Freedom

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

-Albert Camus 

The past week has actually afforded us several days of sunshine, which has been a foreign concept as of late.   We truly have been resigned to a winter palette these last few months--gray, white and black.  These colors, and the settings which they frame, can be beautiful in their own right and, believe you me, I've done everything in my power to look upon them with such eyes--However--the lack of any alternative, any hint of color that would be classified as "one exuding warmth" has been completely and utterly absent.  The sunshine of the past week has had to pierce through the cold and frost but, once penetrated, the effect on skin and soul has been remarkable.  As the slow thaw proceeded I realized that I had almost forgotten that Spring might come.  Really.  There is, I believe, a defense mechanism that kicks in, somewhere around mid January, and its sole purpose is to protect one's heart from the mistaken hope that warm weather exists--now, in the future, or ever.  That is the space within which we've been residing, all the while resigned and reticent.  Spring?  Such is the stuff of dreams!

Thankfully, God is full of grace and love and light and he longs to share that with us silly, shortsighted humans.  So, deep in the space of winter he shines down pure, thick sunshine.  The cold is still present, but it doesn't matter.  The sun rules.

We have discovered, for ourselves, a tract of land behind our property.  It is about five acres and it is hemmed in on two sides by the backyards of two different subdivisions.  We had heard that there was a man who owned this land and that he wanted to develop it but in order to do that, he would have to buy access and right of way and, thankfully, no one has granted him that privilege.  So it sits.  Parts have been cleared of timber, in hopes, I imagine, of future building, but the majority of it remains fairly free of human footprints.  Well, sort of. 

"Our" creek flows through this land and gradually, it gains volume and girth.  The first few hundred yards of land and creek are full of reminders that not everyone shares our love for wild spaces, nor do they see it as sacred and worthy of care and attention.  The creek is littered with tires of varying sizes (beginning with a spare and moving on up to a tractor size), the occasional plastic bottle or aluminum can and, oh yeah, a motor boat.  I wouldn't have believed it, either, if I hadn't seen it myself.  We are still scratching our heads on that one.  But, once you get past those initial indiscretions, it opens up into something closer to the original layout.

The day that we "discovered" it, the ground was still covered in snow and the animal tracks were everywhere--squirrel, rabbit, raccoon, opossum, deer.  Oh, and dog.  Our dog's tracks, since we had brought her along for the adventure, and that of other dogs, most likely from the marauding dogs of our neighbors (one of whom managed to snag himself a chicken dinner from our yard).  The boys kept calling themselves Lewis and Clark and they dubbed Beulah as their very own "Seaman", scouting out new lands and unknown flora and fauna.  Cries of "Mom, look at this!" and "Oh wow, how cool!" pierced the air again and again.  I think it was somewhere within the first hour of this expedition that I realized what I was feeling.

Freedom.

The boys and I had set out on an adventure, by accident.  What started out as simple curiosity led to much more than we had planned.  And that was okay.  In fact, it was more than okay.  And in that freedom, in that letting go of expectations and directives, we were becoming something more.

At one quiet point, as Aidan and I were standing watching the water trickle beneath the ice forms in the creek while simultaneously imagining what variety of animals might be making their home in a huge pile of sticks and leaves, he turned to me.  "I just love this, Mom.  I love being out in nature and being quiet and observing all that is out here.  It just  makes me feel better as a person."

Truer words were never spoken.

Finding Balance...continued

Well, the last few weeks have found us following our hearts.

I decided to abandon a formal structure to our days and just see what happened. We would only do what the boys asked to do. I would respond to any and all requests but I would not push an agenda of any kind. It was a de-schooling exercise, per se. I wanted to give the boys, and myself, the opportunity to shake the whole bottle of creek water and see what settled after the water cleared. Here is just one example of what remained.

