Blogging Summer Plans

I thought I might do better with a blogging schedule this summer, so here are my thoughts on that.   Of course, there are no guarantees.  I may end up spending the summer at the beach without internet access!  Or moving or traveling!   But for now, here's what I'm thinking.  

Monday Housekeeping
Mystie's idea -- a catchall day to report progress and challenges in household areas. 


Tuesday:  Book Club
Poetic Knowledge now, then something else after that.    My place for "slow reading". 

Wednesday Books
For 52 in 52, though I've gone waaay beyond those numbers -- I think I'm past 100 now.    But all the more reason to keep up the writing about the books. 

Thursday Homeschool

Homeschooling planning or unplanning or musing.   This used to be a homeschooling blog, after all.   


Friday Fitness
I don't know if I have enough to fit in this category -- I may have to add self-improvement.    But we'll see. 

Saturday Review
How the week went.... things I want to remember.  Sort of like Faith's Unschooling Highlights, but I usually have nowhere near as much to tell. 

Sunday List of Links
or else, a liturgical year related post.   Or else whatever's on my mind at the moment.

What's on the Calendar Wednesday

I found a simple meme at The Bookworm.   What's On the Calendar Wednesday --  the idea is to write about something that is on your calendar or someone else's.

Recently, almost every day has had something on the calendar.  Today is Sean's football practice down in town, but we added something unexpected.... taking our old dog Frodo to the vet.



Frodo is in his declining days, age fourteen and a half, and one never knows whether this episode will be "it" or not. Our four youngest children don't remember a time when he wasn't around.   Perhaps he will recover this time, but I'm just praying we know when and how to let him go.   

Up till age 12 or so, Frodo was a sharp-tempered, barky little dog who seemed to think we were his flock, to be protected from all suspicious outsiders and herded into place. The past couple of years he has mellowed exceedingly, making friends with visitors (gasp!) and bearing his arthritis with great patience.    I hope to follow his example and mellow rather than sharpen in old age, though I wouldn't mind being spared the incontinence.

Sunday Links (sorry, more than seven)

The theme of this collection of Sunday links is --
Things of Use in My Homeschool Right Now.

Kim uses lots of coloring pages in her Starry Sky Ranch homeschool, and explains why. Helpful for me since I've been sort of ambivalent about the coloring assignments in the curriculum. Lots of tips about how to bring coloring closer to art education.

Laughing Stars blogs a freeschooling learning day, and describes a math game "Race for a Dollar" that I will probably use when we finally get to that money counting unit in Paddy's curriculum. Or maybe I'll start it now so some of the groundwork will be laid by that time.

A few links I found during the week to get ready for next week:

• Some activities you can do with hundreds' charts (from Let's Play Math!).
• Also, some number sense games.
• And some algebra math games.
• Here's an online coin value game.
  

And a few more places I don't want to forget about:

Basic Handwriting for Kids (I found it because of a blog post at Higher Up and Further In)
Sound City Reading: Downloadables for teaching reading
Montessori language materials (free downloadables)
Many, many flashcards
Spelling Lists for Grade 1 -- then you can do spelling games with the words.
Some math games online
Book List for Ancient Egypt


---------
Changing the subject as I think about how I want next week to go:

Three things I needed to work into our routine after I got accustomed to the charter school were

1. Semi-organized religious education
2. House cleaning and maintenance
3. Aidan's education
4. Oh yes, and exercise, but that one I'm reserving for now, so it doesn't count.

I have gotten a routine going for religious education, so that's good. I only have to fill it out a bit.

I've gotten into a routine for my household cleaning, too. I'm revisiting this one.

I've been doing better on setting a pace for Aidan, but that's the one I need to definitely focus on this week. I think the solution will be to enroll him, too, but I have to find out lots about their special education plan, first. In the meantime I need to have an accurate sense of where he is and what speed he is going.

So I've been working with him casually on basically the same content as the beginning of Patrick's Grade 1, though I don't use the same materials. He is doing all right with it. But I need to spend more time and energy with it. That's the focus for next week!

