Eius gratia

I forgot to blog.

2010-08-30T16:08:00.000-05:00

Not forgot, exactly. I've just been trying to spend less time on the computer talking about doing things and more time actually doing things.

The first day of school brought an itch to record the occasion somewhere - so here I am.

What I accomplished today:

Completed introductions for all subjects to all students before 3pm CST.
Put ingredients for red beans & rice dinner into slow cooker.
Drank plenty of fluids.
Loaded the dishwasher.
Distributed popsicles.

What I did not accomplish today:

Laundry
Dusting, sweeping, or vacuuming
Dog grooming (see previous item)
Painting
Lawn care and maintenance

I have a feeling the 'did not accomplish' list is going to remain fairly constant for the next several months at least. Teaching all five kids at once is .. uhm.. a challenge. More accurately - trying to teach four kids while Peter thwarts my every attempt is a challenge.

But, gosh, he's cute.

2009-11-26T19:02:00.001-06:00

Well, the turkey thawed in time... Everyone is well-fed and we had a fantastic day.

My favorite thing about Thanksgiving? Turkey makes little ones go to bed early. :)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Thanksgiving 'Uh-Oh' Moment

2009-11-24T21:20:00.003-06:00

Uhm.. What day is it again?

We have a turkey. This is good. We have actually had our turkey since Saturday evening. That's probably the earliest we have ever gotten a turkey for Thanksgiving Day. This is also good.

Problem: The turkey is frozen solid.

Oh I know - it's only Tuesday - there's plenty of time to thaw the 28 pound bird in time for roasting! Right? Absolutely. That's exactly what I was thinking... Exactly what I was thinking all day today when I wasn't actually thawing him out because I have plenty of time....

It's 9:23 pm on the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving. It just occurred to me that I will need to make the stuffing for our meal Wednesday afternoon. No wait - that didn't just occur to me because I already knew that. What DID just occur to me is that tomorrow is Wednesday. This has everything to do with the 28 pound turkey-shaped chunk of ice in my refrigerator.

I need to extract the giblets bag from the turkey in order to make my stuffing.

That sound you hear is the sound of me sobbing quietly into my sleeve.

I'm heading off to the kitchen now with a hair dryer and an ice-pick. I'll let you know how it turns out.

What I learned in homeshool...

2009-11-24T16:14:00.006-06:00

Geo & Wm at the mall trying not to look too embarrassed to be seen with their mother.

I have come to truly appreciate and be thankful for being blessed with the means and opportunity to homeschool. I have always said that we are fortunate... or blessed... or that I'm grateful. To be honest, I think all of that was mostly lip-service. Even as I said it I didn't really understand what a gift I have been given:

I am actually raising my own children.

I am there for every scraped knee... every first word... I'm there for the arguments and I'm there for the moments of self-doubt. I get to share in every triumph and every new discovery. Yeah - okay - so it also means that the responsibility for whatever goes wrong sits squarely on my shoulders.... It's not like we mothers don't end up with the lion's share of the blame in our modern public-schooled society anyway... At least I get a little heads up when it comes to my parental shortcomings and I'm not going to be informed of them at a teacher's conference or in a post-it note stuck to a book bag.

Geo chugging cappuccino. I keep trying to explain the concept of 'sipping' to him - to no avail.

I have gotten to spend real time with George and William. I feel as if I have actually gotten to know them - the people they are... Whether it's one of our tangents during instruction time or chatting during a trip to the coffee shop on Friday -- I wouldn't give up this time we have together for anything. And I keep asking myself -- when would we do this if they were in school?

William @ our coffee shop hangout.

Sad to say - but I really do feel like I missed a few years of their lives. Back in the old school days my relationship with them was composed of checking clothing sizes to order uniforms, grilling them about homework assignments, feeding them, doing their laundry, rushing them through the door in the morning, and putting them in bed in the evening. I felt like the boarding school house mother. Now I'm sure - quite sure - that other parents are perfectly capable of having a deeper relationship than that with their school-going kids. The important thing here is that I have realized that I was not.

I promised Geo that I would stop posting his pictures on my blog without his express consent when he turns thirteen. With his birthday practically around the corner - I find that I must take this opportunity to post whatever I have on my desktop.

I know it won't last forever. I still look forward to the day when all my fledglings take off on their own. I hope they learned what they needed from their time with me.

In the meantime, I am learning so very much from my time with them. And there it is - the big realization: All this time I thought that our Lord was calling me to homeschool because there were things that only I could effectively teach my children.... How could I not have understood that what was missing from our family was all that the children had to teach me?

2009-11-24T11:30:00.002-06:00

I was just reading back through all of those other homeschool posts on this blog where I stated confidently that I had finally 'figured it out' or 'found our groove'. I couldn't help but notice that those statements were always followed by a blog silence of several months before being canceled out by a red-faced 'okay, so maybe not' post.

So there has been another blog silence of several months - but this time.. No. Really. I mean it this time.....

It's been an excellent year for us so far.

We have taken the week off for the Thanksgiving holiday and I am really missing school this morning. I even took out the Latin flashcards earlier and thought I could casually work them into conversation or something.... But the boys are too smart for me. A holiday is a holiday.

Happy Birthday, Peter!!

2009-11-23T23:08:00.000-06:00

My how time flies... Peter has turned two. He had a great time today and I'm proud to report that all of his siblings genuinely tried to make his day special. Way to go, kids.

Inspiration for the week.....

2009-11-23T22:02:00.002-06:00

In case you haven't seen it:

The Best Photo of the Month by a long shot

I would give anything for my boys to have a chance to participate in something like this... To be surrounded by young people who are proud enough of their religion to go public - en masse. Simply splendid.

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T23:19:00.002-05:00

Only the girls dressed up in costume this year for the trick or treating thing. The older boys stayed home to help with distributing candy while Peter stayed home to keep things interesting. Teething baby + 400 trick or treaters in your front yard = mildly stressful.

Emily's costume deserves another photo. She loved her wig.

Ghost cookies have been a family tradition here since 2002. We make the batches together - the kids have fun either cutting them out or shaping them by hand and are always amazed at just how simple it is to give their ghost some extra personality with chocolate chip eyes. The tradition continues with the eating -- before eating each ghost cookie we offer a prayer for a soul in purgatory.

Happy Birthday, Yvonne!

2009-10-28T11:15:00.000-05:00

Yvonne turned six today.

Zero tolerance?

2009-10-13T15:34:00.003-05:00

The recent news story concerning young Zachary the Cub Scout versus the Christina School District in Newark, Delaware hit close to home for me.

When I was a young girl - about Zachary's age - I was called into the principal's office for bringing something dangerous to school: Explosives. Really. It sounds pretty bad when I think about it. I was eight or nine years old and a teacher discovered gunpowder-packed explosives in my pencil bag.

Here's the story:

Back then my family and I spent most of my summer vacation at our 'cabin' out in what was then mostly woods. It was a gorgeous place on a lake. There were few people and plenty of wildlife and those summers brought some of the best memories of my entire life. One of the highlights was our annual 4th of July celebration. Dwelling out in a rural county meant there were no codes restricting fireworks -- so we would buy big boxes full of them and my father would put on a show for all of us. By the time I was eight - Dad had taken to letting me 'organize' all the pyrotechnics for him... Although I still wasn't able to light them myself -- that was Dad's job. And he did. Often upside down. But that's another story for another time....

Anyway - taking my organization job seriously (as I always did) I searched for a logical solution that year when I discovered that a the box that had contained a bunch of firecrackers had fallen apart and was spilling the little tiny firecrackers all over the place. I selected a zippered plastic
pencil bag from my room. Perfect! Not only were the firecrackers all in one place - but they were protected from the damp July air and the heavy dew in the grass near the lake.

Weeks of summer bliss passed until it was time to return to school. I was returning for fifth grade at St. John Elementary School and excited as always. I loved school. I loved school supplies and books and blackboards and all of those other school trappings... And I loved the good sisters who taught us.

A few days into the school year - we were coloring a back-to-school picture for the hallway. As Sister made her rounds through the classroom ... she stopped at my desk long enough to cause me to look up into her face. She looked puzzled as she asked me to grab my pencil case and follow her. She took me to Sister Michael's office - the principal. I suppose I should have been afraid... Sister Michael certainly didn't have a reputation as a warm and cuddly sort of nun -- but I personally liked her. She had never been anything but kind to me despite the gruff exterior. Every time I ran into her in the hallways on one of my errands for the teachers she would glare at me menacingly at first - then hand me a scapular or medal or holy card and pat me on the head before sending me on my way. And so - I had no real reason to be afraid. I simply wondered what the unexpected meeting could be about.

My teacher had entered the office ahead of me so that when I arrived and sat down as instructed, Sister Michael was holding my pencil bag out in front of her like it was a stinky dead fish. She demanded to know why I had brought something so dangerous to school. I suppose the completely clueless look on my face seemed sincere enough - so she then reached into the pencil bag and produced a single crayon-stained firecracker! Mystery solved. I happily explained that I must have missed it when cleaning out my pencil bag for school.

It was apparently not the best explanation. She then asked me to explain how I went about acquiring such a thing in the first place which I also explained - though not so happily this time.... I could tell by her tone and her expression that I had done something terribly wrong that I didn't quite understand. She asked me if I knew it was against the rules to bring this dangerous thing to school. It wasn't an easy question to answer. In theory I did - in reality I didn't think of the thing as dangerous. It was just a thing left in my pencil case. It wasn't in anyone's hands... it was nowhere near an open flame... Besides - it was missing its fuse which might have explained how it ended up left behind in the pencil bag after the 4th of July. Most importantly, I had no idea I had brought this dangerous thing to school. Certainly I had no intention of doing anything with it.

None of this thought process was shared with Sister Michael, however. Instead I simply answered that I didn't know it was there and I didn't realize how dangerous it was. She softened only a little as she read the rules to me from some book in her office. The rules were full of big words that I didn't understand but she took the time to explain that this little firecracker was an explosive - which was specifically mentioned in those serious-sounding rules. With that an enormous light went off. It was an explosive. I never thought about it as an explosive. I thought explosives were bombs like on Starsky and Hutch. Realizing that I had inadvertently brought a bomb to school... I was sure my life was over.

But my life wasn't over. Sister Michael took the firecracker and asked that I very, very carefully check my school things in the future and that I never bring anything like that firecracker into the school again. I assured her that I wouldn't and apologized whole-heartedly. With that - I was sent back to class. It was over. I don't even know if my parents were ever officially notified of the incident... I just know that I never forgot what happened and my shock and embarrassment that day.