Aidan and August LOVE history. Not only that but, evidently for Aidan, the amount of time that I invest in reading and exploring the subject with him is in direct proportion to the amount of love he feels that he receives from me!
?!?!?
In a weepy moment recently, Aidan started bemoaning the fact that he was, "just sad about his life" in general. When I began to wade through the sweeping generalizations that he was throwing at me it slowly became more and more clear that what he was really upset about was that we had stopped reading from our history book. "You've stopped spending time with me reading history," were his words. Because he loves the pursuit of kings and kingdoms and eras and epochs, because this is so much his passion, the fact that we were no longer partners (albeit, temporarily) in that journey represented some grand withholding of love. The simple act of sitting down and reading through our history book (or any other history book for that matter) and discussing it with him is a way that Aidan receives love.

Yikes.

This kind of turns everything on its head for me.

Could it really be that this education, this learning, this whole way of receiving what the world has to give us is, first, rooted in love?
I believe the answer is a resounding Yes.

Once this incredible realization was made, more began to unfold, in time.

We've been reading our fool heads off. Any and everything. Nothing has been off limits. Full access has been given to all literary mediums. And for the first time, Aidan began reading fiction books independently. He has always read non fiction books independently but I was often curious as to whether he would ever make the switch to fiction himself. He has always loved fiction, don't get me wrong, but only when I read it to him. He could sit and listen to story upon story read aloud, either by me or audio book, all the day long. But picking up one of those same books and reading to himself was not something he chose to do. I suppose part of that is because much of what we read aloud is on a higher reading level than he could do on his own, so he just defaulted to listening, rather than reading. But suddenly, he is lapping up books by the armful. His latest obsession is the Magic Tree House books. Now, his reading ability is much higher than these books, I realize that. But what I've also come to realize is that he is using these books as tools. He has chosen books whose topics are reflective of those which we have already studied in history. So when he reads (very easily) these books , he is reinforcing the facts that he has previously visited through our reading of history. He's making the information his own in a way that speaks to him. An added plus--I've caught him reading aloud to his brother. This morning, I found them cuddled up on the couch together reading about Vikings.

This is the kind of thing that I cannot come up with on my own. I can't plan for this or pencil it into a lesson plan (figurative or real). This is an organic creation, arising when all of the right ingredients come together, unfettered by me and my dictates.

But don't get me wrong. I will not be just an innocent bystander. I can't help myself. I love to discover new things--new birds at our feeders, new words in the dictionary, new ways to make the greatest pizza dough in the world, new ways to add numbers in my head. And I will continue to share these with my boys as they come along. That's just the way I roll. In fact, I'm beginning to think that one of the greatest contributions that I can make towards my boys' education is to show them me being myself.

Again, it is all about balance. I refuse to make this adventure in learning a mere copy of someone else's experience.

We are just going to have to continue being ourselves.

Rabbi Zusya said that on the Day of Judgment, God would ask him, not why he had not been Moses, but why he had not been Zusya. ~Walter Kaufmann

Finding Balance

We are all born originals. Why is it that so many of us die copies?
Edward Young

It has been a befuddling week for me.

I found myself in a funk that I couldn't shake, nor could I identify it's cause, exactly. It was just there, lurking behind my morning coffee and settling in just as the day's activities would, under regular circumstances, naturally be getting started.

And then it seemed to descend deeper, like a thick fog that sneaks up on you and causes you to turn around and check your last step in order to feel better about your next one.

Before long, I found myself sitting, waiting, wondering...

Intuiting that there may be some hormones drawing me to this rabbit hole, I attempted to pick myself up, to move in order to keep from sinking further. I gathered up our "school materials" and decided play make-believe. Maybe if I just went through the motions, my inside self would snap out of it and move on. That can happen.
Sometimes.

But then "school" was such a struggle. No one wanted to do anything. Everything I said to try and sway them felt wrong. I ...They...We... everything seemed off balance in some super cosmic way and I decided that I was going to have no part in it. So I declared that we were done for the day. Just like that. Do what you want. Read all day. Play all afternoon. Wonder what in the hell is wrong with mom. Whatever. (And I didn't say that with an adolescent tone. I truly meant, do whatever in the world you feel like doing.)

It was then that the fog began to wane. As if the choice to do what we wanted to do ushered in more light. Much like when the morning plugs on, despite the limited visibility, and the sunlight, by being itself, begins to burn off the blinding fog.

