Last Night of Five

Posted on December 27, 2023 by Amy

Tonight, I’m sitting up in tears because my youngest baby is about to turn SIX tomorrow. I decided to come on here and read through all the posts about his baby/toddlerhood and reminisce about how precious and adorable he was. I cried through rereading the story of his birth and my fears about Bubba not being my baby anymore, and then I was shocked to find out how very little I have actually written here about him when he was little(r). Here he is tonight:

His last night of being five. Somehow six seems so much older than five.

I have written so little about him here. He’s a very big personality. He has very strong emotions. He is passionate about things like dinosaurs, sharks, prehistoric sea creatures, and playing hard with his brother.

He loves books, fishing, cooking, and playing with his “bestie” (whichever of his sisters happens to be his favorite at any given moment).

Look how little and cute he was

He is such a sweet and sometimes surprisingly sensitive boy. He loves to snuggle and still wants me to sing him his song every night. I really can’t even handle him getting so big so fast.

I don’t really know if I’ll come back to blogging much. My girls have really enjoyed reading the posts from when they were little and they’ve encouraged me to start again. I would like to, because I sure wish right now that I could come here and read all about when my sweet Tex was little. The funny things he said and did. Life is so different from when I could blog often in the evenings after my little girls went to bed, so who knows? I know it’s been so long, I couldn’t even remember how to start a new post a first! But I figured it out. It’s like riding a bike I guess.

Tomorrow, my baby turns six.

How I Made the Switch to Charlotte Mason

Posted on July 28, 2021July 29, 2021 by Amy

There are two things that have been true about me for all the years I have been homeschooling my kids (8 years):

Every year, I have changed nearly everything in my curriculum from the previous year (here’s one example, here’s another)
Every year, I have looked longingly at Charlotte Mason-style curriculum for many hours, seeing how beautiful and fulfilling it looks and trying to figure out how to do it myself. Inevitably I end up feeling completely lost and overwhelmed, and give up.

This year, things have changed. For this past 2020-2021 school year I did change almost everything in my curriculum again (from what I had used in 2019-2020). However, this next year 2021-2022 I am NOT changing again. That’s right, I am keeping with the same plan from this past year. I will of course get some new books for grade levels and do some tweaking to improve my schedule, but we’ll be doing the same curriculum two years running for the first. time. ever.

How could this be??? I finally tried Charlotte Mason!

You guys. It is so amazing and beautiful and all that I have dreamed it would be for all these years of wanting to do it. In years past I have mostly looked at the Ambleside Online site when thinking about trying CM. AO is lovely of course, but when I finally decided to go with CM, I chose to primarily follow the Mater Amabilis plan, which is Catholic Charlotte Mason, and it provided all the resources and info I needed to jump into the CM method this year. I’m so glad I did.

Full disclosure: I spent many, many hours last summer reading and researching and agonizing over how much of the MA work my kids could/should do together, and how much they would do individually, and how to still work out the CM stuff with the Catholic Schoolhouse stuff. Since there wasn’t much else to do during The Summer of The Virus, I was able to pore over many resources to figure out a way to use Charlotte Mason in our family. I read books, listened to podcasts, and pored over websites and Facebook pages. (In case you’re interested, I’ll link to the resources I used at the bottom of this post.)

Where I started: We have always done history, science, geography, memorization, picture study, poetry, catechism, music appreciation, Latin, and other such things all together at the beginning of the day during what we call “Table Work” (some people call it Morning Time). In years past, this time together at the table would often last an hour to an hour and a half or even more sometimes. Then when we were done, I’d send the girls to their desks to do their individual work. They never had a set order or time frame in which to do their desk work. I gave them a list of work each day, which I wrote in their notebook the night before, and they would just go through it in whatever order they wanted, taking turns doing whatever they needed to do with me as I was able.

This worked okay. But it was problematic in two ways. The first is that I spent way too much time preparing the night before for the following day by writing everything in their notebooks. I got the idea for the notebooks from Sarah Mackenzie, who said she is able to do her kids’ notebooks in a very short time each night. (I clearly am not Sarah Mackenzie!) The second, and greater problem was that the school day seemed to drag on way into the afternoon and their lessons seemed to take much longer than they really needed to. When I started learning about the Charlotte Mason method, I loved that one of the things she insisted on was the need for short lessons. So for this past year I totally revamped the way our day was scheduled.

Here’s how it worked:

I shifted our school day so we started a half hour earlier, at 8:30 (before this the girls did gym class with their dad, then we’d have breakfast). Then I changed things so our Table Work was only thirty to fifty minutes each day. I wanted to continue this practice, because it is usually the best time of our day, but I needed to make it shorter. I was able to shorten it while still including Latin, picture study, memorization, geography, music appreciation, poetry, read alouds, etc. And I also added in very intentional time set aside for Shakespeare every Monday, because I have had a tendency to neglect Shakespeare and really wanted to be sure to include it this year.

