Rough Waters...

 You may recall I got a layoff notice a couple of years ago, which was then rescinded just days before my "final" day.

So, it has happened again. And again it happened on the heels of a glowing review. After June 30, I may or may not be cut loose. Somewhere above me, a secretarial position was cut. That person is bumping someone else, who is then bumping me. Last time, the other person, a full-time employee, did not really want my job as it is part-time. This new one is a part-time employee, so I think the chances are far greater that I am being laid off.

With M's work still being somewhat unstable, and then this blow... well, we could use some good thoughts, some positive vibes, prayers, whatever you have. I am trying to stay positive, to think there is something better on the horizon, but truthfully, it's a little hard right now.

Everything else is going okay. We're healthy, we still have our home, the kids are learning in leaps and bounds. M has two interviews scheduled over the next two days.

I'm kind of at a point where even if they do rescind the notice, I don't think I want to keep going through this every other year. Maybe this is a sign that I should be looking elsewhere.

Monday Musings...

Outside My Window...
Clear, sunny, blue skies. It was perfect yesterday for a nice bike ride!

 
In the House & Garden...
Everything seems to be blooming! The clematis, the poppies, the lavender... We're hoping to get some of our veggies in the ground shortly -- currently they are residing in the greenhouse. And there is always weeding to be done.

We're also gearing up for some roof repair over the summer. Now doesn't that sound fun?


In the Kitchen...
Trying a new recipe for salmon this week that sounds good (doesn't bacon make everything better?), and The Girl is hoping to make some snickerdoodles. I should start planning something yummy for Cinco de Mayo!

Currently Thinking...
I'm thinking about our summer break, which is July through August (though I am thinking about changing up our school schedule, so maybe July through mid August). I'd like to plan some learning activities that are fun, like breaking out the Family Math books and Mad Libs. And I hope to get some good field trips in. Of course we'll keep reading over the summer, perhaps the Melendy Family books would be fun!

In Our Homeschool...
The Girl will be working on multiplication in Knowing Mathematics, and The Boy is working through decimals and fractions in Challenge Math. I also want The Boy to work on outlining (Writing With Skill), and The Girl will work in Writing With Ease. The Boy plans to start studying particle physics this week, with this book, and possibly this lecture series, while The Girl and I are going to start reading Animals & Their Young. Oh, and they both were accepted at Hogwarts, and will be trying out a couple of First Year classes. The Girl chose Herbology and Defense Against the Dark Arts, and The Boy will be choosing his today!

Reading & Watching...
More Wind in the Willows this week. I am determined to read from both Human Odyssey and Buddha Stories this week. The kids loved Mud for our family movie night. We watched Cosmos, of course, and will watch another one this week. Maybe another episode of Mankind: The Story of All of Us this week too.

Plans This Week...
The Boy did his volunteer work yesterday, and has fencing twice this week, plus an in-house tournament on Saturday. It is my last week of class (yay!), so The Girl might start doing two derby practices a week the following week. I'm trying to decide if we want to go to this talk on geometry in nature - the kids have some familiarity with the Golden Ratio, etc. from Donald in Mathmagic Land, but it might make Saturday too long of a day.

Have a great week!

ETA: Just got my layoff notice. Crap.

Some Things I Would Like to Do With the Kids 2014-2015...

Poetry

Shakespeare

Family Math games & activities

The Great Sunflower Project

Nature journaling

The Great Backyard Bird Count

Learn the constellations

Have a real garden instead of just tomatoes and herbs

Can our own ketchup, tomato/pasta sauce, applesauce, and apple butter (and more!)

Work on bird identification

Geometric art

 Go to a Renaissance Faire

Go to the Dickens Fair

Go to some living history days

Read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

Dissect a frog and some owl pellets

Raise some tadpoles into frogs

Hatch more mantises and butterflies

Go to more museums

Attend some concert rehearsals

Some microscope work

Watch The Ascent of Man

Visit the Japanese Tea Garden

Check out the [new] Exploratorium

Go camping

Do more art

It's Friday!

