It has been a quiet few months on the blog, and if you know me in person, you know why...
The nausea and fatigue that come with the first trimester weren't all that have kept me away from this space -- we had a solid month of illness here at our house, plus Advent preparations and Christmas celebrations that required what little energy I had to be focused on our family.
BUT our happy news has certainly been the major reason I have been absent, and I'm hoping that now that I'm almost at the halfway point in this pregnancy, I'll be back to my normal blogging self soon. I've never been a high-volume blogger, but I do have so many topics I'd like to write about that it would be nice to be able to be in this space more often.
Baby is due at the very beginning of July, God willing. Your prayers are much appreciated!
And the story behind the photo above: when we made the announcement to the kids around Thanksgiving, they were ecstatic -- especially the Middles. Xavier and Bridget immediately ran to the table and started drawing pictures and writing little announcements, grabbed some tape, and hung them up all over the house. And they haven't let me take them down! So amidst our Christmas decorations are little pictures and signs. It was the funniest reaction to a baby announcement we have ever had.
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Another thing that has been keeping me busy is CM West :: Conference in the Redwoods! It has been an exciting few weeks as Amber and I finish up what needs to be done before the event. I've got a few requests for you:
:: First, if you're in the Western part of the country and want to keep abreast of future conference and retreat opportunities, head over to CM West to sign up for the mailing list and follow our Facebook page. We're planning for the Bay Area and Seattle events to be annual, and other regional opportunities may pop up as well -- subscribing to CM West ensures you will get the registration announcements.
:: And second: I'll be giving a workshop on foreign language at this year's conference, and I'd like to crowdsource a bit. What most keeps you from studying a foreign language with your children? What do you find most challenging? What do you feel you least understand about the method? I am in the "paring down to one hour" stage of my prep work and I'm hoping that your answers will help me focus my presentation.
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For your reading/listening pleasure...
I enjoyed Sally's interview with Cindy Rollins on The Mason Jar a couple weeks ago. If you haven't had a chance to listen, it's a good one! Sally mentioned Dana Goioa's "Poetry as Enchantment," which thoughtfully considers of the musicality of poetry and how it appeals to human nature's best side. Worth a listen and a read!
CMI published Karen Glass' rebuttal to some criticisms Consider This received from other Charlotte Mason educators. I have been anticipating her response ever since I first read the blog posts countering Glass' book, which I felt misrepresented her arguments. I am not invested in the CM-classical argument personally (I find it interesting philosophically but have no "dog in the fight") but I do not like to see statements get taken out of context to such an extent that good will is lost among the Charlotte Mason community. If you're interested in reading more, please do click over and "consider this." :)
Keeping Company is now in its third year! If you missed this month's round-up, head over and read and join. I've been excited to see some new-to-me accounts pop up on Instagram, and I have really enjoyed the blog posts included so far too.
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I just wanted to share a few snapshots from our Christmas festivities, a month late. ;)
We still have a week of Christmas left -- Candlemas is February 2nd and officially closes the Christmas season around here -- so I'll soon be sharing our Christmas crafting and the Christmas books gifted in our home, as usual!
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It's exam week here, and I'm prepping for Term 3. I picked up my prints at Kinkos last night (we're doing Winslow Homer) and downloaded The Story of Dvorak to load to my phone (thanks to a tip from my friend, Dawn). That's two things down! Here's what's left on my list:
:: select and print dictation passages (for Year 5 kids) and copywork (for Form I)
:: select and print memory work
:: plan Morning Basket
:: decide on mapwork for all grades
:: order my son's geometry book
:: prep our Italian materials for the term
:: refresh our bookshelves, binders, pencil boxes
Whew! I'm hoping I'll get a couple hours on Saturday (in addition to the couple hours I need for pre-reading!) to finish that all off so we can start with a clean slate and prepared home on Monday.
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Last night our local CM study group had a "resource share" and I brought a bag of random favorites to show the group. Here's what I included:
Sloane's The Diary of an Early American Boy (his books are great to use for line drawings in Books of Centuries!)
foldable book stand (we have three and I probably need to get another)
two-pack of timers
Winston Grammar, basic level
The Backard Birdsong Guide (would make a great gift!)
Frixion pens (the kids use these for almost everything now)
and our new nature journaling sets, which I'll be sharing here soon in more detail!
A rather odd combination of items that I've mostly mentioned here on the blog at one point or another, but that's what popped into my bag while I was walking about my house right before the meeting! :)
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Have a lovely week, friends! I'll finally have my post about pre-reading up next. See you then!
Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Zoe!
DeleteCongratulations, again!
ReplyDeleteFor those of us unable to attend the conference, is there any chance that foreign language workshop will be available in some form for us afterward? (A blog post series perhaps?) I think foreign language is my biggest struggle in spite of being fluent in both French and Spanish and I can't even explain why I have a hard time, except that my kids seem to be so resistant to hearing me speak a language other than English. I also think I struggle with knowing where to start and how to take all the resources I have and bringing them together to form a coherent entity. I wish I could be a fly on your wall while you prep your materials so I could see how you do it!
