Weekly Wrap-Up

It's been another good week at the United School.  Here's what we've been up to:

Look closely at Thing 2's desert diorama and you'll find 2 coyotes,
a chuckwalla, a gila woodpecker, a tortoise and a sidewinder.
Thing 2 had a blast creating this and, proud mama that I am,
I think it's pretty impressive for a kindergartner.

Thing 1 chose a coral reef for her dioarama.  Cellophane doesn't
lend itself to photography, but see if you can find a giant sea slug,
several anemones, kelp, brain coral, and various reef fish.
Well done, Thing 1!  I especially love the anemones fashioned
out of clay and pipecleaners, Thing 1's very own creative brainchild.

Today we did a nature study at a wildlife rehabilitation center.  This beauty
is a sandhill crane.  Thing 2 circled back twice to look at the cranes.

I've spared you the photos of this bobcat noshing on a
frozen rat.  We heard every crunch and Thing 2 was fascinated!
This particular bobcat had been hit by a car in Southern IL.
He has lasting vision problems and neurological damage
and would be unable to survive in the wild.

Veronica had amazing appeal for a rat.  She really did!
We all had our turn petting her.  She was soft and silky.

Both kids got to hold Rocky the ring-necked dove.  And that's Ranger Kev
with his Santa Claus beard in the background.  What an amazing guy!  He does
nature hikes for homeschoolers in various area forest preserves.  (He homeschooled
his own kids back when no one did.)  We could have talked to him all day long
and he was beyond generous in sharing information about the animals with the kids.
Thank you, Ranger Kev!  You made our day.

Gratitude really is the antidote to complaining.  I am so incredibly grateful for this opportunity to homeschool my children.  How did I get so lucky?

May our blessings be many and our complaints be few.  Amen!

Election Day

No homeschooler worth her salt can miss an opportunity like Election Day.  Leading up to the day, the kids and I studied the candidates and read a little about the election process and the electoral college.  They know red states from blue states, elephants from donkeys, and Romney from Obama.  On election day, after a little more talk about the process and some speculation about who might win, we headed off to the polls.  I talked the kids through the process, explaining each step from looking up a voters name and address to verifying the signature to filling in the ovals on the ballot and turning it in.  And then, we headed off to our local library where the kids were allowed to vote in their own election - for favorite book. They even had mock voting booths.  Too cute.  And, they each got their own sticker to boot, just like mom's.

The Owl, by Thing 1

The owl how swiftly he flies,

his wings make no noise as they beat,

he swoops upon his prey without sign of approach ,

he flies back to his nest,

for a satisfying rest.

Thing 1 was inspired to write and publish a poem this morning.  This is the fruit of her Thursday morning writing journal.  She chose the accompanying picture.  Beautiful!

Thou shalt not complain...

...for the next 40 days.  I attended a yoga workshop on Saturday and was given a 40-day practice not to complain.  I love it!  It's a welcome and much-needed challenge.  It's all too easy for me to fall into relating to people by complaining and yet, I realize that it does nothing to improve the vibration around me.  Gratitude is the antidote to complaining, so gratitude is my practice.  Yoga is more than just asana.  Join me if you like! I'd love the company.  And now, in that spirit, let me share with you some of the things we've been up to.

On Halloween, we spent the second half of our day partying in costume.  We did mazes, dot-to-dots, and word searches, played games, did crafts, and baked cookies!

It's amazing what you can do with
a toilet paper tube and some cupcake liners!

Making mom's famous 100% whole wheat cut-out cookies.

Since Halloween, we've been up to a little of this and a little of that.  Check us out!

The kids were inspired to meditate as ghosts.  (You're supposed to laugh.  I did!)

The kids were inspired to make me lunch.  Isn't it gorgeous?

Ben LOVES his geoboards.

All in all, the kids (and I) agree:

That should read "Homeschool is great!"

What a difference a well-timed lecture makes!

Knock on wood for me; the kids are being total angels this week.  Apparently, they heard my cry for change loud and clear.  There's been (almost) no complaining, and they have been extremely cooperative.  I don't mean to leave the impression that my kids are generally uncooperative, quite the opposite.  They're typically very agreeable; we had just gotten a bit off track by the end of last week.  I'm glad to see we are back on track.  It makes homeschooling so much more pleasant.

I haven't been blogging mid-week much lately, but this has been such a spectacular last 2 days that I have to report.  Yesterday, we began with reading the bible.  (We are in Genesis 28, just after Rebekah and Jacob betray Esau.)  My plan is to read the bible on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until we are done with it.  After that, I would like to work our way slowly through other great religious tomes like the Torah, the Quran, the Guru Granth Sahib, the Vedas, and of some of the Buddhist texts.  Of course, they will all need to be children's versions and I have only located a few so far.  I'm excited to read them myself and to have the opportunity to expose the children to some of the universal teachings which hold true across all religions.  ("Do unto others as you would have done unto you," comes to mind.)

