{This and That} :: Two Weeks In!

We are beginning our third week of school and things are moving along pretty smoothly! I am so happy with how things have shaped up thus far.

Form 1 students working together

This past weekend I had a (very rare!) few hours to myself and was able to sit with all of my notes and think a bit about the rest of the term. So restful!

After Week 1, I made a few tweaks to the schedule and printed new timetables to try. But my Week 2 reflections didn't require any timetable adjustments, so I think we have now hit on a nice rhythm. (Except for the baby, that is -- my #1 wild card as to whether my day will go smoothly or not! :) But she is still unpredictable in her napping so I am honestly trying not to plan around her too much because I think by Term 2 she will be napping at the same time as my little boys. Always an adventure!)

I did spend some time sketching out more complete ideas for special studies, art, handicrafts, and foreign language. Those are often subjects that I plot out a few weeks' work for to start off with, then wait until Week 3 to fill in more thoroughly for the year. I actually always have a "Consider on Week 3" list in my planner for the things I didn't quite have time to flesh out before the year began but that I wanted to think through once we had settled in. I find it to be a helpful practice -- I keep the same kind of list of things to Consider for Next Term and Consider for Next Year. Plopping things that come to mind there (rather than letting them swirl around in my brain) helps me to stay focused on the work in front of me.

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One great addition to our schedule this term has been chalk drawing! 

So far our lessons have used circles and symmetry.

I am doing it with all of my students, from age 14 down to 4, and not only are they really enjoying it, but also they are taking away skills and ideas that I am now seeing in their other art during free time. It has been such a good addition.

I also have my Form 1 students draw in chalk a scene from one of their readings each week while I do Plutarch with the older kids. The first week, for example, they all drew the Creation story from Genesis from our Old Testament lessons.

Even my kindergartener can't bear to be left out of chalk time!

This week, I think we will be drawing fruits and do some more warm-up circles. There is so much flexibility in these lessons.

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My older kids are reading in astronomy this year, so we are all taking it up as one of our special study topics for the year -- it fits so nicely with the Weather and Sky special study focus that we are doing alongside the rest of the CMEC. We have begun our lunar charts and are working on the constellations of the summer sky. August ended up being a wonderful time to start, not only for the meteor shower, but also because Saturn and Jupiter are easy to find right now.

It may not look like much, but we were SUPER excited about it!

A friend sent me a star chart and Vincent has been faithfully taking it out at night with a flashlight and looking at what is visible with the naked eye. It turns out that even with the city lights (we have a street light RIGHT in front of our house), we can see quite a lot. I always consider this the best place to start -- with what we can see without any "help." It gives us a good reference point for further work. (But we do have a telescope on the way -- should arrive any day now!)

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Emilia is seven months old tomorrow and is crawling all over the house, cruising along the furniture, and getting into all kinds of mischief.

Luckily she has lots of people who love to play with her! Justin runs down first thing in the morning to see how he can make her giggle.

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The high schoolers got a good start on the Fesole Club Papers. We did the famous Lemon assignment over the past couple weeks -- with a sleeping kindergartener, to boot! :)

From here, we are planning to move on to the chapters covering trees in leaf, architectural drawing, and still life composition before circling back around to the Boughs of Branstock and Fesole Flower Studies (which will be better in winter/spring here). We will also fold in some work from the other books assigned for art for the CMEC Upper Forms here and there. (I am looking forward to the mini-retreat in the fall all on art in the Mason method!)

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I was on The Charlotte Mason Show to chat with Julie Ross about the basics of notebook-keeping in the Mason method. If you would like to hear both the philosophy behind it and some super-practical tips, have a listen! I hope you find it helpful.

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So that's what's happening around here! Later this week I'm going to sneak in a post about our summer reading. I meant to get it up sooner but school planning took up my time. But even though it's not quite summer break here anymore, it IS over 100 degrees here this week, so I'm pretty sure I can still count it "summer."

Have you begun your school year yet? How are things going so far?