{This and That} :: Thanksgiving and Advent

It's Thanksgiving Week and the First Sunday of Advent is coming up this weekend! With that in mind, I thought I'd kick off with some links from the archives that might help in your planning...

On Thanksgiving:
Cooking Up a Thanksgiving "Feast"

And on Advent:
A Time to Prepare (written SIX years ago!)
My whole Advent archives with lots of ideas for observance

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Let's talk gifts!

As usual, I'll be spending some time this week trying to get Christmas gift plans and purchases in order so I can spend a quieter Advent. I always have a few last-minute things I have to handle in December, but it's nice to get the bulk of it finished or at least planned out so it doesn't consume my mental space in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

If you are looking for ideas too, I have a bunch of gift ideas for you in the posts below...
A Few of Our Favorite Things (ideas from last year)
What We're Reading...and Crafting and Playing :: Christmas Edition
My Top Ten Christmas Books for LittlesOur Favorite Keeping SuppliesCM-Friendly Easter Basket Ideas (...that would be great for Christmas gifts too!)

My {Getting Started with Handicrafts} series is also a great place to start for gift ideas. I love gifting art and craft supplies, partly because they promise lotsof worthy leisure time and partly because they are consumable and therefore aren't adding to our household clutter. ;)  (Speaking of, I have another post coming up later this week that I think you'll love! It's our newest crafting obsession. :))

And to add to the ideas: a few of our favorite things from THIS year...

 

These reusable sticker pad sets by Melissa and Doug have been a huge hit with my littles (and middles) this year. Several of the kids got them as birthday gifts early in the year and they have been in daily use since then.

I got my two oldest daughters a set of these stretchy floral headbands for their birthdays and they love them.

My almost-11yo daughter just picked out a new commonplace book and she chose one of these. They really are eye-catchingly pretty for the tweens and teens in your life.

If you don't yet have a portable terrarium (aka critter shack!), it would make a great gift for any age, all the way down to the littles.

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And before I totally switch gears here, a couple ideas for mama...

I have three books on my personal wishlist this year: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, The Woman Who Was Chesterton, and The Day is Now Far Spent. These have all come highly recommended by friends and I'm itching to read them! Do you have any books on your to-buy list?

And if education and encouragement is what you're after, the 2019 CMEC Retreat Package provides a healthy dose of both! :) Perfect timing as we head into those challenging winter months. (The 2018 Retreat Package is still for sale also if you missed it last year.)

By the way, the CMEC will be offering a DISCOUNT on both packages in honor of Thanksgiving later this week, so if you haven't purchased yet, this week is the time to do it!

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Speaking of the CMEC, this past week were our Winter Form Meetings. Two nights to meet online Form by Form, sharing successes and struggles, getting answers to questions, and thinking through a few topics that moms often have questions about.

This term, we tackled dictation and mapwork. I posted a follow-up on Instagram and was deluged with DMs, so I'm planning a post here on the blog soon. We are finding some simple maps to be a wonderful accompaniment to our geographical readers.

Speaking of Instagram, I also put up a live in-process look at brush drawing in my Stories a couple weeks ago, courtesy of my 8yo, Bridget. (Her finished work is on the right below.) I saved the videos to a Highlight, so you can see it at the top of my feed. Even if you aren't on Instagram, you can still click over and view -- just click the little circle labeled "Brush Drawing." Hopefully it is a helpful look at another simple but rewarding part of our week. (We are using May Mallam's lovely reprint from Riverbend Press for our lessons, alternating with painting from life.)

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Justin turned four this month!

I am so thankful for this little guy. What you can't see from these photos is how absolutely filled with life and joy he is. He brings smiles to all of us every day, and there is nothing I like better than watching him sing musicals to himself, draw "weekly paintings" (he's dying to be a big kid!), or cuddle with baby brother. He is a gift.

And that's our last family birthday of the calendar year! Although Justin always corrects me that the last birthday in our family is actually Jesus. Can't argue with that. :)

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I was thinking of taking Advent off from the blog, but I have quite a few posts in the queue that I'm hoping to get to, so I'm taking that on as part of my Advent observance instead! We'll see how many I finish before baby arrives in (hopefully) early January. Stay tuned! :)

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{This and That}

Hi there! Can you believe it's November?! Which also means I am now in the third trimester with Baby Cruz -- just nine weeks left. :)

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Last month, I had the chance to attend the Schole Sisters meetup down in San Luis Obispo. What a treat! We had lunch and then a short walk to the beautiful Mission.

Funny thing: I have done podcasts with both Cindy and Pam and have worked with Dawn Garrett for years online but had never met them in person. So this was so exciting. And it was so nice to see Mystie and Brandy again too!

I took a couple photos in the Mission museum to draw into my Book of Centuries.

I find now that wherever I go, I gravitate toward the artifacts and decorative arts sections thanks to beginning my BoC a few years ago.

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Three September birthday girls had super celebrations!

I am so blessed in these beautiful daughters! Our Baby #10 is scheduled to share a birthday month with Cate (my only girl NOT born in September), so we'll likely have three girls in September and two in January. So special.

