This is a fun way to practice combinations with Chart A on Week 1 of Essentials.
Instead of having students combine sandwich ingredients, they can combine ice cream flavors, syrups, and toppings.
I found these images on Google, printed them on card stock, and laminated them, etc.
I can easily attach/ detach these from the chart with a loop of painters tape on the back of each item.
For instance, I am usually tutoring a Foundations, Essentials, or Challenge class for our Classical Conversations group, so I need to get my academic orientation done and organize and plan for the next homeschool year.
These summer days where we stay close to home start with silent reading like just about every other day at home starts.
I call the girls down from where they are reading in their beds to eat breakfast. They eat and play with our parrot and share bits of their meals with him.
Then they do chores and shower and dress. This chores/ shower/ dressing routine takes at least an hour. They have a lot of daily chores including feeding the bird, watering plants, taking out trashes and recycling, unloading dishes, folding, drying, washing one load of laundry, etc. The work they do is a real part of the required work for our household.
Next, one of the girls reads silently for an hour while the other practices piano.
Then they switch and the one who was playing piano reads silently while the other practices piano.
They eventually make lunch and clean up after lunch. They may play a game of chess or cards while they eat; they always do a lot of chatting.
Then they do some handwriting or copy work and paint with watercolor or acrylics.
Most afternoons, they do something physical.
They pick berries from the yard or we go swimming in our neighbors pool for an hour or two.
Today, they have to walk down the street to gather fresh milkweed leaves beside the pond to feed our monarch caterpillars.
We also happen to have an orthodontist appointment before dinner today. I strategically schedule all the necessary appointments in this season for these summer weeks when we are staying home.
We always eat dinner as a family, read a chapter from our read aloud, and clean up the kitchen and do another load of laundry together, if needed.
As soon as the girls finish all official, required summer homeschool activities which include one hour of reading, one hour of piano, and a page of handwriting, they are free to do any number of activities like are reading aloud to one another, more silent reading, cross stitching, etc.
They do have tablets, and once all required activities are done, they can play or read on them at that point in the day.
Sometimes they do.
But in general, screens are mostly just non-existent for our family most of the time.
This is very deliberate.
I have found through a lot of trial and error that if I want my kids to be healthy, and by healthy I mean interesting, sociable humans who enjoy engaging with the real world and with other, real people face-to-face and who are willing to do any other things besides playing video games without complaint, screens can't be a "go-to" activity and they just can't have constant, ongoing access to them.
And this is true even in summer. maybe especially in summer. I don't even let the kids nurse a screen addiction in summer when it might be easier to justify, because screen addictions always make the transition to a school routine during the school year much, much harder, even nearly impossible.
And I have lived this and I've also noticed a pattern with other families we know. The parents who give their kids unlimited access to tv, cell phones, videos, and video games in summer eventually have to make drastic compromises with their screen-addicted children and teens, allowing them to do much less school work and all of it only half-heartedly, because the kids are just too difficult to pull away from their screens.
Or these families actually have to stop homeschooling altogether, eventually choosing to put their kids in public or private schools simply so their kids will actually have to do enough school work to have an adequate education.
Without screens in our home, we are just much, much healthier, happier people who actually enjoy learning and working and taking interest in lots of varied activities.
Here are several images of our homeschool classroom.
I've trained my kids to keep things neat as they pull supplies out of the closet and put them back in, but once a year, the closet still needs some TLC from me.
The arrangement and contents tend to change with the homeschool season we are going into.
At one point, an entire shelf and most of the floor was taken up with science lab supplies!
That was when my oldest was in Challenge 3 and I was directing for her class and we were doing Chemistry labs every week.
But now, with the oldest graduated from Challenge 4 and off to college this fall, another daughter only in Challenge B, and my youngest in Foundations and Essentials, I won't be doing lab science for at least another year, so those supplies have been sold to another director to be put to good use.
This year, I'm teaching Foundations and Essentials, so I brought some of the materials I need for review games and math games out into prime spots.
It's amazing how long things will keep if you just keep them!
Some of the stationary my eighth grader uses to write her pen pal was my sister's when she was my daughter's age!
Some of the office supplies I have were my mom's supplies when she was a teacher!
Watching caterpillar become butterflies is one of the most wonderful, awe-inspiring things you can do with your kids.
If you want to raise monarchs, first, you have to locate a batch of milkweed near you (or cultivate some in your yard.)
