School Year Brainstorm

Its school planning time at our house! First Day is fast approaching and although we haven't yet starting thinking about fall, pumpkins or leaf-jumping....I am thinking about study topics, ways to make reading fresh, exciting field trips and anything else that might prime the mental pumps for the boys and I.

I'm a Charlotte Mason/Unschooler. I lean heavily on exciting, well-written books to spring board learning and makes topics come alive....we read-aloud until our eyes fall out. Lots of the time when A is gone we linger at the lunch table, nibbling at our food and reading a few extra chapters of whatever book we are reading at the moment.

We try to spend a lot of time outside and I believe in free-flowing, real-time exploration in the natural world. Skinning knees, digging up beetles and popping seed pods are all legitimate learning activities at our house. Lots of the boys time outdoors is just random and unsupervised, self-directed fooling around that results in lots of interesting questions later on. "Mom...what is that little bug that rolls up when you touch it?" or "Mommy, we were ripping leaves up and saw some of them had white juice inside. Why does it get black on your hands?"

I am doing what I can to include warm familiarity with visual art, this last year we started doing artist study work to learn some of the "greats" and their techniques. I am also really happy to get the paints, yarn or glue out and set the kids to work making something beautiful of their own. I am a little bit of a stickler about "real" crafts and work really hard to make sure that the kids are introduced to the process of making beautiful things that aren't just crappy throw-away Styrofoam stickers and random construction paper cut-outs. A little bit of that kind of thing in a playgroup or Sunday School class doesn't poison the waters but I want to be sure that they really understand and expect to create genuine beauty and utility not just throw-away Oriental Trading Company crafty-garbage.

We are starting to work on useful life-skills....money-education, chore instruction, shopping lessons, navigation, memorization, etc. Lots of excitement ahead in that category this year.

Here's what I am trying to work into my curriculum planning and schedule arranging this year....

20 Homeschooling Brainstorms For 2013

1.  Ru has started learning sleight of hand and wants to perform a magic show for outsiders with rehearsal period, costumes and real admission fees!
2. I want the three big boys to take ice-skating lessons this winter...maybe I'll even join them.
3. We will have a much awaited field trip to The Mashantucket Pequot Museum during October, Native Heritage Month. 
4. We have started a new allowance/chore system and I am planning to do some workshops about budgeting, financial goals and exciting ideas for boy-friendly charity.
5. Ru did the summer reading program at the library and I told him as a reward he could get his own library card and a special appointment with one of the children's librarians to talk about all the rights and privileges thereof.
6. The boys have requested that we go to a real, old-fashioned cider mill where they can watch their cider being pressed before we buy a jug.
7. Ru and now Nib (desperately eager!) will be enrolling in Fall Ball, our local Little League's autumn session.
8. I found and am burning this wonderful collection of classic poems, arranged for children and read aloud by Librivox readers.
9. Dee has started learning to read and this year he'll keep working through 100 Easy Lessons and then tackle real books for the first time.
10. I am magpie-ing the idea of unit themes for each month of the school year.
11. We're going to join our friends in the homeschool group for Field Trip Friday adventures.
12. I am introducing Latin to the house. I have ordered two systems (1 and 2) and we'll try them out and see what works for us.
13. Nib will learn to write his name this year and solidify his alphabet.
14. I'm on the look-out for a Spanish playgroup.
15. I am hunting for music lessons and starting a beginning music theory workbook for the three biggest boys. 

Its gonna be an exciting year! I'm geeked for book buying and activity scheduling.

Foxy Rocks Decorating

Foxy, and her son, my darling nephew.

My sister Foxy is a fabulously inspiring person.She's one of those people who takes on challenges with gritted teeth and a war cry. She is also a person of unbelievable resilience and flair. She's a veteran, an ex-fire fighter, a great cook, a step mom, a mother and a gardener to boot not to mention fashion-plate, brilliant home renovator and maker of the very best chocolate milk around. She is one of those people I have often called when I feel at my bottom and she always tells me to keep on. For years I kept a little Post-It note on the corner of my computer screen where I scribbled something she told me once on a bad day, "The tide will come back in and will bring with new wonderful things!"

English: A small pad of Post-It notes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We all need people of this caliber in our lives. Impressive, forgiving, funny, thoughtful, forever in our corner types. I hope you have one or two, if not...get looking...they're really valuable stuff. If you're in Kalamazoo, Michigan I recommend my sister...Foxy is top notch.

The whole shebang.