Oh, how I would love to be able to sit down with you over coffee and just walk you through the methods and materials!! You are in such an enviable position in some ways being fluent in your chosen language(s), although I know, like you mentioned, that there is still that hump to get over of exactly how to go about the instruction in the most effective and CM-ish fashion. :) I certainly would LOVE to turn the information into a continuation of my blog series on the topic, but I can't make any promises that it will happen right away. I *can* definitely send you the visuals I put together for the workshop, though -- they will miss their fleshing out, which I'll be doing in person, but they will at least be a skeleton of the process. Remind me after the conference and I will send them your way. :)
DeleteAny possibility of your talk being recorded? Oh, what I would give to hear it! Maybe we should move.... ;)
DeleteCongrats Celeste and family :) What beautiful news!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Lacey!
DeleteCongratulations! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ingrid!
DeleteCongrats! Praying for you and your little one. :)
ReplyDeleteDo you have any posts that explain exactly how you do copywork? Like how you select the passages-ahead or when reading? DO you use a resource for your copywork selections, or just passages from what they are reading? My other questions are in regards to outdoor time you do each day-how would you handle it if you lived with a colder climate? Or maybe how does that work for you now, as I'm unsure how cold your temps do get? Do you change it so that they are outside when the high temp of the day is needed, rather than cool mornings? Thanks for any help! I love your blog!
ReplyDeleteHi Jeaneen! For my young students, I select for them -- something from their reading, a prayer, or a poem. My older students mark passages they would like to use for copywork with a post-it so they can come back and copy it later.
DeleteI can't say quite what I'd do in a colder climate! I think I'd very likely adjust our routine to accommodate the weather, as you said, because I really do privilege outside time over everything but meals and naps -- especially for my young kids. And I would invest in quality cold weather gear to make those hours more possible! We get as low as 30s in the mornings during winter, and my kids go out for a couple hours in coats, hats, gloves, and boots in that weather. But we don't get colder than that, so I can't speak from experience for harsher climates. I hope that helps!
Thank you for stopping by! :)
If you could still use the feedback, I am most challenged by not having a goal for foreign language (or perhaps I least understand the goal). Is it fluency? Or cultural understanding? (I admittedly have not read CM's writing on FL in detail, yet.)
ReplyDeleteCurrently I am struggling to find a program that would achieve fluency as I feel that should be the goal if I am to invest the time and energy in it. I am not fluent in a foreign language (4 years of advanced Latin in high school) and I don't feel I can confidently or competently evaluate which programs are most likely to lead to fluency.
I learned a lot from listening to the ADE podcast on foreign language, it was so helpful. I think also, for my kids, it's something they don't understand, having developing fluency in English, and some degree of fluency in reading, math, drawing, etc., it's simply "foreign" to them. Hope that helps.
It does help, Karen -- thank you! And just to answer a couple of your questions briefly based on some thoughts I have had recently: even though CM's goal was fluency (in multiple languages, even!), I don't think ours has to be as homeschool mothers. I think considering our family's foreign language goals in the context of "how much they care" and "spreading the feast" rather than what CM actually expected of her school-educated students will probably help us to be generous YET realistic, if you know what I mean. :) It is challenging to be teaching foreign language without being fluent ourselves, for sure -- I am in the same boat, which is partly why this subject interests me. Personally, I'm aiming for care for perspectives outside our own culture, a solid foundation in both oral and written skills in at least one modern language (in addition to the Latin we're doing), and a desire to learn more. So far we are on the right track, but it's certainly not the easiest subject to teach! I'm hoping after twenty years of teaching the basics of Italian to my students/children, perhaps I'll find myself fluent after all! ;) Thanks for your questions!
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ReplyDeleteSarahJanuary 29, 2017 at 2:58 PM
ReplyDeleteOh yay! I'm really looking forward to your talk on foreign language. Right now we learn and memorize words and phrases which I try to use in everyday life but I feel like it could be a lot richer. I'm not fluent either and that hinders me from modifying the phrases we learn and playing with the language more. The little bit we have done has been very fun - we learned "I take a bath in the evening" and I said "I take a bath in bed" and he laughed and made up his own. It would be fun to do more of that. I guess I never feel fully prepared for this subject.
That's exactly the kind of language play that we do a LOT of, and it's really effective! I don't feel prepared either and end up doing quite a bit of prep work and scripting, which helps a lot. But it's still no easy task! I'm still teasing out how to make CM's recmmendations work for the average homeschool mother like me. :)
DeleteI'm sure you have your talk finished up by now, but what most keeps me from studying a foreign language with my kids is my lack of fluency, as well as that the language I would most like to learn does not have as many already-prepared resources for kids as a more common one, like Spanish or French. I find prioritizing what to learn first and developing a sequence of series to learn overwhelming. I feel like the idea of the method makes sense to me. It is figuring out how to break it down & prepare things in a language I don't know that is challenging to me.
ReplyDeleteActually, I am NOT completely done with my talk (I should be, but I'm not), so that is helpful! LOL I think the problem you're talking about was/is my main issue too, so it's useful to know that I am not alone in that -- and I'm really aiming at an audience of people like me and you, so hopefully I'll be able to offer some solutions for those same concerns. :) Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
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