to shoot a gun in a neighborhood, and there are too many of them to trap.  They’re such a nuisance!  And ugly too, hissing and showing their nasty teeth.  *shudder*

Don’t suggest I call animal control. They would laugh and hang up on me.  The only time they’ve ever come out is when we had a blind raccoon foaming at the mouth in our yard. It had distemper and my dogs were licking it!  Luckily we give the dogs the distemper vaccine from the feed store–it goes in their noses instead of an injection, and I guess it works.  You can buy most vaccines, except rabies, at feed stores like Tractor Supply and they are way cheaper than the vet.  They sell needles and syringes also.  Most of the vaccines just go into the skin on the back of their neck, very easy.  The instructions are on the package insert for each vaccine.

When we finally are able to move to the country I will have no mercy for annoying possums! If they know what’s good for them they’ll go find somewhere else to eat other than at my chicken coops.  Did I ever tell you all there was a big fat possum on my front porch one night when we came home??  I think the population needs some thinning out!  There are way too many to trap and relocate and I don’t want to get bitten.  I can’t kill them in town.  Frustrating.

 

Here are last night’s visitors.  At least they weren’t hanging by their tails upside down! I ran into one, literally, in the dark hanging upside down one night last year.

There’s a baby one in the flashlight beam and a fat one over on the left kind of hidden.

 

 

 

I spent all day yesterday deep cleaning the living room and kitchen.  Rosie has been keeping her room clean and organized for me.  Today I intended to do the bathroom, our bedroom, and then tomorrow the back bedroom which now has Christmas stuff and random toys shoved in it because we have a major lack of storage space.  But I feel sick and gaggy yet again today and I was up half the night.  Maybe I’ll just sit here to prevent vomiting.  Ugh.  I also am starting to get behind on laundry.  It never ends.

I was hoping to make meatloaf and mashed potatoes for lunch.  (Big dinner type lunch since Tyler is never home at night.)  I’m not sure I feel like moving, let alone squishing raw beef at the moment.  Blah.  I can’t even remember what it’s like to feel normal.  I’m 14 weeks.  I have to start feeling better at least most of the time.  I’m going to lose what little sanity I have left.  Well, I might have already lost it…

 

The girls are starting homeschool co-op next week. It’s one day a week. Before this pregnancy I’d been getting together with a group of women who are also doing Charlotte Mason style homeschooling.  We did a book study on Charlotte Mason’s sixth book, discussing one chapter per week.  We planned out a co-op and it’s finally come to fruition!  It’s going to be awesome.  I am super excited.  The person leading the co-op and book study has done an amazing job leading the planning.  She’s organized it so perfectly that we even have insurance.  It’s all fully legal and legit down to the last detail.  There are about 13 families with about 45 kids.  Several of the families have 6 kids!

This is what Rosie is doing at the co-op:

(Rosie will be in Form 1, which is first grade.)

– Nature Study w/ dry-brush watercolor: Birds and Plants, including the turkey, peacock, ducklings (if they hatch in time), dandelions, grapes and clover. The children will also be participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count. Wild Birds Unlimited is donating bird feeders for class observation.

– Drill: cardio health and endurance, coordination, flexibility, strength, agility, balance, speed. This includes jump rope, relay games, team and individual exercises.

– Artist Study: Six works by Albrecht Durer of the Northern Renaissance period

– Composer Study: Six works by John Williams highlighting the different sections and instruments of the orchestra, including concertos for tuba, violin, contra bassoon, harp

– Literature: Form 1 will read a living book about the Sami people of northern Scandinavia (Norway). Form 2 will read Norse Myths by the D’Aulaires. Form 3 will read from Bulfinch’s Mythology, Age of Fable, specifically the Norse myths.

– Bible and Map Study: All Forms will be studying the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul. They will read from the Bible and plot out Paul’s journeys on Biblical-period maps.

 

I’m the assistant teacher for Ada’s class, the 2/3′s.  We’re doing something similar to the older kids, but much more relaxed of course.

These are Ada’s class plans–I’m excited, it’s going to be so fun!

We hope to design a day that is in keeping with the CM philosophy of spreading a feast before the children. In this case, it is through activities and exposure to things (like poetry and art and nature) that would develop good habits in the children – particularly habits of observing, listening and rightly communicating with each other. We hope that in each activity, their curiosity might be peaked and they may seek to further explore the world around them.

10:30: Little Morning Matins – Pledge of Allegiance, prayer, learn/recite
Psalm 51:10. (The 4/5 class will participate in Matins with the Forms)
10:40: Handicraft
11:05: Physical Play: jumping, games, Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, etc.
11:15: Manipulative Play: pattern blocks, shapes puzzles, I Spy
11:30: In Nature: cloud watching, play outside (parents, PLEASE dress kids
for outdoor walks)
11:50: Lunch
12:20: Working in our class garden
12:45: Story Time – e.g. The Ox-Cart Man, Make Way for Ducklings
1:00: Imaginative Play – dress up, blocks, etc.
1:15: Artist Study – looking at animals illustrated by John James Audubon
1:30: Poems – by Robert Louis Stevenson
1:45: Play – puzzles, games, etc
1:55: Clean up together
2:00: Dismiss

Even though that’s a lot of activities for little kids it’s going to be WAY better than the other co-ops I’ve done.  Usually the preschool is super boring and the time passes painfully slowly.  With so much to do it will be fun and not drag!  I’m especially excited about the class garden. I love digging in the dirt with my kids.  Ada loves helping garden at home.

We’ve been slacking on homeschooling while I’ve been freaking miserable with this pregnancy.  We’ll have to do work in the summer to make up for it.  I desperately want to feel better and get my life back to normal!

 

I’ll close this long entry with pictures from yesterday!  My grandma stopped by and gave the girls their Christmas gifts.  She didn’t want to shop during the Christmas rush, so she gave them cash for Christmas then later went out and bought a couple presents to give them after the stress of the Christmas season was over.  It’s nice to spread out the gift giving too.  The kids are so lucky to have doting family, but it can be overwhelming.

My Grandma got them the Calico Critters mansion.  (I know…$$$!!!)  And she got Ada a set of Thomas and Percy trains to go with her train table.  My tiny house was overwhelmed by packaging in like 3.5 seconds!