I also know that I had an enormous amount of love and respect for Sister Michael and my teacher from that day on. I knew for sure that they were reasonable people. I felt that they could be trusted with the decisions they made - because they took the time to listen and use their judgment. Those are some complex conclusions for an eight or nine year old to draw - especially for an eight or nine year old who previously was unaware that a firecracker was an explosive... But I was a pretty complex kid.

That's my story. That's the story I think about when I read stories like Zachary's. How different would my life be today had St. John's implemented a zero-tolerance policy when I was in school? Would that firecracker have led to reform school and the associated trauma and stigma? Would my entire educational career have bottomed out as a result of that firecracker?

Terrifying thought.

Oh - and yet another reason why we homeschool.

Gene Taylor (D-MS) Town Hall in Moss Point, MS

2009-08-17T19:05:00.005-05:00

I'm home with the gaggle of kids - including an incredibly sleepy toddler - so I didn't get to attend tonight's town hall meeting with our representative, Gene Taylor. However, Dave is attending as I type this and has been sending periodic text messages which I thought I'd share until he gets home to tell the whole story:

6:00:06 pm Wish I had a camera.
6:04:18 pm Parking lot full. Cars parked on side of 613 about a mile away.
6:07:25 pm Policeman says they're shutting down bldg. Thousand people inside.
6:13:21 pm Parking in nice isolated wooded area.
6:19:16 pm Car just passed with clown bumper sticker.
6:28:57 pm Haven't seen any out of state tags other than AL.
6:54:01 pm I'm in!
7:12:11 pm Lots of talk about health care.
7:13:15 pm GT says will vote no to healthcare and cap and trade.
7:15:57 pm Said he voted to go to war in Iraq and Afghan. Much cheering.
7:17:56 pm Illegal aliens not going so well.
7:31:47 pm He's done.

More when Dave gets home.

YouTube - FOX: Senator Wicker Discusses Health Care On Fox News - 08.06.09

2009-08-06T19:26:00.000-05:00

YouTube - FOX: Senator Wicker Discusses Health Care On Fox News - 08.06.09

2009-07-30T15:34:00.002-05:00

Our youngest, Peter, has learned with skill and precision how to escape from his playpen at will. This first week of trying to get the daily chores done with a 20-month old underfoot (along with the four other kids and the dog) has been..... an adventure. Today's small success: I managed to convince him to (willingly!!) go back to his playpen and stay for a nice afternoon nap!
I baked my own bread for the very first time! It was lumpy... lopsided... maybe a bit more coarse than we're used to... AH, but it was warm and well-received by my spectacular family. (Thanks, guys!)
I actually took the time to throw this post together!

Camp Stanislaus

2009-07-01T18:33:00.007-05:00

George in the back.

"Camp Stanislaus is operated in conjunction with the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, a religious order of teaching brothers who have operated St. Stanislaus College Prep since 1854. The camp has functioned successfully since 1928."

NB: George could not water ski three weeks ago.

Heading out for a day of fishing.

Ah.. Sailing.

Sunrise over Bay Saint Louis bridge

George on the water.

George doing something less thrilling than water-skiing.

**All of the pictures were taken by camp photographer, Brother Dwight.

Yes, I did drop off the face of the planet

2009-07-01T17:48:00.004-05:00

(In case you were wondering)
But I'm back now.

I won't bother with a full recap in an effort to explain my disappearance. However, I am now missing my gall bladder and a wayward lymph node. I feel much better now. End of summary.

And here we are -yet again- approaching the beginning of another school year. I have spent the last three weeks slaving to produce several 3-ring binders worth of schedules and lesson plans that I will most likely never use (again) but which I feel compelled to have... just in case.... something. Either way - I'm only a couple more book-purchases from being ready to conquer Year Four of homeschool.

As usual there will be changes.

We enjoyed using CHC's curriculum last year - however, there's just not a lot of meat to it. Last year that was a good thing... We needed something of a break. Now though - with the break behind us - with little children only getting bigger - with my gall bladder now in parts unknown and no longer able to ruin a school day - I think we're ready for more.

This school year we're going to have a 12 year old boy, an 11 year old boy, a 6 year old girl, a 4 year old girl and a 2 year old boy in the house. I really want everyone to be involved. I really do not want to have to juggle schedules for at least three different children while trying to entertain the youngest two.

I browsed through (most of) the 6,438,390 search results on Google and finally decided to give the Connecting with History program a try this year. I ordered Volume I and waited breathlessly for it to arrive. When it got here, however, I was disappointed. It wasn't the curriculum itself -- no it seemed very solid if not mildly intimidating. The problem was actually the content... We have tried so many different approaches to history over the last three years that we have started 'from the beginning' far too often. I really couldn't stomach the idea of another few months of the Sumerians and Babylonians.. oh and those pesky Egyptians. Enough!

That's when I ordered Volume II of Connecting with History.

And so here's the year's plan summary:

History/Geography/Literature/Reading/Religion: Connecting with History Volume II
Grammar: Latina Christiana I & II (You can't learn Latin if you don't know grammar)
Spelling/Vocabulary: Book of Roots
Science: Apologia General Science, 2nd Edition
Art: Christian Heritage Art Program
Kindergarten LA & Math: Time 4 Learning
Math: ALEKS Math Lvl 6 & Middle School 3

Hopefully I'll be about the blog off and on to let the world know how it all comes together.

In other news - we got one of the fledglings out of the nest for a few weeks this summer: George is at camp. Three weeks at Camp Stanislaus in Bay Saint Louis, MS and I hardly recognize him:

We'll be driving to pick him up Friday morning and, I admit it -- I can hardly stand the wait. I really miss this kid. Whose bright idea was it to send him away for so long anyway?? Er.. oh. That was me.

Stop this travesty

2009-03-24T22:23:00.003-05:00

More than 100,000 have now signed the petition protesting President Barack Obama’s invitation to speak (and receive an honorary degree) at Notre Dame.

From the U.S. Bishops' 2004 mandate (in 'Catholics in Political Life'): “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

Sign the petition HERE

Habemus Episcopum!

2009-03-02T09:39:00.002-06:00

Morin named Biloxi's third bishop.

"Most Reverend Roger Paul Morin, currently serving as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, has been named the third Bishop of Biloxi by Pope Benedict, the diocese announced this morning.

Publication of this appointment was made earlier today, Monday, March 2, 2009, at The Vatican in Rome and from the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, D.C. Bishop Morin, 67, succeeds the Most Reverend Thomas J. Rodi who now serves as the Archbishop of Mobile."

(READ MORE)

And from USCCBmedia via Twitter at 6:39 am: "New Orleans Auxiliary Bishop Morin appointed Bishop of Biloxi, US Church's longest vacant diocese."

Someone explain this to me.....

2009-02-20T13:02:00.000-06:00

Obama is America's no 1 hero, not Jesus: Survey-US-World-The Times of India

"The top 10 list based on the poll showed Obama at number one position, Jesus Christ at number two, and Martin Luther King at number three.

Wrapping up the top five are Ronald Reagan and George W Bush.

They were followed by Abraham Lincoln, John McCain, John F Kennedy, Chesley Sullenberger, and Mother Teresa in the same order."

2009-02-13T14:45:00.002-06:00

I haven't been updating the Katrina/home blog lately.... Mostly because we haven't been working on the house lately. We have been otherwise occupied.

Invited by our parish priest, Redemptorist priests Fr. Warren Drinkwater & Fr. Vic Karls treated us to a parish mission this week. After all of these years... when it seemed like the parish was either in its late death throes - or already dead... These guys managed to bring us back to Life.

And I was thinking about it this morning... What is it that revived our church - that will revive the Church? There were no creative liturgical interpretations. There was no interpretive dance. No fireworks or people dressed up as Barney the dinosaur. No puppets. No I'm-okay-you're-okay hug sessions. Nope. There was preaching... confession.. and the Holy Mass.

That's the stuff.

Thank you to our beloved priest, Fr. Kelleher - as well as Fr. Drinkwater & Fr. Karls. They will remain always in our prayers and I hope our readers will include them as well.

Got God?

2009-02-13T11:26:00.005-06:00

We participated in a wonderful parish mission this week - and I am planning on posting about the mission itself within the next couple of days... But, in the meantime, I had to share this one irksome experience from last night.

Part of our motivation for deciding to homeschool our kids was our disappointment with the Catholicism (or lack thereof) of our local parochial school. Was I asking too much when I expected my boys to come home with some knowledge of the sacraments... or knowing the basic prayers?

Last night our mission ended with a reception at the elementary school cafeteria. I haven't been in the cafeteria there since prior to Hurricane Katrina - and was happy to see that they had fixed the place up. What made me even happier was to see a gorgeous and substantial crucifix adorning the main wall of the room (something which was painfully absent before) and a poster featuring Pope Benedict XVI a few feet away.

However, when I stood in line to get something to drink - I noticed this on the wall directly across from the new crucifix:

Am I the only one who finds this advertisement to be inappropriate for a cafeteria where Catholic children from preschool to sixth grade eat their lunches all week? I mean -- even if we ignore the skin-tight wife-beater style boy shirt and the undeniably provocative pose.... There's the message of the text: "Girl Power. Actress by day. Rocker by night. I've got to keep fit to keep up. Some studies suggest that teens who choose milk instead of sugary drinks tend to be leaner and the protein helps build muscle. It's the best of both worlds." And then the trademark slogan: "body by milk".

The problem here is the message... "Girl Power" as suggested by this ad - consists of what, exactly? The girl is not an athlete ... So having a lean and muscled body (as suggested by the photo) affords such a girl with what advantages? Right. "Girl Power" = Sex. Sexual appeal... experience... prowess, even.

Just. Ugh.

"The battle lines have been drawn"

2009-02-12T14:45:00.001-06:00

Rabbi Speaks on Pope Benedict Controversy: Leftist Catholics Using Jews to Attack the Pope: "'It has now become very clear, for all to see, the extreme danger that having some who hold high positions in the church seeking to destroy their own church and attack their own pope.' He added: 'The silver lining is that its now that the battle lines have been drawn.'"

No sir, I don't like it.

2009-02-10T10:25:00.005-06:00

And you probably won't either.

Have you read the new census questionnaire? You should. It's here. (It's a .pdf - in case you need the warning.)

What ever happened to a simple: "How many people are living in the household?"

(h/t Jane Q Republican)

When 'human rights' trump human beings

2009-02-04T10:11:00.005-06:00

Above: A flagrant example of the lack of new values centered in the
recognition of fundamental human rights.