The girls were at their desks doing their individual work by 9-9:20 every day. And they no longer just had a list of things to do in whatever order they wanted, taking however long they wanted to get each thing done. They actually had a block schedule for each day. In their schedule I alternated between subjects where they had to read, like history or geography, and subjects where they were doing some other sort of activity, like math, dictation, or copywork. They also had a set number of minutes to work on each subject, and they were to set a timer and work hard on that subject for the full time allotted, and then move on even if they weren’t quite finished (usually they were or they could finish later in the week). This allowed them to complete almost everything by lunch time, even with a recess time included halfway through the morning. The only things they still had in the afternoons were literature, saint reading, and piano practice.

Each girl had a page like this to follow. On Tuesdays we have Catholic Schoolhouse and catechism class, and we spend an hour each way driving to these, so we do Latin and other subjects in the car during our travel time.

It turned out that we usually didn’t quite follow the schedule exactly, but we kept it close enough that they weren’t doing lessons into the afternoon each day.

My planning time changed in that, instead of sitting down every night and writing the next day’s work in notebooks, I would sit down every six weeks and fill out the girls’ schedules, using those provided on the Mater Amabilis website for guidance. They ended up like this:

For some subjects (like catechism, “Living in God’s Church”), I did not assign particular pages. Instead the girls would read for the time allotted on their schedule (20 minutes if you look above at the schedule for LIGC), leaving enough time for a narration before moving on to the next thing. Mostly this was because I didn’t use the Mater Amabilis books/schedule for this subject and I wasn’t sure how many pages to assign, so it was easier to just have them read for a set time instead of a set number of pages. Each girl had both of these pages on a bulletin board strip above her desk, along with a white board where I could write notes for them for each day if needed.

At the beginning of the year I blocked out a plan for myself to make sure I wasn’t scheduling girls to do subjects that they needed my help with at the same time. Mostly I just worked with them on math and dictation, and listened to recitations, so those are the things I blocked out. It looked like this:

Each girl is represented by a different color. The green at the top is the time I set aside for Bubba’s preschool.

The girls were able to move through their work on their own each day. It really helped to have smooth and easy days and a successful year.

I have a few things I need to tweak for this coming year. I talked with the girls to find out which subjects they felt like they needed more or less time for in their schedules, and I’ll adjust accordingly. I’ll need to figure in more time with Bubba since he’s starting kindergarten this year (!). I need to increase and strengthen the habit of good written narrations. And there are plenty of other areas to improve this year, but it sure is nice to have finally found a curriculum, a method, and a system that works well for our family. Took me long enough!

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Here are the different sources I used to help get started last summer:

Mater Amabilis website and Facebook page (the moms who run the Facebook page are so helpful!)

Simply Charlotte Mason podcast, blog (great book lists), and bookstore

Karen Glass books Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition and Know and Tell: The Art of Narration

The Charlotte Mason Show podcast

A Delectable Education podcast

Big June

Posted on July 7, 2021 by Amy

I love homeschooling my kids. I feel truly blessed to be able to do it. But man, I love summer too. It’s so nice to get to the end of the school year and put away all the books and curricula and just chill for three months. Except this year, we did not chill at all for the first of the summer months. June was full. And busy. And big.

It started with a birthday for this boy.

Then we took a road trip field trip to explore some of the cool things in our state.

The kids did their end-of-the-year showcase for our Catholic Schoolhouse co-op. The four older kids did presentations of memory work with their classes. Then Sis did an individual presentation about Abigail Adams.

Lass and Sis received their Super Scholar trophies for knowing all the memory work for the year. (Miss moved up to the Dialectic level this year and didn’t do memory work.)

And then both Lass and Sis received medals for achieving the “Triple Crown,” which is what they call it when someone earns Super Scholar for all three cycles of memory work.

The next day we had our official last day of school. We had finished all of our classroom work and final exams at the end of May, but I decided to save the final day until after our big field trip and showcase. Our traditions for ending the year include taking last day photos,

going out for lunch (at the same place every year),

and doing an at-home showcase for Dad. The girls recited the Gettysburg Address all together, then each of them and Bubba recited a poem individually. Then they each shared an art project they did during the year, one of our geography maps, and a piano piece. The grand finale was the Hokey Pokey in French (“le Hokey Cokey”).

The next day, the kids and I left for Kentucky. My parents no longer live there, but my grandma’s memorial service was being held not too far from where they used to live, and they wanted to spend some time down there to visit my brother’s family and some of their friends. So they rented a cabin at a marina and asked us to come down for a few days before the memorial service.