I must say I am glad the weekend is practically here! I'm ready to sleep in a little.

Highlights This Week...

Laughter for one, when they both wanted to ride in the front seat, which of course did not happen! But as far as homeschooling-life goes, we:

Enjoyed another episode of Cosmos

Read a few more chapters in The Wind in the Willows, and we all agree, the language is just beautiful

Made some good headway in math

Enjoyed a chapter in The Complete Book of Marvels, where we traveled to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (though in the book Halliburton referenced it as the "Temple of Diana", which would be Roman, not Greek, as my kids were happy to point out)

Listened to The Girl read out loud for nearly an hour yesterday - she didn't want to stop!

Watched The Boy learn some new defenses and attacks in fencing

Made two kinds of soup for a friend's mom (she's at home on hospice... cancer)

Worked on outlines and narrations/summarizing with Writing With Skill and Writing With Ease

And a Few Low-lights...

We need more consistency, but I had to take my dad to a doctor's appointment one day mid-week, and other bits of life got in the way

We did not get around to reading from either The Human Odyssey or Buddhist Stories

Not enough science this week, and we didn't do art either

This Weekend...

The Girl is skating in a demo bout at halftime during a roller derby bout. With a little more training, she should be able to actually play in the next game!

Since it is raining today (which means no park with friends), The Boy will probably attend an extra fencing class

The Boy is doing volunteer work at the bike shop on Sunday with M

Family movie night will probably be this movie -- I had never heard of it, but M previewed it and thinks we will all enjoy watching it together

So I won't classify it as a great week, but it was pretty good. I definitely have some things to work on/toward for next week!

To Textbook or Not to Textbook...

That is the question.

The Boy seems to be heading toward the land of textbooks, a place we have only rarely visited over the past eight years (with the general exception of math).

This is the textbook he is all starry-eyed over...

After that, he wants another one by the same [primary] author...

I am not sure what to make of this (and yes, I'm halfway joking here)! I feel that we have reached a crossroads, a divergence, with one child still in Charlotte Mason land and the other slowly moving down a different path.

Since a great part of the reason we homeschool is so that our children can find their own paths, follow their hearts and their interests, then we need to allow them to do just that.

Of course, it isn't all about the textbooks... that's just a "symptom" of something deeper, and that is that my boy is growing up. He'll be thirteen next month, and in high school in another year. He dreams of learning about physics in college, so to him this is laying the groundwork for that. And he still reads living books too, such as these (on his current agenda, & mine because they just look fun!):

      and

Do you think a Charlotte Mason type education could work for someone who wants to pursue physics in college, or are textbooks a necessity at this point? Thankfully I can get a used copy of the textbook he wants pretty cheaply,  so it won't be too much of an investment if it doesn't work out. But then, he's always enjoyed reading things like encyclopedias, so a textbook may be just his cup of tea!

I'll still take suggestions though, for living books on earth science and chemistry, as enrichments to the textbook!

Monday Musings...

Outside My Window...
Cool and overcast, with a chance of rain. And maybe more rain later in the week. Unfortunately, while I very, very much want the rain, it is supposed to rain Friday, which is just not a good day for that! With recent weather, etc., the kids didn't see their friends for a month, since Friday is the primary time we get to hang out. And so they would be really bummed if it rained again this Friday!

In the House and Garden...

I harvested my first artichoke for the year! (Isn't my purple colander pretty?) And I have about 7 more growing so far. I realized this weekend that we could also make better use of the front yard for growing some veggies (that's where the artichokes are). Maybe some Rainbow Lights Swiss chard, some kale, and next winter, I'd like to put in a row of asparagus plants. Thankfully, it is okay around here to grow edibles anywhere on my property, unlike some cases I have read of. Ridiculous, huh?

And around the house, even though we have gotten rid of a lot of stuff, I still feel we have too much. I feel cluttered. I think my mind lately is aspiring more to this than this. I wonder which the husband would find more appealing?