I sat down with my coffee this morning to this little gem of a news item:

United Nations Population Fund Leader Says Family Breakdown is a Triumph for Human Rights: "Speaking at a colloquium held last month at Colegio Mexico in Mexico City, UNFPA representative Arie Hoekman denounced the idea that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births represent a social crisis, claiming that they represent instead the triumph of “human rights” against “patriarchy.”

'In the eyes of conservative forces, these changes mean that the family is in crisis,' he said. 'In crisis? More than a crisis, we are in the presence of a weakening of the patriarchal structure, as a result of the disappearance of the economic base that sustains it and because of the rise of new values centered in the recognition of fundamental human rights.'"

Yesterday I had planned to write about the trials and travails of being a stay-at-home mother to five kids in a household supported by a conscientious and loving husband and father. The idea started to lose ground as I mentally played-over various hypothetical responses to a post on such a subject: "You don't work and you're complaining?" "Try being a single mother." "You're the one who decided to have five kids." The internal conversation quickly devolved further into accusations of selfishness: "There are starving children in the world and you chose to bring more into it." "Do you even think about how much solid waste you people produce? What about your carbon footprint?" "I bet you live in a big house and drive an SUV too, you ignorant zealot." Or self-righteous pity: "You're nothing more than a house slave to that man." "Your unenlightened world-view brings you to actually believe that reproducing has some bearing on your self-worth."

Eventually the hypothetical responses won the day - and I never published the post.

But those responses were grounded in more than theory - they were all drawn from experience. Alternatively, if I had a dollar for every time someone has exclaimed, "Wow, what a beautiful family!" - I still wouldn't be able to make change for a five. We are constantly belittled and berated instead. Complete strangers find it well within their rights to make obscene remarks about whatever they imagine our sex life to be. At best we are ignored - a social pariah.

So now Mr. Hoekman spells it out for us: We are a seven-person force of oppressive patriarchy. Our disdain for 'fundamental human rights' represents all that is still wrong with the world. But not to worry - we're fading fast... We, the anachronistic hold-outs in the face of progress and modernism! Someday - as the enlightened forces of good contracept and abort themselves out of existence - those of us too stupid to stop reproducing will disappear from the face of the earth and... Uh... wait a second.... Just how well was this plan thought out again?

2009-02-03T10:49:00.003-06:00

Link to the petition

An increasing number of headlines each morning are chiding Pope Benedict XVI and his decision to lift the excommunications of four SSPX bishops. Of course, headlines chiding the Pope for something appear every morning... And all those general disagreements have not gone away either. Therefore, the internet is positively cluttered with criticism of the Holy Father this morning.

CatholicCulture.org has an excellent summary here. (Complete with links to news articles.)

Happy Birthday, George!

2009-01-31T14:39:00.003-06:00

So you're twelve now, big stuff... Time to get a job. :)

St. John Bosco, pray for us.

Perpetual Rosary for the Obama administration... Sign up!

2009-01-28T17:32:00.003-06:00

Brought to you by CatholicCulture.org

"Prayers for the President, II A 30-day perpetual Rosary for the Obama administration, that it may be animated by an authentic perception of the Good, leading it also to oppose intrinsic evils such as abortion, euthanasia, fetal stem cell research, human cloning and homosexual marriage. Double-click a time slot to sign up."

Link is HERE.
There are plenty of time slots to be filled. :)

AFP: Vatican official accuses Obama of 'arrogance'

2009-01-25T20:43:00.001-06:00

AFP: Vatican official accuses Obama of 'arrogance': "'If this is one of the first acts of President Obama, with all due respect, it seems to me that the path towards disappointment will have been very short,' Fisichella said."

2009-01-23T22:41:00.006-06:00

This program is from RealCatholicTV.com

The Vatican on YouTube!

2009-01-23T18:23:00.003-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/vatican

This one is definitely going to be one of my favorite YouTube subscriptions! :)

Hey! Wasn't this supposed to be a homeschool blog?

2009-01-21T19:19:00.003-06:00

It's been a while since I've actually blogged about our homeschooling experience, but I think my excuse is a good one this time: It's been so comfortable homeschooling lately that we sometimes forget that we're homeschooling. I think this is some sort of milestone.

Of course we've made some changes since my last homeschool update... We're still using the CHC curriculum - but have dropped Saxon math in favor of a self-paced online program. The biggest change we made after getting back on schedule following our long Christmas break concerns when we 'do' school. I was having so much trouble not losing my mind during the day with the demands of a 5, 3, and 1 year old while trying to actually talk to the boys about something school-related. We simply never had more than 10 minutes of time together... and a good portion of even those 10 minutes usually was interrupted by squeals of joy or screams of booboos (real or imagined).

We all decided that something drastic had to be done. And so we've done it. The boys sit down with Dave and I after the other kids are in bed each night for the bulk of their lessons. They still do independent work and reading during the day... But our actual 'school' time is now when it's dark.. and quiet. Ahhh.

Now I have more time to play with the little ones and read with Yvonne... (Oh - and clean the house.... answer the phone... walk the dog... cook dinner.... do the laundry... etc.)

Of course this means that Dave and I have scheduled away most of our free-time together... But technically we weren't getting a lot of that anyway with the chaos generated by our previous schedule. And - neither of us are opposed to declaring a holiday when we realize it's needed.

New Orleans police remove parishioners occupying closed Uptown churches - Breaking News from New Orleans - Times-Picayune - NOLA.com

2009-01-19T13:31:00.000-06:00

New Orleans police remove parishioners occupying closed Uptown churches - Breaking News from New Orleans - Times-Picayune - NOLA.com

New Orleans police evicted parishioners from two Uptown Catholic churches Tuesday, allowing the Archdiocese of New Orleans to reclaim the churches which parishioners had occupied around the clock for almost 10 weeks.

Police were instructed to arrest occupiers if they resisted, with Archbishop Alfred Hughes deciding "It's time to bring this to a close," spokeswoman Sarah Comiskey said.

In a coordinated operation police, accompanied by lawyers from the city attorney's office, pulled up around 10:30 a.m. at Our Lady of Good Counsel on Louisiana Avenue, and at St. Henry Church, on Gen. Pershing Street, about a mile away.

I know in my heart that we're next. Pray for us.

My totally unexpected present

2008-12-28T10:30:00.006-06:00

From my super-incredible husband:

The bow wouldn't stick in the rain.

2008-12-24T21:59:00.007-06:00

Christmas approaches!

2008-12-22T16:48:00.003-06:00

The final days leading up to Christmas are just as exciting to me now as they were when I was a kid.... Just for different reasons now. I hope I can pass that on to my own kids. In the meantime - the house is decorated and the lights haven't burned out yet despite all the rain and wind gusts.

The tree is up and decorated now as well. I am quite proud of myself as I allowed the kids to hang the ornaments by themselves this year. Yeah - I know.. I'm one of those terrible perfectionist types who wants ornaments organized by size and color and such. I really didn't interfere this time though aside from the occasional shout of "Don't forget - dangly ornaments on the short branches....."

I don't think I'll ever have the strength to give up the light-stringing part of this tradition.
We'll see.

Mental note: Next year don't put the Advent wreath directly under the A/C vent.

2008-12-21T10:06:00.002-06:00

Happy Birthday, William!

2008-12-18T16:27:00.001-06:00

Happy 11th birthday to William - wow, time flies. Weren't you just a baby recently?

For William's birthday we rounded up our kids and a few children from the neighborhood and put them in a large cage. Okay... Not really.

Instead - Dave rented this absolutely enormous bouncy thing from a local hardware store. Dave tells me they put it in the Suburban with a forklift. Uhm.. Dave didn't have a forklift to get it out -- just me. It was great though - the kids love this stuff... And an 18-foot inflatable thing with a whale on top makes much more of an impact than a couple balloons and party hats you know. Getting this thing deflated, rolled up to Suburban size and loaded back into the car was a feat which deserves its own blog post -- but you wouldn't believe me without pictures. Pictures that I couldn't take because we were accomplishing this amazing feat around midnight in the middle of the road in front of our house. No one was permanently injured or arrested.

Yvonne.

George.

William likes guns.

2008-12-03T20:48:00.002-06:00

Scranton's @ downtown Pascagoula is already decked out for Christmas.

Taking pictures of Christmas lights at night from a moving vehicle is difficult.

The purpose of our excursion: to take the girls out in the freezing cold night so that they could mail their letters to Santa Claus. :)

Happy Birthday, Peter!

2008-11-23T21:22:00.008-06:00

Peter is presented with his first birthday present. This will be the first time he ever attempts to unwrap a gift, so Nana explains that it's okay for him to rip the pretty paper in the process. He is intrigued.

Fifteen minutes later, Peter celebrates as he finally manages to tear a corner of wrapping paper from the box.

Another fifteen minutes pass - yet Peter carries on, undaunted. The rest of the children demonstrate a miraculous level of patience.

"Uh oh."

Happy 1st Birthday, Peter!

Just one of the many reasons

2008-11-20T23:39:00.004-06:00

... that we disconnected our cable television service yesterday: Joy Behar and The View.

After referring to homeschoolers as 'demented', Behar explains, “They’re afraid of children, they learn to be afraid of other children.”

Vatican Cardinal: "A New World Order is Gaining Ground"

2008-11-20T23:24:00.000-06:00

Speaking at the opening of the 23rd plenary assembly for the Pontifical Council for the Laity, the president of the Council, Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, warned, "The idea of creating a 'new man' completely detached from the Judeo-Christian tradition, a new 'world order,' a new 'global ethic,' is gaining ground."

And of particular interest in light of my previous post, Cardinal Rylko also had this to say:

"Our true problem is not being a minority, but rather having voluntarily become marginal, irrelevant, because of our lack of courage, so that we will be left alone, because of our mediocrity." "For Christians," Cardinal Rylko added, "the moment has arrived to free themselves from a false inferiority complex … to be valiant witnesses of Christ."

And of course there is what was left unspoken in my own post... because it is a given:

He warned, however, that such faithfulness would come at a personal cost. "Whoever wants to live and act according to the Gospel of Christ has to pay a price, even in the highly liberal societies of the West," he said.

From LifeSiteNews.com:
Vatican Cardinal: "A New World Order is Gaining Ground"

The varying degrees of "Catholic"

2008-11-19T09:25:00.006-06:00

What exactly is a 'liberal' Catholic? For that matter - what is a 'conservative' Catholic? If I had a mere nickel for each time I've read the words "I'm a Catholic, but..." around the internet over the last few months we could probably manage to Christmas shop this year without tapping out the Christmas club account at the credit union.