Sunday Cross-Section

I haven't been doing much blog-reading for a while. Too busy, too much to keep track of on the home front; I didn't want to wander off into cyber-space and lose my focus. So I missed that Cindy of Dominion Family has a new title for her blog, Ordo Amoris. I knew that Brandy at Afterthoughts was discussing Leisure: The Basis of Culture but I didn't realize that the discussion was being hosted by Cindy. So I have some catching up to do.

I love Joseph Pieper's book and decided that though I'm probably too late to join in with the discussion, I could start rereading it and reading the discussion archives on Cindy's page.

I don't seem to be capable of big picture thinking right at the moment so I thought I'd chip away in little pieces. Today is a beautiful California fall day up here in the Sierras above the mile-high marker. The sky is sunny with some clouds, which puts interesting shadows and indirect lights on the tall incense cedars and sugar pines, making them glow almost portentously.

Sean, my teenager, seems to have gotten the swine flu or else the garden variety one. He was only a little bit sick until he played football Friday night. The varsity quarterback got hurt and Sean as back-up got pulled in to QB for almost the whole second half against the toughest team they've played so far this year. Sean is only a sophomore and has been practicing defense, not QB, all season. He played with a lot of heart (I wasn't there but Brendan taped it) and didn't embarrass himself, but was no more able than the senior QB to muster an effective offense against the other team. He was crushed after the game but felt better after some support from his team. But since then he has had a relapse with the flu and I'm thinking bronchitis, maybe?

Paddy is playing some battle game with the Tumbling Towers blocks (but I wish he wouldn't keep putting them in his mouth!). Aidan found our inflatable globe and a metal ring that just fits around it. He carries it around with him and refers to it as Saturn : ). Brendan and Kieron's whereabouts can be discerned by an irregular chorus of coughing. We are an unhealthy household right now, but everyone is on the mend except for Sean.

I don't know what Liam's doing right at the moment, but in general he has been working on music (playing classical guitar and composing things occasionally) and finishing the Mini-Golf Mania port (which he finalled last week -- see here). It's almost impossible to resist the temptation to compose classical guitar pieces after you've played enough Carulli and Giuliani -- the arrangements almost seem to come to you out of the air!

So -- not much actually about leisure within this post except by particulars but here is what I have written in the past on the subject.

In philosophical terms, leisure is essentially "free" and "free" is defined as:

"not being subordinated to a duty to fulfill some function."

Now since this is already a scattered post, I will post a question that I ponder occasionally but that I have no answer for yet. And you don't have to answer it either.

If my kids are enrolled in a government school (a publicly funded charter program) is our education still "free"?

I don't have an answer, because I am not comfortable enough with all the philosophy of liberty to be able to muster all the components of the question. I take the question out every now and then and dust it off and turn it over for a while then put it back on the shelf again.

Aside from the question of government funding and oversight, is the K12 curriculum itself a "liberal" one?

That's another question that's difficult to find an answer to. In some ways, definitely yes. The curriculum is ordered towards cultural knowledge and development of "humane" skills directed towards ability towards further learning. The outcome is knowledge, to the benefit of the student as citizen and human, not specifically functional as in "worker" or "cog of the State".

I would say that in some ways the "model" is an Enlightenment one, not a classical philosophical one. But that will take more thought, too. Cindy wrote in regard to the Pieper book:

So in the simplest terms possible, this chapter contrasts a purely empirical knowledge with a knowledge that assents to a bigger picture. One sort of knowledge produces pride and the other sort produces humility. Interestingly, while the nature of the empirical is to deny the spiritual, the nature of the spiritual can include the empirical. This is a distinction that should clear up some of the difficulties in approaching the topic of leisure.

The K12 approach is based on empirical investigation and acculturative knowledge (my terms and my take, so read this with a grain of salt). Since as Aristotle says, knowledge begins in sensation, empirical investigation is certainly not contradictory to the spiritual or philosophical endeavor. However, the search should not resolve with empiricism. Because of the K12 emphasis on acculturation through civic, musical, artistic, language and literary study, at this time I don't think it does do this.

Time to make some toast!


(Liam's guitar composition -- he says the audio isn't very high quality and he wasn't too thrilled with his playing, either)

Treasured Moments (1)

I haven't been reading many blogs for a while, so I only just found Erin's meme at Seven Little Australians Plus One. (By the way, this is the first time I realized that the title of her blog was the title of a book, though I should have guessed!)