On Tuesday and Thursday, then, we'll begin our day with yoga.  We did just that today.  It was so refreshing to begin the school day with movement, music, and meditation.  I taught a short set and then we did a chanting meditation (Kirtan Kriya) which both kids know and love.  I'm not sure if it was the physical exercise or the centering effect of the meditation, but we had an especially engaging day of learning.  The kids worked diligently on their basics this morning: math and literacy.  Thing 1 has completed her spelling unit for the week already and is starting another one.  (We normally only do one unit  per week.)

Then, over the lunch hour, the kids pulled out materials to construct dioramas for science.  We're studying biomes.  Thing 1 has chosen to do a coral reef diorama and Thing 2 will do a desert.  They worked for well over an hour at that and I didn't have the heart to tear them away, even though I wanted to do a unit on the election.  This is one of the advantages of homeschooling.  I can allow their work (and their attention span) to come to a natural conclusion.  What a gift!  They did finally tire of making clay models of anemones and cacti, and then we launched into our election unit.

We lingered over decorating some posters I had found at the dollar store on the party system and only had time to briefly discuss the candidates.  We'll pick it up again later this week or next and then, we'll have our own election at home.  With only 3 votes, it won't be as exciting as a public school mock election, but they'll get the idea.

And that's all the news that isn't!  Stay tuned...

Weekly Update

It's been a little too long since I blogged.  Things have been good, but we continue to face challenges in certain areas.

Let's start with the good first.  I started reading the bible to the kids this week.  It's part of Thing 2's curriculum and we've been skipping it since the beginning of the year.  The kids are beginning to think of it as a taboo subject which is not at all my intention.  References to the bible are everywhere in our culture, in literature, even in our country's history.  Religious convictions or not, the bible has played an important role in history.  Everyone (myself included) should know at least a little about the bible.  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristin-m-swenson-phd/five-things-everyone-shou_b_835721.html)

That said, I do want to temper the bible with healthy doses of science and reality, so after reading Genesis, I taught a lesson on the Big Bang and evolution.  The kids were truly interested, asking lots of questions, so we decided to take a trip to the Field Museum to see their Evolving Planet exhibit.  That was on Tuesday.  The kids were so engaged!  It was one of those moments of pure homeschooling joy.  What better way to bring evolution to life?  Even better, mid-week, very few people were at the museum and we had the exhibit almost entirely to ourselves.  We meandered through, reading the descriptions of each period and watching various videos.  I felt like the kids really began to understand the history of our planet and the history of life on earth.  Beautiful.

The rest of our week unfolded in a fairly quotidian manner.  We continue to do math and literacy daily.  Thing 1 does spelling and grammar 3 times a week.  We were a little light on literature and history this week, but we'll pick it up next week.  Which brings me to our struggles...

Thing 1 is a whiner.  OK, perhaps that's too harsh.  How could I say such a thing about my own precious child?  Well, you teach her 5 days a week and live with her!!  You'd say it too.  This issue - the complaining, the whining, the "but I'm too tiiiiiired Mom" is easily my biggest current challenge in homeschooling.  This is not something she would ever have done at public school.  She wanted to impress those teachers.  Apparently, the unconditional love of a mother doesn't do much to motivate a child.

So what to do about this?  When Thing 1 and I had a frank discussion last night at bedtime about the issue, she suggested (in a whiny tone, of course) that I should just "lessen the work."  Not the answer I wanted to hear.  The whole point of homeschooling is to provide a broader education than the public schools and if I lighten the load, we will only be doing the bare minimum.  Instead, I think next week I need to crack down on the whining.  I gave a lecture about how lucky the kids are to be homeschooled.  I told them that other mommies send their kids to school so that they can go to the gym, have lunch with their friends, and get a part time job.  "I could do that too," I said!  "No, no, don't do that!  We love being homeschooled!"

So, I explained, next week, I will vociferously enforce a no whining, no complaining, no bad attitude policy.  We shall see.

Other than that, I have to say, I do enjoy being home with the kids.  It's a more relaxed environment.  We don't have to do the mad dash to school every morning and we get to spend lots of time together.  We get to rush off to the museum on a moment's notice to study evolution and snuggle on the couch daily.  Despite my own whining and complaining,

Too busy for a meaningful life??

OK, I've just had a very negative e-mail interaction with a puppy breeder.  It was insulting and condescending and driven entirely by the breeder's admission that she was simply "too busy" to help educate me and my family.  'Busyness' has become the bane of our culture.  Anymore, it seems everywhere I turn, people wear their 'busyness' as a badge of honor and use it as an excuse for everything.  I get it.  We are busy, but let's bring some consciousness to that and actively work at building more meaning and quality into our interactions and into our daily lives instead of using it as an excuse to erode the quality of our relationships and lives.  Grrr....  Check out this link:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/