Monday, August 17, 2015

{This and That}

Thanks for all of your kind emails and comments regarding my planning posts--I'm glad they are useful to you!  This week, I'm hoping to post Xavier's school plans, and maybe the week after that, a list of some of my favorite books for the preschool/kindergarten set.

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I took the oldest three to see their first Shakespeare play last week, a local production of Much Ado About Nothing.  We had just read the Lambs' version of the play last spring (for Year 3), so we listened to the Arkangel audio of the full-length version over the last couple months and the kids also learned several passages as part of their memory work.  They were so excited about going and absolutely loved it.


I'm thinking we'll probably read Midsummer Night's Dream next and then The Winter's Tale for Term 3, since I think that will be playing locally this spring.  That is one of my favorite plays, so I'm looking forward to it!



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My husband started working from home again for at least the short-term as of a couple weeks ago, which means we'll be hitting the beach 1-2 times a week as long as the weather holds.  We had this same situation pop up last summer and it was bliss.  I feel really thankful to have the opportunity for more time at my favorite places with my favorite people.



(Both of those photos are completely unedited--no color filters or brightening or anything.  So if posting slows down a bit here, it's because I am sitting under a beach umbrella staring out at those beautiful waves and those beautiful kids. ;)  I have to take it when I can get it since I never take the kids to the beach by myself!)

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The challenge with that scenario is getting school done!  Last week, for example, we had one full day at the beach, one morning out for nature study, and one morning out for homeschool park day.  This week, we'll be adding back in our piano and art lessons one morning too, and I think we're aiming for two beach trips.  That makes my "average day chart" look less and less average. ;)

This is why I love working primarily from a weekly checklist rather than a daily schedule.  For the days that we were home, we followed our daily schedule and appreciated the pre-planned rhythm.  For the days that we weren't, we worked off of our weekly checklist before and after the day's outing.

We also did a few things in the car on the hour-long drive to the coast: the week's Minn reading and narration, the narration for This Country of Ours, a bit of Italian, memory work using Evernote on my phone, and an hour of our Year 4 free read on the drive home.

Thanks to the weekly checklist, we still got everything done without feeling like we were behind just because we missed Latin on Monday morning at 9:30am. ;)

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Oh, and one last thing about the beach: I came across this creature on our last outing.  Anyone know what it is?  Just a sea slug?  It was dead and smelled terrible, but I had to hold it to get some photos--all for the love of nature study, you know.



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Some friends and I have been doing nature study together for years, and this year we're attempting a slightly more formal approach now that our kids are a bit older.  We're focusing on trees, and we'll be following a half dozen of our most common native trees over the course of the year.



Usually we have maybe 3-4 families and 10-15 kids, but last week, we had eight families and over 35 kids!  Those picnic tables shown above were packed and we ended up having to journal in shifts--a really fun time. :)

8 comments:

  1. Love these THIS and THAT posts, Celeste. So glad you get more time with hubby, kids, and the beach! And EWW! You are brave picking up that thing! :P I am SOOOO greedy to take my children to some Shakespeare plays. They are few and far between in our area and seem to be "retellings" that tend to be more bawdy then I want. Hmmm. I'm going to keep looking, though.

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    1. I know what you mean about the Shakespeare plays. The ones we had here this summer they changed the time period or ramped up the bawdiness factor. It's their way of making Shakespeare more appealing to today's culture. Yuck! There was a wonderful version of Henry V we would have loved to see. But it was 50 to 80 dollars a ticket. So bummed. But I'm determined to keep my eyes open.

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    2. This Shakespeare production was by a local youth company (teens and college students--mostly homeschoolers!). They perform two full-length plays each year and I have heard such good things about them. We were not disappointed! They set it in the Jazz Era but it was otherwise unchanged and the setting seemed quite fitting. And I consider myself fairly hard to please because I am definitely a Shakespeare purist. ;) The nice thing is that although they played the comedy as written, since it was a youth performance, they didn't accentuate the bawdy jokes and whatnot. It was just very well done and I'm looking forward to seeing more from this troupe.

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  2. What a wonderful opportunity to take your kids to see a real Shakespeare play! I knew they'd love it. :-) I've been able to take the older two to a few, but I haven't for the last two years. I had hoped to do it this summer, but we were traveling a lot so it didn't work out. There is a lovely troupe composed of older teens and people in their 20's that puts on a Shakespeare play in a park in Roseville in June each summer (for free, even!) and they do a wonderful job. I'm really hoping we can go to their performance next year.

    Your beach days sound wonderful! I'm looking forward to more beach pictures on your blog. Your photos you posted are so lovely! Well, perhaps that's the wrong word for describing that slug... but he certainly is remarkable. No idea what it is though! We're going to be camping at Sunset Beach next week and I'm super excited. I haven't been to the beach in ages!

    Because of travel and a death in the family and swim and guests and, well, life I haven't had a chance to dive into your plans for the year... but I do about have mine done, so that's a plus. :-) I'm looking forward to taking a look soon though.

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    1. That top beach photo was taken at Sunset, Amber--we were there last Thursday! Monterey had their classic car week going on and we didn't want to get stuck in traffic, so we headed toward Santa Cruz instead of our usual Asilomar that day. I hope you guys have a wonderful time camping! A great way to send off the summer. :)

      This Shakespeare performance was done by young people too and I was so impressed! I had heard good things about the company, but it was much better done that I could have expected. And a neat thing is that we knew (not personally, but by sight) some of the youth performing, including the teenage sons of our husband-wife art/piano teachers and several other people from our TLM. I guess it's a very homeschool-heavy performing team. ;)

      I'm looking forward to seeing you plans whenever you get a chance to share them. I found the wrap-up posts you did recently for each grade to be really helpful!

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  3. We have a fabulous Shakespeare theater near us. It's a replica of the original Blackfriar Playhouse that Shakespeare built. The actors are first class and play to and with the audience as in Shakespeare's day. Because of attending these performances, we love Shakespeare. It's worth a trip across country to see! Also, hard as I try to implement a daily schedule, the weekly one prevents frustration since we rarely find it possible to get it all done as scheduled that particular day. Life seems to have its own plan which trumps mine.

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    1. Sounds just fabulous! I am officially jealous. And yes, life usually trumps the plans I try to make as well. ;)

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