Here.. Let me try it: I am Catholic, but I really mean it.

Yeah - I was born to Catholic parents. I was baptized in a Catholic Church. I went to a Catholic school. These are all statements which are usually followed with "but..." Eh. Not this time.

I don't merely attend a Catholic church on Sunday. Catholic is not merely my 'denomination' or 'religious affiliation' for the sake of filling out forms and registrations. Nor is my catholicism reduced to just one of the many aspects of my cultural heritage.

I am Catholic. Completely. Thoroughly. Joyously. Gratefully. Imperfectly. Hopefully. Catholic.

There was a time - a time that doesn't seem that long ago - when the statement "I am Catholic" said it all. No longer. But this is as much my fault as it is the fault of the "Catholic-in-name-only" types: For over and over again when the Catholic Church is brought into a public forum - it has been the "I'm Catholic, but..." crowd that has been there to jump into the fray and make themselves be heard. You see - if I had a dime for every time I've quietly bemoaned that fact without actually making myself heard I wouldn't even need that Christmas club account.

So there it is. I'm holding myself accountable. Starting. right. now.

Cookies Round I 2008

2008-11-18T19:11:00.003-06:00

Since there's already a tree upstairs... it should come as no surprise that cookie-making has started a little early this year as well.

Already?

2008-11-12T10:00:00.002-06:00

Yes!

Of course this isn't our official Christmas tree. This is our new official upstairs Christmas tree. :)

It all started when I had the wild idea that listening to Christmas songs while working on our various home repair/improvement projects upstairs would help to energize and motivate me. It worked so well that I was inspired to start digging through the storage room for decorations as well.

2008-11-03T09:03:00.001-06:00

Your result for The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test...

The Prioress

You scored 5% Cardinal, 64% Monk, 56% Lady, and 46% Knight!

You are a moral person and are also highly intellectual. You like your solitude but are also kind and helpful to those around you. Guided by a belief in the goodness of mankind you will likely be christened a saint after your life is over.

You scored high as both the Lady and the Monk. You can try again to get a more precise description of either the Monk or the lady, or you can be happy that you're an individual.

Take The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test at HelloQuizzy

(h/t Vehige at Thursday Night Gumbo)

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T22:07:00.003-05:00

Father Corapi in the Eleventh Hour

2008-10-29T11:32:00.002-05:00

Father Corapi: Eleventh Hour Election Video - HERE. Be sure to watch all three parts.

Happy Birthday, Yvonne!

2008-10-28T19:57:00.000-05:00

Rosary Rally

2008-10-26T22:13:00.000-05:00

We attended this year's Rosary Rally at the coliseum -- the first one to be held there since Hurricane Katrina. It's been waaaay too long.

67 Million Catholics

2008-10-21T01:33:00.002-05:00

Not resisiting crayons...

2008-09-26T20:03:00.005-05:00

So we obviously survived our most recent bout of severe weather episodes... Not only did we survive - but we came through unscathed and grateful as always.

We barely missed a beat with our school work -- absolutely no scheduling nightmares or stress and we've almost completed our first 9 weeks of coursework. Go, us!

This week's major art project once again comes from the Christian Heritage Art Program. After reading and studying Daniel's Song of Praise we all took a couple of days to think of something for which we are thankful - and then dedicate our crayon resist drawing of whatever that thing is to Our Lord as a prayer of thanks.

The results:

William: My creative mind

George: Space & everything I know about it

Yvonne: The sun & the wind

Emily: Everything

Anita: Wind

Jackson County declares Local Emergency

2008-08-29T19:38:00.000-05:00

Jackson County declares Local Emergency: "The Jackson County Board of Supervisors declared a “Proclamation of Local Emergency” today (Aug. 29) in advance of possible effects from Tropical Storm Gustav. This proclamation allows the County to take several steps in preparation of severe weather.

The Board is closing the Ocean Springs Harbor to all “transient vessels and boats” until the threat of Gustav subsides. All current boat owners with valid “Slip Lease Agreements” can continue to dock their boats at the Harbor."

Governor: Evacuate FEMA Trailers, Cottages, Low-Lying Areas

2008-08-29T19:36:00.000-05:00

Governor: Evacuate FEMA Trailers, Cottages, Low-Lying Areas: "Governor Haley Barbour has announced that Katrina victims still living in FEMA trailers, mobile homes and cottages as well as residents in designated flood hazard zones along Mississippi's coast should begin evacuating this weekend as Gustav approaches."

2008-08-29T12:17:00.002-05:00

2008-08-21T23:39:00.002-05:00

The boys upon hearing that because they aced their spelling quiz on Wednesday there would be no more spelling lessons for the rest of the week.

Happy Birthday

2008-08-12T09:54:00.005-05:00

To our princess... and her favored knight (that would be you, Daddy). We love you. Thank you both for bringing the fairy tale to life.

Cave wall art

2008-08-11T16:08:00.003-05:00

The first week's art project was "Cave Wall Animal Art" - a project from the Christian Heritage Art Program created by Sr. Marie Vianney Hamilton, O.P. of the St. Cecilia Congregation in Nashville, Tennessee.

George

Emily

William

Yvonne

2008-08-09T11:52:00.002-05:00

2008-08-04T23:00:00.003-05:00

George & William valiantly struggle to appear awake this morning.

So what could be better than having school in the middle of your living room .. surrounded by wild toddlers and wearing dirty socks?

I can't say today went off without a hitch. Not in good conscience anyway. I need to perfect my plan to keep the girls entertained throughout the day or I will lose my mind. I think a good portion of today's chaos was simply first day (or maybe first week) excitement though...

All hitches aside - the day was lovely. I'm impressed with just how much the boys have matured since the beginning of last school year and I hope and pray (and pray and pray) that I don't do anything to dampen their enthusiasm this time around. I have always said that I want this entire experience to be fun and challenging for them - but this time I mean it.

One day into the school year I have already come up with a couple of tweaks to the system:

1) More coffee is absolutely necessary.
2) The schedule needs to flex even more to allow for a little working ahead and finishing early.
3) We need new crayons. Nevermind the enormous basket brimming with 20 years of accumulated crayons and pieces... New crayons are completely and utterly necessary.
4) Current snack planning and preparation methods leave much to be desired. Must. fix. this.

With that I'm off to set the coffee pot to wake me in the morning.

It begins

2008-08-04T12:03:00.004-05:00

Twelve noon on our first official day of homeschool for the new year and so far no bloody noses, paper shredder accidents, or irreparably damaged psyches. So far.

I'm not sure how this will all work just yet because we're trying (oh, we're trying) to sort of follow a schedule today... (As much as I'd like to throw schedules out the window I know, deep down, it would be the death of me.) This year I was wise or foolish enough to actually throw plenty of free time into the schedule. As so often happens with things-homeschool... I am sure I will soon learn the hard way just why this is a terrible idea.

Happy first day everybody. :)

My present

2008-07-25T00:45:00.003-05:00

Dave's birthday present to me this year.

It's my birthday

2008-07-24T11:09:00.004-05:00

And Emily will cry if she wants to.

How do people take those perfect & wonderful pictures of their entire families? No one crying, screaming, or in motion? Maybe my kids just cry a lot.

Have I ever mentioned that I love books?

2008-07-19T09:50:00.002-05:00

The new curriculum has arrived!

My excitement is tempered by the awareness that I only have a couple of weeks to pour over the mound of books and figure out how to use them to actually teach my family in some rational manner. Bummer.

Who has time to blog.....?

2008-07-07T15:07:00.004-05:00

I admire all those people out there who maintain a blog - as in really maintain a blog. It's hard work. You have to manage to live a mildly interesting life in between posting about your mildly interesting life in such a way as to make it all sound wildly interesting. I've accepted the fact that I really can't do either all that well -- let alone do both at the same time. And to think - there are people out there who maintain more than one well-written (and subsequently) well-read blog. I'm in awe.

With that said, however, I've decided to revive the ol' ThomerSchool blog. It should be necessary then for this first revival post to be quite lengthy - considering that the preceding post was actually an introduction for the 2007 ThomerSchool year.... Let's begin with a summer of the year then:

We survived.
The boys were educated.
No one moved out.

That's it in a nutshell.

Our first year of parent-designed curriculum and scheduling out-of-a-hat (literally almost -- it was actually a coffee can) was thrilling and exhausting and terrifying. I was working way too hard. The boys didn't seem to be working enough. I have no idea what we were doing other than not driving to and from a school building every day.

And so it was indeed a combination of exhaustion and paranoia that let us to our second year curriculum selection. We used a pre-packaged program from Our Lady of Victory Catholic Homeschool. It was a beautiful program... thoroughly Catholic and thoroughly traditional. The books themselves will be gorgeous additions to our home library. However, in many ways, I now feel the selection of this program was nothing but a knee-jerk reaction to the mistakes we made during our first year of flitting through the ether of abstract education.... OLVS is most definitely a classroom curriculum. Literally the stuff of the 1940s/1950s classroom. I understand that was the appeal initially. I had dreams of giving my kids the experience I had in a Catholic elementary school (multiplied by 50 considering by the time I attended school in the 70s the curriculum was already somewhat liberalized and secularized).

I believe that I did make that dream come true. But I have no intention of doing it again this year... or ever again for that matter. You see - this may come as a surprise - but I am not, in fact, an entire staff of teaching nuns. Instead, I am the extremely high-strung mother of five living in the ongoing aftermath of a major disaster. Last year, specifically, I was also a thirty-six year old mother of four expecting our fifth child -- and then the thirty-six year old mother of five kids including a newborn. Point: I don't have time to devote to two traditional full-time school days every day while also keeping everyone alive.

The boys accomplished a lot last year. The amount of work they actually finished takes up a good portion of our kitchen storage space at the moment. I'm very proud of what we did...

It is now our third year of the homeschool experience and I believe we are all beginning to feel like pros. The fear has subsided... (I've said that before - but this time I mean it...) No one is going to forget to learn how to read or manage to leave the house in young adulthood without knowing where the U.S. capitol is located or how to make change. Considering the fact that such things are a standard which even the public educational system cannot take for granted with their own graduates -- I'd say we're doing okay.

We'll be trying out a new curriculum for 2008. Our order from Catholic Heritage Curricula is on its way as I type this. What we're hoping to find in this new curriculum is a little more freedom. We want our curriculum to be full of tools that we can use as we work together each day... Rather than a program which forces us to plug our lives into its schedule. I want to spend more time discussing things as a family... praying together as a family.. working on projects as a family...

And less time begging bored and exhausted kids to finish their busy work so we can all go to bed on time so we're rested enough to wake up early and start all over again in the morning.