In the Kitchen...
I've been looking for simple, make-ahead yummy breakfast ideas lately, and then remembered this fabulous refrigerator oatmeal. I made some for the kids and I for today, subbing in strawberries for raspberries in the raspberry/vanilla recipe (I also didn't use jam, but put a little raw sugar in there, and I used regular [whole milk] Greek yogurt). YUM! It is creamy, and a little chewy. I'd like to try some of her "newer" flavors too -- apricot ginger sounds great, and I bet the kids would love the pineapple-coconut!

I'm also making a couple of soups this week for a friend's mother, with The Girl's help. The mother is at home, dying of cancer, and all she wants these days is soup. So I am making a batch of butternut squash-orange soup, and a mild chicken tortilla, so I've got bone broth going in the crockpot right now.

In Our Homeschooling...
The kids really loved all the readings about the Buddha last week, and we did indeed watch Little Buddha again--our favorite parts naturally are the ones that depict the life of Siddhārtha Gautama / Buddha. This week, we'll read the second chapter on Buddhism in Human Odyssey, and some of Demi's Buddha Stories. The Boy is really enjoying the challenge of Jousting Armadillos & Other Equations, so he'll continue with that, and The Girl is getting faster and faster with math facts, using Knowing Mathematics.

Reading & Watching...
We're about halfway through The Wind in the Willows. The Girl and I are enjoying a story each nights from The Serpent Slayer & Other Stories of Strong Women. We'll be watching Cosmos again this week. Last week we finally watched the first lecture from HHMI's Changing Planet, and plan to watch another this week. The kids are still making their way through the Dr. Who series. Movie night is still up in the air, though we've been talking about Indiana Jones!

On the Agenda...
The Girl was bummed that Easter got in the way of derby practice this week. She may be in a bout on Saturday though! The Boy has fencing practice two nights this week, and I am down to the last few weeks of classes myself. M may or may not have more job interviews this week. Definitely a quieter week ahead (knock on wood)!

Have a good week!

Homemade Zoology Studies...

I am using Science Explorer: Animals as a "spine" text for this study, but needed to "bulk it up". So here is what we are supplementing it with!

Main Texts
Animals in Order series
Animal Classification series
Scientists in the Field series

Supplemental Texts/Hands-On
The World in a Drop of Water
Life in a Bucket of Soil
A Child's Story of the Animal World (which is beautifully written and chock-full of great information!)
101 Great Nature Experiments
Janice VanCleave's Biology for Every Kid
The Amateur Zoologist
We also have two microscopes, some owl pellets, dissection kits and specimens, etc.

Main Documentaries
I am sure there will be others!
Life
Life in the Undergrowth
Blue Planet
The Life of Birds
Life in Cold Blood
Life in the Freezer
The Life of Mammals

Monday Musings...

Another month is flying by! I swear I don't know where the time goes.

What We've Been Up To...
Yesterday, The Boy tried out volunteer work at a local community bike shop. M took him there (on bicycle, naturally) and hung out/volunteered too. The Boy came home looking like this...

So I think it was a success! He also smelled of grease -- apparently he spent the hour and half taking apart hubs.

The Girl found out yesterday that she made the roster for the teen derby team. She may or may not play in the game later this month, since she is new to the roster, but just being on there made her a happy girl! She and I also watched 13 Going On 30, which was a lot of fun.

Outside My Window...
Cool, overcast mornings lately, and then fairly cool afternoons with some sunshine. The apple tree is still blooming, but the cherry tree has finished. There's no rain showing up in the extended forecast, much to my dismay.

In the House and Garden...
Our dwarf peach has baby peaches already! The Swiss Chard also made a sudden comeback, and my artichoke plants, put in last year, are thriving. We're cleaning out the garage these days, and I am getting myself mentally prepared to clean out more of our books. We're hoping to put in tomatoes, peppers, and maybe some squash over the next couple of weeks. I also want to get going on building a salad box for mixed greens.

