Isn't it ironic

Life is full of irony.

My latest dose arrived in the form of a cold, which (as usual) turned into laryngitis.  

This week was supposed to be the first of our new curriculum plan.  Our new literary curriculum plan that is comprised almost exclusively of read alouds.  


Monday went of smashingly.  The kids were feeling a little wimpy on Tuesday, but we got our work done, and everyone was still pretty enthusiastic.  By Wednesday evening I was feeling a little puny myself.  Thursday morning saw all bets called off.  Friday I had half a voice.  Today, Saturday, finds me at just above a whisper, which requires a painful amount of energy.


The last time I had laryngitis (about 6 months ago) it lasted 2 weeks.  


I had this grand plan of working 6 weeks on and taking 1 week off, and part of the reason we started this week was so that we could have off the week of Thanksgiving.  It's only week 1 and we're off track.  And if I don't have a voice next week, we're kind of hosed.


Through all of this I am trying to remember that God's plan is better than mine, and His timing is never wrong.  He's always, always trying to teach me about my control issues.


QL's kindergarten graduation is tomorrow, and next Sunday is Em's 4th birthday.  Having the extra time to focus on these important celebrations really is a blessing!  And if I'm being honest, everyone will probably be blessed by a little less blabber from mom!  : )

Milestones

When you have kids, marking milestones is a natural ordeal.  
"He rolled over!" "Aw, her first steps."  "Did you see him smile???"

I find myself in the very strange position of marking very different milestones.  

Jo is our last baby.  It would take a miracle of God for us to have another.  Not that that can't happen, of course.  But as for our plans, we are done.

Today, Jo joined the other kids for lunch: turkey hot dog and apple.  The big kids' food was presented a little differently, and they had a few other things added to their plates, but for all intents and purposes all 4 of my children ate the same lunch.

It seems that my days of making and/or buying baby food are nearly over.

When Jo celebrated an amazing milestone for herself, her first steps, it was also a milestone for me.  She is the last of my children who will ever do that.  That's a strange thing for me to think about.  My life over the past 7 years has always involved a baby in one stage or another.


Now I have 2 big kids (who seem so much bigger every day), a wildly energetic preschooler, and Jo, my on-the-brink-of-being-a toddler.

These moments are breathtaking.  And I'm so glad I have the presence of mind to recognize that....and them.  But I'd be lying if I said it isn't a little bittersweet.

Mostly sweet though.  Mostly sweet.

Hello, my name is Tasha, and I am an addict....

Sad, but increasingly more true.

I love books.  Love them.  I love the outsides as well as the insides.  Of course I love a good story.  Sometimes I even really enjoy a plain old mediocre story.  But I also love the way a really old book smells.  I love the way a book from the 50s or 60s smells.  And I love the smell of a new textbook.  They're all a little different, ya know.  It's intoxicating. 

My love of books has been a little overwhelming to Husband for a while now.  I reconciled this to myself that he isn't really a reader, so he doesn't "get it".   But things have gotten to a point now that even I get a little tight chested when I walk into our "schoolroom".  There are stacks upon stacks upon stacks of books.  A major contributor to this is the fact that we've made some changes in our curriculum, and I needed to sort our books accordingly.  Sorting happened.  Re-shelving, not so much.


Seeing as we ascribe to a literary education in our homeschool, having a lot of books is kind of par for the course (unless, of course, you use the heck out of your library, which I'm trying to get better at).  I have been building our home library for a few years now, and I snatch up great finds from used book shops and thrift stores when I can.  I don't feel bad about owning these books; they are an investment in my children.  I just really need a better way to organize and keep track of what we've got.  And right now, looking at these stacks upon stacks upon stacks, I have an overwhelming urge to just chuck them all and start over!


I think instead, I'll put on my big girl pants, go down there and do the work.


And put a freeze on the book budget for a while.

Our new curriculum plan, in time for a curriculum fair!

Simple Homeschool is holding a curriculum fair again this year!  When they ran the series last year I was IN LOVE!  Being that our tiny people are still, well....tiny, I love to see what more experienced homeschoolers are using to educate their kids.

They're inviting readers to link up this Friday and tell what they're using, and I figured that since we just made a big change in how we're doing things around here, it would be a perfect time to write that post!

As for the changes, after much ado, Husband and I decided that instead of waiting til fall, we ought to just go ahead and move forward with our new plans.  So, we have stopped using Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory, and are forging ahead.

As for why we're starting a new curriculum plan when most other families are putting their books away for the summer: we school year round-ish.  With all the comings and goings that Husband does with his job, and adding Jo to the mix last summer, we require (and enjoy) a lot of flexibility in our schooling schedule.  Also (and maybe more importantly), I have found that with these young ages, my kids go BANANAS if they don't have some kind of structure going on.  Three months of no lessons seems like hell to me.  Too much free time for the kids while mom is busy doing the tons of work that it takes to care for house and home = kids getting themselves into trouble, a lot.  We take short breaks when we need to.  Keepin on keepin on keeps us sane and peaceful.

