October 2016 – Educating Oaks

Educational Intentions: Week 12

Rejoice: Quiet for me, with Bible and prayer and writing something and planning. Writing morning pages and writing down a concrete plan for the day are still working together to help me focus and refocus frequently thought the day.

Relate: We are switching artists this month. We are considering the art of Thomas Gainsborough. We’ll continue reading about Beethoven in The Story of Beethoven, and we’ll listen to the Ninth Symphony

Remember: It is time (the beginning of the month) for me to switch out the memory work for November. However, we still haven’t mastered Psalm 1, Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, the Shaker song Simple Gifts, and the hymn Nothing But the Blood of Jesus , so I suppose we should continue on for a couple more week. This is what happens when we don’t have a morning meeting four days a week. In October, we had a fantastic and busy month, but we didn’t get our stuff finished.

Reason: We’ll continue with math and grammar as we have been. And one boy will continue with his study of JavaScript and Electronics.

Read: We’ll read bits of The World of Captain John Smith, Wild Animals I Have Known, Pilgrim’s Progress, Plutarch’s Publicola, Trial and Triumph, and At the Back of the North Wind. (Short lessons mean that we’ll be spending 15-20 minutes on each of those, so that list isn’t as long as it seems like.) It is time to change poets, so we will start with this book of poems by William Blake . We need to listen again to Henry V Act 2, but we did finally finish Treasure Island. It took way longer than I planned, but the boys enjoyed it.

Record: The younger boys will do copywork and an IEW lesson. The older guy has a debate this week, and then a project to work on, and we all need to add to timelines and such.

Restore: There are plans to be at the YMCA at least twice this week, and don’t have anywhere to be in the evenings this week. That will help my sudden need for more rest since we should all get to bed on time.

Week 11 Reflections

We still didn’t finish everything that one on the list I made for week 10. But I’m ok with that. I’ll move it forward to week 12, and we’ll keep the memory work the same for November instead of changing it out. We’ll move on when we have conquered what we’ve got. The artist (Gainsborough) and the composer (Beethoven) aren’t changing this month either, so that is easy.

I am exhausted. I actually slept more than six hours last night for the first time in quite a while, and I am having trouble getting going. A goal for next week has to be some rest for me, so that my body doesn’t revolt. (I have some physical issues that flair when I am overdone and cause me pain, and my whole family would like to avoid that. It isn’t good for the mom to be down.)

I did finish the new Flavia de Luce book, and that was lovely.

Week 10 and Break Week Reflections and Intentions for Week 11

So, the week before our break kind of went … and we didn’t make it through anything except the bare basics for my younger kids and about half the assignments for my Freshman. And I just went with it. We did some other projects: shopped for prizes for Laps for Little Ones to help our friends at the Little Light House and completed some cultural studies with friends.

I suppose the good news about that is that we will cover the stuff I planned for last week this week. My Freshman will play catch-up and also accomplish this week’s work (including debate prep). However, I am pretty tired from our trip, and I hope for some time on the couch with books and discussion and maybe a nap.

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We spent our break week on the front range of the Rockies with my brother and his family. We soaked up the mountains and streams and relaxation. We shopped and fished and walked and slept and just hung out together. And we ate a lot of really tasty stuff like pot roast at home and ice cream at Lik’s. Yum. Yum.

Now we are home, and we miss my brother’s laugh and my nephew’s giggle and my sister-in-law’s quiet presence. But we’ll see them at Christmas. Until them, it is back to schoolwork and tutoring and cooking and cleaning and Mt. St. Laundry.

During the twenty-four hours we spent in the van coming and going, I finished up four books that were just for me (several of which I had been reading bits of here and there forever), and that was fabulous. The first one, I had laid aside two years ago (The Lost Pearle), and like all Lamplighter books, it turned a good tale. Pearle was forced to marry an evil man, and she worked her way out of that and back to a good one. I read a new release that started out interesting, but had a ridiculous ending, and I am not even linking it (Everything, Everything). I finished up The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown, which spoke to me, a recovering perfectionist, about being worthy of love and acceptance in spite of my mistakes and brokenness.

I also completed a review copy of Ann Voskamp’s The Broken Way, which was a poetic read about how our brokenness is healed not through holing up and waiting for God to heal it, but by continually giving hope to others in His name. We are all our own form of broken, and as we serve others, God uses that very brokenness to help them find healing. He heals us in the process. While I wish this book pointed the reader even more to Scripture for these facts, I have experienced these truths in my life.

I also started Alan Bradley’s new Flavia De Luce release, Thrice the Brindled Cat Hath Mew’d, which is a rollicking good time. I’m looking forward to our Drop Everything And Read moment today, because I’ll get to see what happens next. (If you haven’t met Flavia, you should. She’s a twelve-year-old chemical genius with a knack for discovering dead bodies and for solving their murders. She has a quirky and macabre wit that I find highly entertaining.)That was our Fall Break. Now it is over, and we are getting back to normal. (I hope.)

Educational Intentions: Week 10 and Break Week

Thank goodness Break Week is coming quickly. I am exhausted. Here are the plans, which will be carried out over the next two weeks, along with a few adventures I’ll record later.