Erin writes:

... Commitment ... Encouragement ... Support ... Ideas ... Plans.

I invite you to join us every Saturday and share your plans and ideas, your targets and goals and your stories ... your 'Treasured Moments'. In this way we may inspire one another, encourage ourselves and start achieving our dreams.

I'm a day late, but I wanted to give it a try. For now, I'm just going to list a few things that happened last week that were "treasures" -- but I'll be reflecting about the whole list as I move through next week. I wish we had taken pictures, but maybe, next time.

Picking Elderberries.

Last week we went down to the open land below our house. Kieron remembered finding elderberries there with his father and older sister many years ago. Sure enough, there were three generous sized trees loaded with ripe elderberries.

This is only the third year we've really picked elderberries, though usually the older kids eat them off the trees in the fall. I've been plucking them off their branches and freezing the berries in little packets (except that Brendan's always taking a packet out to eat them : )).

I just recently found out that black elderberry is a remedy for flu.

Chopping Down Trees

Kevin decided that it's fun to chain-saw. He started clearing our lot that's for sale and then ended up cutting down a bunch of trees that have been encroaching too near our house and providing an entrance route for destructive Sierra Douglas squirrels into our roof.

Aidan loves to see the trees fall, the boys get a workout clearing away the fallen branches and things, and Kevin's sawing up the trees so we will probably save quite a bit on firewood this spring. Of course, most of it is still unseasoned, but some of the trees were dead or close to it, and incense cedar doesn't take long to season compared to the green oak we dealt with last spring.

Reading Lord of the Rings.

Paddy, age 6, just LOVES listening to this. It's a great start to the day.

One More Thing

This week comes St Therese's feast day and also the decade anniversary of Aidan's liver transplant. This anniversary is a mixture of joy and other feelings. Particularly so, because last year at this time we were up in Oregon at a family reunion on the coast. My dad got to see Paddy for the first time ever and play the "patriarch" for a while with almost all his ten grandchildren around him (Liam was at college and Sean had to stay home because of school).

Seems odd, that almost all the most treasured moments are mixed with poignancy a bit.

We will really be missing Clare this week! She's been gone for over a month now.

Transition Edition

I think I'll just free-associate and call it a Boring Post for Saturday, even though it's not quite Saturday.

1. Clare and Liam are watching old Star Trek episodes. I can consistently identify the episode within 30 seconds, which is scary. I didn't remember how campy they were, probably because when I watched them it was on a 13 inch black and white screen and I was only 13 or 14, which makes a difference.
2. Sean seems to be recovered from his endoscopy on Friday except that his lip is numb. What's with that? I hope it goes away. The diagnosis is mild GERD; his grandfather suffers from it too. We'll have to learn to manage that.
3. We are having a family party today to herald the upcoming changes in our family.... Clare leaving, Sean starting school, Brendan starting college. It COULD be the last summer we're all here together. We might move; Liam might be living somewhere else. Anyway, chocolate toffee squares, banana cake with cream cheese frosting, Russian tea cakes, Ruffles, root beer, and barbecue food all seem appropriate to the occasion. Though probably not that great for the GERD.
4. I'm thinking of a point system for work accomplished for Kieron, so we can both tell at a glance whether he's earned his leisure time or not. I think Gatto would hate that though. (I'm reading Weapons of Mass Instruction). And I am not sure if Josef Pieper would like the concept of earning leisure time, either. Why do these things have to be so perplexing?
   
5. The current Star Trek episode is the Nazi one where the Nazi talks about the brutish stupidity and inferiority apparent in Mr Spock's physiognomy. Ha ha. Everything I needed to know about eugenic folly and planned societies, I learned by watching Star Trek.
   
6. Next week Sean resumes school, Brendan starts his college classes, and we drive Clare to Thomas Aquinas College. Sigh..... our homeschool group had a leavetaking party for Clare last week and the moms were talking about how even good things can bring pain. It's like labor all over again.... sigh.... I will miss my dear daughter and my only feminine comrade in this House of Men.
7. Sigh!!!
   
8. That makes me grateful for Facebook and the internet, and cell phones, and their potential for connection.
9. Time goes so fast!