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We have moved on to Term 2! So far, this year has gone more smoothly than any year so far. We have had time for almost "all the things," and everyone seems happy and thriving. There have been setbacks and struggles here and there, but really we are all enjoying our school days.

I totally expect things to get wild up in here once Baby 10 arrives, so we have been moving through the year full steam ahead with no breaks. I'm glad everyone has been happily on board. I'll admit: I could use a break! But I am thankful that they don't seem to need one.

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Since the baby will likely arrive just after our Christmas break, I have planned exams to be semesterly: so one full set at Christmas and one at the end of the year. But we still wanted to do a shortened set of exams at the end of our first term for our Family Subjects that change term by term: artist study, composer study, recitation, dance, solfege, special study, etc. We took a Friday afternoon and did an hour of narrations and an hour of recitations/performance with our usual celebration. It was simple and fun!

We had our usual hodge podge of end-of-term treats:

supplies for bookbinding - more on this in an upcoming {Getting Started with Handicrafts} post!
a couple additional pairs of embroidery scissors so everyone now has his own
more twistables for the little boys
silhouette paper (we are going to do some silhouette work this term)
chalk crayons for Clara

and a few related books:
Devaney's Blood and Guts: The True Story of General George S. Patton
Bold Leaders of World War I
Moody's Mary Emma & Company (the next for them to read in the Little Britches series)
The Story of the U.S. Coast Guard
The Gettysburg Address, illustrated by
With the Bible Through the Church Year

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This past week we had Halloween, All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day, so we went a little light on studies to accommodate the observances.

But we also had the last Latin class of the term for my oldest two, in which they gave their recitations -- Roman dress required! It was nice to have it coincide with Halloween week because they were planning on being early Christian martyrs anyway (St. Tarciscius and St. Cecilia), so we planned for double duty garb. ;)

Recitations:

And my merry band of saints for Halloween:

Vincent actually switched it up at the last minute after seeing Xavier's St. George costume and decided to be St. Martin of Tours. :)

One of our favorite stops is always the fire station by our house. The firefighters are always so happy to get visitors trick-or-treating! We don't get a ton of kids in our neighborhood.

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Last but definitely not least, I announced last weekend that the 2019 CMEC Retreat Package is now up for sale! Head over to check out the full description as well as read about our suggestions for using both individally and in groups. :)

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Hope your November is off to a good start!

2019 CMEC Retreat Package :: Now Available!

Happy news: the 2019 CMEC Retreat Package is now available for purchase!

This retreat includes a set of all-new workshops by Amy Snell and me, designed to lead you through a full consideration of The Beautiful Person Within: A Living Approach to Character Formation.

Amy and I planned to cover the topic of character formation after getting lots of questions about habit training and such. We felt like there was more to be said on this topic in the Mason community and determined to dig into the Parents' Review and the Mason archives for a fuller sense of her approach and how it relates to both teaching and parenting.

And we realized a few things along the way:

First, preparing to talk about character formation and habit training is a lot like praying for patience -- it can be dangerous! ;)  Along the way, God molded both of us in all kinds of ways, some delightful and some unexpectedly challenging. For me, these workshops ended up being a labor of love in the midst of the most difficult first trimester I have had. And yet, I think the retreat was all the better for having been created in the midst of that struggle. There is nothing like writing about character while you are in the thick of a character-building episode yourself -- and, at the same time, forming a new little character in the womb -- to give clarity and a healthy sense of purpose. :)

There is always a lot more than an intellectual investment that goes into preparing a heartfelt retreat like this one. It ends up being formative in its own way.

Second, so much of what we read made us realize that character formation was really at the heart of all of it. Every subject of the curriculum Mason offers us, every lesson plan, every suggestion for family life, every principle, every practice -- it is all oriented toward and stems from her understanding of character: what it is and how it is formed. We researched this topic specifically for months, but it was really what we had been studying the whole decade we have been studying this philosophy.

Third, Mason's approach to character formation mimics her approach to teaching: respectful of personhood, committed to love and to duty, centered on delight, oriented toward relationship. The deep, soul-stretching work we have before us as parents is the same work we have before us as educators. And any efforts we make toward this work pays joyful dividends in both teaching and mothering.

I hope that doesn't make it sound like these workshops are all "high thinking" without the "plain living" Mason promises us! :)  We have LOTS of the practical in this retreat too. The philosophical governed what we included and how we presented it, and it is the philosophical that we hope inspires you to feel courageous and confident in taking up the work of teaching and parenting in the daily. And then we offer plenty of examples and methods for doing just that. :)

Here's what the package includes:

• Six audio workshops by Amy and Celeste in mp3 format
• Accompanying workshop slides in pdf format
• Conference picture study in pdf format
• Beautiful conference handbook in pdf format

You can read talk descriptions, bios, and how to purchase over at the CMEC!

The CMEC also offers special pricing for study groups or events, so be sure to reach out if you're thinking about studying this retreat in community.

(And P.S.: the 2018 package is still for sale also! It is a completely different set of talks from the 2019 package, focused on how to develop and implement a Thinking Love with our children and students, including good practices of preparation, guiding students to independence, and more.)

Retreat photos by CMEC member Sarah Hebenstreit. Thanks, Sarah!