The light, in our case, was me owning up to my wildly vascillating heart.

A heart that adores letting my children lead me to what they want to learn because they obviously know that best.

The same heart that will relentlessly bludgeon my psyche into believing that structure is of the utmost importance and to settle for anything different is irresponsible.

I know that I have blogged about this ad nauseum. I know that I am a broken record. I know that I waste so much precious time worrying and fretting. And I'm so very tired of it. So, very tired.

The world of homeschooling--although wonderful and life giving and an all around stupendous adventure--does have a dark side. That dark side is the incredible temptation to compare your methods, your children, your abilities to that of other families. No matter how hard you try, no matter how confident you may feel (at the moment), no matter what--it happens.

I will observe a friend's child who is of similar age to one of my own and I'll see that they have acquired a skill or a knowledge that my child does not share. Instantly, I go inward and begin to worry, to fret, to bemoan our state of affairs. "We should be learning that! We should have mastered that by now!"...etc.

And no matter how many times I remind myself of the incredible damage this kind of thinking can do, I still indulge in this practice. It is so powerful, this...this ...comparative politics. And so very unfruitful.

Then I stumbled upon this amazing quote:

"To compare is not to prove."
French proverb

If I am going to survive this grand adventure known as "homeschooling" I am going to have to tattoo this truth across the back of my eyeballs. Write it in lipstick on my bathroom mirror--hockey mom style. Brand it upon my big ol' backside like one would a brainless sow. In other words, meditate on it without ceasing until it coats every surface of my heart and mind and soul.

If I continue to compare myself, my methods, my children, my household, my dog, my yard to everyone and everything else, the truth is this:
I'VE PROVED NOTHING!

When I really sit down and have a come to Jesus talk, the truth that I need to grasp with a fierceness and a dedication I've not truly owned before is this:

All we need be is ourselves.

Truly. Completely. Passionately.

Glory in the fact that we love The Story of the World history (Classical method), that we would prefer to spend a great deal of time outdoors just being and observing (Charlotte Mason style), and that when unleashed in a library we allow ourselves to indulge in whatever suits our fancy subject-wise (even if that means we need rolling carts to hold all of our books and we wait until the holidays to pay our fines in canned goods and that we read and re-read every volume written of Hank the Cowdog). If that is who we are, then so be it.

If this is what works best for us then so shall we be.

That funk that I spoke of, that fog that descended so thickly and so effectively obscured my view--that was a result of choosing to compare rather than to be. I, and my children, had begun to lose sight of that which brought us joy and wonder. I had stopped taking pictures and blogging. My boys had found themselves bored and uninspired. Yes, we were moving through a curriculum (that one author had suggested was the best) but what were we really gaining in the process? The truth of the matter is this--I am really an unschooler at heart, with Classical and Charlotte Mason tendencies, but, most importantly, my own passions and hopes and dreams for my children and myself. By taking off that lens and trying to wear those of others (however noble and worthy they might have been and continue to be), I only lost focus, missing the beauty and detail that came more naturally when I was less self conscious and, instead, more self aware.

I want to look back on our learning experience together and be able to describe it like this:

"Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other in both mind and body; to try the manners of different nations; to hear the chimes at midnight; to see sunrise in town and country; to be converted at a revival; to circumnavigate the metaphysics, write halting verses, run a mile to see a fire, and wait all day in the theatre to applaud 'Hernani'." -Robert Louis Stevenson


To be continued...

Gymnastics

I believe that I mentioned in an earlier post that one of the things that the boys have been doing with their time this fall is taking gymnastics. The class is offered through a local gym that offers regular and team gymnastics to the general public, but has graciously reached out to the homeschool community, as well. They have offered us two different classes, held Wednesday mornings, at a very reasonable rate. Honestly, we are only able to do this because their fee is so affordable. And they are a full scale gymnastics gym, complete with all of the requisite equipment, so we are really fortunate to have this opportunity.