One of the most wonderful things that we did on this last trip to Michigan last week was stop and see Foxy and her family. They live a very frugal life, and travel money isn't always on the books so it had been a long time since we were together. Not only did I get to see her but my entire family (6 kids y'all!) converged on her house for lunch and noshing. A tasty and nostalgic time was had by all and we even managed to get a great big family picture with every single person looking at the camera!

Cousins, just playin' in the yard. Best ever.

Foxy's suave husband.

And people...in the midst of their well pump being out, her sweet husband being between jobs and her working insane swing shifts....I was inspired all over again. How does she do it??? In the middle of all of the stress and short ends in their life right now she and her husband are working hard on their house, constantly rearranging things and trying to figure out how to make better with what they have. I love their place. They live in a suburban neighborhood in a fixer-upper house they are slowly remodeling with an acre of beautiful fenced yard: a gigantic spreading cherry tree and the perfect childhood swing, a vegetable garden, and lots of creative spots for kid play. My children are in heaven the entire time we're visiting.

Foxy, my spritely niece, and my other sister Lockbox.

Sprite holding her baby cousin, Pom.

I love her can-do spirit her artistic vision and her romantic sensibilities. I've always said she had amazing innate ideas about taste and aesthetic. I am ever more sure that its true after this visit. As usual she's been busy shifting around the details of her house and thinking of clever things I wish I'd discovered. I had to share my favorite bits and bobs with you.

She made this little play-tent from an old sheet, a golden scrap of fabric, a hula-hoop and a little ribbon! Amazing or what?!?$

She's a decorating wizard and all around impressive person. I think I won the sister lotto! And this is only one of my amazing siblings if you can believe it. Hot diggity dog...my parents had it goin' on!

Creativity Stew

Been thinking about ways to get creative, getting a jump on Christmas presents and the idea of making things again together with the boys as a part of our school time this fall. All that to say...I have a bunch of fabulosity to unload out of my brain tonight before I go to sleep.

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

Drink it in, Friends..."The world is so full of a number of things..."

These might be a good way to deal with our burgeoning feather collection, and my own insatiable desire to pick up and haul home any pretty feathers we find. Feathers as useful gift. Genius. And how much fun would the boys have, color dipping them?
Oodles.

Image via Wikipedia

Fresh Ricotta. I think it has my number. I have been listening to a lot of The Splendid Table. I hear all the past shows as podcasts while I drive Aaron to work and he does math with Ru in the backseat and the little boys listen or look at books. So inspiring! Seriously, I wish all of you could start every day with a huge infusion of culinary brilliance like that. I drive back to the house salivating and full of ideas, fresh ricotta is my latest yen. I especially like the list on the right hand side of that link with ideas for how to use ricotta. I feel like lasagna and cannoli is it for my own personal exposure to the cheese. And then, when I have made my own fresh ricotta...I will make this with it. *slobber slobber slobber*

Image by Rooey202 via Flickr

Maybe I had too much Tasha Tudor in my life but I always kind of fancy the romance of animal versions of our human holidays. (Tasha always talks about The Animals Christmas for example) I have this fluttery fantasy of making these little ornaments on a Valentine's Day afternoon with the boys to hang outside our windows for the birds, so that they feel their own little bit of love. I had no idea Knox gelatin was the key to those bird seed cluster thingies, by the way.

Am looking around this old house at the dated bits and wondering what hardware I could update in an hour like these clever diy bloggers did. Oil rubbed bronze spray paint, here I come!

Image by alsokaizen via Flickr

I was recently given a little wooden, windowseat style storage bench (Yay!!!) which I put in the boys room but turns out they don't use it...I thought they'd plop there with story books  but no such luck. They want cozy seating for storytime...so they head to the office loveseat or even their beds and leave the bench all bare. I have new plans to paint the bench a grown-up color (its all bright primary colors right now) and move it downstairs to the entryway (Convenient shoe donning spot and secret mitten storage location all-in-one? Yes please!) but moving the bench means I again have no home for the out of season or back-up blankets, quilts and flannel sheets. I have been plotting some rolling underbed storage beneath the boys bunks, imagining high glamour in the form of plastic Rubbermaid products but check this out, Holmes! Is that not hot? Am now keeping my eyes peeled for loner dresser drawers.

Image by adwriter via Flickr

And finally, in closing. I can't think of a single, blessed reason why it would be useful or appropriate or helpful for me to make these cookies. Oh, but I want to! Aren't they beautiful? Indian dinner party anyone?