Happy First Day of School boys!

2007-08-27T07:01:00.000-05:00

So our first day of the fall semester begins today! After a rocky summer of soul-searching.. trying to decide whether or not this homeschool thing was really for us.... Here we are.

The Sun Herald | 01/26/2007 | Pascagoula library re-opening

2007-01-26T10:15:00.000-06:00

The Sun Herald | 01/26/2007 | Pascagoula library re-opening: "The Jackson-George Regional Library is slated to re-open at 9 a.m. Monday, nearly a year and a half after Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters saturated the two-story building, destroying furniture and books and damaging the building itself."

A Day in Pompeii

2007-01-21T23:01:00.000-06:00

A Day in Pompeii :: About the Exhibit: "A Day in Pompeii takes visitors back in time to experience life and death in this cosmopolitan city. The exhibition features over 250 exceptional objects that lay buried in Pompeii’s ruins for over 17 centuries. Included are room-size frescoes, marble and bronze sculptures, jewelry, gold coins and everyday household items – all of which evoke the richness and culture of daily life in the Roman Empire’s favorite vacation resort."

Long-awaited and now on our homeschool schedule for February 2nd....

Wow! What a difference a break (and a kitchen) makes!

2007-01-10T10:06:00.000-06:00

I know it's only Wednesday - but I feel it's safe to go ahead and brag right now: What a great week we're having!!

For the first time since we started homeschool, I feel like we finally have a handle on how it feels to homeschool. We've gone through different curriculums and schedules... We've tried writing.. we've tried typing.. we've tried oral discussion... We've tried it all... But this time around it seems the fear has left us and we're just enjoying our days together.

Monday we woke up early for jelly toast and hot chocolate then went over our catechism while we ate. After that we had a traditional math lesson and the boys followed up with some corresponding Time4Learning lessons while I straightened up and played with Yvonne and Emily. We then had a totally interesting history lesson -- the boys loved the history lessons we did last summer and had begged for me to bring them back -- complete with notebook activities. We took a lunch break before the boys returned to Time4Learning for their language arts lessons (and congratulations to both boys for mastering the material!) and then we did a little internet research together while the babies napped. George and I worked together in the afternoon on his first research paper... and that activity later faded into George simply browsing through the encyclopedia reading whatever interested him. William played with Yvonne in the meantime... and by dinner everyone was happy. How great is that?

As I type this - George is logged into Time4Learning working on math. William is in the kitchen with Yvonne teaching her how to write numbers. We've finished language arts for the day and now we're taking it easy waiting for a History Channel program about pirates at noon.

Arrr!

Christmas break

2007-01-06T20:14:00.000-06:00

The boys sitting with their basketball coach waiting to get into the game.

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany - the end of the Christmas season... and time to start getting ready for school to start again on Monday. With all the Christmas hubbub and home repairs and so on, I hate to admit that I haven't actually worked on a lesson plan in a couple of weeks and I'm starting to feel a little pressure.

We're starting the New Year off with a stronger mix of bookwork and Time4Learning. I am planning to start this 'semester' just as I did last June. And that is with a more intense and rigid school schedule for a few weeks. After that we will start to slowly taper off until the boys have yet again found a particular area of interest to pursue at their own pace.

Of course... that's going to require actually getting all of our materials together that have been packed away while we were rennovating the kitchen... and it will mean buying a replacement computer monitor for the one that passed away just before Christmas... But it can be done.

I'm also adding Yvonne to the schedule starting next week. She very much wants to join her brothers in school in a more serious way... and I think it will be lots of fun for her.

In the meantime - the boys have been spending some of their Christmas break with basketball practice. They also played in their very first game today -- and we're very, very proud of them. They had a lot of fun and played their hearts out. Go, boys!!

Now it's time to go sharpen some pencils and dust off the printer.

WLOX-TV - The News for South Mississippi: The Pascagoula Library Bounces Back Post Katrina

2006-12-06T19:01:00.000-06:00

WLOX-TV - The News for South Mississippi: The Pascagoula Library Bounces Back Post Katrina: "As the library prepares to reopen its doors post Katrina, Mars says they are in need of Employees to fill job positions, ten to be exact including clerks, library assistances, and a custodian.

'We had several employees that left, so we are in the process of taking applications,' Mars said. 'It is very important we have a full staff when we open.'

The Library is expected to open at the end of January."

Time4Learning

2006-11-06T14:30:00.000-06:00

We started off our homeschool journey this past June armed with a myriad of textbooks and lesson plans. I knew better. I had read thousands of stories of beginner homeschool families on the internet and no matter how different each was - what they had in common was the total overpurchase of teaching materials that first year. I couldn't help myself though -- I have loved books and crisp clean new notebooks and sharpened pencils since I was a very small girl....

We haven't used it all. I'm an optimist though (not to mention a packrat) and I fully believe that someday we will have need for each and every text and folder. Someday.

Until then we have come up with a different plan.

I was more naive back in June... and I truly believed that I would somehow manage to work in three and a half hours of traditional classroom-style instruction each day while trying to manage the needs, demands, and whims of a three year old, a one year old, three cats, and a dog in a house still in need of repair since Hurricane Katrina. Maybe naive isn't a strong enough word.
When days passed without actually being able to get through a single hour of a lesson without major disruption - I started to panic...

It was then that we tried a more self-guided lesson plan. I would prepare a folder for each of the boys the night before and include a list of reading assignments, workbook pages, handouts, and so on - and they, in turn, would complete the day's work as best they could and ask for help when things got hairy. Of course - things got hairy at the most inconvenient times... And the days were hectic and stressful. That isn't why the plan didn't work however... The REAL problem was making sure the work was ready each night. I found myself up at 2 and 3 in the morning printing out worksheets and reading science textbooks sometimes. And on the busiest of nights -- it would slip my mind altogether. I started to panic again....

I pulled an all-nighter and eventually narrowed down our biggest stumbling block to math. We could always make time for our other subjects -- but when it came to the drudgery of math sheets and drills... and the fact that I often wasn't available at the moment I was needed for answering questions... math was a problem.

I started searching the internet for a good supplemental math program -- maybe some software that could give the boys some basic math practice when I wasn't available. All I really wanted was some sort of back-up plan for those days when things just weren't turning out like an episode of "Little House on the Prairie".

What I found that night was a website and program called "Time4Learning.com" (http://www.time4learning.com).

We have been using Time4Learning for over two months now. In the beginning I did, indeed, use it as only my 'backup plan' for the most hectic days. We have now integrated it into our regular daily schedule.

The math and language arts lessons are engaging and thorough. The boys don't have much trouble staying on task - and it's great to actually hear them giggle through some assignments. I have to admit - sometimes late at night I go through some of the language arts lessons so I can giggle too. We now use the program as our main curriculum for those two subject areas -- and supplement with textbooks and workbooks only when more practice is needed. (Some lessons in the program offer printable worksheets -- which also come in handy.)

The program also offers lessons in science and social studies for their grade levels which we are using to supplement our studies here at home. To be more specific - we use the Time4Learning lessons as a springboard for our own lessons. For instance - George completed a short lesson on the formation of rocks and the rock cycle today on T4L... Now we will use our textbooks and reference materials to study further... Create some notebook pages.. and collect some of our own rocks.

No more fretting about grade level discrepancies and trying to teach two boys at once either -- we have two memberships and two computers... and everybody's happy. Adjusting the level for particular coursework is simple - as simple as the click of a button or a quick email to admin.

(Speaking of email -- I should mention that any time I have contacted customer service I've gotten a quick and useful response.... !!!! Imagine that!!)

T4L is self-teaching... Meaning that, technically, all the boys have to do is log on in the morning and complete the next lesson. However, lesson plans are available for each grade level for those of us who just HAVE to have something to do with the planning process. In our case, I like to print out the lesson plans and set a goal for the completion of certain assignments or chapters by the end of the week... If after reviewing quiz and test scores it seems that more practice is needed in a given area -- then we go back and complete those lessons until they are mastered.

Oh - and did I mention how nice the freedom of using this program is? Because this is a web-based program.. the boys can complete their assignments anywhere and anytime - as long as they have access to a computer and the internet! No more lugging around textbooks and notebooks or guilt-ridden complexes when we want to go visit Mom for the day.

If you're interested in using the program -- either for your entire curriculum or as a supplement -- you'll be happy to know that they also offer a free trial. If you're already convinced - you'll be happy to know that the price is quite affordable.

So the next time I'm lying prostrate on the floor suffering from a broken leg and can't reach the bookshelf - all I have to do is say "Hey boys -- go log in and learn something today... I need to heal." And they will. Do you have any idea how comforting that is? I'll bet you do.

Field Trip: Mississippi Sandhill Cranes

2006-10-13T13:32:00.000-05:00

George in the field - almost literally.

A stand of saw palmettos.

William at the visitor's center.

Pretty wildflowers at marker 20.

George takes in the view.

The field trip was a complete success! Despite the dreary weather - Dave and the boys had a good time AND managed to see some rare Mississippi Sandhill Cranes. The boys were also thrilled that they were able to find some pitcher plants in their natural habitat -- these are fantastic native carnivorous plants that they had read about and were hoping to see in person.

Pitcher plants!

2006-10-13T11:02:00.000-05:00

The boys have gone out on a field trip to the Missisissippi Sandhill Crane Wildlife Refuge with their father this morning. Unfortunately, the weather chose today to break our recent drought -- but hopefully they'll get a chance to at least walk around in the mud a bit. They have cameras and will be posting pictures when they get home.

In the meantime, George has posted some new photos in his photoblog.

2006-10-05T20:31:00.000-05:00

2006-08-21T09:57:00.000-05:00

Our big plans for the first official day of school on August 7th were immediately dashed with the total demise of my computer that morning. We were forced to scrap whatever schedules we had made and just wing it.

Of course we had to wing it for the entire week while waiting for a new hard-drive... and I've learned that once you start winging it it's hard to stop.

We worked really hard this summer so these first 'official' weeks of school have been a little scary to me. We still complete a math lesson and a grammar lesson every day -- but it always seems like we haven't gotten a whole lot accomplished until I actually sit down at the end of the day and write everything down.

This morning's schedule is blank. George is working on a math lesson while William works on an art lesson while he waits to use the book. In a little while we'll switch. Plans for the rest of the day? We'll take some time to write in our journals - try to come up with some crazy prepositional phrases... and when the babies are sleeping we'll get a chance to read together.

Maybe at this pace we'll all make it afterall.