When the class first began, I was worried that August was going to get bored very quickly. He is in the Kinder Gym class and the fact that he is on the older side of the age range and very physically adept, it first appeared that he might lose interest. But, happily, after the first few classes that were held primarily in their "small people" section of the gym, his class has moved onto the regular sized equipment and he is getting to do things on the balance beam, the high bar and the parallel bars. You can see him here, getting to swing with gusto on the high bar. He loves it and asks everyday if it is the day for gymnastics. He's very proud of the fact that he can skin the cat with the best of them and I'm sure it is just a matter of time before he is doing flips on the trampoline. Lord help us.

Aidan, on the other hand, had to warm up to gymnastics. Thankfully, after the first class, we only had to hear for about a week about how it was ridiculous that the teachers would expect him to try something that he didn't know if he could do or not. The nerve of some people! But, after the gentle reminder that I gave him about having already paid for a month's worth of classes and his need to honor his commitment, he returned to the second class and has been driven ever since. He has made amazing progress in overcoming some deep seated fears of his (fear of heights, being upside down, exerting himself in any way) and each week he comes home having learned a new skill. I am really very proud of him and hope that he continues to build on each new success.


Oh, and if you're curious about the socialization issue (everyone is, right?), this is one example of what my kids experience. Because the two boys' classes are held in succession, both have about an hour to kill when they are not in class. The different kids who are also waiting find a myriad of things with which to occupy themselves and the majority of the time, it is doing something with each other. One of the other families is really into games and they always bring several different ones each week, inviting any and every one who is interested to join in the play. Here the kids are playing a hand of Twisted Fish and loving every minute of it.

We really do love homeschooling.

Life with chickens

One of the big shames about me not posting for so long is that you have been left out of the egg loop. Our chickens finally started laying eggs in October and we have been trying to get into the egg business ever since. Like I have alluded to in previous posts, tending to these chickens has provided a ride on one of the biggest learning curves of my life. We have basically been making this up as we go (okay, we do read a lot about chickens and such but when you've never done something before and you just start doing it, well... there are a LOT of unknowns) and we have found that we've made some good decisions and some not so good decisions. For example:
*Decision to finally take the plunge and order our chicks==good decision
*Decision to order 50 of the darn things==RIDICULOUS decision
*Decision to butcher the roosters ourselves==good decision (for the incredible education we received in the process)
*Decision to butcher dual-breed birds at 24 weeks of age==unfortunate decision. Yes, we have a freezer full of birds, but we can really only stew them or smoke them (on the grill, people!). If I want to make my fabulous buttermilk oven baked chicken I still have to buy it from the store. That right there really frustrates me, especially when I think that the chicken we do have in the freezer is some of the most expensive meat we have ever had in our possession. It's criminal, really.
*Decision to build our own coop with scrap materials=very frugal/green/whatever-you-want-to-call-it of us decision. This saved us a ton of money.
*Decision to build the frame of the coop with the idea of it being a chicken "tractor" and then changing our minds about that idea mid-stream==not so smart decision. We definitely should have fleshed this idea out a bit more before we started sawing and hammering and committing ourselves to an idea that we flip flopped on. What we ended up with is a coop that is really too small for the number of chickens that we have. Since they only use it to sleep in, we can get away with it. One saving grace to having built a quasi-chicken tractor is that it is moveable, which has come in handy as we figure out the best way to fence in our chickens and keep them out of our neighbors yards while also providing them with fresh ground to graze on. Remember what I said earlier about making this up as we go along? This is a good example of that.


Oh well, live and learn, right? Actually, it has been kind of fun to fly by the seat of my pants on this one. There are not many areas in my life where I can afford to make bad decisions, learn from them and not ruin someone's life/future/psyche in the process.

What you see here are the various hues of our eggs. They really are beautiful and the picture really doesn't do them justice. Some of them are a pale brown, others darker, and even some have spots. Just lovely. Unfortunately, our hens started laying as the days were beginning to get shorter and shorter. The number of hours of light in a day is what determines whether some hens will continue laying through the winter or not. So, we were up to a high of 18 eggs a day and now we are lucky if we get 10. We set our price at $1.50/dozen based on that higher number of eggs a day. That would guarantee that we would cover our feed costs and maybe recoup a small portion of the grand investment these lovely birds have become. Now that our daily numbers have dropped, we aren't even breaking even on the feed. Oh well.
By the way, the eggs are DELICIOUS so, even if we have to eat every cotton pickin' one of them, at least our palates will be satisfied.