Rejoice: Quiet for me, with Bible and prayer and writing something and planning. Writing morning pages and writing down a concrete plan for the day are working together to help me focus and refocus frequently thought the day.

Relate: We are switching artists this month. We are done with Rembrandt for the moment, and we’ll look at the art of Thomas Gainsborough. And We’ll continue reading about Beethoven in The Story of Beethoven, and we’ll listen to the Ninth Symphony

Remember: We have new things to memorize this month, including Psalm 1, Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, the Shaker song Simple Gifts, and the hymn Nothing But the Blood of Jesus (those links are all to YouTube videos we’ll watch at some point).

Reason: We’ll continue with math and grammar as we have been. And one boy will continue with his study of JavaScript and Electronics.

Read: We’ll read bits of The World of Captain John Smith, Wild Animals I Have Known, Pilgrim’s Progress, Plutarch’s Publicola, Trial and Triumph, and Treasure Island. (Short lessons mean that we’ll be spending 15-20 minutes on each of those, so that list isn’t as long as it seems like.) It is time to change poets, so we will start with this book of poems by William Blake . We need to listen again to Henry V Act 2, and when we finish Treasure Island (still hopefully this week), we’ll start on Robin Hood.

Record: The younger boys will do copywork and an IEW lesson. The older guy has plenty of work to do for an upcoming debate, and we all need to add to timelines and such.

Restore: There are plans to be at tae kwon do at least twice this week, and I’ll teach Latin for moms one evening. I’m also going to book club one evening. But I need to finish the book first. At least I am almost done…

Week 9 Reflections

No pictures this week. I forgot to take any. We were fairly successful in completing the educational plans for the week. We did have a few adventures, planned and unplanned. But most of the activities I had laid out got done anyway.

We had a laundry emergency that demanded a visit from our favorite appliance repair guy. (That we have had enough of these issues to have a favorite is another story for another time.) He restored the function of the washing machine, and we continued in our quest to conquer the mountain of laundry that accumulated quickly. We also lost a couple of hours to getting new tires put on the van on another day. But it was absolutely necessary, and so we had lunch at Costco one day.

Keeping up with the educating and the homemaking at the same time is harder than it sounds like it would be. Since we are at home more than the average family, we make more messes at home, we eat more often at home, and we simply live here more. Our appliances seem to break more often, but they are also probably used more often.

A major downside of my week was discovering that I had been deceived by one of my kids. We’ve dealt with the issue, but the road to rebuilt trust is long. We’ll continue to develop his conscious, and he’ll be a good man when he is older because he got caught and redirected. But in the meantime, he needs prayer and a lot of oversight. It will be a long couple of weeks over here as I work my way through that.

Our much more fun adventure of the week was a trip to the state fair. We went and visited a friend who had chickens entered in the chicken show, and we walked around and looked at all the art and photography and exhibits. We sat in cars in the exhibit hall, played all of the pianos, and the kids ate some junk food. It was a good local adventure.

Educational Intentions: Week 9

I am grateful that this week should be a little less crazy than last week. We have four of five days that will be our normal, and I get to be home most evenings, which bodes well for my household. Normal is good.

Rejoice: Quiet for me, with Bible and prayer and writing something and planning, because filling out that daily index card list is working well for me.

Reason: We’ll continue with math and grammar as we have been. And one boy will continue with his study of JavaScript and Electronics.

Read: We’ll read bits of The World of Captain John Smith, Wild Animals I Have Known, Pilgrim’s Progress, Plutarch’s Publicola, Trial and Triumph, and Treasure Island. (Short lessons mean that we’ll be spending 15-20 minutes on each of those, so that list isn’t as long as it seems like.) It is time to change poets, so we will start with this book of poems by William Blake . We need to listen to Henry V Act 2, and when we finish Treasure Island (hopefully this week), we’ll start on Robin Hood.

Record: The younger boys will do copywork and an IEW lesson. The older guy has an essay to complete on The Scarlet Letter, and we all need to add to timelines and such.

Restore: There are plans to be at tae kwon do at least twice this week, and two will have a golf lesson one evening. We’ll see what other rest and family fun we come up with. I know I have several books to finish.

Week 8 Reflections

That was a pretty good week. We did manage to do most of what was planned, but that was somewhat miraculous. There were a couple of things that got canceled, and I also spent a couple of days fighting a migraine. Migraines stink and make me rather cranky, but they do make sure that I stay home. As long as we are home, things get done.

One thing that I did differently this week was to help my high school freshman put all of his work into both his planner (creating daily lists of work for each school day) AND onto a schedule for the week, assigning each subject a block of time on each of the four days. I’ve resisted this forever (more on that later), but do you know what? It worked. He knew both what he needed to do and when he needed to do it, and he didn’t need me to tell him what to do. That is a fantastic thing because I can only keep so many to-do lists in my head. If his is on paper and assigned to hours, I don’t have to think about it. Decision fatigue avoided again!

Because we all had all of the work due on Monday done and packed on Friday afternoon, we went to Science Museum Oklahoma for the day on Saturday, hence the pictures.

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