(Ada was still in her pajamas…)

One from my iPhone from last night before bed, out of order–

After that Ada and I made some chocolate chip banana bread muffin tops.

Rosie wasn’t interested, she was happy to play by herself with the Calico Critters for a little while!

I wanted to write down some quotes and thoughts after reading the first three sections of Chapter 3 from Charlotte Mason’s book Towards a Philosophy of Education.  I’m reading the book with a group of other moms.  It is so wonderful to meet other mothers who are interested in the same lifestyle I am!  We meet every Tuesday night to discuss the book and plan our Charlotte Mason style homeschool co-op, which will start classes in January.

If you want to read the chapter it’s in full context here.

Just to clarify, Charlotte Mason lived from 1842-1923.  I believe she wrote this final book a year before her death, in 1922.  I’m too sleepy to fact check that right now.

 

 

“We do not consider enough that the nourishment, rest, fresh air and natural exercise, proper for the body as a whole, meet the requirements of the nervous system and that the undue nervous tension which a small child suffers in carrying a cup of tea, an older boy or girl in cramming for an examination, may be the cause later of a distressing nervous breakdown. We are becoming a nervous, overstrained nation and though golf and cricket may do something for us, a watchful education, alert to arrest every symptom of nervous over-pressure, would do much to secure for every child a fine physique and a high degree of staying power.”

Can you believe Charlotte Mason wrote these words in England nearly a hundred years ago?  I would think that nervous and overstrained is a fairly accurate description of the lives of most Americans today.  That’s not the life I want for my children, if I can help it.

One of the most difficult aspects of parenting, for me, is the balance of teaching my children good behavior while still realizing they are just kids.  Tonight at my Charlotte Mason study group one of the mothers who has older teenagers was talking about mistakes she thinks she made when parenting her oldest child.  Her daughter was very rebellious as a teenager.  She was talking about why her daughter ended up that way and she said something that really stood out to me:

If we put too much emphasis on the perfect “outside” behavior we sometimes forget to look at the heart.  

That makes me think of the saying, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”  It’s so easy to get caught up in how your children are behaving and forget to just laugh with them and love them, to forget to cater to their hearts more so than anything else.  Gentle correction, whispering, and lots of snuggles goes a lot farther than yelling.  (Or idiot screaming as Rosie and I have termed it.)

Why is it so hard to remember these things on a daily basis when you are in the trenches of parenting?

 

“In these days when reason is deified by the unlearned and plays the part of the Lord of Misrule it is necessary that every child should be trained to recognize fallacious reasoning and above all to know that a man’s reason is his servant and not his master; that there is no notion a man chooses to receive which his reason will not justify, whether it be mistrust of his neighbour, jealousy of his wife, doubts about his religion, or contempt for his country.”

“The only safeguard against fallacies which undermine the strength of the nation morally and economically is a liberal education which affords a wide field for reflection and comparison and abundant data upon which to found sound judgments.”

I loved this passage. One of my main reasons for homeschooling is so that I can allow my children to learn to think for themselves using logic and contemplation.  It seems especially applicable during an election year, when everyone’s logical reasoning flies out the window.

 

 

“Every child wants to be approved, even baby in his new red shoes; to be first in what is going on; to get what is going; to be admired; to lead and manage the rest; to have the companionship of children and grown people; and last, but not least, every child wants to know. There they are, those desires, ready to act on occasion and our business is to make due use of this natural provision for the work of education. We do make use of the desires, not wisely, but too well. We run our schools uponemulation, the desire of every child to be first; and not the ablest, but the most pushing, comes to the front. We quicken emulation by the common desire to get and to have, that is, by the impulse of avarice. So we offer prizes, exhibitions, scholarships, every incentive that can be proposed. We cause him to work for our approbation, we play upon his vanity, and the boy does more than he can. What is the harm, we say, when all those springs of action are in the child already? The athlete is beginning to discover that he suffers elsewhere from the undue development of any set of muscles; and the boy whose ambition, or emulation, has been unduly stimulated becomes a flaccid person. But there is a worse evil. We all want knowledge just as much as we want bread. We know it is possible to cure the latter appetite by giving more stimulating food; and the worst of using other spurs to learning is that a natural love of knowledge which should carry us through eager school-days, and give a spice of adventure to the duller days of mature life, is effectually choked; and boys and girls ‘Cram to pass but not to know; they do pass but they don’t know.’ The divine curiosity which should have been an equipment for life hardly survives early schooldays.

Now it has been demonstrated very fully indeed that the delightfulness of knowledge is sufficient to carry a pupil joyfully and eagerly through his school life and that prizes and places, praise, blame and punishment, are unnecessary insofar as they are used to secure ardent interest and eager work. The love of knowledge is sufficient.”

Dearest Charlotte Mason,
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?
Why could we have not lived at the same time?!
How do you creepily sit in your chair in 1922 across the ocean in England and write things about education and society that completely ring true today in 2012 America?

 

 

 

“The pageant of history with its interplay of characters is as delightful as any tale because every child uses his own film to show the scenes and exhibit the persons. We fuss a good deal about the dress, implements and other small details of each historic period but we forget that, give the child a few fit and exact words on the subject and he has the picture in his mind’s eye, nay, a series miles long of really glorious films; for a child’s amazing, vivifying imagination is part and parcel of his intellect.”

“The way children make their own the examples offered to them is amazing. No child would forget the characterization of Charles IX as ‘feeble and violent,’ nor fail to take to himself a lesson in self-control. We may not point the moral; that is the work proper for children themselves and they do it without fail.  The comparative difficulty of the subject does not affect them.”

 

 

This is the reasoning behind using “living” books rather than text books to teach subjects whenever possible.  How much more do you learn when you see history and culture through the eyes of a person telling a story rather than learning facts from a book?  I’ve been to industrial England through Charles Dickens.  I’ve been a drummer boy in the civil war.  I’ve sailed on the Titanic, and from multiple perspectives! I’ve been an immigrant, a pilgrim, a slave, and an indentured servant.  I was once an Indian.  I’ve even been to Imperial China.  The list is endless.  I’m lucky because I had an innate love for reading as a kid, I read everything in the library I possibly could.  I can’t wait to educate my children using historically accurate literature.  Imagine all of the places we’ll go!