The college girl only 19 short years ago. ...

and now

Works for Me -- "Black List"

So, I haven't done a Works for Me Wednesday for quite some time, but I thought I would jot this one down while I'm thinking about it.

I deal with mood swings, which since I'm a middle-aged woman seem to come fairly predictably in one-month cycles, though they also crop up in a different form on anniversaries which have sorrowful meaning for me. During the "down" times I often wake up at 2 or 3 am. Remember LM Montgomery's "white nights", especially in the Emily books?

Emily fully expected she would be sent home to New Moon in disgrace. Aunt Ruth would stonily decline to keep such a girl any longer in her house -- Aunt Elizabeth would agree with her -- Aunt Laura woudl be heartbroken. Would even Cousin Jimmy's loyalty stand the strain? It was a very bitter prospect. No wonder Emily spent a white night. She was so unhappy that every beat of her heart seemed to hurt her. And again I say, most unequivocally, she deserved it. I haven't one word of pity or excuse for her.

When I first read her books, as a pre-teen, I could only imagine what she meant. I know exactly how it feels, now.

Anyway, during the white nights, I've learned to pray, not always in words but in silent oblations. Sometimes suffering can be a prayer, and I don't think suffering HAS to be exactly grounded in reality in order to be valid. When you think about it, there are two things going on with suffering -- the "matter" of it, and the reaction to it. Like school and learning, they are only incidentally related to each other. There have been times when I've had a lot going on objectively to complain about and felt little desire to complain, and other times, when there is apparently little to complain about where I feel any amount of pain. So I believe that even semi-irrational mood-swing suffering can be turned into participation in the Via Dolorosa. After all, in world terms there is much reason for sorrow, yet sorrow has to be grounded in caritas in order not to simply turn into pity-partying.

The other thing I've learned, in the down days when everything around me looks discouraging, is to make lists. It works for a melancholic-phlegmatic like me because most of the time my phlegmatic self acts as a stabilizer and as a bit of an anesthetic. It lets me ignore and endure things that are really wrong that I could change. When my melancholic side takes over, it is powerful and perfectionist but not temperate. Writing down everything that I see in its worst light during the melancholic moments is like a message in a bottle to my phlegmatic side. That way I can address the "bad things" in a calmer way when my emotional ship is more on keel. What a lot of mixed metaphors there! The basic point is that rather "change-everything-in-the-house-right-this-minute" I just ponder and list and wait until I'm saner to make actual changes.

Anyway, this might not work for everybody but has been fairly helpful for me. It doesn't take away the pain but it helps to redeem it.

By the way, I like this temperament test. The questions are sort of silly, but it seemed to peg my temperament accurately (and my daughter's, too) -- and it tells you whether your key temperaments operate as "strengths" or "weaknesses". I came out like this:

Melancholy Strength: 9 Weakness: 14 57%
Phlegmatic Strength: 7 Weakness: 3 25%
Sanguine Strength: 3 Weakness: 1 10%
Choleric Strength: 1 Weakness: 2 8%

Even though my melancholy side is by far the strongest, it's largely my phlegmatic side that I count on to help me function. That was interesting to me.

Processing

I thought I'd quickly list out an overview of what I usually have on the agenda for the summer.