We stopped on the way down to visit the birthplace of Wild Bill Hickok (a random roadside attraction)

We got home from Kentucky around 11PM on a Saturday night mid month. Then we went to Mass the following Sunday morning and afterwards left for a week at the Farm!

Putting a crawdad back in the water and watching it get gobbled up by a fish!

After we finally got home from all our travels, the last week of June included eye doctor appointments (one new girl in glasses!!), volleyball camp, dance troupe performances, and a yard sale at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

I saw a meme recently that said, “Adulthood is saying, ‘But after this week things will slow down a bit,’ over and over until you die.” Me about the month of June: “But after this month, things will slow down a bit.” So far it’s true. (It must be if I’m blogging!) We do have a few things coming up, like girls’ camp and a trip to Montana. But nothing like Big June.

Here’s to two months of (finally) (relatively) lazy summer!

The Reading Post/Challenge, Part 2 (The Books)

Posted on April 28, 2021April 29, 2021 by Amy

Okay, here it is. The post you’ve been waiting for. My 5X5 Reading Challenge books revealed! You’ve been on the edges of your seats waiting for this one I know since I posted Part 1 over two weeks ago. Drum roll please…

CATEGORY 1: Authors I Want to Love

I have lots authors I really love. Some of them would even be considered great authors by the literary world, like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Louisa May Alcott, L.M. Montgomery, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemmingway, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Margaret Mitchell. Some are children’s book authors, like Jan Brett, Barb Rosenstock, and Patricia Polaco. Some are less well-known, like Louis de Wohl.

There are also many authors that are very much beloved by others I know and/or by the world in general that I just don’t love. Primarily because I have little to no exposure to them. Hence, this first category.

I’m just going to start right off the bat here with a huge confession. The first book on this list is by an author that I tried to read several years ago and just couldn’t get into. She is a beloved author by many, including some of my dearest friends. I tried to read the book that seems like her most popular. The one everyone loves. The one made into multiple movies/miniseries. Who is this author, you ask? What is this book? I know I’m going to hear it on this one. I’m a little afraid to admit my prior lack of affinity for her work. It’s (gulp) Jane Austen. The book? “Pride and Prejudice,” of course. I just really couldn’t get into the whole Mr. Darcy thing before. Happily, I already jumped into this one and absolutely loved it the second time around. In fact, my devouring of this gorgeous book is the reason it’s taken me so long to finish this post. So, now I’m a Jane Austen lover and have purchased all of her books for my Nook for only a couple bucks. See, this reading challenge is already working!!

The second in this category is Anne Bronte. I wanted to find a love of a Bronte, but I just am not interested in what I’ve tried to read or what I know about Charlotte or Emily. So… Anne. The third is John Steinbeck. I don’t know why “The Pearl” is the only story from my literature textbooks that I remember reading, but I think I must have liked it, so I’m going to try to acquaint myself a bit better with Mr. Steinbeck. Fourth – William Faulkner, um, just because. Fifth – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, because I’ve never read a Sherlock Holmes mystery and I just want to! The books to go with the authors:

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Bronte
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

CATEGORY 2: Books I Should Have Read in School

My girls have some amazing books on their reading lists for school, both now and in the upcoming years (I like to look ahead). And while there is no curriculum that is going to cover all the great books in a K-12 education, they have lots of really good ones. And there sure are a lot I think I should have read in school. A few of them, like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” I’ve already read and enjoyed, and some, like “Catcher in the Rye,” I’ve read and thought were horribly overrated. I’m all about rounding out my paltry education, though so here is a category to address my lack (and most of the books from the first category could be in this one too).

Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Scarlet Pimpernel – Baroness Orczy
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

CATEGORY 3: Books to Reread

These are all books I enjoyed the first time I read them, and I’m either reading them again to share with my girls (“Little Women” on audiobook, “Watership Down”), or just planning to reread for the enjoyment. I’ve found that rereading books I read as a kid/adolescent has been very interesting, and often my perception of them is completely different as an adult/mother. For example (*”Little Women” spoiler alert*), when I read “Little Women” as a child, and even reread it as an adolescent/young adult, I was devastated that Laurie and Jo did not end up together. I hated Amy for “stealing” the guy who should have married her sister. Listening to it now with my girls, they are having the same reaction to the Jo/Laurie/Amy drama that I had back then, but I am seeing it completely differently. I absolutely love Laurie and Amy together now, and I completely agree with Marmee that Jo and Laurie would not have been good together. This has shocked me, as Amy has gone from being my least favorite March sister to my probable favorite!!