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Making Things Season

We're starting to really think about Christmas around here. Not that we're decorating or anything like that, but we're starting to think about making things. Its that time of year.

 We will mix up cookie dough and put it in the freezer anytime we get a free moment from now till the 25th and this weekend I hope to sit down and make up lists of make-able gift ideas for all the people I can. We buy gifts too, but I like to reinforce every year the idea that our hands are still useful, creative and elegant instruments that are quite capable of making something well-loved...even in our modern age.

Yes, you can just get on Amazon and buy everything you need. (I've done it! And there's a certain freedom there too.) but there's something really soul feeding about making a lovely thing for someone you care for and seeing them unwrap it carefully on Christmas morning. This year we have a mortgage in our budget pool so that means there's even more incentive to get out of the mall box and start dreaming up gifts here at home.

 We have finally run out of this wonderful large packing paper that our movers used around our goods, so that means the boys are a little restless for something creative to do with their hands. Just in time...I could use a few more tiny creative hands.

I'm even starting to think about taking up my knitting needles again.  I guess cold fingers will do that to you. *grin* Remembering the success of my hat knitting venture from last year and thinking sort of bravely of making a little sweater for Nib. So scary! Argh! Somebody tell me I can do it.

I also found instructions online for finger knitting by accident and was enchanted with the idea of teaching Ru because he pesters me endlessly about "teaching him to knit" although I've tried and obviously, wielding the needles are a bit much for him at the age of 4. This might be the perfect solution.

Am also starting to think very deeply about gifts for the boys for Christmas. I have decided to do three gifts for each of them...which may be objects, experiences or some other idea. I want to come up with a gift for each boy's: mind, body and spirit.

And look at that jolly baby! If its even reasonable to call him a baby. You can't see in that picture but he's managed to cut through his two front teeth at 5 months of age. He's still sleeping beautifully, grinning ear to ear and astounding me with his easy-going calm. He's a very good natured little person. I can't wait to see what he's all about as he unfolds more and more.

Miq The Fairytale Genius

So, I've mentioned before that A has this brother, Miq who is utterly splendiferous in his own right and is married to the equally wonderful Penny. Lately, one of the big events in our extended family has been Uncle Miq's deployment to Iraq. (Ru is very impressed) All of us have been watching Facebook for the little updates he throws Stateside and doing what we can to stay in touch with Penny and their daughters. His little girls who are my boys cousins are now down to just one utterly fabulous parent which, is not as bad as it might be but, is obviously far less than ideal. We're all thinking of them often and watching (as much as you can watch when they live in Germany and we all live on this side of the pond) and wishing them all the very best.

But that Miq is a clever one. Never the type to sit on his hands mournfully in the middle of all that burning sand...he's been dreaming up one of the most creative and lovely daddy gifts I've ever seen. Sandstorms must be good for the imagination. He's been writing (from scratch mind you) lavish, bedtime fairytales for his daughters and recording himself telling them. If they half as big a hit with his daughters as they are with my sons, his special stories will never be forgotten in family lore.

At our house, we play them over and over and over.

So far, there are two installments...but, I expect there are more forthcoming. How many more? Heaven only knows...but, every one is a gem and whatever arrives we'll all rejoice.

I'm toying with sketching up some watercolor illustrations of Aclaircy's adventures. They're such beautifully imaginative stories, I'd have fun creating visuals.

Without further ado folks....The Amazing Uncle Miq:





Much love to you Miq as you wait and work and while away the days and days and days. We're rooting for you!

A Peek Into My "Studio"

My bedroom, my kitchen, my garden and the couch are really collectively "my studio" at the moment...there's no dedicated creative space in our house, no real "spot" to store all the artistic goods just a general flow of creativity that messes up the whole place and keeps us humming all over.

Friday was an explosive day for me, spurred on by a swap I was part of that involved a lot of crafting but, that was only the downhill push. Before I knew it I had avalanched my way into full creative mode complete with large amount of scrap fabric and other materials flying about and thrown hither and yon. Been way too long since I did any sewing, felt awfully good to sit and hum away on the machine again. I miss it. Am looking forward to a nice space for sewing at our someday house. Speaking of which....there may be house news on the way! (just a little teaser)

But, here's a peak into my workbasket lately:

And then....on the subject of personal artistic-ness I have to include this portrait sketch in pencil that one of my fabulously talented and inspiring fellow Tuesday art session painters did of me. I feel like I won the lottery! Can you believe it? I have had my portrait "done." So exciting!

Here's my favorite bit: