Wonderful are all His works

This lovely verse in Paradise Lost reminds me of our Foundations Memory Work, so I put it on the front of our Foundations guide. 

"For wonderful are all His works, Pleasant to know and worthiest to be all had in remembrance always with delight." -Milton

All his works- The facts our family has been putting to memory for the last ten years of Foundations with Classical Conversations compass all God's works, all subjects from Bible passages to math and science laws to world geography. 

Pleasant to know- It's pleasant to have a storehouse of knowledge including a timeline and a map of the world to constantly reference and feed your imagination or inform whatever you are doing, reading the news, taking nature walks, visiting museums, or reading stories.

In Remembrance always- We share beloved books and poetry and music in common, and this shared content builds our family culture. Memory Work builds this culture, too. Since we all share them in common, the facts come back into our thoughts and lives and conversation constantly. 

With delight- The way we go about storing and recalling the information with chants and games and motions and songs is delightful, particularly for the youngest people in our family. But even the grown ups and teens still enjoy singing a history sentence with the family when it comes up and just for the simple fun of it.  

For no fact stored in a living mind remains unrelated to other ideas for long. Minds go to work at once clothing bare facts with layers upon layers of understanding, relating one fact to another fact already known and loved, weaving a beautiful tapestry of related ideas, and making all into one glorious unity which fosters imagination, curiosity, wonder, and doxology- for wonderful are all His works.   

Adele is writing stories in her free time. In this photo, her older sister, Avril, is reading them. But she is also editing as she goes and complaining about all the spelling and grammar mistakes. Adele is looking on in frustration, wishing Avril would just focus on the content. I found this funny, since I am always editing and complaining about Avril's spelling and grammar mistakes in her writing, and she is always wishing I would just focus on her content. 

Bookshelf Pajama Pants

A precious family friend recently gifted the girls adorable, matching pajamas. I love the bookshelf pants. Both girls also happen to be reading matching books. They are both in the middle of the Harry Potter series. 

Scaling Essentials for My Second Year Student

It's the beginning of our third week of Essentials, so Analytical Task Sheets begin. 

Last year was my youngest daughter's first year in Essentials, so I scaled the work down. 

I felt confident doing that, since it's my eighth year of Essentials and she is the third child I'm taking through this program. 

I knew there would be time to do more in years 2 and 3 of the program. 

So last year, we did tasks 1-4 with 3 to 4 out of the five sentences each week. 

Of course, we also studied the charts and wrote the papers and drilled math facts for Essentials, and we did all her other homeschool work, too.  

So scaling was a good choice to make the work load appropriate to her age and within everything else we were doing. 

But as we started on our first Analytical Task Sheet yesterday, we breezed through the first four tasks with the first sentence of week 3. 

So we moved on to sentence two, then three, then four, and even sentence five, finishing all four tasks for all five sentences in about ten minutes!

It's obvious that we need to scale up this year, and not just because it's her second year and there's an expectation that we do more, but because the work is truly easier and so, it's appropriate and fitting and right to take on more. 

Today, day two of our week at home, I plan to go back to sentence 1 and add task 5.

We may do task 5 for sentences 2 and 3 and 4 as well, seeing how far we get within the twenty or thirty minutes we give to Analytical Task Sheets everyday.    

If we manage to finish task 5 for all five sentences before this week ends, we'll probably return to the first sentence and start into task 6, the quid et quo. 

That would be amazing, but I'm also comfortable waiting to add task 6 for next year, the third year, when it will likely be even easier to do so. 

I'm surprised by how fast we went through the first four tasks yesterday and surprised we finished all the sentences so quickly and easily.  

But then again, I've been doing this for a while, and I know how it works. 

We built a strong foundation last year by consistently doing the first four tasks with at least three sentences each week. 

So naturally, this year it is easy to progress on to more, building and scaling-up on that solid foundation we built last year.  

This is the testimony of Jan

This is the testimony of Jan, unfortunately, when she met a group of other homeschool moms in the park.

"What kind of homeschooler are you?" they asked. 

Jan confessed, she did not deny, but confessed, "I use a combination of resources."

And they asked her, "What then? Would you say you are a Charlotte Mason homeschooler?"

Jan said, "No." 

"Are you Classical?"

Jan answered, "What does that mean?"

"Are you Neo-Classical?"

"No."

So they said to her, "What method do you use? We'd like to make some broad, sweeping judgements about you. What do you say about your homeschool?"

Jan said, "Our education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life." 

They asked her, "How can you quote Mason if you are neither Charlotte Mason nor Classical?" 

Jan answered, "I have the Holy Spirit, and He guides me into all truth." 

At this, they went away murmuring, offended. 

Some of them dismissed Jan as Neo-Classical, since she will continue to use whatever books she wants. 

The wind blew, and Jan sighed. 

Then Jan continued sketching a flower in her nature journal until her daughter, who had been reading in the shade of a nearby tree, ran up to her, and told her all about the book she just finished. 

Managing Tutoring Foundations and Essentials

I am tutoring both Foundations and Essentials this year, and honestly, it takes quite a lot of planning and organizing. 

It's the second week of our CC year, and I already find that the various tasks involved with tutoring can constantly loom over me and distract me from giving my kids the focused attention they need. 

And that's going to keep happening unless I'm careful.  

So I'm trying an experiment. 

I just finished all my plans for the week, and it's more than twenty four hours ahead of the time we have to leave for our community day. 

I even made a list, checked it twice, and packed the car with all the little stuff I have to take. 

The only thing I'll need to do to prepare for our CC day is help the girls pack lunches the day before.  

My daughters still have a full day of homeschool tomorrow before community the next day.

So I'm really looking forward to being totally free to focus on them. 

We'll see how this goes. 

But having it all done this far ahead feels so lovely right now as I sip tea and type this, this may be the way I strive to manage tutoring Foundations and Essentials in addition to homeschooling my own girls. 

Don't misunderstand me. 

Tutoring at my CC community is a gift and reward, and I've done it for years and years and years, but the workload is real. 

And this post is about managing the workload for Foundations and Essentials so that I can still give your kids the best portion of my attention.   

If you tutor, too, and the workload threatens to loom, distract, and overwhelm your homeschool day, especially the day right before community, it might help if you, too, just dive in days ahead and plan and settle all the details (and even pack your car) long before it's actually necessary. 

A Stormy Day and Thunder Cake

One Sunday afternoon earlier this month, a big storm was rolling in, the kind of storm with serious thunder, big enough booms to make grown ups jump and take notice. I was already baking a berry crumble and brewing tea to have in place of dinner. (With late lunches on Sundays, sometimes all we have room for is dessert in the evening Sundays. And since I don't often bake desserts, that makes Sunday dessert even more special.) Adele was helping me in the kitchen as always. When she kept hearing the thunder, she thought of Thunder Cake and asked to read it to me. So it was that I was listening to a storm roll in as she read Thunder Cake as we baked a desert together. It felt like I was inside a storybook for a few moments. 
 

 

Hagia Sophia Captures the Imagination

The History-Based Writing Lesson in Essentials this week was on Justinian and the Hagia Sophia this week. The Hagia Sophia really captured her imagination. So she wanted to illustrate her paragraphs. Using a picture of Hagia Sophia for reference, she made her own original drawing by copying the basic shapes or oiLS from Drawing With Children, something she is learning to do in the fine arts portion of Foundations.

Semicolon Quandary

Me to Avril: There should probably be a semicolon here... Avril sighs and puts her hand on my forearm: Mom. Listen. Anytime I put a semicolon in there, you say it should not be there. When I don't add one, you say it should probably be there. Me: No! Really?! Avril, now laughing so hard she can hardly breathe: It happens... every... single... time! I watch her laughing for second and realize she's probably right and that's when I laugh, too. *hysterical laughter all around*

Me: You look very studious right now. 

Avril: I feel very cozy… here in my nest of my books.

Homeschooling Is Indispensable

Moms often express doubts about homeschooling through high school. 

Homeschooling means parents have to take responsibility for teaching or at least facilitating their child's learning in all the subjects at a high school level including math and science.

Most reasonable and thoughtful people hesitate at the thought of doing this; They don't feel entirely confident or qualified.

So parents are drawn to traditional high school because experts are teaching the various subjects, and having experts delivering information seems like a way to ensure kids will learn all the different subjects as well as they should.  

But as I discuss homeschooling vs. traditional school with doubtful moms, I find homeschooling is actually essential to me and to what I want my children to understand about leaning itself and what I believe about how everyone actually relates to Truth. 

Speaking generally, in school, students will face an expert teacher and that expert will deliver selected information which students will passively receive then study to retain and give it back to the teacher on tests. 

So students in a traditional school set-up are often put into a relationship with a teacher of a subject and not the subject itself. 

They may never encounter the subject itself or the truth behind a subject itself, and they may never realize this, because of course, they "took Spanish." 

Maybe worst of all, to students in a traditional classroom where experts teach the subject, knowing a truth about science may end up being to them synonymous with relating to (or just agreeing with) their expert teacher in science. 

That's terrifying. 

But homeschooling high school with a parent who isn't an expert in Chemistry or Pre-Cal, who may only have specialized degrees in English Literature and Theology, is an altogether different experience, and mainly because it has to be. 

Homeschoolers come to understand quickly, probably more than anyone, the need for help from expertise. 

They can't look to their mom as expert and receive the subject or the truth in the subject from her. 

Rather, homeschoolers have to stand with their mom seeking truth together. 

