Creation Presentation

Anne: Jen, Amy and I completed the Creation Presentation this past week. Here's my finished product with all the layers.To make the script better accessible for myself and to help my 3 1/2 year old do it on his own afterward, I made index cards for each layer/feature of creation that you are to add.
The front has a picture of the felt piece he is supposed to add next and the back has the 'script help' I wrote for myself.

organizing materials

I wish that I had started doing this 3 years ago!

I have a whole closet dedicated to storing "school stuff", which I know is a luxury not everyone has. Yet I let that closet became one of those from a comedy, where you open the door to a falling avalanche of unorganized piles.

Not any more!

I buckled down the past week, emptied out the whole closet, sorted materials by SUBJECT, put them in their own labeled containers, and put in shelving that actually works. Now when I want to get out something in particular, I can actually open the door and find it - imagine that!

low tide & handwork

I read a post recently by a homeschooling mom who chooses the phrase "tidal homeschooling" to describe her family lifestyle. Depending on all the different variables that affect a family from day to day and week to week, some seasons school is in high gear, some seasons it's in low gear. Instead of following a schedule ruled by the clock or the calendar, she just lets things happen according to whatever rhythms are set in place and out of her control, without stressing about it.

So far, this is how my own experience with raising our children has been. There have been months that I've felt great and we tried a lot of new things and learned in a very "Montessori" way. Other months, like the current one, we are completely low-key and in a very "unschooling" way of life. We're spending long hours outside, learning games like chess and checkers, finding new games to play on the computer, and listening to books on tape. Our latest favorites are CD recordings by Jim Weiss. We have 3: King Arthur and His Knights, Greek Myths, and She & He: Adventures in Mythology. I didn't know if they'd be worth the $, but my 5-year-old is completely captivated by these stories. He rested on his "new" bunk bed this morning and listened for an hour. When we get in the van to go somewhere, he asks, "can we listen to the stories about King Arthur?" And I am really enjoying listening, too. It takes my mind off everything else!

Speaking of distracting my mind, I decided out-of-the-blue to learn how to knit. Both Montessori and Waldorf schools encourage a lot of hand-work by the young children. They even teach their boys to knit and crochet, which I'm not sure my dh would think is a good use of our time here... but the point is to keep the hands moving, having interesting work to focus the attention on, having a functional product or gift when finished, and interacting with natural materials, like bamboo knitting needles and yarn of wool. Examples of sewing and weaving activities for children are here. My 5yo wove a hot-pad for me with his Aunt, and to this day when he sees me using it, he always says, "thanks for using the hot-pad I made, mom!" That's another example of a good self-esteem builder!

Ordinary Time

(sara): Easter Season is still upon us for a while... May 11th is Pentecost, the final day. Here's the "official" liturgical calendar for 2008 in the U.S. It's a pdf. file from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

While continuing to share and discuss the Easter presentations, feel free to begin posting about the Ordinary Time presentations also!

Pope's visit

Dave K. passed along this link as a resource for children about the Pope and his current US visit.

life

(sara): I am great at planning. So great, in fact, that sometimes all I do is plan, and never get around to implementing. :)

I like to plan "school work" in 4-5 week stretches. I plan presentations for both the 3 & 5 year olds, Monday through Friday, a couple things each day, plus violin practice. It really isn't a big deal, the presentations are all basic Montessori and easy to do... yet it's the doing that life just doesn't always permit. We're in week 3 of my latest batch of plans, and haven't done hardly a single thing!

Life has lately provided a very sick 1 year old, several sleepless nights and rainy days, immobilizing back pain, a crashed computer, and a very busy husband. Oh, plus these things want to move in for the summer, so I had to vacuum out every window sill in the house.

But you know what? My kids don't know about my plans. They wake up each morning, refreshed and just happy to be alive. I don't think I've ever seen them bored. I see them playing together and just stop and remind myself: perhaps their plans are better than mine. My ideas can wait.

goop!

(sara): I was reminded in a recent 4Real thread how fun it is to play with cornstarch & water. We had nice weather on Sunday so I sent the kiddos outside with a plastic tub, a bowl of cornstarch, a container of water with a large baster, food coloring, spoons, scoops, and so on. They had a blast. We've done a few presentations recently on states of matter, so it was a chance to review solid & liquid. As I was thinking about it, I decided that this was just the kind of activity to use with the word "magic" - because it is amazing, but obviously has an explanation. And my 3yo has been rhyming words lately, so when I picked up some of the goo and said, "I call this GOOP!" of course he replied, "that rhymes with... !" and they were overcome with a fit of laughter... Great fun.