1. As you've seen on this blog and my older ones, every year I start by planning in outline form the next school year -- you can see some of what I've done so far on my sidebar. Basically, I'm done with that now except for some details.
2. As we get deeper into the summer, I am in the habit of going on a personal combined spiritual/educational retreat. So it's something like a homeschool conference with myself (I've never actually been to a real one, though I've conferenced with a friend) and something like the Ignatian retreat that Kolbe recommends to begin the school year. I try to examine my present practices and rearrange my priorities so I can better grow closer to God in His Holy Will.
3. During this time I usually read several books about education to refresh my vision and I often end up posting more than usual on my customary message board and egroup haunts as I try to work things through. That's what's happening now and why the blog is flooded with long educational posts.
4. While I'm thinking I usually struggle with several Big Questions. This year I seem to be thinking about Compulsion, and about Classical Education, the value of the classics in their original languages, and about true feminity in the heart of Mary and how I can better live that out. (I am sensing I have some growing to do there -- I know it's not something I have talked about much on here before so I will try to expand on it some other time).
5. In light of what I decide in regard to those things I will list some goals. Not so much the standard ones naturally associated with the curriculum ("student will learn to add numbers with sums up to ten") as much as what I'd like to see my life and work with my family look like.
6. Then I choose a particular saint as the "patron" for that year. I've done that for the last several years. My very first year as a homeschooler I dedicated my homeschool particularly to Our Blessed Mother and this, my fifteenth year of homeschooling, or is it my sixteenth? I think I may want to do that again.
7. Now we are coming towards the end of mid-summer, and I usually think through our habits and household arrangements more specifically and try to make them more conducive to what I want to see in our lives.
8. During the last part of the summer, I usually plan some sort of retreat or theme to start off the school year with a good focus. I also devote the last part of the summer to being around my family, being "intentional", and observing them. If there are any summery things we haven't gotten around to, like trips, family visits and hanging around outside or catching up on yard work, this is the time. Finally, it's time to set the details of the fall schedule, which means I usually carry around a clipboard with my notes on them for several days or weeks until I have it more or less internalized.

So there it is, the process.

Another Big Question I've been dealing with is: Am I taking too much time on this "retreat" I mentioned? I was thinking about it -- I don't go to homeschool conferences or actual retreats. I am almost always here with my family, but am I really here if I'm thinking about other things so much (the house getting messy, meals sometimes late, and all that?). It makes me uneasy, and I tend to think it's not quite right, but I have a little internal puritan imp that sometimes poses as the voice of my conscience, so I'm not always sure. Anyway, I'm posing the question because it's been raised internally and I would like to find some peace on it, even if it means giving up something quite valuable.

(me spacing out on the computer, picture by Chari)

Sunday Six

I found or rediscovered some interesting resources when I was planning this week. I'm listing them by category and lightening the load on my bookmark toolbar.

--1--

Catholic

Anecdotes and Examples Illustrating the Catholic Catechism -- a google book from 1904.
Free PDF downloads supporting the Faith and Life religious education books. You can also see color html topic outlays if you go here and press the Curriculum Outline link for each grade.
A Short Catechism of Church History for the Higher Grades (Catholic schoolbook from 1904)
A Catechism of the Catholic Religion (Catholic schoolbook from 1899)

--2--

Catholic or Christian Living

Outline for Sunday Mass Preparation by Castle of the Immaculate.
Eucharistic Miracle Stories for Children
Gold Dust -- a collection of golden counsels for the sanctification of daily life edited by Charlotte Yonge
Faith Filled Days in the Domestic Church -- growing resource!!

--3--
Science and Math

(I don't know enough about science or math to vouch for any of these totally, but worth glancing at)

Light and Matter -- open-source physics textbooks
Living Math -- every homeschooler probably knows about this site but still VERY cool.
Physical Sciences Resource Center -- for grades K-20
Mathematically Correct: 2 Plus 2 -- topical commentary and critique on math as it is taught in schools.
Online Science and Math Textbooks -- looks like mostly higher-level resources.
Textbook League -- critical reviews of middle and highschool level textbooks, not just science but also history. Virulently secular but interesting.
Middle School Physical Science Resource Center -- of interest because of this extensive review.

--4--
Assessment

KISS Grammar -- Samples of Student Writing.
Texas Education Agency -- released standardized tests for practice

--5--
Education

Teaching and Learning -- An Augustinian Perspective
Internet Text Archive
The Objective of Education is Learning, Not Teaching

--6--
Miscellaneous

A Chart of Latin Chants (pdf) -- from this site on Learning Latin.
Ideas for Embedding Google Spreadsheets in your Blog or Website -- unfortunately I don't understand what they're saying, but I wish I did. There's also calendar and excel templates for free on this site.
Ambleside Year 0.5 -- maybe for Aidan.
Get shipping labels online and avoid waiting in post office lines -- if you have a bookselling business.

Wednesday Weigh 2

Last one was June 10 so now that it is July maybe it is time for another one. I've decided that once a month is enough for these.

