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Saturday, February 28, 2009

The Reading Mother

  

 

I had a Mother who read to me, 

Sagas of pirates, who scoured the sea,

Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth,

"Blackbirds" stowed in the hold beneath.

 

I had a Mother who read me lays,

Of ancient and gallant and golden days;

Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe,

Which every boy has a right to know.

 

I had a Mother who read me tales,

Of Gelert the hound of the hills of Wales,

True to his trust till his tragic death,

Faithfulness lent with his final breath.

 

I had a Mother who read me the things,

That wholesome life to the boy heart brings

Stories that stir with an upward touch,

Oh, that each mother of boys were such.

 

You may have tangible wealth untold;

Caskets  of jewels and coffers of gold.

Richer than I you can never be--

I had a Mother who read to me!

By: Strickland Gillilan

 

 

"Today a reader,

Tomorrow a leader." 

~ Margaret Fuller ~

 

When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book. ~ Margaret Walker ~

 

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. ~Anna Quindlen ~

 

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. ~ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ~


There is no substitute for books in the life of a child. ~ Mary Ellen Chase ~

 

A room without books is like a body without a soul. ~ Marcus T. Cicero ~

 

Never judge a book by its movie. ~ J. W. Eagan ~

 

When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be
reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books
you will be reading meanings. ~ Harold S. Geneen ~


Books are not men and yet they stay alive.
~ Stephen Vincent Benet ~

 

Books are not made for furniture,
but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
~ Henry Ward Beecher ~


A book is good company.
It is full of conversation without loquacity.
It comes to your longing with full instruction,
but pursues you never. ~ Henry Ward Beecher ~

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Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Drop in for a Visit

A "typical" day in our house.

Well, I tried to journal just one days worth of homeschooling to put here but it was one of THOSE days around here today:) So instead I'll run down the basic gist of how 70% of our days go.
To give a bit of background I have 5 children; 3 boys (Tom-7yo, Wes-4yo, Will-2yo) and 2 girls (Ali-7yo, Emi-5yo). We are using Ambleside Online as a curriculum guide and Tom and Ali are in Year 1. I posted our daily school schedule at the end of this post so you have an idea of how our day goes school wise.

My children have always been early birds but since moving them all into 1 room I have trained them to not come out (except for bathroom use) until 7 a.m. so generally that's when our day begins. I am working to instill the habit (again) of early rising in myself so have made it my goal to get up at 6 a.m. in order to have my quiet time and preparation for the day.

Our Morning Routine goes something like this:
  • Everyone Dressed
  • Beds Made
  • Free Play til Breakfast (Emi is my breakfast helper)
After breakfast we move onto Chore Time:
  • Kitchen Chores
  • Room Chores-the older 4 children each have a room assigned to them to clean everyday.
By now in our morning it is about 10ish so we are ready to start our school. I gather all of the kids into the livingroom for our Morning School session. We spend the next 1-1 1/2 hours in this room moving through most of our reading assignments and other group activities. I do require that all of the children stay in this room and for our bible reading, poetry, and preschool readings the 3 non-schoolers must be seated on the couch sitting quietly, after that we move onto the schoolers reading assignments and the younger 3 are free to play quietly in the room.

Morning School Session:
  • Say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag
  • Sing weekly hymn and folksong assignment
  • Read preschool bible story
  • Read daily poetry selection
  • Read Beatrix Potter story to preschoolers
  • Read Bible story (OT) or New Testament passage (Tom, Ali and I are reading through Mark using their new KJV bibles. We alternate days with OT stories and NT reading.)
  • Read Scripture and/or poetry memory selection
  • Read daily school assignments (this one is flexible and sometimes doesn't get accomplished until later in the day.
Now this may seem like a lot of reading but there are plenty of breaks and diversions throughout and we are very flexible with the order of this list and on some days only accomplish a couple of them.

By now it's time to prepare lunch so we break up in order for me to make lunch and the kiddos to get in some more free play time. Tom is my lunch helper.
After lunch we do our kitchen chores again and then I take a bit of a break before naptime and the rest of school.
Here is what our afternoon generally looks like although not one day is exactly the same as another.
  • Will down for a nap
  • Quiet Time for kids (each child picks a few toys and books and goes to their assigned room for an hour of quiet, alone play) Computer or Nap time for mom.
  • Disciplinary Studies - Math, Copywork, Reading Lesson, Assigned readings
  • Computer Time for kids (Each child is allowed 15 mintues of computer play time)
  • Read Aloud/Laundry Folding (I am still working on consistently doing this in our afternoon.)
  • Quick Clean livingroom, kitchen and hallway floors

That's pretty much it for our day. Some days some of these things get bumped til after daddy gets home but on most days we finish before he comes.
Our evenings are relaxed and full of play and interaction and before bedtime I sit back down with the kids and we read a couple of chapters in our current read-aloud selection.