In Our Homeschooling...
We'll be reading about Buddhism this week in The Human Odyssey, and I have a couple of Demi's beautiful books to compliment this chapter. We did start The Adventures of Rama, but it wasn't quite what we hoped, so back to the library it went! We started enjoying a fairy tale each day from The Blue Fairy Book, after I read this post. And starting with a fairy tale is a lovely way to start each school day! The Girl will be moving on in Knowing Mathematics, and I have to say, if you want/need to make sure a child's 4th/5th/6th grade math skills are pretty solid, this is a great, and fairly quick, way to make sure they are! I can actually see the facts getting cemented somehow. The Boy will keep going with Challenge Math, though he also wants to work with Alcumus this week. And there will be writing, and reading work, etc.

Reading and Watching...
Of course we'll watch the next Cosmos episode this week, and I want to start watching our HHMI videos. We're continuing with The Wind in the Willows, an absolute delight, and perhaps finally finishing those biographies. I think we might watch Little Buddha (again) for family movie night.

What I Am Thinking About...
Getting ready for fall! Well, homeschooling in fall specifically. I am looking longingly at Journeys Through Bookland, specifically volumes three and five, and am trying to decide if I really need them or not. Would that just be too much?

On the Agenda...
I have only five weeks of classes left this semester. while I have certainly enjoyed this semester more than the last one, I am also relieved that my break is coming up soon! Fencing, school, maybe more derby practices (she should be going twice a week soon)... the action never stops!

Have a good week!

Being Involved...

As my kids (gulp) get older, I think a sense of community involvement is important. So recently we started looking for volunteer opportunities that would suit each of them. Yes, I know many schools around here don't require community involvement until high school, but when there are great opportunities, why wait?

So for The Girl, whose dream since age 2 has been to be a veterinarian, I found a service-dog, puppy-petting project. What animal-loving child would not want to pet puppies? I emailed them immediately, and we've been placed on the list for the next litter or two, which may not be until summer, but it is still something to look forward to! And yes, since she's under the age of 16, I get to pet puppies with her (no complaints there!).


And then for The Boy, there was no interest in petting puppies, which I understand. He likes animals just fine, but isn't the type to get all hyped up about them. Instead, M suggested he try volunteering at a local non-profit, which offers bicycles and all their parts at low prices, along with training in bike maintenance. We went in, and talked to the owner in person, and he said The Boy can just come in any time they are open to volunteer! The Boy is really excited about this, and has been studying bicycle repair ever since, with the aid of a library book.

Do you volunteer in your community? Is community involvement part of your homeschool plan? Eventually, The Boy hopes to do some automotive-related volunteering/an internship, when he's older, and The Girl would like to volunteer at the local wildlife rescue facility. We've done some work at a food bank, baked cookies for a women and children's shelter, donated clothes to homeless shelters, and been Secret Santas most years, but this feels different, more targeted at what my kids love while still helping out.

Monday Musings...

Outside My Window...
The rain has left for the time being. Actually, we're now ahead of where we were in rainfall at this time last year, so I am okay with that. And the sunshine, warmer weather, blue skies... all are gorgeous!

Considerations...
I am working on my end-of-the-semester seminar paper, 12-15 pages in length. I am also working on leading a classroom facilitation in the same class. And I am planning both for now and the fall in our homeschooling. We've fallen back into our semi-unschoolish ways (what if?), albeit with a few caveats... such as a required historical/autobiographical book each month, etc. And I am better than okay with it, as we seem to be learning more than ever! I have also made a decision about my own education, and will be taking a break from the MA program over the next year and a half (or so) to complete a teaching credential. There are multifarious reasons for this, foremost among them being that the MA program at my college is offering fewer classes each semester, meaning that it will take me forever to finish. Anyhow...

Around the House & Garden...
M and I are making summer plans for some household work, such as fixing the leaky family room roof. We've started digging up the garden area, and have some herbs and lettuce started. Tomatoes are on the agenda, as are squash, cucumbers, and peppers. Over the next few months, I also hope to finish ripping out all the wall-to-wall carpeting that remains, and start painting all the rooms. In the meantime, I'm always catching up on dishes and laundry, and there is a lot of weeding to do this week. Thankfully, the chickens love the dandelions I pull up!