The latest drama regarding our chickens has been the nasty turn our temperatures took this week. We had our coldest weather of the season these past few days, even some wintry mix the other night. So, with temperatures diving into the upper teens, I became obsessed with how my chickens were going to survive. See, our coop is really bare bones. No, I mean really bare bones. It's walls are made of tin, for the love of Pete! There is nothing about our coop that is insulated. You can see daylight where the walls meet and the top foot of the coop is open air, covered only by hardware cloth and more tin for the roof. Cheap to build, yes. True shelter, questionable. So, the first day of the arctic blast, I did what any self respecting mother would do. I made the chickens hot oatmeal. Yes, I did and they LOVED it! I just felt that I had to do something to help warm their bones, or at the very least, their combs, wattles and ugly chicken feet. Amazingly, though, these chickens are incredibly resilient. They are, of course, covered in feathers, and that said feature is something I depend upon myself when I snuggle in under my down comforter in my freezing bedroom that hovers around 59 degrees this time of year. They work--amazingly. As long as they are out of direct winds, can hunker down over their feet completely and tuck their heads under their wing, they are pretty much good to go. It's helpful that we also have breeds that are more cold worthy. Remember, three of our birds are of a breed that actually have feathers on their feet! Even better. Also, we decided to rig up, out to the coop, a ridiculously long extension cord fitted with the lamp we used in the brooder when the chickens were but wee chicks and their warmth was of the utmost importance. It kind of helped. A little. At least they can look around at each other all night and know that they are not the only chicken freezing their tail off.

It doesn't mean that they aren't cold, though. These ladies had just come out of the coop, had some hot oatmeal and then settled down on this limb in the yard in order to soak up the weak morning sunshine. They're not exactly warm, but they will most certainly survive.

Admittedly, though, we are still concerned so John spent a few hours yesterday making some modifications to the coop in anticipation of even nastier weather headed our way this week (impending winter storm, frigid wind chills). He stapled some opaque plastic around the hardware cloth at the top of the coop and made a temporary "second" wall out of hardware cloth on the inside of the coop. He then stuffed the pine shavings that we use for bedding and some extra hay down inside of it. We'll see how well that works.

I suppose the worst case scenario is that one morning we might find we have more frozen chicken than we thought. Wouldn't that be grand?

Where has the time gone?

Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires. ~Charles Caleb Colton

I feel like the above sentiment is the only explanation I can come up with as to why it has been so ding dang long since I last blogged. I don't feel as if life suddenly got so busy that I simply didn't have the time nor do I feel like I haven't had good things to say. It truly seems as if, while purposely and intentionally choosing how to go about our days, more time passed than I realized. There are some definitive factors that have played a role, for sure. The biggest being that we are not nearly as "free-form" in how we go about learning around here. As I mentioned in my last post--years ago--we have shifted to a more Classical approach, at least as far as history and language goes, and that has radically changed our dedicated formal learning time. I'm still trying to navigate this new approach and I'm not sure how much of it I want to keep. The history, most definitely, as Aidan and August adore it. But I'm still trying to determine what works best for us in the other areas.

Further, we were involved in our Fall Homeschool Co-op, which recently finished for the season. I made an executive decision to not be involved in the Spring Co-op, for several reasons (some of which I will expand upon later), and I feel good about that choice.

The boys have also started a gymnastics class every Wednesday, which is turning out to be really rewarding for both boys. August is ready to move up to the older class, as he feels like he is beyond his preschool peers in terms of physical ability. I think he may be right but I will trust the teachers on this one. Maybe when he turns five (in three weeks!).