Reason enough for me.

Soooo, on to our new curriculum plan!!!!!

(Drum roll, please!)

We are now (FINALLY!) using Year 1 of the Higher Up and Further In curriculum from Lindafay at charlottemasonhelp.com!

I have been looking at this website for a couple of years, and now that the big kids are 7.5 and 6, I feel more than confident that we're ready to go full-on Charlotte Mason.  I feel kinda rogue!  

I recently read a blog of another HUFI user, and the author described it as more user friendly than Ambleside Online, and I could not agree more.  That is exactly it.  So if you want to move ahead with Charlotte Mason, but Ambleside is a little too.... intense for you, as it is for me, Higher Up Further In (charlottemasonhelp.com) might be a good choice!  The cmhelp website is a treasure trove of information to get you started, and it is quite obvious that Lindafay put a lot of time and love into it.  There is also a Yahoo group for her curriculum, and she is very active and available to address your questions.

Since everything is spelled out at the website, I'll not regurgitate it all here.  But I will tell you how we're making it work for our family:

We do all subjects together except reading, writing, and math and I love that.  We have things to talk about over dinner.  The kids make up games that follow the story lines of the books we're reading.  My sanity is saved by only doing one year.

For habit training, we're going to finish up what we were doing before we start using HUFI's plan.  

We've been going through Ruth Yount's book, Get Wisdom! along with Achieving True Success.  This takes about 5 minutes each morning and seems to be effective.  The kids have really enjoyed it!  We also use some cards called Mind Your Manners Language Cards, which I found at a local school supply store, and we love these!  On one side of the card is a picture of someone doing something rude or ill-mannered, which I show.  We discuss what the offender is doing, and what they should have done instead.  Then we flip the card over to reveal the polite behavior.  We do one card a day, and I think it's the kids' favorite part of the day, even my 4 year old!  

For math we are using Singapore, which came with BLHFHG.  The kids are doing well with this and seem to enjoy it.  It does move a little fast for QL right now, so we're taking a break and working on addition facts. We have Math U See Alpha, so I'm going to go back and have her work a little bit through that (which is what IW started on before going to Singapore).

Reading has been a subject that has come quite naturally and easy thus far in our house.  We've stopped doing formal phonics with QL and are now just reading and addressing problems as we come to them (which was all I ever did with IW, who reads well above grade level).  For the most part I let the kids pick what they want to read to me each day, and it is usually a Magic Treehouse book.  Lindafay at HUFI considers these books to be twaddle, but honestly, we really like them.  And IW is excited to read them, so that works for me.  I think the books are very informative, and as far as the element of magic, I find a lot of that in the tales and literature selections in the curriculum and don't really see the difference.  We read and discuss these books together, so I'm comfortable.  

In my former life I was a Spanish major, so I am choosing 4-6 new words/phrases for the kids to learn each week.  I figure this will be enough foreign language for now.

Instead of doing a full-on artist study, we are going to work our way through some of the Come Look With Me books since we already own them. 

We are going to follow the Handbook of Nature Study blog for nature study.  This week will be our first (assuming the kids are no longer sick this Friday!) and we are going to start at the beginning with challenge #1.  I'm so excited about this I can't even say!

As for the rest of the curriculum, we are doing everything as written. 

*I think* the only thing I've added is P.E.  We purchased the online version of Family Time Fitness.  Husband and I both thought it would be a good idea to add some structured physical activity to our days since we just aren't able to participate in organized sports during this season of our lives.  And the kids are kind of over running around the backyard everyday.  The pdf that they send includes links to YouTube videos demonstrating all of the activities, so anyone can teach P.E. using Family Time Fitness.  Adding P.E. will, hopefully, add some new moves to our playtime repertoire.  And since it's already gotten up to some rather high temps here in the deep south, I'm hoping this will help burn some of their pent up energy this summer when it's too hot to be outside for long.  Although we've only just started this, it seems to be a big hit with the kiddos. 

****I forgot, we're also adding Apologia's elementary Zoology 1 for science.  We're going to do the junior notebook.*****

In a couple of years when Em joins the mix, I imagine he'll be in his own year.  Until then he's enjoying puzzles, books, playdoh, and playing with his toys.  He's picking up all of his "preschool skills" on the fly, so I don't feel any need to do a preschool program with him.  That feels very contrived, and he's learning everything he needs to know by just living his life.  So that's our preschool plan: life.

I am so, so, so excited to read what everyone else is doing with their kiddos, and how many other families are choosing to school year round-ish!