One important thing Charlotte Mason talks about is avoiding what she calls twaddle.  (Twaddle is such a funny word…)  She says that children should only read quality books, not dumbed down versions of famous stories or silly fluff books for their education.  This seems important in today’s world, when things like 50 Shades of Gray are on the best seller list.  I’m sure it’s fine to read fluff books when you’re relaxing before bed, but overall the main bulk of your child’s reading should be classic books or books with challenging words and meaty subjects.  Reading and being read to makes kids super smart. I think everyone can agree on that!

When thinking about the books we choose to read, the TV we watch, and the electronic games we play someone at my study group tonight said to ask yourself what we’re doing to draw our children towards beauty and truth.  I wrote that down because I thought–what a high standard to hold against the things you let your kids do.  I’m not against an episode of Sponge Bob or some other harmless funny idiocy in moderation, I like to have a good time and laugh with my kids.  But for the majority of the stuff that goes into their little brains?  Beauty and truth.  Something to consider.

This is not to say I want to shelter them from everything in the world, not by a long shot.  I want them to develop a taste for quality literature, music made by real musicians with talent, classical music, beautiful pieces of art, the awesomeness of nature…

It’s like living with PURPOSE.  Not just bobbing through life riding the waves of whatever crap popular culture loves next.

From a Christian point of view Charlotte Mason says that “education is the handmaid of religion.”  That could mean several things. One immediate thought is how I can use beauty and truth, living and learning with purpose, to help my children discover God.  Every human is born with an innate desperate need for spirituality, for something greater than themselves.  But at the same time every human also has an obstinate, rebellious nature that wants to deny any sort of god so that they can focus on living life on their own terms.  That’s what education is, what growing up means–to wrestle with those two natures, to search for God.  To find your purpose in life.

I love that I can raise my kids so this all blends in with education.  It’s a life long journey, not just twelve years of 9-3 on the clock in a school building.  I kind of think this may be what’s wrong with so many kids today who float through college and seem to party and have no purpose to their lives.  I know so many people who are simply lost and confused.

 

Another thing I love about Charlotte Mason, as I learn more about this homeschooling method, is the emphasis on life long learning as well as good habits.  I used to think it was kind of silly to focus so much on habits.  Then Rosie got a little older.  Heck yeah habits are IMPORTANT.   I should re-write that about twelve times in bold.  If you have toddlers now trust me, start focusing on little habits like cleanliness and order.  Nothing neurotic, just talk about and encourage them to help you clean up messes, brush their own teeth nightly, do simple chores, use table manners, and so on.  It will be so much easier for you when they reach ages 5 or 6 and become more mature.  You’ll have already laid the groundwork and things will flow more smoothly in your house.

We did some of that with Rosie, but not enough, and we had somewhat of a huge battle at ages 4-5, heightening at age 5 to the worst of it.  I still love the idea of consensual living and parenting with your child’s emotions and perspectives in mind.  However, it seems that it’s easy to forget that “consensual” involves your child learning to keep others’ needs in mind as well.  Consensual can easily end up being child-centered living by accident.  For our family consensual living means you clean up after yourself because you value your own property as well as our communal space in the house.  You go to bed when it’s time without arguing because we all need to rest and keep a rhythm to our days in order to feel happy.  You listen to what your parents ask you to do because the natural order of things is that parents need to be in charge sometimes, and by this point you should be able to trust that we wouldn’t tell you to do something that isn’t beneficial or needed.

Also, just FYI, parenting is hard.  But then again life is hard too, right?

 

Devoting part of every day to reading and discussing school subjects with Rosie takes up a lot of time.  It’s very hard to keep Ada quiet and entertained while I work with Rosie.  I’d say that’s probably the most difficult thing about homeschooling.

The other difficult thing is finding a balance between what Rosie should be learning and what kind of subjects she enjoys.  For example we studied vikings for a week and they did not interest Rosie in the least.  Ada on the other hand LOVES vikings. Now we’re reading the next chapter and it’s about Columbus.  Also of no interest to Rosie.  Ada spent an hour reading the Columbus pop-up book to herself and exclaiming over the map.  At least someone is listening.  Hah.

Rosie’s favorite school book is this one book I hesitated over called Wisdom and the Millers.  It was on the reading list as part of the religious bit.  It’s about a Mennonite family and the evening devotions their dad reads to them.  We’re supposed to read a chapter every day.  Rosie thinks it’s the greatest story book in the world.  I have no idea why.  It’s about what the Bible says about being a tattle tale, for example, and then the dad tells a story about one time when he was a tattle tale as a kid and what happened as a result.  It’s a chapter book with one picture per chapter.  Today’s story was about how a good man cares for his animals while a wicked man leaves them to suffer.  The story the dad told his kids was about a time when he a little boy and he got angry with the goat for kicking over the milking pail then didn’t give the goats any water for a day.  Rosie is totally riveted by this book. It’s kind of funny to see her begging me to read a book about morals, of all things.

The good thing about homeschooling is that you have time to follow your interests.  However I also think it’s important to learn a little about a wide variety of subjects because you never know when you’ll need to be informed about something later in life.  You also never know when you’ll be surprised by your interest in something you didn’t expect you’d like!

Another good thing about homeschooling…we can walk around in our pajamas until we feel like getting dressed!  Ada and I like to wear our pj’s all morning.  Rosie loves to get dressed as soon as possible.

We usually eat breakfast and watch a tv show, then the girls play around for a little while before we start school work.

As part of Rosie’s school work we do a composer study where we learn about a different composer each month.  We “study” the composer one day a week.

This month we’re learning about Beethoven.  Today we read a little of a children’s book about his life.  We learned about his childhood and listened to the first song he composed and performed at age 10.

Then we listened to Moonlight Sonata while painting what the music sounded like.  Rosie said it sounded like a person pining away in love.

(I didn’t tell her why Beethoven wrote that song!)  She painted herself because she loves her best friend Cade and he lives several hours away.