Study photos of the plants in books and online so that you can begin to identify milkweed near you.
Over time, I have gotten so good at identifying milkweed that I can see it from several yards away as we fly by on the highway.
And I've been looking for so many years that I know several places where I am likely to find it growing.
But we have some milkweed growing wild near our pond only a few minutes from home, so that's where we usually go to collect the eggs and leaves.
The milkweed patch needs to be close enough to your home (or work or church, etc.) for you to return to it on a regular basis throughout the process of raising caterpillars, because once the eggs hatch, the caterpillars start eating, and will need to keep eating, so you will need a constant supply of fresh milkweed leaves to feed them enough to keep them alive.
Once you find a local source of milkweed, look on the underside of the leaves until you find round eggs like those shown in the picture at bottom.
You can also study pictures of the eggs to be sure you are bringing home the right eggs.
Clip the leaves that have monarch eggs on them off at the stem just using your fingernail, but careful! Milkweed sap is sticky!
It won't hurt you, but it gets everywhere. You'll definitely need to wash your hands once you get home.
Wrap the stems of the leaves in a wet paper and lay them on a plate or platter.
Keep the paper towel moist, adding water to the paper towel as often as necessary. This will keep the leaves fresher, etc.
The eggs will hatch in a few days and the caterpillars will immediately begin eating on the leaves.
Once they hatch, it will be time to go back to the milkweed patch and bring home some more fresh leaves.
I long for God to order my thoughts
So that I may order my words
So that I may order my actions
So that I may order my feelings.
The Spirit of God hovers over the chaos of my mind
And God says, “Let there be Light!”
Christ is with God is in me is working.
Through Him, another Creation, I can be made new.
God divides the darkness from me.
He kindly holds back the waters that surround.
He provides solid ground where I can stand,
Even places all manner of gifts under, into my hands.
He’ll scoop me up, press me, smooth me,
And I come alive just in time to die again.
He blows His breath into me. Out goes all my life.
He empties me of the poison wherein I swim.
I go gasping like a fish pulled out of natural place,
Eyes wide, flailing, foolish, but I can see Heaven for a glimpse
Till I flip myself, fall away, and dip in native Chaos again.
How long, Oh Lord? Will I long like this and slip and long away?
"Peace." He whispers. A wonder,
He stoops to answer a fish of clay.
"Do not you see? From where you are,
Longing is ordered thought toward Me."
-Veronica Boulden
Actually, Avril did not attend as a camper; she was a teen volunteer.
But volunteering is definitely an age-appropriate way for her to still "attend."
She still got to be a part of all the fun, hear the stories, learn the songs, and get all the spiritual and social and physical benefits, only she was also able to grow in virtue as a helper to the people around her.
Adele, still in grade school, was just a regular camper.
Dwayne purchased the CD of songs, and we've already listened to it once since VBS ended.
VBS has been a very important part of my kids's spiritual lives, because we've always made it a priority and we've continued to listen to the songs, so the Truth in them will remain with the girls their entire lives.
We have almost a dozen CDs from the Vacation Bible Schools the girls have attended through the years, and we still listen to them all.
My mom and sister live nearby (in Summerville), so we stayed with my mom.
The conference was Thursday-Saturday, but we came early, arriving Monday, in order to have some quality time with my family before the conference began and we'd be too busy to see much of them.
Monday, we flew in and arrived in time to have dinner and visit for a few hours till bedtime.
Tuesday, we slept in and Mom made biscuits and gravy for brunch. Then I ran some brief errands for her. (My daughter is still talking about those biscuits a week later, and I'll admit, I'm still thinking about them. They were delicious.)
We spent the largest part of the day with my sister at Mom's pool drinking ice-cold wine coolers and beers and talking (and getting a sunburn.)
We also had outstanding naps and some gourmet pizza that day.
It was just a nice time with family without any commitments.
Wednesday, my friend Jessica, who was also coming into town for the Circe National Convention, came with us to my mom's pool and brought her kids.
We shared a cooler of ice-cold sodas and waters and lots of healthy, hearty snacks, and we swam for hours.
That evening, Norah and I invited my youth ministers in high-school/ mentors during my college and early marriage and career years, Bob and Kathy, to dinner.
But Bob and Kathy also happen to be local Christian school administrators, and Kathy loves and esteems me so highly that she asked me to meet with some of her teaching staff (via Zoom) to share some techniques for teaching critical thinking skills.