Having this experience of changed impressions of some of my favorite books, I considered rereading some books I didn’t like the first time around to see if I might appreciate them upon revisiting. However, I quickly decided that one slog through “Anna Karenina” was enough in my lifetime, and thinking about rereading “Slaughterhouse-Five” makes me want to cry. So I’m sticking to previously loved stories for this category:

Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemmingway
Watership Down – Richard Adams

CATEGORY 4: Catholic Books

I’m always reading Catholic books. I usually have at least one or two I’m working through at any given time. Here are five that I have in my lineup:

Fabiola or the Church of the Catacombs – Nicholas Patrick Wiseman
The Day is Now Far Spent – Robert Cardinal Sarah
Eucharistic Miracles and Eucharistic Phenomena in the Lives of the Saints – Joan Carroll Cruz
The Warning: Testimonies and Prophecies of the Illumination of Conscience – Christine Watkins
A Catholic Soul Psychology – Randolph Severson

CATEGORY 5: Books to Read Alongside my Kids

I mentioned that my kids are reading great books as part of their curriculum or sometimes what they choose to read for fun. I have found some great books by reading theirs. “The Wilderking Series,” “The Wingfeather Saga,” “Hatchet,” and “Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes” are just a few of the books I have loved through reading them with or to my kids. Honestly, I could probably write a lengthy post just about this, but I’ll narrow it down to only five for today, and keep it just to those books that I want to read for myself, not just those that I’m reading to my kids, since this challenge is supposed to help me to increase my grown up reading.

The Giver – Lois Lowry
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster – Jonathan Auxier (also the author of Peter Nimble)
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
Island of the Blue Dolphins – Scott O’Dell

So that’s it. I know it’s so dorky how much I’ve enjoyed planning my categories and books. If you’re a nerd too, I highly recommend it. I’ll give an update at the end of the year to let you know how it goes!

A Dorky Reading Post and a Challenge (part 1)

Posted on April 8, 2021April 29, 2021 by Amy

Disclaimer: This is a really nerdy post about books and reading. If if that’s not your thing, probably just skip this one.

I’ve written a lot about my love of reading to and with my kids (check out the “books” label in the Topics drop down menu on the right). As my girls get older and books get bigger, both in size and subject matter, I’m enjoying reading many books with them that I never read when I was younger.

I have come to realize that, though I have been an avid reader my whole life, there’s a whole lot of great literature I was never exposed to. I never read a single classic book all through my elementary, middle, and high school years. At the public school that I attended, in our literature classes we had textbooks. So we probably read excerpts from classic literary works, though I don’t really remember which ones (except randomly I recall “The Pearl” from elementary school). I took a Shakespeare class in high school during which we halfheartedly read through a few of the Bard’s plays (“Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Tempest,” I think). In college, my poorly chosen “literature” class (or maybe it was a writing class?) was something having to do with “Women’s Studies,” and the only book I remember reading in that class was Paula Kamen’s “Feminist Fatale.” It was capital-A Awful. I took one European Literature class during a short summer session my senior year, in which I read Camus’ “The Plague,” Goethe’s “Faust,” and Hesse’s “Narcissus and Goldmund.” You guys, Shakespeare aside, these are the only three classic works of literature that I read for a class in my entire school career. Three.

That’s not to say I never read good books on my own in my younger years. I did. “Little Women” and “Little Men.” “Anne of Green Gables” (the entire series). All of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. “Gone With the Wind” was a favorite. I read “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn” at some point. Probably quite a few more. But nothing in school, and as I see all these amazing books that are popping up in our curriculum now, I’m so excited for the girls to read them.

As an adult, I have at various times made an effort to expand my reading horizons to include more excellent literature, rather than just the mass market suspense novels I blew through like crazy in my twenties. Here and there I have even had some success with this. I have mentioned in previous posts a list from Time Magazine of the best 100 English-language novels from 1923 (when Time Magazine began) to 2005 (when the list was published). I’m not all that sure that the list really includes any kind of true consensus of great literature from the time period it reflects (um, “Slaughterhouse-Five”????). It was compiled by just two Time Magazine writers, after all. But there are a lot of great titles on there, and it gave me a great place to start, so I set a goal at one point to read through those (I had read three of them when I started), and I managed to get through 17 of them. (For fun, check out the list here and see how many you’ve read. I would love to hear about them, as I am weirdly obsessed with this list for some reason. I’ll put mine at the bottom. And for extra fun, here’s another top 100 of all time to check out. I’ve only read 10 of those.)

Unfortunately, my efforts to read through the list books, and a lot of others pretty much fizzled out when homeschooling got more involved, and I started having to work a lot harder to find time to read for pleasure. I also began reading books related to helping me deepen my faith and my understanding of Catholicism, so what time I was finding for reading was mostly spent on titles in that area (I wrote a post about my favorite Catholic books back in 2016, and will do another updated one in the not too distant future).

Frankly, in the past few years I have been pretty bad at setting aside time for myself to read for pleasure.