Balance of Time

This is a new one -- I think that more than weight and fitness per se, I have to just work on balancing my life in a healthy way. That includes regular nutritious meals and good exercise but also other things like time spent on family, work, prayer, home learning, outdoor life and community activities. For now, that thought's just a placeholder. This next month I'll try to keep track of where my time and energy are going. Then I'll go from there.

Food

• Not too bad. I've been eating vegetables and fruit several times a day. A little careless with the carbs but it hasn't spiraled out of control.

Water

• This should become more of a priority. The weather has finally gotten warmer and I'm spending more time outside. Plus, Clare tells me that when you're exercising more your muscles retain water and you need to flush the toxins by drinking more.

Exercise

• I went walking 5 days out of 7 on our community trail with Chari and some of the kids. Total 15 miles, so not bad at all. I would like to keep that up. It's so pretty this time of year, too.
  

Challenges for this week:

• Drink more.
• Keep up with the exercise (I'm thinking about doing some yard work now that I'm SO fit-- LOL).

Weigh-In

I'm down 3 pounds from last time. That's about a pound a week, which is definitely a good trend. On the down side, my normal range is about that so I will have to get a couple of pounds down from there to feel like I "really" made progress. This puts my BMI at 21.6. If I get down to 21 I'll feel OK about that. I don't like to get much higher than 22.

Sunday Six

--1--

An Ambleside homeschooler from Australia shared this MEP Primer presenting how she uses the program with her Year 3 student. Since I've talked about MEP on my blog several times, I thought others might find this useful.

--2--

Here is a mega-project -- lesson plans based on the Book of Virtues -- at Shiver Academy. Look on the sidebar -- you can download it all at once or in sections.... it's a pdf.

--3---

I found this Exhortation to Educators by St John Bosco, written near the end of his life. A quote about gentle discipline:

“How are we to go about breaking down this barrier?”

“By a friendly relationship with the boys, especially in recreation. Affection can’t be shown without this friendly relationship, and unless affection is seen there can be no confidence. He who wants to be loved must first show his own love. Our Lord made himself little with the little ones and bore our infirmities. He is our Master in this matter of the friendly approach. A master who is only seen in the master’s chair is just a master and nothing more, but if he goes into recreation with the boys he becomes their brother.

If someone is only seen preaching from the pulpit, it will be said that he does his duty, neither more nor less, whereas if he whispers a little word in recreation, this is seen as the word of a friend. How many conversions were brought about by those few words which you whispered suddenly in a boy’s ear, in the thick of the game! When a person knows he is loved, he will love in return, and when a person is loved he can get anything, especially from boys. This confidence sets up an electric current between boys and superiors. Hearts are opened, needs and weaknesses made known. This love enables superiors to bear with weariness, annoyance, ingratitude, or the troubles, failings and neglect of the boys. Our Lord did not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax. He is your model."

--4--

I found these Latin Teaching Materials a long time ago, but was just looking through the site again. Lots of nice handouts and teaching materials. I think I particularly like the Elementary Readers.

One more Latin resource -- at Tar Heel Reader -- there are some very easy Latin readers, probably for the grade school set -- but kind of cute.

--5--

A bibliographical monograph on the value of classics. Perhaps not very interesting, but I wanted to bookmark it for later. A lot of times you can find some of these old books in the Google repository.

--6--

That's about all I can think of, and it's time to dress the kids for Mass. We are going down to town for a Tridentine Mass -- long drive and hot weather down in the central valley, but very worth it!

Boring Saturday (late) -- Time Slipping By

This boring post for Saturday is a day late. I got busy yesterday with various things and didn't have time to sit down and write, though plenty of boring openings for posts slipped in and out of my mind as I went about doing other things.

I thought I would try to talk a bit about what life looks like around the house these days. Even though those are boring to write and not too thrilling to read, they are like a time capsule -- when I find them several years later I'm always very surprised how things have changed.

This morning Kevin (my husband) took Clare (my daughter, 19) and the two little ones, Paddy (6) and Aidan (just 10) off to their grandma's cabin by the lake. He is going to take them out on the boat and Paddy can play with his little cousin Declan. Kevin told Paddy last night that if he didn't wake up in time, he was going to get left behind. As a consequence Paddy burst into our room wild-eyed at the crack of dawn this morning, afraid that he had been deserted. I told him he could go back to bed and I'd be sure to wake him up. A few minutes later Aidan showed up, having wet the bed. His mild cerebral palsy seems to affect his night time continence, but he feels too grownup to wear Pull Ups at night, so I end up doing lots of laundry.