Ada painted too.  They just kept painting and painting, as if we’d never painted before…?

We ran out of paint.

Once we ran out of paint Rosie washed her hands and ran off to play.

Ada had to be swiftly relocated to the tub.

Things got a little wild in there.

I informed Ada she had paint on her bum.

Shocking.

But pleasing too…

Nope, none on the tongue.

I didn’t photograph the next place she checked for paint.

Then we were very silly.

Ada *loves* looking at these pictures later.  Our computer screen saver is a huge slide show of pictures from the last six years.  The girls watch it for hours sometimes.

While Rosie went to dance class this evening Ada wanted to get out her new violin.

Rosie is going to start learning violin soon with me as part of school.  Ada kept asking, “Where is my own bah-oh-lee-ann?” (Kentucky accent ftw!)

Well her own bah-oh-lee-ann came in the mail a couple days ago.  It has been a source of MUCH pride.  Ada very delicately removes it from the case, practices holding it correctly, plays emphatically, then carefully places it back in the case.

Super bonus: The case is also a back pack!

When Rosie goes to dance class on Thursdays with Tyler’s parents Ada immediately takes advantage of the one-on-one time.

She wanted to play the violin for me tonight.

She warmed up her rhythm abilities with the drum.

Then, it was time to remove the beloved bah-oh-lee-ann from its case.

She has to do it all by herself.

Sunflare to the max.

She was in the process of yelling.  I think she’s calling out square dance moves or something.

She kept yelling, “Macaroni pizza!”

She wanted me to get out the banjo.  Alas my banjo skills are still a work in progress…a major work in progress. I can play a G lick! That’s about it.

Yes, I know, how many pictures can there be of Ada playing the violin?

The violin is just so teeny tiny and freaking adorable!

MACARONI PIZZA!

A few weeks ago I said I was going to write more about our homeschooling style.  I haven’t had time to write much, and truth be told I’m still learning so much about Charlotte Mason that I can’t accurately write up something about it.

The basic way Charlotte Mason style homeschooling works is that we use living books instead of text books.  Living books are narrative style books, like an autobiography, that are written by one person and pull your thoughts and emotions into the story, get your interest, so that you remember what you’re learning about.  Basically the opposite of reading a dry encyclopedia.  The opposite of a text book, which are usually little summaries of historical events or boring explanations.

There is a lot, and I mean A LOT more to CM learning than just living books.  I’ve been trying to learn about it on my own for the past year since I discovered Charlotte Mason and I’ve been totally overwhelmed and sometimes confused.  We’ve tried out several homeschool co-ops in our area and I haven’t found any other parents who do CM.  None of the co-op classes have lined up with the philosophies, which has been disappointing.

 

I’ve been praying, wishing, hoping, and praying even harder that I might find another family who is interested in Charlotte Mason.  A few weeks ago I posted on a local board asking if anyone had a certain book for sale (A Child’s History of the World) because we needed it for Year 1 and I’d forgotten to order it.  Someone offered to give it to me, which is awesome because it’s a $40 book.  Then someone else saw my post and messaged me to ask if we were doing Charlotte Mason because she knew that was a living book.  She went on to ask me if I’d heard about the Charlotte Mason study group starting up.

Say what?!

Apparently a few other mothers are interested in Charlotte Mason homeschooling and they are starting their own group to study one of Charlotte Mason’s books.  (Volume 6)  Her books are written in Victorian English.  They are educational theories, dense reading.  Thought provoking stuff about not only education but a lifestyle, how you intend to raise your children.  I already own the book they were going to study and I’ve tried to read it on my own, but it was a little discouraging to slog through chapter after chapter with no one to bounce thoughts off of.  The book has lots of “ah-ha!” moments that beg to be discussed.

Not to over generalize, but most of the parents I’ve met at these homeschool co-ops don’t seem to be into this sort of thing.  There are a lot of worksheets and curriculum packages, not much in the way of deep discussions on things like educational philosophies.

I was THRILLED to hear that not only are there other CM families, but they want to have a study group.  SIGN ME UP!!

(Yes, me, the socially awkward person who avoids groups of people as much as possible. This could be premature, but it is possible that I *might* be coming out of my shell.  At least peeking out…)

 

I went to the first meeting of the group last week and there were 14 other moms there.  That’s a pretty big number!  Quite exciting.  We discussed the preface and introduction of the book for three hours.

Three hours people.  Three hours of actual intellectual discussion on a topic I feel passionate about–parenting and education–with others who are interested and in agreement, from varying backgrounds and different ages.

Be still my heart.

The very, very best part is that these all seem like normal people.  Smart, caring moms who aren’t snooty or weird.  Just normal, average families.

The very, very, very best part (oh yeah I just found a reason to use the underline!) is that the leader of the study group is organizing a Charlotte Mason homeschool co-op.  The study group is planning the co-op together.

Yours truly is possibly going to be teaching the three year old class.  Play based learning.  (Because I love toddlers and preschoolers more than any other age group.)  We plan to start the co-op in January.  I never realized how much planning it takes to run a co-op!  Between the 15 mothers at the study group there are about 50 children.  Some of the women have large families, some just have one child.  There’s a good mix.

 

Tonight I went to the second meeting and it was as good as the first meeting.  Three more hours of discussion.  I am able to ask experienced mothers for advice with every tiny problem we’re having.  Since this is our first year of real schooling (more than just Kindergarten) it’s been a little challenging.  It’s like the support I’ve found on the internet has stepped out into reality.  I may no longer need the internet if this trend continues.  No joke!  The leader of the group invited us to come over to her house soon so Rosie can see how her kids do “school” and be encouraged.  I think that will help a lot.

I’m also learning more about so many different resources that will be extremely helpful as Rosie gets older.  Things I would have not figured out on my own, or at least not easily.

I will be posting more about Charlotte Mason and how this style of schooling is working out for us as we go along. If you’re interested in reading more about it, below are the main principles from Charlotte Mason written in modern English.  Keep in mind these were written in another time period and some things you have to take with a grain of salt.  Overall the goal is to give children not just knowledge, but the desire and wisdom to be self-educating so they can learn (and enjoy learning!) throughout their whole lives.