2006-08-01T15:13:00.000-05:00

It's almost officially the beginning of the school year for the rest of the coast. For some reason this makes me nervous. It shouldn't. We have been doing homeschool for a couple of months now... But I guess as long as we were working over the summer there was less pressure somehow.

I called the Jackson County Attendance officer last week only to be greeted with an answering machine that said she would be out of her office until August. Now it's time to start calling and leaving messages until someone actually calls me back.

In the meantime we're doing the school thing.

I think the boys feel a little differently with the official schoolyear beginning as well... I've been meeting a lot of extra resistance to the even the smallest of requests. It's time once again for a new approach.

I've been spending more and more time working one on one with the boys rather than trying to force them into the same subjects at the same time. This translates into a lot more instruction time for me -- but that's better than extra time spent trying to get and keep everyone's attention.

Now I have to see how far along the boys are on their notebooking this afternoon. I had hoped to get in a science lesson before dinner...

2006-07-12T14:25:00.000-05:00

This morning I woke up as early as usual and started the laundry... let the dog out.. fed the cats.. changed a couple diapers.. refreshed some bottles... made some coffee... and crawled back into bed. I was guessing the boys wouldn't be getting up and coming downstairs any earlier than 9:30 am anyway -- and the bed was warm...

I soon awoke to the sound of shuffling and whispering in the kitchen. I threw some shoes on and braced myself for whatever mischief the boys were sure to be making... To my surprise I found them carefully laying out their textbooks for the day. "Wait, Mom - wait! We're making a surprise for you!" they shouted as they shoved me back out of the kitchen.

They had gotten up early - but were apologetic that they didn't get up as early as they had hoped. (William explained that his clock said 'eight' but when he came downstairs my clock said 'eight forty-five'.) They went through my dayplanner for today and gathered all the necessary materials for each lesson and put them out in order on the kitchen counters. Sharpened pencils were neatly placed at the kitchen table and on our little blackboard they had scrawled the words: "Good Morning! We love you, Mom!"

Sigh. If only every day were like this....

We finished our math lesson in record time (and with no battles to speak of...) - added King Menes of Egypt to our timelines... Had a great discussion from the 'Touchpebbles' series about criticism & self-improvement... Put together a light hut for growing our plants and even planted some basil seeds.

William puts his freshly planted basil in the shop-vac box light hut....

And George too....

Voila! Light hut! Now let's see who remembers to water these poor things...

We're almost done for the day now... George is just putting the final touches on his drawing of Humbaba from the Epic of Gilgamesh and then we're all free! Free!

2006-07-06T14:42:00.000-05:00

2006-07-06T11:23:00.000-05:00

Yet again we are totally behind schedule... and I'm tempted to throw the whole schedule out the window. There have been plenty of days when I think I could have chased the boys around with pencils and notebooks until they finished all the work I had planned -- but I couldn't help but stop myself and let it go. I don't want any of us to start resenting the process already.

On the bright side -- the boys completed their Level One Red Cross swimming instruction over the last couple of weeks... All is not lost.

Today we're catching up on all the fantastic lessons I had planned for the last two weeks. Okay that sounds bad -- I have no intention of doing two weeks worth of work in one day. We worked yesterday too. Er.. wait that still sounds bad but it's not like that at all. Hmm.. Now that I think about it - there isn't all that much catching up to do.

It isn't that we didn't do any work at all over the last couple of weeks... It's just that our lessons were limited to maybe and hour or two per day rather than three or four... Not bad at all.

We started talking about ancient Babylon yesterday... and I'm looking forward to learning about the Hanging Gardens this afternoon.

We have begun to lean heavily on notebooking activities. I like the fact that the boys' work is entirely their own - and that they are allowed to come away with what interested them the most from each lesson. It's really neat to see what each of them come up with when a lesson is over. Sometimes it's rather predictable... like yesterday both boys chose to draw a picture of what they thought the Tower of Babel would have been like for their notebook activity... But when we read a few chapters of 'Black Beauty', for instance - William drew a detailed picture of the tragic hunt of the hare - while George drew a picture of the locomotive speeding past Black Beauty in the field. Aaah... It's good to know they're actually reading and not just sitting with a books in their laps trying to look interested.

Photo Project #2

2006-06-21T12:58:00.000-05:00

We've had our first camera-toting scavenger hunt today. Each of the boys were given 45 minutes to locate five items (or types of items, in this case) on their list - take a picture - and return home.
For the results, check out William's Photo Blog and George's Photo Blog.

2006-06-19T23:22:00.000-05:00

2006-06-19T22:17:00.000-05:00

My kitchen is full of notebooks and daily planners... weekly planners... planner planners.. calendars, schedules, and checklists. It is no wonder that I have managed to lose all track of time over the last couple of weeks. You see -- once I become dependent on little notebooks and scraps of paper to keep up with what needs to be done and keep track of what I just did (and the dependence sets in quickly, mind you) my brain immediately shuts down. Inevitably, I forget to mark something off a list somewhere or neglect to make a note of a finished project immediately after finishing... And then I'm completely lost. I'm left with big blanks in my memory.

So that's what happened -- I over-organized myself. For our first week I was keeping meticulous notes and faithfully recording completed lessons and instruction times. I started slipping at the beginning of the second week when life managed to rearrange our schedule a little bit and I found myself having to scratch-through here and pencil-in there. By mid-week I was winging it entirely.. and by the weekend it was anarchy.

It was 10:30 pm Sunday night when I remembered that we would be having class this morning but had absolutely nothing planned. Fatigue and time-constraints forced me back to the basics. One ballpoint pen - one simple daily planner - and the simplest, most flexible entries I could manage, such as: Math (50 minutes) Science (30 minutes) History (30 minutes) Reading (30 minutes).

We started out this morning finishing up any projects we left dangling at the end of last week. This gave me a little time to organize a few actual lessons for the remainder of this week -- and it gave the boys a little time to ease into this week's work. Still -- nothing's perfect and we didn't manage to finish everything we had planned for the day.

The boys colored a portrait of Mozart and then completed their grid-drawing art lesson from last Thursday. After that we read a story from Tales of Ancient Egypt entitled "Ra and His Children" and worked on notebook pages about what they remembered of the story. William drew a picture of Apophis - the dragon of darkness and wrote about how the dragon brought evil to the land of Egypt which caused Ra to create the lioness Sekhmet so that she would devour the rebellious Egyptians. George drew a picture of the council of the gods of Egypt and explained that Ra was so angry with the evil people that he wanted to destroy everything - but the other gods suggested that he instead find a way to only destroy what was evil and leave what was good.

Then our regularly scheduled programming came to a grinding halt when one of William's friends came over to play for a couple of hours. George took a little time to research the Egyptian god, Thoth -- after seeing his image over and over during our trip to the Exploreum on Friday he really wanted to find out what the guy with the bird head was all about... We tried our hand at a science lesson after that but he really didn't seem interested so we took a break until William could rejoin us.

We started our math lesson for the day with facts practice as usual -- and George was so frustrated with the timed sheets of 100 facts that I realized we had to try something else. We found a website with timed math facts problems and both of the boys tried beating the clock a couple of times. It clicked and they agreed that they would very much prefer to start their math lessons with the website rather than the daunting worksheets. Fair enough. The lesson after that went smoothly enough -- but since we only have one math textbook and the boys have such a hard time both sharing the book and actually getting any work done - when it came time to do the lesson practice problems I decided to let them work separately. William worked on the rest of the math while George reviewed the countries of North America via a great online game we discovered last week.

It was dinnertime when William finished with his math - so George didn't finish the math lesson for the day... but after today's session with the geography game he felt he was ready to label the countries of North America on an outline map. He breezed through it and we are thrilled to know he can find places like El Salvador and Nicaragua on a map -- something the average eighth grader probably cannot do. William got to play the geography game again some before dinner but said he's not ready for the outline map just yet... And though we probably had enough time to force George to finish the math lesson for the day -- we settled for giving him time to play a game about 'Place Values' online. Afterall - our lesson today just happened to be about place values... and he was having fun.

Tomorrow we'll try once again to conquer that science lesson.. and George will have to find the time to finish the math left undone today. Also on the menu: grammar, catechism, handwriting, free reading, and some online word games. All scheduling will be written out in pencil tonight for sure since tomorrow will also be beginning swimming lessons in the morning.

The Exploreum Field Trip

2006-06-19T22:03:00.000-05:00

Today marked our family field trip to the Gulf Coast Exploreum in Mobile, Alabama to see the exhibit, "Mummy: The Inside Story" courtesy of the British Museum. We also were able to take in the IMAX movie: "Mystery of the Nile" (see the trailer HERE) and of course the kids got to play with the regular Exploreum science exhibits in Hands On Hall.

Mom does a good job of telling the story of our trip on her blog so I will leave the story-telling to her on this one and share some of the pictures instead. Uh.. of course -- all of these pictures are also courtesy of Mom. (Thank you, Mom!! I'd raft down the Nile with you anytime!)

George learning the value of a lever and fulcrum at Hands On Hall.

Yvonne learns about Ancient Egyptian wildlife.

I have no idea what William was doing but he almost looks guilty.

By the way... We have all decided that mummies are rather disturbing - and though studying the life and culture of ancient civilizations is interesting and even exhilirating... It seems like the dead should be given the respect due them -- no matter at all just how long they've actually been dead. Poor Nesperennub. May he rest in peace.

What about socialization?

2006-06-15T21:05:00.000-05:00

The school year hasn't even officially begun yet and already I have heard the word 'socialization' several times too many.

First, I would like to point out that none of my kids are being raised in a bubble. Every day each of them interact with at least six other people from various age groups. If that's not socializing activity -- I don't know what is.

Second, I have discovered that billion dollar public school systems are really not necessary for facilitating social interaction with peer groups. Actually, it seems that an awful lot of money could be saved if some of those systems would take note of my technique. Here's what you do: Take a couple of your kids... give them each a plastic light saber and a bike.. and send them outside. Within minutes - your front yard will be overflowing with kids -- some you've never seen before in your life... all asking for snack chips and Gatorade -- and with plenty of interaction to go around.

Yvonne is very confident about her light saber technique and will challenge
anyone who will hold still long enough.

I honestly couldn't get a picture of all of the children in our yard this evening -- not all at the same time anyway. (Flocks of children move quickly - and almost constantly. It's fascinating to watch, really.) There were an awful lot of them though... girls & boys...some with bikes.. some with skates.. a couple with dogs... all fully armed and quite social. We ran out of Gatorade.

That's more like it.