Aidan, on the other hand, is experiencing the perfect blend of challenge and success. The first gymnastics class was a disaster for Aidan. My sweet little perfectionist was not able to perfectly perform everything he was challenged to try and thus he was ready to quit. It was a challenge for me, as well, as I had to sit and listen to the teachers pushing him in ways that I am not accustomed to (both in tone and in words). We let him ruminate on his first class experience for a week without much ado. When the next class came around, he claimed he didn't want to continue. I used the excuse that I had paid for a month's worth of classes on the basis that he had said he wanted to do this thing and that he had to participate for at least that long. If, at the end of the month, he still felt the same way, then we would allow him to stop. The money investment worked brilliantly and, after the second class, where he was able to experience some success in a difficult physical challenge, he was hooked. Tomorrow is the first class of the second month and both boys can't wait.

The other "obstacle" to my blogging has been my husband. I normally find that the best time to collect my thoughts and communicate them in a half-way decent way is in the evenings, after the kids are in bed. Unfortunately, this is when John often settles into his routine of reading online political blogs, researching his newest love--Economics, and, in general, monopolizing the computer. This is the only time when I wish we had two computers. In all other instances, two computers would seem completely frivolous. I have just chosen to find other things to do with my time.

One thing that I have been doing is brainstorming ideas for Christmas--gifts to give, ways to festoon our home, and most importantly, how to really focus on the deep meaning of the season. For the first time we are going to have a Jesse Tree and I am really looking forward to that. I will elaborate on that more later. I am also dedicated to the idea of making the majority of our gifts. And I don't mean cheap crafts that folks will just throw away once we leave the premises. I took a sewing class this fall and I am really inspired to make a few things that I intend on being beautiful, if not useful.

I suppose, ironically, I want to focus on our time this Christmas season. How we spend it, who we share it with, how what we do effects others... you get the picture. I hope to share our experiences with all of you as the month progresses.

Thank you for following my musings, whether in a time of plenty or in a time of want. I appreciate your ears.

Where we are

Well, another big pause between posts. I just can't get my groove on in terms of finding a pattern for writing. I think about it all the time but the opportunity to sit down and put finger to keyboard is fleeting.

Obviously, there are the daily chores (getting up with the chickens, walking the dog, etc) that have to be done but we've also begun a new routine for "school" this Fall, which is very new to us. I haven't shared much about what we're doing this year, mainly because I was trying to figure out how to wrap it all up into a neat little descriptive package, easily accessible and understandable to all. But the truth of the matter is, it's not a neat little package (what in my life is, really?) nor is it completely formulated. It continues to evolve and take shape, much like the personalities of my boys.

Until this year, we were, primarily, an unschooling family. We had no set curriculum, no textbooks, no agenda. Well, that's not exactly true. I did make it my goal last year to teach Aidan to read and I used a book to guide us on that path. And I had heard of this neat math program that was a series of four workbooks, meant for a child to work through at their own pace. We got those books and gently introduced Aidan to early math concepts. But even those "formal" activities took up 30 minutes a day, maybe. The rest of our time we just read lots of books, hung out at the library and checked out more books (about anything and everything). I really let the boys call the shots.

This year, I longed for a little more direction. Just something to give me a small nudge in order to get this clan moving. Then, once the motors were warm, we could run amuck, letting our own interests take over.

Now understand this, I've always had a very strong suggestive nature with the boys and I've never shied away from picking out books that I want them to read and slipping them in with our other library selections. I've long been a fan of Charlotte Mason and her love and respect for the natural intelligence found in children. Her insistence that children hear and read beautiful language and living ideas through their books has always ruled our literature choices--since the beginning. And her commitment to nature study, art and music only solidified my respect for this woman's philosophy. We've kind of always "done" Charlotte Mason, but more as a lifestyle choice rather than a purely educational approach.

But, although I've always been drawn to the unschooling idea, I also have traditional leanings. I believe in phonics, I took Latin, my husband was a Classics/Philosophy major... you get the idea. The idea that my children would naturally fall upon these ideas on their own, no matter how much I was an unschooling believer, just didn't seem likely. How many seven year old kids pick up a Latin book and say, "I want to learn this!"? Maybe one or two? (Really?)