It includes all regular school subjects, though I think once you reach high school level there will be some break away for things like calculus if Rosie wants/needs to learn something like that.  I never took calculus and didn’t need it for my major and neither did Tyler, but for some reason people love to pick out that one particular subject so I used it as an example.  (There, now I don’t have to get 20 more comments asking me how my child will ever learn calculus!) By the way, there’s a home school co-op or college class for that, I don’t have to worry about it right now or ever.

Anyway.

Links with more info are below the principles.

 

A Short Synopsis of the Educational Philosophy Explained in This Book

‘As soon as the soul spots truth, the soul recognizes it as her first and oldest friend.’
‘The repercussions of truth are great. Therefore we must not neglect to correctly judge what’s true, and what’s not.’
– Benjamin Whichcote

Whichcote meant that the end result of truth is so great, that we must be careful to make sure that what we live by is, indeed, the truth.

1. Children are born persons–they are not blank slates or embryonic oysters who have the potential of becoming persons. They already are persons.

2. Although children are born with a sin nature, they are neither all bad, nor all good. Children from all walks of life and backgrounds may make choices for good or evil.

3. The concepts of authority and obedience are true for all people whether they accept it or not. Submission to authority is necessary for any society or group or family to run smoothly.

4. Authority is not a license to abuse children, or to play upon their emotions or other desires, and adults are not free to limit a child’s education or use fear, love, power of suggestion, or their own influence over a child to make a child learn.

5. The only means a teacher may use to educate children are the child’s natural environment, the training of good habits and exposure to living ideas and concepts. This is what CM’s motto ‘Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life’ means.

6. ‘Education is an atmosphere’ doesn’t mean that we should create an artificial environment for children, but that we use the opportunities in the environment he already lives in to educate him. Children learn from real things in the real world.

7. ‘Education is a discipline’ means that we train a child to have good habits and self-control.

8. ‘Education is a life’ means that education should apply to body, soul and spirit. The mind needs ideas of all kinds, so the child’s curriculum should be varied and generous with many subjects included.

vol 6 paraphrase pg xxx

9. The child’s mind is not a blank slate, or a bucket to be filled. It is a living thing and needs knowledge to grow. As the stomach was designed to digest food, the mind is designed to digest knowledge and needs no special training or exercises to make it ready to learn.

10. Herbart’s philosophy that the mind is like an empty stage waiting for bits of information to be inserted puts too much responsibility on the teacher to prepare detailed lessons that the children, for all the teacher’s effort, don’t learn from anyway.

11. Instead, we believe that children’s minds are capable of digesting real knowledge, so we provide a rich, generous curriculum that exposes children to many interesting, living ideas and concepts.

12. ‘Education is the science of relations’ means that children have minds capable of making their own connections with knowledge and experiences, so we make sure the child learns about nature, science and art, knows how to make things, reads many living books and that they are physically fit.

13. In devising a curriculum, we provide a vast amount of ideas to ensure that the mind has enough brain food, knowledge about a variety of things to prevent boredom, and subjects are taught with high-quality literary language since that is what a child’s attention responds to best.

14. Since one doesn’t really ‘own’ knowledge until he can express it, children are required to narrate, or tell back (or write down), what they have read or heard.

15. Children must narrate after one reading or hearing. Children naturally have good focus of attention, but allowing a second reading makes them lazy and weakens their ability to pay attention the first time. Teachers summarizing and asking comprehension questions are other ways of giving children a second chance and making the need to focus the first time less urgent. By getting it the first time, less time is wasted on repeated readings, and more time is available during school hours for more knowledge. A child educated this way learns more than children using other methods, and this is true for all children regardless of their IQ or background.

vol 6 paraphrase pg xxxi

16. Children have two guides to help them in their moral and intellectual growth–’the way of the will,’ and ‘the way of reason.’

17. Children must learn the difference between ‘I want’ and ‘I will.’ They must learn to distract their thoughts when tempted to do what they may want but know is not right, and think of something else, or do something else, interesting enough to occupy their mind. After a short diversion, their mind will be refreshed and able to will with renewed strength.

18. Children must learn not to lean too heavily on their own reasoning. Reasoning is good for logically demonstrating mathematical truth, but unreliable when judging ideas because our reasoning will justify all kinds of erroneous ideas if we really want to believe them.

19. Knowing that reason is not to be trusted as the final authority in forming opinions, children must learn that their greatest responsibility is choosing which ideas to accept or reject. Good habits of behavior and lots of knowledge will provide the discipline and experience to help them do this.

20. We teach children that all truths are God’s truths, and that secular subjects are just as divine as religious ones. Children don’t go back and forth between two worlds when they focus on God and then their school subjects; there is unity among both because both are of God and, whatever children study or do, God is always with them.

vol 6 paraphrase pg 1

(Copied from: http://amblesideonline.org/CMM/M6_00.html )

 

An FAQ about everything related:
http://amblesideonline.org/FAQ.shtml

We’re doing Year 1 and using the basic plan from here:
http://www.charlottemasonhelp.com/2009/07/books-and-schedules.html
I also like this, Secular Charlotte Mason, for when the religious aspect gets to be too much. Because while we are Christian I’m not really into extremely religious homeschooling. Good to see this site because it shows how you can still do CM style regardless.
http://www.secularcm.com/

I have to interrupt my regularly scheduled homeschooling post to share pictures!

I don’t think I ever updated about The Birthday Ducklings.  They were all murdered by their father, Benny Duck.  He broke their necks one afternoon and I found them all three floating in their little pool.  I’d seen him chasing them the day before and thought about separating them, but I never dreamed he would actually kill them.  Apparently male ducks sometimes murder their offspring, who knew?

It was incredibly sad.

BUT…they are back!  The three ducklings, reincarnated. ;)

June, the mama duck, sat on eggs this past month.  For some reason she abandoned them a few days before they hatched.  (She’s an awful mother, she should have protected the other ducklings and didn’t even miss them when they died.)  I stuck the two eggs I found under my Silkie hen.  Silkies will brood anything.  This particular hen had been sitting on a box of river stones she found in the garage for a few weeks hoping to hatch them.

A couple of days later we could hear peeping and pecking from inside the eggs.