2006-06-09T16:13:00.000-05:00

Ahhh the day passed much more pleasantly yesterday -- and I'm happy to say the kids all went to bed with smiles on their faces. Yes - I measure the quality of a given day by the kids' moods at bedtime. A dangerous thing to do, I know (especially when everyone has an earache) -- but I always do it -- even when I'm pretending I'm not.

The mounds of waffles with syrup started the day as planned. Then we turned on Mozart and got out sketch pads and passed the time drawing whatever the music inspired. We chatted a bit about how the visual arts can reflect the emotions of the artist.. and whether or not they should... (They both agreed that they should - otherwise everything would be just plain dull.) And then we chatted some more about how the happy and the sad and the silly, scary, miserable and serious are somehow what come together to create beauty. It was going really well, I thought... So I explained how the music we were listening to could affect what we were drawing if we let it. George looked up puzzled and said, "You mean because I'm going to draw musical instruments, right?"

"Er.. not exactly, George.. I mean if when you listen to the music you are picturing the orchestra and the instruments.. that's fine... but it can make you feel things too.. and you can put those feelings on paper."

"Uh.. how do you draw a feeling?"

"Hmm.. well... you know how you said some of this music sounds happy - and some sounds sad?"

"Yes. But that's music."

"Okay but haven't you ever seen a painting and thought it seemed happy or sad?"

"Oh I got it.. Like if they paint a picture of somebody crying...."

"Well okay yes.. but you could paint a picture of a flower or a box or the sky and it can still be happy or sad..."

"A box is not happy or sad."

"Well no.. but how you see the box is all about how you're feeling when you look at it.. so when you paint it.. er.. What I mean is - we can express our emotions when we paint or draw by using certain colors, or drawing the lines in a certain way, or using certain brush strokes..."

"...."

"I guess I don't know how to explain it right now... Let's just draw - we'll talk more later."

"About what?"

"You know.. the emotion and art thing..."

"Oh! you mean like Picasso's blue period?"

Sigh. I wrote out this story to remind me in the future not to try to teach down to these guys.

So then we giggled through the rest of our drawing... Had a short catechism lesson and got in our reading and handwriting and copywork for the day all in the same lesson -- and no one was wounded. We took some time for the boys to complete their second typing lesson -- both were thrilled to have raised their words-per-minute one word this lesson (they're typing an average of 8 wpm as of this writing). Then we took some time to read a few stories about Mozart and the boys wrote short research papers about his life and work. Both of the boys thought it was pretty cool when they found out that Mr. Mozart was an avid billiards player and sometimes actually wrote music while playing. (They then thought it was the perfect opportunity to convince me to give them a few pool-playing lessons. I would have given in if I could play well enough to teach. :) We'll settle for some informal games later on this weekend, I'm sure.)

Instead though, they went outside to make an entry in their nature journals.

I don't recall pulling out any hair yesterday -- so things are good.

Things are as usual a little off schedule today - and I'm not panicking yet. William had his appointment with the eye doctor today: It's official - he needs glasses for reading. We're all very excited about this... but the glasses won't be ready til next Friday. In the meantime, the doctor told him to rest his eyes today -- no reading, drawing, or coloring until tomorrow...

So this means I have the day off! Woohoo!!

Tomorrow then -- we try a bit of ancient history...

The honeymoon's not over yet....

2006-06-08T00:36:00.000-05:00

I was sitting here at this late hour with thousands of thoughts racing through my head about this 'homeschool' thing... Most of them weren't all that good at first. (It has been a long day.) But then I had one of those epiphanies that you can only have late at night when you started drinking coffee around 10pm and you've eaten way too many roasted peanuts for your own good and you're souped up on decongestants and fever reducers. It went like this:

Bah! I think everything would just be a little easier to handle if I wasn't feeling so bad. I mean, half of it is just that I'm so sick. Besides, none of the kids are feeling all that well either. Yvonne is sniffly and mean. George is prone to sudden tears as he usually is when he's feeling under-the-weather but doesn't want to tell anyone.. And William looks more pale than usual. So, I can't really blame them for not wanting to sit through math drills and grammar lessons right now. We'll just have to tough it out. That's right.. er.. Wait. Why is that right? Tell me again why we're toughing anything out? Why on earth am I sticking to a schedule? Uh oh.. It's been 72 hours and I've already forgotten most of the advantages of homeschooling. Don't we make our own rules here?

I'm going to blame it on my cold medicine. When I'm feeling fuzzy in the head I tend to resort to lists and schedules to get me through -- and that's exactly what I was doing here.

Today was tough. I woke up early enough and had everything neat and tidy and ready to go, but was met with a bit of resistance when I announced it was time to have the first lesson. My fragile and influenza-burdened ego just couldn't take that kind of rejection and I threw a little temper tantrum of my own and said I didn't think I was up to teaching anybody. The boys looked bewildered but they were quiet. I stormed out of the room and wandered around aimlessly for a few minutes, but when I returned to the kitchen I found the boys there still waiting. George was busily writing - so I peeked over his shoulder to see the words "I will not upset Mom" neatly scrawled on the paper 10 times. Eep! I kissed them both on the heads and hugged them 'hello'. And then I apologized. I explained to George that I think I am prone to sudden tears when I feel under-the-weather, too... And we went on with a decent discussion about how to tell when a story is taking place when the author keeps changing the tense of the verbs... and the difference between 'knowing' and 'understanding'. (From Wondering at the World)

We took a long break before I called them back for some math -- but, once again, neither of them were all that pleased with the idea of actually doing anything. I didn't storm out of the room. I slapped a deck of cards on the table and said "Okay - give me a chance here.. I am going to show you how you can practice your addition facts by playing a card game...." That perked them up. At first. Or at least until one of them started winning and the other ... well.. wasn't. It happened to be William who ended up on the losing end of the card game -- but I know full-well that had it been George he would have reacted in exactly the same way. William slumped and refused to play again. So I - in full drill-sargeant mode - handed him a sheet of 100 addition facts and a pencil and sent him off. I was a little surprised when he returned with the sheet neatly done and no complaints. My foggy head couldn't figure out why on earth he would seem to prefer doing traditional math drills to playing such a gloriously fun game. But I didn't get to dwell for whatever reason -- I think a baby cried or a buzzer went off or the phone rang.. I can't remember exactly -- but by then it was that time of day for me that always most resembles a Calgon commercial... minus the luxurious soak in the spa.

I was feeling sort of proud of myself for having the good sense to not load up our schedule with a lot of really intense work since we had done so much during the previous two days... and I waited a couple of hours before I asked the boys if they thought they would be able to label the world map with the names of the seven continents. They both replied that they could do it if they knew how to really spell them. "Well.. Haven't you been studying?" They both quite honestly said "No." And that was it. Not "No, but we will..." Just "No." So I put on the cheeriest voice that I can when I'm tired and congested and said "Oh! Well.. Okay! How about I help you learn to spell them?" That was followed by a couple of very audible groans.

I didn't storm out of the room again. I was proud of that too. But I wasn't very nice either. I found myself barking at them to sit down and get out a pencil because we were going to learn how to spell the names of the continents whether they liked it or not.

It wasn't the most pleasant experience. I don't think it was for any of us, that is... But they may have actually learned how to spell the names of the seven continents. If they haven't - it would serve me right. (I realize that now. At the time - I was still barking and so adamant... As if our very lives depended on the boys learning how to spell Antarctica TODAY.)

Thinking I was being most good and kind... I let another hour pass before I asked them to join me for a quick grammar lesson. I shouldn't have been surprised that they didn't want to join me for a quick grammar lesson -- but I was anyway. Their work ended up done neatly before they trudged off toward their rooms looking full of gloom and despair.

But it still didn't hit me. I sat down with my planner and reviewed our lessons for the day.. Math drills - check; Geography - check; Writing component - check; Reading component - check; Discussion - check.... Suddenly, I felt rather bored.

I jumped up and remembered that Dave had mentioned that he saw a sign about a booksale at the public library between 9 and 5 today. That's what we'd do! I would grab the boys and we'd go have a happy old time at the book sale!

"Put on your shoes!" I called to the boys.
"Why?" they called back.
"Don't ask why -- hurry up and come with me!"
"But why?"
"Because we're going somewhere."
"Where are we going?"
"We aren't going anywhere if you don't put your shoes on."
"But I don't want to put my shoes on!" shouted George.

William was heading for the door so I shouted back "Okay, fine - you don't have to come then."
And I made my way out to the stupid van. William was in the back seat already when George came running out - still shoeless - to ask again 'But where are you going?' I was quite frustrated by then as it was 4:30 and I knew it would take about 10 minutes to get to the book sale that ended at 5:00. "George.. put your shoes on in the car and come with me."

Ten minutes later we passed the public library and the big sign outside that read "Friends of the Library Book Sale 9am to 2pm." Ahem. I said absolutely nothing to the boys about where I had originally intended to take us.. But I was determined that we would go somewhere by then.. So I headed for the mall and the bookstore in Gautier. William found his dream book about World War II fighter planes and was immediately in a state of bliss. George had a harder time finding anything that interested him... but then he stumbled across this coffee-table sized illustrated book about the universe. He was so excited... and the whole day flashed through my mind as I turned over the book to find the price: Fifty dollars. I told him 'no'. He was crushed. Crushed! He finally decided on a couple pocket encylopedias -- one on space and the other about insects... but his heart wasn't in it. That's when I decided I would make everything right by taking them to the music shop to find a CD for them... I was hoping they'd have Holst's The Planets because George has always been very excited about it. Of course, they didn't. So we browsed the classical section together. George found a Bach CD and asked if we could get it.. In the meantime, I had selected Mozart. "Well, George.. I know you like Bach.. and soon we will study Bach.. But don't you think since we are studying Mozart right now it would be better to get Mozart?" He agreed. He looked sad though. I guessed he must have still been upset about that universe book....

We didn't attempt any more lessons today. It was already too much.. and I was sincerely wanting the boys to have a good day in the end. I thought they might like to have some fun drawing and coloring with me though after Yvonne and Emily were in bed -- so I got out the supplies while I waited.

In the process of going upstairs to gather the boys for me - Dave discovered that neither of them had actually finished their daily chores -- picking up their toys, making their beds, cleaning off their desks -- and mentioned it to me as they entered the room. What a bad idea. Don't tell me that. You know - me - big grumpy sniffly drill-sargeant mom... Don't tell me that!! I did what any big grumpy sniffly drill-sargeant mom would do: I told them they had to clean their rooms before we could do anything. They immediately burst into tears. Two hours later we all calmed down. Their rooms were never cleaned... and we never got to color either.