I was flattered to be asked to share anything with full-time educators, but I flatter myself that I actually did some good. I have a lot of confidence in what I am doing in our homeschool, and I am seeing a lot of real fruit at this point in my journey. But I kept my comments brief, and most importantly, pointed their staff toward resources (like Lost Tools of Writing and Circe, etc.) that have done me the most good through the years.
Dinner with Bob and Kathy was lovely. We reminisced and gave glory to God for all He has done and is still doing. It was nice to let them get to know Norah better. They've loved me like a daughter since before I was Norah's age, and they've loved her her whole life and cheered me on every step of motherhood and homeschooling, but they haven't been able to be a big part of our lives since we've moved so far away.
All day on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, Norah and I attended the Circe National Convention together, just like last year.
Throughout the conference, Norah and I sat with my dear friends from the Circe Apprenticeship.
Norah built her own friendship with these precious ladies over the days of the conference, and this just delighted me.
It was glorious to share such godly women with my now-grown daughter, and it was a reward to see such godly women really enjoy my daughter's company, too.
It was another indicator to me that I have done well.
I'm not boasting.
I simply mean to say that if godly people can take delight in your children and then they tell you how delightful your children are, etc. you can have confidence that you've done well by God's grace.
After the conference ended, we grabbed a quick meal, and then Norah and I started the long journey home, navigating airports and flights and lines and loud, bumpy plane rides all evening.
Dwayne picked us up at the airport in New York and then kindly let us sleep on the drive home, wake up long enough to basically crawl upstairs into our beds with our clothes still on, and sleep on until the morning.
It was an exhausting trip, as always, but enriching.
Our hearts and minds are full.
It was a reward and a delight to see family and friends that are like family and attend my favorite educational conference with my beloved daughter.
The girls have to read silently for at least one hour every single day of summer vacation.
At the beginning of summer, I assign them a stack of books.
They usually get to choose which book to read next from the stack, unless there is a book I want them to read first for some reason in which case, I will tell them, "Read this next."
They have to read from a book on the stack for the first hour of the day.
They often read more than one hour by choice.
(In fact, Avril has been downstairs reading for the last two hours.)
But after the first hour, they can read any book of their choice.
(Case in point- Avril is reading a Warriors book- not at all something in her assigned stack.)
Avril will be in Challenge B next year, so her stack of books has all the Challenge B titles like "The Phantom Tollbooth" and "Defeating Darwinism," things she will be assigned to work with next school year.
She'll reread the same books again in a few months, but she'll also have to write about them or complete assignments, so having a familiarity with them already will make that easier.
Adele is still in Foundations and Essentials, so she is reading from a stack of various chapter books I've collected through the years from various reading lists (Sonlight, Academic Press, etc.)
I have had the privilege of hearing Gibbs speak live at a few Circe National Conferences, and there, I have always enjoyed his presentations the most.
Josh Gibbs obviously puts a lot of work into thinking deeply and organizing and then delivering his ideas. His work is always precise and polished.
The topics he speaks on are particularly relevant to me as a Classical, Christian educator. Albeit, I'm a homeschooler/ part-time parent-tutor at our co-op, and not a professional teacher at a full-time private school, but his insights are practical and keen nevertheless.
I often find myself laughing out loud at some well-worded critique or well-timed jab, even when the jest or criticism actually hits quite close to home and makes me uncomfortable.
I find that I only benefit from reading and hearing a number of voices as I grow as a Classical educator and a Christian.
And as a lover of essay as a form, I admire and appreciate Gibbs's work.
When you ask literary kids to label their sandwiches, funny things happen.
The other day, I saw that they were bent over, intently watching something happen on the surface of the water or on their boats for over half an hour; I couldn't tell what they were watching from where I was on shore. But, they paddled over to the shore and showed me, they were watching a dragonfly nymph emerge from the pond and come out of its skin and lengthen and dry until it was ready to fly. They were astonished and enchanted.
After two weeks of swim lessons and practice every single day, the girls have progressed to swim level four. They know freestyle, backstroke, elementary backstroke, and breaststroke. They have started learning butterfly. We've been enjoying doing laps together for the last few days, which is really lovely, because I have always wanted them to share my love of swimming laps.
Avril was part of our church's production of the play "And Then There Was One," a spoof on Agatha Christie's famous murder...
