FullOfStitches.com blog.A good laugh leaves me in stitches!

I’ve been wanting to have some drawing time and to get outside regularly for quite some time now. I feel mildly trapped in suburbia, but it’s also a place to start. Yesterday, I came across a website hosting a nature challenge (the first challenge is here) and took it as a good way to stimulate this outside time.

The 3 school-aged children have done their math, now are prepping for the outing and can finish their reading assignments when we get back.

How’d it go?

I’ve been seriously grouchy today. Cleanup took longer than expected, my stomach was off, and then math took twice the allotted time..

We rode our bikes to the local park (big grassy field with a couple varieties of trees and a small toddler playground). The littles ran off to the playground and I sent the big three to walk the other half of the loop (figure 8 walking path) with instructions to listen and look. I sat by the bikes and took a few breaths and let the quiet start working on my temper.

These little daisy-like flowers are often in bloom when we go to the park. TJ picked some for me.
I also found the lichen-covered stick by where we parked the bikes.

This little bird seemed to be hoping we’d brought a snack.

And these wild static beasts seemed to be every where!

Reading Brigitte Jordan’s Birth in Four Cultures is beginning to open my eyes. Yes, it’s a suggested reading book for my schooling (midwifery), yet she delves more and deeper into how natural learning occurs than many other books I’ve read. I’m in chapter seven now, where she describes the native midwife teaching her to perform prenatal massage by placing her (midwife’s) hands over hers (student) on the mother’s belly. The midwife’s knowledge is more in her physical body than in her spoken words.

The chapter also references another work: about Liberian tailors and how they apprentice. The apprentice starts off more play than work, allowed to work with the least expensive items – fetching and cleaning, learning what is in the shop, then moves up to sewing the less expensive garments (like previously cut pieces to be sewn together, and I’m guessing his button skills will be well practiced by now) well before he is ever allowed to cut fabric.

So do we when teaching our children.

They play with the bubbles as we clean the dishes. They sweep up little piles with the dustpan and brush while we’re sweeping the larger floor. They play with dough while I’m making bread. These activities teach them responsibility, importance, and hospitality.

Christ is known to talk in parables, but how did He teach His disciples to be mighty men of God? (Men who when with Him were recorded mainly as squabbling over who would be the greatest!) These men witnessed His humility – taking the time early each day to pray and align His desires with His Father’s, associating with and healing those that most of His people felt were undeserving..

How frustrating can it be to be the only (thinking/able/rational/fill-in-the-blank) person in the vicinity? Homeschooling, no, Parenting can be a huge lesson (for us!) in humility, patience. They need to play, yes, but they also need direction. If there is a child, there is learning, but what would be the cost of constant play? To move a family from poverty takes a parent willing to read to the children. To motivate a child takes interaction. To continue to live learning takes mastery of the basics and advancing challenges.

My challenge this weekend: prepare for the schoolyear. What “schedule” will we have? What materials are still in want? Prepare!

MissB’s up late after a nosebleed.. So, she gets to be the first to try out the play-dough. I read a great blurb over at Sew Liberated that inspired me to make some again -finally! The recipe she links to is like my Mom’s recipe that she used to make us play-dough. I said to Ben that I was cooking up scents from my youth, and he said the smell seemed oddly familiar. I’ll have to ask his Mom if she ever made his play-dough!

LX has taken over the balance bike full time:

When little ones start out learning balance, moving to a pedal bike is a quick to master skill. MissC has her bike and, at 4 years old, can ride it herself.

Watching the Nutcracker ballet today. The children are in awe, except LG. He’d rather be running, so he’s getting a nice nap.

http://hs-survival.blogspot.com/2010/11/national-no-homework-week-revolution-to.html

Go read it.

As a Homeschooler, my children are children. They play and imagine through the day. They ask me to teach them if I’m off schedule. They love to read and are hungry to learn.

Give the public school kids that chance. See if it makes a difference. Try it for a week.

We went for a picnic at the county park. It’s only 2 1/2 miles from the house.. Maybe we can bike there..

Dear Mr. Principal,
TJ is a student living in my dorm. He has a brilliant mind, yet is wasting it. His room was left a mess -against regulatory policy- and when he failed to clean it, those excess things were removed. He has since gone into the storage department & removed the items he desired.
Also, as per regulations, he has certain set “chores” to do each morning. Today is Thursday, & it has come to my attention that the said work was left undone. Indeed, the scanty work he performed this AM was not complete.
Please advise me on how to proceed with this young man. I perceive him to have an underlying brilliance that I do not wish to be tainted with such tarnish.
If you would like to schedule a telephone interview with the student, please advise me of a good time.
Thank you, the staff.

In class today, I introduced the SWR Learning Log to the girls. As we went along, I explained that we would be writing example words that include the letter making the different sounds. This page was a learning experience for me!

For the letter A, its sounds are /a/, /A/, /ah/. The example words were /a/: am; /A/: apron; /ah/ wasp.. MissB spelled that last one W-O-S-P.

When we got to Y as a vowel, I again explained that we would be using Y to say it’s vowel sounds, /i/, /I/. The first word was gym, /j-i-m/, using a G for the /j/ sound. They both wrote G-I-M.. And Y also says /I/, as in cry, /k-r-I/. Guess what? I want to cri, too.

Deep breath, they’re just learning & will sort it out as they learn the rules.

It feels like summer is finally sneaking up on us by the bay. It’s been such a cool summer here that it was beginning to feel like it might just fade into autumn.

School has begun for most of the districts here. Ours has been building up as well, slowly getting a little more done each day and soon we may be doing most subjects any given day. I mainly have two classes, TJ & the girls. TJ’s got 5 years on them, so his math & grammar are more advanced. Science & history are simple enough to do together & have his reports be more in depth.
Hitting 102 set us back, though. It’s too hot to think! School uniforms are currently swim wear & the classroom is the pool.