So, to bring things full circle in my long-winded summary of my life as a reader, as I find that my children are reading great books for school that I have never read, I discover that I want to read them too. I want to get back to trying to read more great, classic literature again. I want to learn to appreciate some beloved authors, whom I’ve just never gotten into.

I want to be a reader again.

So, to that end, I’m starting a fun reading challenge for this year. It’s called the 5X5 Reading Challenge and it’s from the Schole Sisters blog/podcast. You can check it out here.

In a nutshell, you choose five categories of books, to give breadth to your reading (these can be subject matter, author, genre, or anything really), then choose five books for each category, to give depth to your reading. I’ve been having so much fun coming up with my categories and books! (I told you I’m a nerd.)

This post has already gotten too long with my possibly-annoying over-share of my lifetime of reading, so I’m not going to go into detail about all of the books I’ve chosen for my challenge, but big dork that I am, I will compose a post with excessive bookish detail very soon.

Here are the books I’ve read from the TIME list:

An American Tragedy

Animal Farm

Brideshead Revisited

Catch-22

The Catcher in the Rye

Death Comes for the Archbishop

Gone With the Wind

I, Claudius

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Lord of the Rings

1984

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The Power and the Glory

Slaughterhouse-Five

The Sun Also Rises

Things Fall Apart

To Kill a Mockingbird

The ones in blue are the overlap with the Modern Library list. Which ones have you read?

2020 In Photos

Posted on March 26, 2021 by Amy

JANUARY

The girls all got to perform in “The Snow Queen”

FEBRUARY

MARCH

Totally staged… no one actually got hurt going down this awesome sledding hill

_______________________________________Right about here, the world shut down_______________________________________

First haircut. I can’t even blame COVID, because I wouldn’t have taken him to get it professionally done anyway. I’ve never been awesome at cutting the boys’ hair, but this one turned out a little worse than usual (in my defense he would not be still!!) Fortunately, we had nowhere to go and no one to see how bad this cut was.

One of my favorite things to come from the COVID shutdowns was that my older two girls felt sorry for their sister because she couldn’t see any friends or go anywhere fun for her birthday, so they secretly planned an early morning birthday party just for the three of them, complete with games, homemade prizes, decorations, party favors, etc. AND, they enjoyed it so much they have kept up the tradition for each birthday since then, even after the locked down period ended.

APRIL

Some stuff was hard to get at the grocery store for a while, so I started baking bread!!

Our Holy Thursday family foot washing tradition

MAY

My dad came over to teach the girls how to make fire

Look how surprised she looks that she did it!

JUNE

JULY

We had a date night fishing on my husband’s boat. Right after we went out the temperature began to drop, it became super windy and choppy, and then it started to rain. We sped the whole way home in rain that felt like icy little spikes hitting my face. But, it was the first time I had been out on the boat in 13 years, so that was cool.

AUGUST

Poor baby had a fever up to 107. A few days later his rash told us it was just roseola, but on this day he was getting tests at the hospital.

We discovered an amazing new nearby park, and went there for Lass’s birthday

SEPTEMBER

First day of co-op. Bubba was in a big kid class!

I was so excited to hook up this bike trailer for the boys. I thought it would be the most awesome thing ever to be able to go on bike rides with all the kids instead of me walking while the girls rode. You guys. They. are. *heavy*. I thought I was going to die every time I took them for a ride. We didn’t take too many bike rides.

He was so excited to hold this kitty. Check out his brother trying to sneak in some petting.

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

We have a New Year’s party the night before Advent, and the new Church year, begin

DECEMBER

This photo was taken at about 3am Christmas morning, after midnight Mass

Call It a Comeback

Posted on March 15, 2021 by Amy

Oh, you guys.

I have been thinking about writing a blog post for so many months now.

A few times I’ve typed something up, only to not press “Publish.” It feels so awkward to come back to writing after not having done so for such a long time, especially since everything is so bizarre in the world right now. I don’t know what to write about. It seems strange to just publish a post like normal out of the blue. So here’s my attempt at coming back and not being weird because I’m talking about how weird it is to post again after so long. I’m just going to start typing and see what happens…

Sooo, what’s new? Check out how big my kids are all of a sudden:

It seems like just yesterday we were here:

Or here:

My husband was showing videos from his phone to me and the girls the other day. The girls were so little and cute. Their little voices!!! It made me remember how glad I am that I have this blog. I’ve enjoyed from time to time looking back through the posts here and seeing the photos of my girls when they were so little or reading about something we did.