So that's what brought me here... Sitting in front of the computer late at night -- wondering where I went wrong... and then the epiphany...

Yes -- I'm grumpy -- but that's not the big problem. The problem is that I lost sight of our goals already. I spent the day trying to force things. Learning to spell the names of the continents became as artificially important as that stupid daily planner from the school... George wanted a book about the universe so I bought him something else. William was obviously upset about losing the game - but rather than taking the opportunity to reassure him and maybe join in the game with them or change the rules to balance out their different levels of math proficiency - I punished him with math drills. Egad! George wanted Bach so I bought him Mozart. And then I wandered around wondering why I was meeting so much resistance.

At least I have tomorrow's lesson plan figured out already. It's gonna go like this:

Wake up whenever we feel like it. Make waffles with extra syrup. Listen to the stupid Mozart CD while eating waffles. Ask the boys what they want to do today. Listen to them.

From there -- I think I'll just wing it.

2006-06-06T22:27:00.000-05:00

Is there enough coffee in the world?

2006-06-05T22:04:00.000-05:00

We have survived our first full day of homeschool-type activities! My feet hurt. My lips are chapped. Everything is blurry and leaning slightly to the right. I feel as if I'm having some sort of out-of-body experience as this is typed since I couldn't possibly have the current mental capacity to form words into sentences and type at the same time.

But it was great.

I will have to find some way to slow down the pace a bit for the future or I will die....

But how can I knock the boys' enthusiasm? All day long they were ready for the next lesson - asking for more to do... And when they both responded with a resounding "AWWWW" when I told them at 9:45 pm that it was time for them to go upstairs and do something quietly until they fell asleep because my brain was turning to mush - I couldn't believe these were the same two boys that I pushed and scolded and threatened and begged to do one hour's work at homework time for three years.

Our scheduled program for the day consisted of a modest four hours of work: grammar, math, geography, and a reading & discussion session. We conquered the grammar lesson in no time, spent 30 minutes each on facts practice drills, and had a great introductory discussion about our reading....

But what I wasn't planning on.. was that while William was working on his math drills on the computer - George was not content at all with the idea of just running off to play while he waited for his turn. Instead, he asked if he could take some extra time to write more in his journal. (!) How could I say 'no' to such a thing? What this meant though, was that George was still writing in the journal when William actually finished his math practice.

Then it was William's turn. He tried half-heartedly to go watch a movie or play outside with his light saber.. but things weren't the same without George running around - so he came back and asked if I had another assignment. (!) Since William is a bit of a timid reader - and I was planning on starting over with the basics with him just to rebuild his confidence anyway... I decided it would be a good time to introduce William to a phonics lesson.

But when George was done with the journal and his math practice... He didn't want to be left out of whatever William was doing and thought it would be fun for him to try it too! So -- I gave George his phonics folder and went through the instructions quickly just as Yvonne walked in and said, "Me write too?" Erg. Thankfully, I had a phonics folder for Yvonne ready for just such an occasion and sat her down at her Hello Kitty table nearby to work alongside her brothers. Then I ran around like a lunatic cleaning the kitchen, changing Emily's diaper and clothes, and making snacks for everybody.

I figured after such a long morning and some apple slices and yogurt dip (Thanks, Swapna!) everyone would be ready to go flop on the couch and watch some meaningless drivel on the substitute television and I would be able to sneak off with a cup of coffee for a few minutes...

What the kids had in mind was a little different though: they wanted to do their chores. (Oh why oh why did I have to give them their own chore charts?) "Okay. Where's the vacuum?" asked George. Then William chimed in "Hey - I fed the cats already.. I'm supposed to help you cook today -- what are you cooking?" Er... I was caught offguard but I managed to stave off a mutiny by explaining that we needed to let the babies rest a bit longer before we turned on the vacuum ... and that William would be able to help me cook dinner for us all later. George agreed and ran off to dust the upstairs instead and William followed behind to make sure his toys were picked up from the morning.

I had just enough time to clean the yogurt dip off Yvonne's face before they were back and ready to start school again. I felt a little bad when I told them to run off and play and be free and give me some time to rest... But then, Mom saved me. She came just in time for a visit and a cup of coffee! I was able to convince William to go upstairs and play in his room until I called him... And could only get away with letting George play a couple science games on the computer. The break was very much appreciated.

We had some lunch and George vacuumed the living room before we started anything else. Yet again, it was George's fault... He came up to me looking all sad and puppy-dog like and asked, "Can we do a drawing lesson? Pleeease?" Sigh. How hard could it be? I got out their sketch notebooks for them... rounded up a dozen pictures of real-life castles online for them.. and told them to draw a medieval castle.

In the meantime, I actually managed to get Yvonne and Emily both settled for naps... and had that cup of coffee I wanted all day.

They were putting the finishing touches on their castles when Dave got home from work. He was just as sniffly and feverish as I had been all day -- so I decided to make some home-made chicken soup for dinner. I showed William the basics of chopping vegetables and boiling water.. and we went over cooktop safety... but I admit I was a little relieved when he seemed slightly uninterested. I jumped on the opportunity and said 'Hey! It's not going to be light much longer... Why don't you go out?'

Nope.. He wasn't going anywhere without George... and George had asked for his writing journal again because he wanted to add an entry about the castle he drew. Hmmm... I had to find a way to convince George to put on his shoes and go outside when he was finished with his entry so that I could get them both out of the house and playing before the day was done...

Then I remembered the cameras! Why not? I had bought them both some pocket-sized digital cameras that I planned to use for various 'photo essay assignments' throughout the year... I wasn't prepared with an assignment just yet -- but they were going to have to try out the cameras at some point anyway. It was just the thing to get George to put his shoes on and the boys went out while I finished making dinner. (You can see their photos here: George and William) Mind you - I sent them out with their watches - but in the commotion I forgot to give them a time to be home... I wasn't worried at first because the cameras only hold 20 pictures each -- and how long could it take to take 20 pictures anyway?

The soup was done and the boys weren't home - so I jumped in the car and went out to round them up. I found them on their way home - sweaty and happy... George saw me and started talkingreallyreallyfastlikethis telling me about all the pictures he took. William just looked at me casually and said 'I took two pictures." Two hours -- two pictures. Hmmm... I tried hard not to make a big deal out of whatever William was doing other than taking pictures while they were out... Afterall - it wasn't a formal assignment.. and they were supposed to be having fun. And at least he got two taken before he was distracted, right?

We got through dinner and I showed them how we were going to 'blog' their photo assignments (once blogger decided to start working again) ... and then with one last tiny burst of energy I pulled out our map of the world to review the continents with the boys before I finally told them they had to go away because my brain was no longer functioning.

Four hours of scheduled work - turned into eight. *flop*

It's funny that I was worried we wouldn't manage to finish what I had scheduled in a day....

Homeschool Eve

2006-06-04T22:51:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is our first unofficial day of school.

I have no intention of making this any more stressful than any of us need it to be right now, but I thought it would be a good idea to use some time over the summer to get our feet wet as far as this home education thing goes.

We have all managed to catch the latest sniffly-nose fever bug -- just in time for lessons... So we're all set. We should be a bunch of cranky, snorting, bleary-eyed people in the morning. I can't wait!

I'm actually not kidding. I can't wait - sniffles or no sniffles.

The decision to homeschool is nothing sudden. The desire was there almost two years ago when the boys were just starting elementary school -- but at the time, circumstances did not permit my keeping them home to teach them. Or so I thought.

So after the baby and the puppy and the other baby and the kittens and Hurricane Katrina... Things changed. Whatever seemed so important before that storm does not carry much weight around here anymore. And the experience taught some really valuable lessons, such as:

1) You really do NOT have any clue what might happen tomorrow -- so pack in as much today as you possibly can.

2) 'Normal' is a totally relative term.

3) If you want anything done at all (not just if you want anything done right, as the cliche goes...) you might as well do it yourself.

It wasn't long after the incredible disaster that our boys were called back to school. That's about the time I started losing faith in the entire system. Two weeks after my eight and nine year old boys shared a near-death experience with the rest of their family and many of the inhabitants of their known world... They were suffering through mounds of 'catch up' homework assignments and sitting out recess on the sidewalk for such atrocities as not having one of their parents sign their daily planner the night before class.

Okay... The last thing on my mind was signing a daily planner. Is there anything wrong with that? Apparently there were those who believed so - for the increasingly agitated scribbled warnings and escalating levels of threatened punishment seemed to imply that the heavens would fall and the earth shatter into a million pieces if I did not get my priorities straight and remember to sign the blasted planner. I hated that planner. Several times - much to my horror - George would come home crying again for getting a 'check' or having to 'sit out recess' because the planner was left unsigned on days when I had been absolutely sure to sign. I would scramble through the pages in desperation only to discover that in my exhaustion that morning or the night before I had signed the wrong page.

Sure.. George often forgot to even bring the all-important planner home. Both the boys had a lot of trouble remembering to bring home homework assignments or notes from teachers....
And I had a lot of trouble reprimanding them since I was having my own trouble remembering to lock the doors at night and turn off the stove before I burned the house down.

The notes continued. "We must go on with our regular schedules and guidelines to give our children a sense of normalcy during this time." Could someone tell me what is 'normal' about sleeping on a mattress on a concrete floor among stud walls and exposed wiring each night - and expecting -- yes, demanding! -- the wrath of God upon you if you didn't send the two bucks for next week's field trip by Tuesday?

My patience with school in general was worn quite thin by the beginning of this year when I announced to Dave that I was ready to bring the kids home to learn.

But of course, it was not my only reason. Actually, it wasn't even my primary reason.

I missed my kids. I missed them a lot. For the majority of the year I got to see my boys for a maximum of five hours per day. Three of those hours were spent chastizing them for not bringing home stupid daily planners that I personally cared nothing about and then forcing them to complete mindless drills and busywork called 'homework' (Most of which consisted of material that quite obviously should have been completed at some point during the seven hours the school had my kids each day). For the next hour I cooked and served food... and then cleaned the kitchen and washed school uniforms for the hour after that... and then... Oh - wait.. That was the end of my 'quality time' with my kids because by then they passed out from exhaustion.

Unless you count the morning rush of flying cereal and lost belts and socks that don't meet dress code ("If your teacher thinks a bowl of cereal is not a balanced breakfast - tell her to come here and cook for us all every morning... Five minutes - get your backpacks! Wait.. brush your hair! Where's your planner? Did I sign the planner? Go go go!") as bonding-time.

So tomorrow we begin again... I'm up too late because I have those 'first something' jitters and it will take a lot of coffee and thera-flu to get things started....