At 8 am I was feeding them breakfast (toast and peanut butter) and talking to Clare.
At 8:30 they were off. It is quite rare for me to be alone in the house as I am now. All the teenage and adult boys are sleeping. Liam, the oldest, is home at present, having graduated from college this May.

It has been cold up here in the Sierra Mountains. Cold day after cold day. Brendan said he could see his breath when he was taking out the trash last night. Kevin has mostly stained the deck now but had planned to have the work done much sooner, only he can't risk laying down the stain and then having it rained on. It is oil stain and does not react kindly to water droplets. In fact, the effect is like, well, like oil and water.

Next week Sean starts summer football practice. And Brendan is soon going to take assessment tests for the semi-local community college. It's an odd time in our lives, a transition season if there ever was one. Next year, my youngest, Paddy, will be formally in Homeschool First Grade. His birthday is in December, practically the day after the public school cut-off, which put him technically in kindergarten last year though he was six and already reading. The point is that for the first time in my motherhood years I have no preschool kids.

This is also the first year we have a College Graduate. Liam will be going off into the world within the next few months.

Clare and Brendan will be going to college -- Clare will be going to Thomas Aquinas College where Liam went, and Brendan will be going to city college until he gets a clearer sense of what he wants to do from there.

Sean will be a sophomore at the high school and playing on the varsity football team.

Kieron is a teenager now and will be in Grade 8, almost a high schooler.

When my life was unremittingly busy with babies and medical issues, I glanced ahead to these present days and imagined I would have so much more energy and time. It hasn't really happened, though. I have less urgent work to do but that really doesn't in itself free up large spaces for working on projects. I think time is a bit like space in that regard. You can move from a thousand square foot house to a 3000 sq ft house, as we did back in 1997, and still find yourself bursting out of the storage space within a short space of time. Maybe it's like that with money too. You can FEEL poor on a mid-range income. Presently we ARE poor in terms of cash income, and genuinely have few pennies to spare. But I know that people who have higher incomes still feel a bit tightly pressed and it's not an illusion. And people poorer than us still manage without starving, just as I know one family of 10 who lived in an 800 square foot house and got by.

With time -- you can have way more time freed up yet if you are not careful, you can find the available moments slipping by just as fast with not much extra to show as a result. So time management has become a priority for me again, though in a different manner than it was before. It used to be I had to skimp and save on time. I was always in a hurry. Somehow I stayed a half step ahead. Now I have more time. But it's easy to fritter it away, as you can with money and space. I requested some time management books from Paperback Swap and am planning to go through them slowly this summer and glean some productivity ideas. So you may be seeing this topic again in future, though I'll bring it to a close for now!

Systems Update -- Health Habits

Though I am using a different logo, I'm following the Happy to be Home "2 Moms, 20 pounds" meme for Weigh In Wednesday.

By the way, I think my favorite posts ever about health and eating are at bearing blog: master chronology (a whole weight loss journal) and constellation of habits.

So here's my situation. When I weighed myself this morning I was at 145 pounds. I am 5 feet 8 inches and this puts me within a pound of a BMI of 22, which is just fine for a 46 year old female. It's also 18 pounds more than I was in college and 13 pounds more than I'd like to be, but I can live with that.

The main reasons I keep up with these accountability projects is so that (1) I stay in my target range (it's harder now than it used to be when I was younger) and (2) because I'm really not a very healthy person unless I try to be intentional. Sometimes I feel guilty about posting about my food issues because I don't technically have a weight problem. On the other hand, I think I really do have a food problem. It has gotten better in the last 20 plus years but I still have to manage it. Jen's Saint Diet posts are quite insightful about the spiritual effects of food issues.

So I'll be focusing primarily on health. I would sort of like to lose about ten pounds but that's secondary. The main thing is that when I start eating too much junk, my energy level dives, I get less involved in life, and I usually end up depressed. It's partly a psychological thing I need to deal with.

