{This and That}

Hi friends!  First up: some news: f you haven't already seen it, I want to invite you to...
CM West :: Retreat at the Beach!

Amber (from Flare of Light) and I are hosting a little Charlotte Mason retreat at a beach house on the Sonoma Coast.  We're planning that it will be a quiet time of Mother Culture, community, and refreshment.  I am so looking forward to lots of Charlotte Mason chat with a lovely group of ladies.  You can read more details at the website.

There are just a few spots left, so you'd like to join us, please let me know!  You can fill out the registration form and Amber will be in contact with you.




~~~

I can't post a {This and That} without including a couple shots of my littlest guy.  He is a dimpled, smiling, crazy-haired little dumpling and we cannot get enough of him.  (Excuse the blurriness--he is never still!)

He learned to roll both ways this past month and finds that far more fun than napping, but with lots of arms to hold him, we're making it work--and his giggles definitely make our school days much brighter!

~~~

Speaking of school, we began Term 3 a few weeks ago, and as usual, I did a bit of tweaking to our schedule to start the term.  Our babymoon checklists worked perfectly during the time I needed school to be a bit more hands-off, but I was ready for something more structured now that we're out of the newborn phase.  So we're pretty much back to our Term 1 checklist with a few changes:

:: The Big Kids showed over the past couple months that they're ready to do Latin and dictation study without me.  So I'm keeping those on their independent schedule rather than doing them all together.

:: They also really like doing written narrations, so I upped that to twice a week.  (Just to be clear: I'm only requiring that extra written work because they enjoy it.  I think one written narration weekly for Year 4 is great and what the wise ladies at AO recommend beginning with. :))

:: A.A. Milne is a super-huge-gigantic-through-the-roof hit here with the whole family right now, and we were only halfway through his poems at the end of Term 2.  (He's scheduled for Year 1 for Cate, but we do poetry together in Morning Basket, so everyone listens in.)  So we're continuing with him for Term 3, alongside Wordsworth for my Year 4 students.  (Gianna has loved Milne's poetry ever since we read it for her Year 1, so she is particularly pleased.)

:: Our weekly schedule has also changed a bit since it's a new semester and outside lessons have shifted.  I also don't need as much flexibility in our days because we're not going out much with an infant.  So I did some juggling of the Big Kids' work and divvied it out into four days to give them an idea of how to take their checklist of work and spread it out over our schooldays.

:: My Year 1 student really wanted a checklist like her older siblings.  I gave her one during our babymoon to keep her moving along on her independent assignments, so I basically adjusted that and printed it out for her.  She's pleased to feel more like a Big Kid.  (And again, to be clear: she's not responsible for doing the items on her checklist independently--we do almost all her work together.  She just likes to be the one to cross things off. ;))

As you'll see, our Term 3 checklist looks very similar to Term 1's with slight modifications:

The only thing that is bugging me about this new format is that there's quite a bit of repetition on the charts themselves.  But I'm not bothered enough by it to change it now, especially since it's working really well and we only have EIGHT weeks left in the school year. And that means I'm already getting ideas for how I'll tweak them for next year...

~~~

As usual, we celebrated the end of the term with a few treats, including a few books naturally...

The Battle of the Kegs, illustrated by Paul Galdone
Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride, illustrated by Ted Rand

Both tie into our Revolutionary War Readings for Year 4: one a bit more serious and one more fun. ;)

I also gave the kids a book of Brahms sheet music (that was supposed to be an end-of-Term-1 treat but it was lost until I uncovered it during Christmas wrapping!), and this set of origami books I happily found at the thrift store.  So far they are great!  The "Easy Origami" one can be done independently by the Big Kids and with help by the Middles.  The other two are more challenging but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to hand them over to my Bigs after they work their way through the easy book for practice.  Gianna got straight to work and made half the book's offerings so far, including a sweet little cup she wants to full with treats for Xavier's birthday and a tulip she's putting aside for Mother's Day for the grandmas.

Cate's Paddle-to-the-Sea using Easy Origami :)

~~~

So I finally took five seconds and added a podcast app to my phone.  Why did I wait so long to do that?!  Not that I have a ton of time to listen to podcasts (it is way too loud for that around here!), but now the time I do have can be so much more efficiently used than the clunky mp3 method I was using before.

On to the real reason I mention this: have you checked out the first Schole Sisters podcast yet?  I listened to their episode on levity last Friday and it was great for this bossy, Type A, first-born. :)  I always say that I'm not the "fun mom" (I'm totally not!), but I do try.  So I can use all the encouragement to "levitate" that I can! ;)

~~~

I have a terrible habit of opening a bunch of tabs and leaving them to read later, when I get a bit more free time in the evening or on the weekend.  Unfortunately, that "more free time" hasn't happened in a couple weeks, so I have a big stockpile.  Here's what's sitting in my tabs bar right now:

Charles Dickens' Hard Times: The Usefulness of Useless Things
What is Poetic Knowledge?
Screen Addiction is Taking a Toll on Children
Busy is a Sickness
Unholy Anger: Disciplining Ourselves Before Disciplining Our Children
Catholic or Pagan Imagination
Little House on the Prairie Shows Us Why Kids Need Both a Mother and a Father
The Broken Sword

A great-looking list, right?  I need to get on that!

~~~

Last but not all least: years ago when Joyous Lessons began, it was a joint effort between me and my in-real-life dear friend, Angela.  She eventually stepped away from homeschooling (and blogging) for a time, but we remained the best of friends.  And now I'm so pleased that she's back to both: home-educating her two sweet children, and blogging about it at her new spot on the net, Glimpses of a Living Education.  She's the real deal and pretty wonderful, so go take a peek at her life in the mountains and say hello!

~~~

That's it for today!  Coming soon: a look at written narrations and Keeping for my Year 4 students, What We're Reading in January, nature swap fun, our Term 3 Morning Basket, and a recap of our Term 2 exams!