So, I started researching more about the Classical Model. The Well Trained Mind, by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise, was a fascinating read. This philosophy centers around the classical pattern called the trivium, a way of organizing learning around the way a child's mind is naturally maturing. There are three stages-- the "grammar, logic and rhetoric."
The "grammar stage" is early elementary, where the child's mind is naturally tuned to memorize.
The "logic stage", or later elementary/middle school, in which the child begins to think more analytically.
And lastly, the "rhetoric stage", at the high school level, where the child learns to write and speak with more confidence and authority.

These authors have also penned different books, history and language "textbooks", that fall in line with these learning stages. The Story of the World is a four part series of history books that explore history from the Ancients through Modern times. We checked out from the library the first in this series last year and the boys really enjoyed the way it recounted history so easily, in the form of a story.

So, after a lot of contemplating, reading, researching, stalling... you name it, I decided to attempt to follow the Classical approach for the grammar stage. We now have a more formalized pattern for studying history, language and science. We are using The Story of the World for history, along with its accompanying activity book. Aidan LOVES, LOVES, LOVES it. Last week he told me that he wanted to read through the whole book as quickly as possible so he could get to the Greeks and Romans (is he his father's son or what?!?!). The activity book that goes along with the history book has map studies, coloring pages and other activities that Aidan begs to do. It also includes suggestions for supplemental activities as well as literature selections that complement the history study. I have found the literature suggestions to be worth the price of the book. I never would have known about the majority of the titles and the absolute bonus has been that our library has almost all of them! What a boon! We have been introduced to titles that have greatly enriched our history study. For example, we are reading through a book titled, When the Beginning Began by Julius Lester. It is a collection of stories gathered from Jewish legends and the author's own translations from the Hebrew of the Book of Genesis. It is totally rocking my world! The stories are fantastical, beautiful, humorous and they put an incredibly original spin on how the world was created. And they leave me thinking, deeply, about the concept of creation and evolution and that whole mixed bag of ideas and beliefs. This is not a trite little Sunday School lesson--this is the kind of stuff that I want to think about, along with my boys.

The other big part of this approach is Narration. We were already familiar with this because it is also a huge part of the Charlotte Mason approach. The idea is simple. After reading about anything, I have Aidan narrate back to me what we just read. The reason that I really like this is that it allows Aidan the opportunity to "write" down his thoughts without being slowed down by the mechanics of writing. Although Aidan can write fine enough (and very neatly for a lefty, I might add!), he is still very slow about it all and he can't spell everything he wants to say. I know for a fact that if he was required to physically write down a narration, rather than dictate it to me, we would be lucky to get a sentence out of him. His frustration would overrule everything else and he would just give up. This way, he gets to practice putting together his thoughts and communicating them clearly without the worry of how to spell everything correctly. I love this practice because it is already obvious that Aidan is a good writer. He uses transitions beautifully and his language is much fuller when he dictates to me. He still gets writing practice in when we practice spelling and copy work or when I make him write thank you notes, so it's not like he never picks up a pencil. It just makes sense to me to focus on the thinking aspect of the writing process while he is still building up his endurance physically writing. Plus, it is such a testimony to the fact that he has been filled up with good books and stories when he dictates to me, "Once there was a brave explorer who had found some pretty interesting things. People were curious about the legend of a cave filled with crystals..." He really likes to draw in his reader and then surprise them.

So, all of this to say, for someone who was all loosey goosey last year, this year looks like boot camp. I have run into what I feared I would if I ever chose a specific curriculum. Because I am such a rule follower, I find myself kind of hyperventilating when we don't do things exactly the way they suggest in The Well Trained Mind. I really have to coach myself down from the ledge of "All or Nothing" where I seem to gravitate. When I let go and just use these guidelines as what they are--guidelines-- than it's okay if I make it my own. That's hard for me but I'm slowly getting there.

So, today it will be the Assyrians and some multiplication problems and some phonics and lots of stories (like Sindbad, from the Tales of the Thousand and One Nights and and Gilgamesh The King and The Boxcar Children and the Mountaintop Mystery).

And of course, there are always the chickens to observe and feed and love on and sunshine to soak in and songs to sing and pumpkin bread to bake.

It's all good.