In Our Kitchen...
The Girl says she misses our ethnic cooking adventures, so I hope to blend those back in.. We've been reading Faces together, and could use that easily as a focal point for a month at a time. This month's focus is Paris, so we'll do some French cooking.

In Our Homeschooling...
I'd like to make some more progress in The Wind in the Willows this week, and after a couple of weeks steeped in ancient China (The Ancient Chinese World), we're moving back to K12's Human Odyssey, with which we can fit in more documentaries and supplemental reading. I think this week we'll move into ancient India! And we're planning on some science with Dr. Art's Guide to Science this week.

Reading & Watching...
The Boy will wrap up his reading on Henry Ford this week or next, and then he'll have to choose someone else to read about! The Girl and I are working on wrapping up the book on Sacajawea. I finished A Winter's Tale. We have another episode of Cosmos to watch this week, along with another episode or two of Mankind: The Story of All of Us, and The Boy and I (and maybe The Girl) want to try out The Inexplicable Universe with Neil deGrasse Tyson, which is on Netflix! I am hoping to see more Great Courses offered there soon!

Everything Else...
Fencing and derby practice are on the agenda, as always. Since M fixed my bicycle last week, we've been doing a lot of riding on local bike trails, especially with this weather! The Boy is working on a series of car drawings, and The Girl has been sculpting again. Always feels like we have a lot going on! I'll leave you with one of the car drawings in The Boy's new series of art... Have a good week!

Books, Books, Books...

In addition to all the reading I do with my kids, I love to read for my own pleasure, and I read for school as well. I always have a stack of books by my side! So I thought I'd share what reading delights I am up to at the moment.

For school:

and

And then, just for myself, I am reading:

and





I have my next couple of books planned out too:

and 

The second book here is the updated version of the book I am currently reading, that goes back and checks in with the teenagers as adults - I think it'll be interesting to see what they made of their lives so far!

So what are you reading? Any good recommendations?

Tuesday Musings...

Too much to do yesterday, so I missed out on Monday Musings. Tuesday will have to do!

Outside My Window...
Rain, rain, and more rain. We are supposed to get a break from it tomorrow, and maybe have some sunshine! And it did stop for a brief while yesterday afternoon, so M and I took the kids out on a bike ride, the first one I've done in a while.

In Our House & Garden...
I swear I spend way too much time cleaning for us to have such a messy house! Sigh... I guess we need to downsize our possessions even more. The cherry tree is in full bloom, as are the California poppies and Spanish lavender. Everything is very, very green thanks to the recent rains!

Homeschooling Thoughts...
I am thinking about next year (okay, fall), but haven't quite made up my mind on many things, besides wanting to put together a Tolkien literature study. In the meantime, The Boy will continue with the mix of Zaccaro and Khan Academy this week, as well as working in Thinking in Threes. He's trying to finish up the biography of Henry Ford. The Girl is going to try Knowing Mathematics, which should arrive today. It is a compacted overview of fifth grade math, and takes about 13 weeks to complete, which is what we have left in our school year! She'll keep reading aloud, and we'll try to wrap up the book Winged Moccasins: The Story of Sacajawea over the next couple of weeks. I did set up my fridge schooling for the week! We have a Greek root word, spelling rule, the two-times table for review, a saying, a quote, and art!

Watching & Reading...
We're enjoying our second trip through The Wind in the Willows as a read-aloud. In addition to various readings for school, I've been delighting in Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale, which is just beautifully written, and very gripping. We're planning to watch the third episode of Cosmos today, and sometime this week we'll watch more of Mankind: The Story of All of Us. The kids still need to pick out Landmark and All About titles! We really enjoyed The Story of Salt last week, and I think we might try 10 Plants That Shook the World.

This Week...
M is working a lot more this week, so I will be acclimating to being home alone with the kids. [I do have to say that homeschooling is easier when you don't have a dad popping in and out with a million and one things to say!] Nothing special on the agenda, and I am actually hoping for a quiet week!