Rosie was thrilled and spent a lot of time listening to them.

  

  

After 48 hours of noise there were cracks! The first egg finally pipped!

We waited and waited, but nothing else happened.  The duckling got the tip of its beak out of the shell but could move no further to hatch out.

With a sinking feeling I realized a terrible error in my Silkie-hatching-ducks plan.  Ducks get out and swim, then get back onto their eggs wet.  This makes the eggs warm and humid.

Chickens…well chickens don’t do that.  They are much more dry.  I SHOULD HAVE MISTED THE EGGS!

The baby duck couldn’t hatch out because the membrane inside of the egg had dried out and essentially glued the duckling to its own egg shell.  Crisis!

There’s no such thing as a bird c-section.  Eggs have veins running along the inside that attach to the membrane.  If you rip open the veins then the bird will bleed to death and die.

What to do, what to do??

 I had to try and do something, otherwise the duckling would just die inside of the shell.  So I started at the little hole the duckling had made with its bill and I gently chipped away while moistening the dried out membrane I exposed using a warm, wet sponge.

I managed to mostly avoid the veins I saw.  I was holding my breath.

I love seeing how the duckling was all packaged tightly inside.

See all of those veins in the shell?

I wasn’t sure if it would be ok since I peeled it out of the egg.  It fluffed up and it’s fine now!  Rosie named it Junior, after the mama duck June.

Then the second egg pipped, and the beak was sticking up out of the shell with the duckling unable to move around and hatch out, just like the first duckling.

 I held my breath and attempted to rescue it without killing it.  This one was more bloody and took a long time to perk up.  We thought it was going to die for sure.

It laid there limply for hours.  The girls named it Sleepy because they didn’t believe me when I said it could be too weak to live. Obviously it was only sleepy!

Please don’t die, please don’t die….

(Here are some pictures from my real camera.)

Sleepy, next to its empty shell.

Sleepy next to the shell, and Junior happily napping while fluffing up.

Rosie and Kirsten watching the ducklings.

DUCKSSSSS!

While waiting for Sleepy to wake up (or die) we had a tea party in the weird red glow from the heat lamp.

Then we played soccer, which ending up being dangerous after the ducklings almost got knocked out.

Finally, fluffing achieved!

I don’t know what this face was about.

And Sleepy look like it might live!

Rosie before her first dance class of the season, the evening of Hatch Day.

He knows not to eat them…

I swear, he won’t touch the ducklings! But they smell good…

She wasn’t squeezing, she knows how to be gentle. Most of the time.

Yesterday I found a third egg peeping outside!  June left it unattended all night long, and it got cool out.  I was surprised it was still alive.

I tried to let it hatch, but it was stuck too.  So I helped it gently like the others, but there was a lot of blood.  A lot.

I managed to get it out, but something was wrong.  I think where it got too cold it didn’t finish developing properly.  It didn’t absorb the yolk all the way.

Basically its ducky belly button is like a big hernia.  It hasn’t been able to open its eyes.  It twitches and scoots around the box on its side, but its almost been more than 12 hours and it hasn’t opened its eyes or gained any muscle control.

I thought for sure it would die over night, but it didn’t.  It’s still flopping around in there.  I’m not sure what to do.  I hope it dies soon to get it over with.

The other ducklings are snuggling it, and occasionally it stretches out and yawns.  Poor little guy.

We took the two healthy ducklings outside to play yesterday evening.  They are big enough now to waddle along.  Yesterday they could barely walk in the grass. They loved it today!

We’re on Week 2 of homeschooling for first grade and it’s going pretty well!

I’m not going to lie–it’s certainly *not* easy to find time to do “school” and still keep up with housework, plus taking care of the kids and pets.  On top of that we are getting ready to put our house on the market, packing up everything besides the bare bones essentials, painting, etc.  I am so busy!

 

Several people asked me what kind of homeschooling we’re doing and why we homeschool.

Why we homeschool is a question that could have multiple answers.  Contrary to some homeschooling families I think the biggest reason is FREEDOM.  My kids are free to explore what interests them.  They are free to be themselves without being bullied, without being trapped in a building with 1,000 of their closest peers all day, every day.  I’m free to be their parent without having to negotiate with a school system, without having to deal with a frazzled teacher lacking in compassion.

The second reason we homeschool is…morals? This reason is a little more difficult to explain.  It’s not because I want my children to be sheltered, but simply because I enjoy spending time with them and want to invest time in nurturing them, not just educating them. There’s no reason they need to grow up too quickly.  Childhood goes by fast enough.  Now is my chance to help them learn right from wrong, to share wisdom, and to hopefully impress upon them how to be compassionate human beings.

We are Christian, but that’s not why we homeschool.  I’m teaching Rosie about both evolution and creationism.  We have the opportunity to discuss what our family believes, different dating methods, the findings of science, and what other people believe.  We do read the children’s Bible as part of our daily studies.  We’re also currently studying vikings, including Norse gods.

One thing I especially love about homeschooling is that my children are part of the world now.  They won’t go to school for 12 years waiting to graduate and go out into the big world.  They can venture out into the big world bit by bit as they grow and mature throughout childhood.  They can live their lives now, not trudge through their school years looking forward to finally graduating and being free.  They are already free!

 

Of course people *love* to judge homeschooled kids.  It’s kind of laughable to me, honestly.  For every person who has said something like, “I knew this one homeschooled kid who was weird…”  I say to them, “I went to public school and I knew this whole group of kids who were really weird and had no social skills…”

Oh but what about this one homeschooled kid someone knows who didn’t do well in college?  Hrm.  I am on Facebook.  Let me tell you how many of my peers from public high school did well in college, graduated, and now have successful careers.  Uh, yeah…try not to laugh.

And hello?  My kid does have friends and she is perfectly social.  I don’t understand what people think we do.  She doesn’t sit in a basement with no windows reading bible passages for all her waking hours.  She plays with the kids on our street.  She goes to dance class and homeschool co-op.  At co-op she takes three classes and has play time with about 25 other five and six year old’s.  We also participate in group field trips and play dates with other homeschooling families in our area.  I was going to sign her up for Girl Scouts but I don’t think we have time for it right now, we’ve got too much other stuff going on. The homeschooling community in our area is very active and growing!

She also knows the tellers at the bank, the cashiers and baggers at the grocery store, and the greeter at Walmart.  She’s able to politely greet them and have a conversation with them.  Most of them know her by name.

When people say, “How will she EVER be socialized?!?” they must mean, “How will she ever learn what it’s like to be bullied and judged by your clothing!”  Sorry guys, but I kind of hope she never learns that.

This is not all written to say that every kid who goes to public school is bad, or that it’s the wrong choice.  Hi, I’m not ignorant.  Obviously every family can’t stay home, some parents are not cut out to homeschool, some kids need special services that trained staff at school provide, and so on.  But for us?  Homeschooling is great and we love it.

I *have* to give a list of reasons we homeschool because it’s sometimes exhausting.  I need to remember why I chose this!

And also because I’m not sending my kid to public school.  If I’m not sending my kid to school then of course you would have the right to demand why…?  Is this an unwritten rule?  (Speaking about people in real life, not so much on the internet where it’s more normal to discuss these things.)  I’ve never asked someone who sends their kids to regular schools why they aren’t homeschooling, but everyone feels they have to ask why my kids aren’t going to the local school.  Then–oh, oh this is my FAVORITE part– they get defensive when I talk about it while answering their questions.

It used to bother me.  Now I think it’s really, really funny because I have a list of sound reasons why we personally chose to homeschool, and I’m happy with it.  Somehow in people’s brains this translates into me thinking they are doing something wrong…if only they knew!  I am so busy trying to be a wife, a mother, a teacher, and myself that I absolutely do not have time to analyze or judge another family’s school choices.  Why would I want to do that in the first place?  The world is not black and white.  Just because I am pleased with the choices we made (and we damn better well be pleased with them, we chose this path after all!) does not mean that we despise every other option.

 

That’s a stream of thought answer to why we homeschool.  We homeschool for a multitude of reasons, but mostly because it’s really cool to hang out with your kids and learn new stuff right along with them!

 

See the next entry for info about what type of homeschooling we are doing!

Every year of parenting I learn something new because I run up against another challenge.

 

Parenting is hard.  I think it’s harder the older kids get.  Five and half, almost six is the most difficult yet.

 

It’s this age when suddenly there’s no more adorable toddler or preschooler innocence left.  Kids are expected to behave with some maturity.  They should be able to start understanding how to act in different situations.  Being a preschooler is no longer an excuse, because they aren’t that little any longer.  All of that cute baby fat is gone, gone, gone.

 

I have never let Rosie get away with things.  I think I’m a pretty strict parent.  I try to say yes as much as possible over the little things–I mean I try not to make a big deal over stuff like a few crumbs in the living room or whatever.  I want us to have fun, I’m not running the military over here.

 

But I don’t let my kids throw tantrums in public when they are little.  We will immediately leave.  I taught both girls to walk along beside me as soon as they could walk and understand.  (10-12 months, a little older than 12 months for the fully understanding bit.)  I taught Ada not to run in the road right away, and to stop when commanded, and so on.  I don’t mess around with these things–I don’t tolerate out of control behavior for a single second when it can be helped.  I always take the situation into account–overtired, illness, hungry, bored, upset, etc., but I never just let things slide when behavior starts to rapdily decline.

 

When Rosie was small I taught her manners–please, and thank you, and waiting patiently.  And she has always been expected to obey the first time she’s asked because if I demand she does something in my mom voice right away it’s always something very important.

 

 

 

The point of this is, whether through parenting or sheer luck both of my girls were very well behaved, as much as kids can be.  No kid is perfect, obviously.

 

Then I saw Rosie get excited about reading, and against my better judgement I let her read a bunch of Junie B. Jones books.

 

Holy crap.

 

EVERYTHING fell apart.

 

Attitude, down the crapper.  Talking back, not listening, stomping, eye rolling, tantrums.  Tantrums! To rival a toddler!

 

What the heck?  She began acting just like Junie B. Jones!  (Those books are bad examples, have you all ever read them?)

 

I’ve spent the past few months trying to restore order over here.  It’s been exhausting!  An unfortunate battle of wills.  Rosie was in the firm camp of Will Not and I was in the even firmer camp of Yes You Will.

 

I normally try to find a way to work the situation so everyone can be happy, but these things were just way beyond consenual living.

 

 

Yes You Will respond when I ask you a question.  I know you heard me.  Yes You Will pleasantly pick up the huge mess you made.  Yes You Will listen when I tell you not to do something.

 

You are not the boss of the entire house.  No way.  You cannot scream and demand things from your parents, or anyone else for that matter.  You cannot do whatever you want, whenever you want just because you feel like it.  You cannot stomp and roll your eyes constantly.

 

And dammit we covered this when you were 15 months old:  WE DO NOT HIT, PINCH, OR KICK ANYONE FOR ANY REASON UNLESS YOU ARE BEING KIDNAPPED BY A SCARY STRANGER.  NO, YOUR SISTER DOES NOT QUALIFY AS A SCARY STRANGER.

 

I think part of it is the age.  Every little girl I’ve ever known seems to go through a bossy phase around this age.  Unfortunately this phase for Rosie has coincided with a new Junie B. attitude.

 

Nightmare!  Or as Junie B. would scream, “911! 911!”

 

 

Today Rosie had her first actual playdate.  I left her at a friend’s house in another town for the whole day, and her friend’s mom brought her home this afternoon.  I was super nervous that Rosie would be bossy and rude.  (Manners suddenly seem to elude her, again I say what the heck? Did aliens beam down and delete all of the hard parenting work I’ve done right out of her brain!?)

 

Guess what happened at the play date.

 

The little girl she was playing with is apparently also going through the same bossy phase.  (Maybe she read the Junie B. Jones books too.)  She bossed Rosie around, and then threw a tantrum when Rosie didn’t do exactly what she wanted.

 

This is not a criticism of the other little girl because I know her mom is a good parent all around and sometimes you can’t control your child’s attitude no matter how much heart and soul and discipline you put into it.  Believe me, I would know.

 

I just found this HYSTERICALLY funny.  Rosie does the exact same thing to Ada over, and over, and over every day.  She flips out when Ada doesn’t do exactly what she commands.

 

Rosie totally got a taste of her own medicine!  Right down to the, “I don’t want to play with you anymore because you aren’t doing what I say.”

 

Rosie deserved it.  She deserved every second of it.

 

Sorry Rosie, payback is a b*tch!

 

I might be laughing for the rest of the night.

 

 

Tonight when I was tucking Rosie into bed she commented on how the other girl had behaved.  I was like, “Rosie you know that’s exactly how you treat Ada.  It didn’t feel very nice, did it?”  Rosie agreed it wasn’t very fun.

 

She was shocked when she saw her friend throwing a tantrum.  Rosie couldn’t believe she might look so ridiculous when she starts stomping, screaming, and wailing.  Oh, but she does!  She said, “Mom my eyes got really big!  My friend threw a toy!”

 

Rosie, that should have been like looking in a mirror.

 

Ahahahahahahaha.  Hah. Hahahahahaha!

 

 

Maybe Rosie will remember this.  She was actually a lot nicer to Ada this afternoon.  I hope she doesn’t forget!  If she does, they can probably play together again soon.

 

Despite the little girl issues Rosie still had a blast and wants to play with her friend all day again.  Go figure.

 

I love kids, confusing creatures that they are.

 

 

Please God may this phase pass swiftly.

 

I can only reprimand, go over the family guidelines, and remind her how to use manners so many times before my brain implodes.

 

 

I can’t wait to see what happens when K gets here.  Can’t boss around someone who doesn’t speak your language! (Which I think is part of Rosie’s concerns.)  It will be a wonderful distraction from the intensity that forms between Rosie and Ada alone, I think.  It should also be a good learning experience in compassion for Rosie.  Everyone is not as blessed as she is.

 

And well mostly, you know all lessons aside, I just can’t wait to love on K and see her having fun with Rosie and Ada, even if Rosie’s behavior is a work in progress.

 

 

Oh if you are struggling with bored kids this summer and your kids like to color, I have a present for you.  I compiled a huge amount of Dover coloring and activity books.  Paper dolls you can print out on card stock, castles of the world, dragons, birds, zoo animals, and tons more.  They are in PDF format so you don’t even need an e-reader or anything.  Link below!  (Leave your email if you want the link, don’t want to leave it up and violate copy right laws any more than I already am!)

The speech therapy appointment went pretty well.  (Except for the part where I left Ada at home with Tyler and she cried most of the time.  Oh Ada.)

We got to the school a few minutes early and had to wait in the front entrance.  While waiting I had a few moments of self doubt.  What if Rosie just rode the bus to this school every morning?  It would be so easy.  I wouldn’t have to worry about curriculum, struggling with Ada while doing activities with Rosie…

I would get peace and quiet all day and get to spend time with Ada while Rosie went off and made friends and learned all she needs to know on her own.

The school was bright and clean, the staff was friendly.

Then the speech therapist came out to meet us and walk us back to her office.  On the way there we passed a kindergarten class lined up against the wall outside of their classroom.  One of the little boys smiled and ran up to the teacher and hugged her arm.  He was kind of bouncing around, you know like little kids do.  Rosie bounces around like that all the time, non-stop sometimes.  The teacher scolded the little boy.  She said to him, “If you don’t stop that you’ll go sit in the corner again!”  Then we walked past them and I didn’t see what happened.

It’s school–I know there has to be order in the classroom or it will be chaos.  They are there to learn, not play or snuggle the teacher.  But I remembered that’s not what I want for my kids.  Just…the whole package…not what I want for them.  Moment of doubt passed, myself reassured about our choices!

 

I was nervous that the speech therapist was going to be critical of our choice to homeschool, but she wasn’t at all.  Instead she said she thought it was great, and Rosie is way ahead with her reading skills.

Rosie was nervous and couldn’t sit still in the seat.

The speech therapist had Rosie read several pages worth of labeled pictures with different words like “pig” and “soldier” and “snow”.  Then she held up picture cards and Rosie had to tell a sentence about what was going on in the picture.  Rosie was still feeling nervous and she kept saying a word about the picture instead of a sentence, so the speech therapist just talked to her instead.  Rosie was more than glad to chat.

I didn’t think Rosie would qualify for public school speech therapy since it’s only for serious cases that will impact education, but she did qualify.  The speech therapist said Rosie has two issues.  Obviously a problem with the letter R, which she may or may not outgrow.  She also has a lateral lisp, which interferes with the pronunciation of several letters.  I think she said S, SH, J, and Z.  The lateral lisp isn’t something that kids grow out of.  It requires speech therapy to correct it.

 

The steps you have to take to get speech therapy are kind of time consuming.  I wish I’d started this earlier in the year!  School is out at the end of May.

We have to wait four weeks, during which I do simple exercises with Rosie at home and keep a log of how she’s speaking words after each daily practice session. Apparently teachers have to do this in their classrooms also.  After a month of that I have to report back to the speech therapist with the log. The speech therapist said this was mostly a formality–there’s little I could do at home that would correct the lateral lisp since it’s one of the things that requires more intensive help.  That makes me feel good and bad at the same time.  Good that it’s nothing I’ve lapsed in that’s caused her issues, and bad that it’s something she will struggle with.

After I report back to the therapist in four weeks, assuming Rosie is not magically cured, then we’ll set up a meeting with a special education team.  That includes me, a kindergarten teacher, the speech therapist, and maybe someone else I’m forgetting.  They’ll set up a plan for her therapy and I have to give written and verbal permission for it.  THEN we can finally start.

 

Rosie isn’t very thrilled.  She keeps saying she doesn’t need to go to that, she already knows how to talk.  It didn’t help that the speech therapy office is inside of the special education classroom, where there was a big group of kids that were obviously different.  Rosie is so sensitive and she feels like we’re criticizing her.  The sad part is she keeps trying to slowly say the words correctly to prove her point–that she can talk–but she’s still saying them wrong.

I’m really glad we went ahead and got her evaluated now before it becomes a bigger issue.  I don’t want anyone to make fun of her, that would crush her sensitive soul.