One example: Lass got such a kick out of me telling her about the time she was dilly-dallying while we were trying to get ready to go somewhere and I was on her to get her shoes on. She was singing and twirling and doing everything but putting her shoes on and I told her for a third (or fourth?) time to get. her. shoes. on. And she responded with “MOM! I AM! Stop talking.” (You can read all about it here). I didn’t remember that particular episode, or the others mentioned in that post for that matter. I ended up reading the whole post to the girls, and we all got several good laughs from it.

When my girls were little, the three of them, three and under, life was a little bit of a blur. I was sleep deprived, and seemed to just be changing diapers and washing diapers on repeat forever and ever, and I was a bit frazzled, I suppose, and there is so much I don’t remember! So this blog has been such a blessing for me to look back on as all of my babies are growing up too quickly before my very eyes.

I’m going to try to start writing again so I’ll have all these years in stories too. My girls as they grow into teenagers (*gulp*) and my boys as they’re still fairly little. Here is a recent episode that gave us all a chuckle:

I haven’t written enough about my boys for you all to know that my youngest child, whom I’ll call Tex, since he hasn’t ever really had an established blog name and his siblings say, “Don’t mess with Texas” in reference to him, is a dear, sweet, yet quite ornery child. You could say he’s spirited. And feisty. For perspective, he has more tantrums in the span of a week or two than all of my other children combined had in the entirety of their toddlerhoods. He is definitely a precious gift from God, who will hopefully contribute greatly to my sanctification.

Anyway. The other day we were having dinner and Tex got mad. This is quite a common occurrence, but on this particular day his ire arose because he had refused to sit at the table to eat his food, so I took his plate away and said he was done. He screamed. He stomped. He balled his little hands into fists and then yelled at my husband and me, “I’m going to jump out of this house! And I’m not going to see you ever again!” Then he said something about going to live at a toy store.

I have two observations about this. 1) I’m fairly certain this was his way of saying, “I’m going to run away!” although he has never heard of the concept of running away, nor has he heard any of his siblings say anything like this. 2) He has never been to a toy store (that may sound weird, but the child has literally spend a third of his life in a bizarre twilight-zone lockdown-ish existence).

Here he is with part of a large piece of foam that he had shoved way up into his nostril. We had to pull it out in pieces with tweezers.

A few other photos of recent happenings:

I think in the past I have said I was coming back to blogging, and then I’d write a post or two and fade away into bloggy-silence again. Maybe I should say, “Don’t call it a comeback!” just to cover myself in case I do the same again. Or maybe I should challenge myself, and call it just that.

Homeschooling in the Time of Quarantine

Posted on March 18, 2020 by Amy

Wow, you guys. It has been a crazy week. Most people are now stuck at home, quarantined to one degree or another, though at this point there isn’t really anywhere to go anyway with everything closed. I mean, we stayed home a lot before, but this is a new level of HOME.

It seems like nearly every school in the country has been shut down at this point and now just about everyone is, in some ways, homeschooling, whether they want to or not.

I’m seeing lots of memes on Facebook with kind of snarky comments about everyone having to homeschool now. I’m not really a huge fan of the comments that are poking fun at people who are suddenly finding themselves in the position of having to do school at home with their kids, except for this one (I edited off the top comment, because it was rude):

Yeah. That pretty much sums it up.

Personally, I can’t imagine what it would be like to suddenly find yourself in a position of having to do school with your kids at home. In many, if not most cases, these suddenly-homeschooling parents don’t get to choose their own curricula and activities (which is part of the fun of it). They have been sent home with their kids school assignments that they now have to complete at home. I’m sure the kids are not super excited about that and it’s all just a bit overwhelming at times.

I have seen some parents who are really excited about this, who have said they had wanted to try homeschooling and now they get their chance. And I have seen some parents who are saying they’re nervous, annoyed, or lacking confidence in their ability to pull this off. I even saw where one mom posted about how she yelled at her kids most of the day and then she thanked her children’s teachers for putting up with how awful they are (I think that one was meant to be at least partly in jest. I hope.).

I would like to say, first of all, to anyone who is reading this and feeling overwhelmed by suddenly having to do school at home with your kids: YOU CAN DO THIS.

Secondly, I would like to just offer a few little tips to maybe help things to go smoothly-ish. I posted a link to this post on my Facebook page, which has lots of ideas and links for practical things you can do during the day, including podcasts, booklists, video streaming, online art classes, and so on. My list here is less about specific school-y things to do and more about how to make the shift to school at home a little less painful.

Tip #1: Have a plan/routine to start your day.

Example, after breakfast and morning chores, I used to put on a song every morning just before 9. My kids knew that the song was the signal that it was about time to start school, so they’d come to our kitchen, which is near the schoolroom. Often there would be a little quick dance party, and then when the song was over, everyone would move into the schoolroom and the day would start.