They are both students in relation to truth. 

So yes, homeschoolers find expert texts and DVDs that will move us along in the journey. 

But homeschoolers can not passively go on a tour of the subject from an expert, they have to dig in to the material in a way that traditionally schooled students usually do not. 

They have to move forward inch by inch, step by step, perceiving the next truth and then the next truth and then the next for themselves, beholding Truth itself, taking ownership of the entire learning process in every subject moment by moment.  

Homeschoolers learn that learning is actually active and that Truth can be perceived with the help of the Holy Spirit anywhere and without an expert guide.  

Education is a relationship with the Truth and not a relationship with an expert or teacher. 

And homeschooling better demonstrates that than traditional schooling usually does. 

Therefore, it's indispensable to what I want my kids to learn about learning itself. 

New Cookbooks and False Hope

 

There's a meme that says, "No one has more false hope than a homeschool mom with a new chore chart." 

The same could probably be said about a young wife with a new cookbook. 

But in this case, I'm not a young wife. 

And in this case, I've already made four of the recipes in this cookbook that I recently bought on impulse at the book fair.

Four recipes is four more recipes than I made in the last four cookbooks I bought before I realized I don't actually ever cook anything in the cookbooks that I buy. 

And I've been cooking and buying cookbooks that I don't use long enough to know when a cookbook isn't going to work for me.

I only need to read it for about one minute.  

And most cookbooks don't work for me, so I usually don't even buy them anymore. 

But after scanning this one for a minute, I knew I had found a unicorn. 

So I keep reading, and I kept finding more and more recipes I knew I'd like. 

This cookbook uses ingredients I usually have or buy and I've actually heard of them all. 

It is nearly perfectly aligned with my sensibilities, skills, and actual interest-level than any other cookbook I've found so far. 

I've marked the recipes I've made, and I plan to make many more, if not most in this book. 

My family wants me to make those recipes I've made again already; They were so good. 

 

First Day of Foundations and Essentials

We've started another year of CC. This is our tenth year homeschooling with CC! I'm tutoring a Foundations and Essentials class, and my youngest is in my classes for the first time ever. It's not we haven't gone to CC together every week for literally her entire life. It's not like I haven't taught her everyday of her life at home. But as far as CC jobs go, I've always been teaching someone else's class, so it's special that I get to be her teacher this year. Her older sister, Avril, was nice enough to pose for a picture with her little sister. Avril is in her second week of Challenge B. 

Volunteering

We volunteered at the library's book fair setting up one day and tallying sales the next. 

And we're already keeping a record of Avril's volunteer hours in a blank composition notebook. 

It might be a little premature, since she's only in what may be eighth grade or even seventh, depending on how long she stays home learning before going off to college. 

But it's important to start establishing the habit of recording hours now, so that it becomes second nature once Avril really gets into actual high school years and she's piling up the volunteer hours then. 

I learned that lesson with her older sister. 

When it was time to complete college applications, it was quite difficult remembering all the details about volunteering dates and hours and details from years before. 

So I know it's wise to start a notebook for those records and just fill it up as we go on from here.  

Book Purge

We purged hundreds of books we aren't going to read again/ don't want to keep. 

Shown here is only a portion of the boxes and bags we donated. 

It was an important exercise, since we are constantly adding books, but we're almost totally out of space for more shelves. 

Unless we add shelves along the walls in the hallway... 

Here I Raise Mine Ebenezer

I checked Avril's Latin without the key. 

And it was a few of those exercises that the Henle Answer Key doesn't even provide answers to, maddeningly, because the content is just supposed to be so easy and the answers so obvious. 

But at this point, it actually was so obvious to me that I checked it all and found errors without the key, and I am still in total confidence that I was correct. 

And when Avril needed help with some Algebra in her not-so-Pre-Algebra math text, I helped her with that. 

There was not even a moment of knee-jerk, internal panic or an ounce of beady, outward sweat like there used to be when my older daughter needed help with math.  

I knew just what to do and more importantly perhaps, I knew why. 

I do read the Vulgate almost everyday now. 

I did just finish directing Challenge 4 with Advanced Math and Physics included. 

But it was this, this helping my middle daughter Avril with Henle 1 and Pre-Algbra without any trouble that made me realize how far I've come from where I started. 

When my oldest was at this same age and place in her homeschool journey, I was utterly dependent on the answer keys and thankful and happy to have them. 

But now, I have subsumed some of those answer keys at least.  

It was a glorious moment of realization, and I gave glory to God for His help.

It was not always easy. 

And knowing what's coming in the upper Challenges, I know it won't always be this easy.

But now I also know it is actually getting easier, and that's exciting. 

Here I raise mine Ebenezer. 

Hither by God's help I am redeeming my own education as I homeschool my kids.