Thanks for stopping by for a quick and brief visit.


My school schedule was inspired by Lindafay at Higher up and Further In. Previously I had a much more complicated and detailed schedule that was similar to Sonlight's layout. I am loving how simple this format is and how easy it makes my life. I keep this in a binder along with a printout of the weekly schedule from Ambleside. We are in the last few weeks of our 2nd term so I'll be making up a new schedule soon and will be tweaking it a bit.

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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

In the Groove

What a nice week it has been so far.
After the craziness and distraction (all good) that December brings it is so nice to just stay home and be home and work in our home.
We seem to have hit on a pretty good routine for school and daily life right now so the days clip along at a pretty good rate and we are covering all of our bases while having a bit of fun.

With the new baby coming in just a short 20 weeks I feel the need to correct some training and disciplining problems that have cropped up and been growing with each of the children. So I have put that at the top of my list for each and everyday.
I have also been impressed to use this time in training the daily habit of picking up the house. Alissa, Thomas, Emily and Wesley are each assigned a room to take care of for a duration of 12 weeks. They have 4 chores that must be accomplished in their "room" each morning without fail. I have been spending this week making sure that they are completing these chores properly and weaning them off of my help during their 30-minute clean time.
I also use these as commission chores for which they do get paid a small amount for each chore accomplished.

I have also been trying to catch up in the kitchen after being down for the count for several days due to a bad cold. Normally I would dump my kids in front of some movies so that I could get this done, but we are on a bit of a media fast at the moment so I have asked them to help me out by adding an extra 15 minutes after meal clean up chores are done. They have blessedly cooperated and after doing this 4 different times I only have a couple of nasty pans to wash and a couple piles of clutter to get cleaned up.
It is such a mistake to think that are children are not only capable of doing many tasks around the house but very detrimental not to train and include them in on these things.  The kids and I do have a good time working together and have become quite the cleaning team:) Hopefully by the time the baby comes these habits will be instilled as well as cheerful working attitudes so that the transition will be a bit less bumpy.
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Sunday, January 13, 2008

Sunshine!

I'm cold-blooded, for as long as I can remember I have always been cold. Pregnancies have made a slight difference but still in the winter-time often I can't seem to get enough layers of clothes on and I drink gallons of hot beverages everyday.
So, you can imagine my delight to have a "warm" place in my house. For a few hours every sunny day I am blessed by having sunlight pour into my kitchen through my one small South window.
Mmmmm, delicious, lovely, bright and warm sunshine! I love to be in my kitchen in the afternoon just for the sunlight, it brightens the whole room and warms my baking counter so that I almost feel hot standing there.

Truly the light is sweet,
and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun:
Ecclesiastes 11:7
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Saturday, December 8, 2007

Counting down to Christmas

We are having a very fun time looking forward to Christmas this year!
I'm enjoying keeping up old traditions and starting new ones and always searching for ways to point my children towards Christ during this time.
Here's a bit of our traditions.

OLD
Decorate the tree after returning from Thanksgiving weekend with family.
Make & decorate sugar cookies
Participate in a Christmas Cookie exchange
Read lots of Christmas books
Drive around and look at Christmas lights

NEW
Mail out Christmas cards and letters
Make & decorate gingerbread men
Read a chapter from "One Wintry Night" & "The Indescribable Gift" nightly.


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Monday, October 8, 2007

Frogs! Frogs! Frogs! or are they Toads?

Wow, who would have thought that we had so much "nature" right under our feet!
Due to some water issues around the drain in our basement (the sewer backed up ) I begged Daffy to remove a nasty old wall from the area and the result was discovering a whole family of frogs. We grabbed a bucket and Daffy started plucking them off the floor and when it was all said and done we had 13 frogs on our hands.
The kids were in frog heaven! This was the first real encounter the kids had with frogs and they learned a lot as well as got over any fears or shyness they had experienced before, especially Bubbles. After playing and watching for hours, Ollie got slightly bored and decided to dump the contents in the grass so several were lost both times that he did that until only 1 remained.
I took matters into hand at this point to make a habitat for it in the hopes of getting a chance to identify which type of frog or toad it might be and made a dirt, moss, grass, water oasis in a dishpan. But Bubbles was in rapture over this frog and couldn't stand to leave it by itself. She ended up naming it "Sodona" and taking turns with Wendy in carrying "her" around the yard and playing "house" with her. This lasted for about 5 minutes until the frog saw its chance and escaped.
Counting Frogs

Ollie taking charge of the captives

Let's watch them swim

Cheap entertainment

FrogNog on the Rocks

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Thursday, August 30, 2007

Accidents do happen

Well it finally happened. DS2 stepped on one of the boards that got left out and poked a nail into his foot. Not good timing for this but then is it ever:) Thankfully it is a very small puncture wound and I was able to get an appointment for him at the pediatrician to get a tetanus shot. DH will take him since he left the board out.


I did have to call DH back this afternoon and apologize for my rude and angry attitude about the whole thing. Yes, it's his fault for leaving the board out but I could have picked them up at anytime as well and it still doesn't give me an excuse to be nasty.
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Thursday, August 30, 2007

Good ol' Thyroid

Rough day today and dealing with a lot of hyperthyroid symptoms. Very tired after a late shopping night last but I did get some great deals. I had no dressy clothes to wear to either of the 2 weddings coming up so a friend and I went mall shopping last night. I found an adorable black skirt and 2 cute tops at Sears and because they were all clearance items I only paid $22.50 for all 3!!!!!
It is taking me all day to put in my Natural Foods co-op order so I guess I'd better get that finished up while 2 kids are napping and the other 3 are playing outside:)
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Wednesday, August 29, 2007

It's raining, it's pouring.

Well, at least it was raining and now it is cloudy and wet outside, but it's staying very nice and cool in the house thanks to the attic fan! No a/c needed today and it's right around 77 degrees inside!
Today has been a baking day. Although I planned out menus and grocery list last time I went shopping for some reason or another I didn't get enough so we are out of bread, milk, eggs froz. veggies and all easy snacks. So I've made ww rolls, ww apple muffins, milk, and homemade potato chips:) It's been a good day to bake since it's not too hot and makes the house seem cozy with all the smells.
Here's the muffin recipe that I used. I used 1/2 ww flour and 1/2 white flour and didn't put the nut topping on it. Also since I'm out of eggs I used egg replacer. They turned out fine and the kiddos like them. I also always add lots more fruit than recipes usually call for.

APPLE CINNAMON MUFFINS 

1 egg
1/2 c. milk
1/4 c. oil
1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 c. apple, grated

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease or spray bottoms of muffin pans with Pam. Beat egg; add milk and oil. Mix in remaining ingredients. Batter will be lumpy. Pour into muffin pans and top with nut crunch topping.

NUT CRUNCH TOPPING:

1/3 c. packed brown sugar
1/3 c. nuts, chopped
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Bake for 20-25 minutes.

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Monday, August 27, 2007

And so we begin!

Last week we started school. Originally I had no plans to start sooner than after Labor day but with temps rising into the 100's outside it worked out to start sooner to keep the kiddos occupied while inside.
The twins are starting Kindergarten this year so we have been using "Little Hearts for His Glory" as our main curriculum and supplementing with Christian Liberty K math, Handwriting without Tears, and Phonics Pathways. They are doing very well and have surprised me in what comes easy and what takes work.
DD6 is showing signs of having some trouble with reversals while DS6 (who has some form of PDD) is having no troubles with that at all. Ds6 has started blending in our Phonics lessons while 1B6 hasn't quite gotten the hang of that.
It has worked out the best to spend about an hour of time in the early afternoon while baby and 2 yo are sleeping. Dd4 either sits with us, colors, uses the chalkboard or rests in her room. She really wants her own books but I don't feel that she is ready to jump in with anything serious so I'll have her doing minor things like cutting out shapes to glue. I did order her the beginning book from Handwriting without Tears (HWT) so she will start that when it comes. I am continuing to use "Little Hands to Heaven" with both DD4 and DS2 and am trying to accomplish that in the mornings.
My biggest surprise with homeschooling so far is how thought and time consuming it can be! The actual doing of it hasn't been a big deal but I am thinking about it all of time. My mom (a 26 year homeschool veteran) says that it will get easier and that the beginning is always the hardest.
In the midst of all of this I am continuing the journey toward DD4 and DS2 being potty trained. So we spend lots of time in the bathroom reading. That has to be the best perk is that they have learned to sit still and listen to stories. I also have figured out which books take about 5 minutes or longer to read.
That's all for now since it's almost lunchtime and my stomach is doing it's own talking.
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About Me

And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. Psalms 90:17

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