We don’t do this anymore, because my husband has instituted “gym time” before school starts. Now morning chores are done before breakfast and once our morning meal is cleaned up, the kids all go downstairs for some sort of gym exercise that my husband writes for them on our white board in the basement. They do this for about half an hour and then as soon as they’re done, school starts in the schoolroom. We have our routine timed so they still get into the schoolroom about 9am. We always start with prayer, singing the Doxology, and saying the Pledge of Allegiance, to further formalize the “official” start to our day.

My point is, there is a known routine that helps us to move from regular morning stuff to school time. And because it’s the same every morning, I don’t (usually) get grumbling and complaining about it being time for school. I think it also helps that we get school done first thing in the morning, so I don’t have to try to round everyone up after they’ve been able to get absorbed in other stuff. So I guess that’s tip #2.

Tip #2: If possible, do school first thing in the morning after breakfast/morning chores.

Tip #3: Don’t try to make school at home look like school at school. It’s okay if they don’t do all their work sitting at the table or if they need regular breaks, or whatever. I have a kid who always takes all of her reading assignments into our pantry and reads them while sitting on top of our chest freezer. I think that’s pretty weird, but she gets it done so who cares? And also…

Tip #4: Don’t try too hard to match some idealized idea you have about what school at home should look like. I mean, I’d really like to be reading Shakespeare to my kids on a blanket under a tree in our backyard whilst they construct to-scale dioramas of the Globe Theater… or something, but that’s not likely to happen. It’s a great benefit of homeschooling to be able to do science experiments and art projects and nature walks and poetry tea times and all those things. But if that’s not your thing, don’t sweat it. And if you do want to add in this stuff, just do one or two things to start. Not all the things at once, or you’ll burn out.

Tip #5: Read aloud. Just pick a book, pick a time of day, and gather your kids around while you read to them, even if they can read for themselves.

Tip #6: Bribe them with food. But don’t necessarily let them know you’re bribing them. Have a poetry tea time (nothing complicated, just have snacks and tea or another tasty beverage while you peruse poetry books together and read aloud from them for each other), eat a snack that somehow goes along with something your kids are learning about in their schoolwork (this doesn’t have to be complicated either… I mean I made corned beef hash out of a can for St. Patrick’s Day yesterday), or just bake something together for fun (and math). Or sometimes do make it obvious you’re bribing them! My kids rarely get to chew gum. But they know that if they have a cheerful attitude and do our work without complaining during Table Time (our version or Morning Basket: schoolwork done all together at the table before everyone breaks away to individual work), they can have a piece (except right now because: Lent). Food makes everything better.

^ They wrote “The Corn Laws” in cookie frosting on the plate and then stuck microwaved popcorn to it^

Tip #7: Last and most importantly, let yourself enjoy your kids and try not to stress about their schoolwork. Schools are probably going to be closed for much longer than two weeks. The work will get done. They will learn and they will be fine. Your connection with them is much more important that how much schoolwork they get done (I have to remind myself of this often!!)

Shifting from regular school to homeschooling would be a huge adjustment under the best circumstances, and both parents and kids would need time to acclimate to such a huge change, even if they had been expecting it and were prepared for the shift. In these times of unexpected, perhaps unwanted, and probably unplanned-for homeschooling, everyone needs some breathing room, some compassion, and some time to figure things out. Homeschooling is hard! It’s okay for it to be messy sometimes. But hard as it may feel, we all have an opportunity to slow down and enjoy each other for a while. You can do this. I hope that you will truly love this opportunity to be your kids’ teacher all day, at least for a while. I am praying for you.

2019 in Photos (Alt. Title ~ Better Late than Never)

Posted on March 9, 2020March 9, 2020 by Amy

I’m two months late, but here’s a recap of 2019. In photos:

JANUARY

^Holy Name of Jesus^

^First steps^

FEBRUARY

^First haircut^

^My first time skiing^

^Owl pellets^

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

(May was a big month!)

^Field trip^

^Farm trip^

Florida trip!

^We were all soaked after the orca show^

^ First Holy Communion^

^May crowning^

^Last day of school^

^Big boy haircut!^

JUNE

Chicken butchering day

^New contacts^

JULY

AUGUST

^Her first hunt^

First day of school

SEPTEMBER

Labor Day party (Theme was “Historical Figures”)

Arkansas trip

OCTOBER

^Homemade gnocchi^

^Mom vacation^

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

^Quilts made with Grandma^

^Heading to Mass Christmas morning^

Homeschool Plan 2019-2020 Edition

Posted on August 21, 2019 by Amy

School starts on Monday around here. We’ll be doing 5th, 4th, 2nd, and a little bit of preschool this year. I’m frantically organizing curriculum, planning our schedule, and cleaning our mess of a school room (does anyone else have a hard time getting rid of books and curriculum??). I took a picture of our school room at this very moment, resisting the urge to clean it up for the photo. This is after I spent hours yesterday organizing, rearranging, and purging:

Okay, let’s be honest. I didn’t really purge much. A small stack of books went to my donate pile, and I threw a bunch of the girls’ papers in the recycling. I have a really hard time getting rid of books and curriculum. Anyway…

I have commandeered the island in our kitchen for planning for the past week, which I think drives my husband crazy but is unavoidable, since as you can see in the photo above I have no room on the table in the school room yet. Plus, I have to keep an eye on little boys while I’m planning, and I’m certainly not letting them loose in that mess. I know it will soon be a delightfully organized space, perfectly conducive to learning, but for the moment it is not a good place for little boys (or anyone else for that matter).

Here’s what my island has been like:

In terms of curriculum, we’ve made quite a few changes this year that I’m really excited about. One pretty big change comes from having discovered Our Lady of Victory as a source for wonderful traditional Catholic curriculum. We attend a Latin Mass, and it has been a bit hard to find curriculum that teaches about the Mass in the traditional Latin rite, so this was a great find (I learned about it from a friend). Look at these amazing books, which are Miss’s 5th grade religion:

We are using OLV for religion, spelling, and handwriting, and also grammar for Lass and Sis.

Miss’s language arts/literature is another thing that is new this year. It’s called The Good and the Beautiful, and it is absolutely both of those things. You can get a lot of their curriculum free for download if you want to print it yourself, which we did a little bit the last two years. I like how it includes spelling, grammar, literature, art, and geography in fairly short daily lessons. And Miss can mostly do it independently.

Yet another change is from Singapore to Saxon Math for Miss and Lass. I think Singapore was getting the job done, but I like how Saxon includes daily math facts speed practice, mental math, and problem solving at the beginning of each lesson, and includes constant reviewing.

So, yeah. I just realized that for my girls’ individual work, I changed almost everything: religion, math (except for Sis), spelling, handwriting, grammar… Miss is still using the same typing curriculum from The Good and the Beautiful, and we’ll still use IEW for writing practice and assignments. Sis still has Singapore for math and All About Reading, though I actually bought her the reading curriculum from OLV too and might switch that as well. Yikes, that’s a lot of changes in one year!!

Here’s the basic stuff/core subjects for each girl:

Miss

Lass

Sis

Much of our work that we still all do together, which includes memory work, religion, history, science, geography, latin, and fine arts will still be the same. Most of our memory work will come from Catholic Schoolhouse, which we have enrolled in again for this year. We will also do additional poetry and Bible verse memorization. And we will continue to memorize the Baltimore Catechism too.

We will be using The Story of Civilization again for our history spine (Volume III this year), and continuing to mix it up with various living books for science and geography. Science will cover ecology, physics, earth science, and health. Geography will cover Oceania, Central and South America, Africa, and Antarctica. We’re going to start off the year with Draw the World, so I won’t forget this fun geography activity like I did last year. Then we’ll do the books for the individual continents as well.

I’m switching latin to Prima Latina, which I’ve had for years but never used. Fine arts will include picture study portfolios from Simply Charlotte Mason again. I’m thinking Da Vinci and Michelangelo this year. The girls will still have piano lessons, ballet/jazz, and knitting classes. They will also all be choosing, planning, and implementing at least one project this year.

We will read a lot of books. Here are a few that are on the list for the year, either as read alouds or individual reading assignments for the girls:

That’s a lot already, but we’ll also try to add in art projects and games. One of my favorite things that we have ever done in school is using Five in a Row for learning through picture books. We don’t seem to have time to do that too much anymore, but I’m going to add these in a few times this year because we all love it so much, and because I have a preschooler again, who will especially enjoy these I hope.

And speaking of my preschooler, I’m keeping things very loose with him. I think he will really like being able to join in for parts of the school day with his sisters. I am not planning to bring him in more than twice per week, but we’ll see how it goes. We’ll mostly just do coloring, cutting, pasting, and playing. And lots of reading. I have plenty of faith and Bible based picture books and alphabet picture books, so I will try to focus on those. But I will likely just follow his lead. My goal is for him to have fun and to learn the Sign of the Cross on his own and become more familiar with lots of Bible stories. He knows many basic prayers already just from hearing them every day, but we will work on those as well. I got these boxes for sensory bins for him to play in too:

I’m thinking his sisters can take turns planning little activities to do with him each week too, like felt board activities, learning a new nursery rhyme/song, simple crafts, games, etc.

And that’s about it. Of course, we will do lots of praying and working on growing in virtue. Those things are more important than any of the rest of it anyway, and hopefully will help keep us on track.

I’m very excited to start. As long as I can get that room organized first…

Motherhood and Miscellany

Author: Amy