So here I'll try to list my goals and challenges:

Food

My basic longstanding goals are:

• eat breakfast within an hour of getting up,
• eat at regular intervals during the day (breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner with an optional extra snack either at mid-morning or at bedtime if I really need one),
• limit carbs of any kind and especially white flour and sugar,
• eat a bunch of vegetables during one meal at least, and
• eat fruit (or any carb) only alongside a protein.

My bigger-view goal is to stay with these goals at least 90% of the time, and when I get off track, to get back on track within a couple of days (gradually, if necessary).

Water

I do all right on water most of the time. Fortunately I love water and dislike juice and soda, so there's a hazard avoided right there.

The goal is maintenance here.

Exercise

I'm a sluggish person -- temperamentally a combination of melancholic and phlegmatic, and allergic to sun, some airborne outdoors things, plus my own sweat (due to eczema).

Favorite exercises: a hike through the woods, riding the exercise bike with a book propped on the rack, and, um, that's about all.

I am trying to read books about running because I like the IDEA of running, just have difficulty with the actual doing of it.

My Walk to Rivendell ticker is here. I probably need to set a specific goal per day. Maybe I'll start with 3 miles on the bike, ie 20 miles per week, and go from there.

Challenges

Listing the big long-term ones here and hoping to come up with workable solutions over time. For me, One Solution doesn't seem to work. Toolboxes work better, but better still if there's an order of priority.

• Carb spirals -- where I have a few bites of some sugary or carby thing and then can't stop, sometimes for days, weeks, months.
• Dislike of exertion (see above). I usually exercise for a few days consistently and then just...stop.
• Plus the melancholy tendency to get discouraged when I meet with difficulties. What usually happens is that I bring my phlegmatic side in to console the melancholy side ("it's not so bad...") and then basically just let the whole things slide. I have to take the emotion out of it.

Successes

Since this is the baseline I won't list any.

Plans for the next week

Eat regular meals and snacks and refrain from eating in between meals. If unachievable, resort to carrots or salad or something of the sort.

Weigh every day.

Weigh-in

I have a ticker over here. and there is also a chart showing my definitely cyclical history over the past couple of years.

Wordless Wednesday: Ready to Spin

(Aidan's birthday tops, and he found an old pencil box to contain them)

Six for Sunday-- Education

--1--

Faith from Two-Thirds Unschooling linked on an e-list to this math article -- I remember reading it a long time ago -- The Story of an Experiment. This is the experimental proposal:

The whole subject of arithmetic could be postponed until the seventh year of school, and it could be mastered in two years' study by any normal child.

The rest of the article is about trying that experiment. Dates from 1935; interesting reading.

--2--

I liked these posts at bearing blog: plan for science next year and follow-up. Good points about homeschool science teaching, made by a homeschooler with a science background.

While I am at it, a question: Where do you look for science resources if you're (1) not a science person yourself (2) can't stand Apologia or most other designed-for-homeschoolers science resources (3) don't want to inflict public high school science texts on your highschooler and (4) prefer "living books" written by people who know and love their subject?

The answer for me is: browse MacBeth's website, High School Science. Living books and other links there, divided by conventional high school classifications of earth science, biology, chemistry, physics, etc.

Some other time I'll write a whole science post since it's something I've been thinking about lately as Kieron approaches high school age. I've sold all my Apologias so I don't even have to be tempted to try them out again.

--3--

Teacher, Revised, the site that tried to make the case that going to a public school gives you the right to call other people names, has been inviting dispatches from the home school front, and this is a good one. There are good comments, too.

Since I am the mom of a kid who went to public high school this year (the first in our family to do so) I also liked this post called After the Final Bell. I admire what public school teachers do, the good ones at any rate, in spite of being "overwhelmed by standards, teaching to the test, and paperwork". Sean had some good teachers this year. And I give Mr Jesse Scaccia credit for being willing to listen, definitely an attribute of a good teacher.

--4--

Someone on my classical Catholic list (see sidebar) linked to RC History's Timeline of Saints (pdf). A good resource for chronological studies. There is also a saint's timeline at Saints.SQPN (formerly patron saints' index). It's presently in a bit of confusion as the site switches domains but if you look up the date you're interested in, you can often find good information.

--5--

On the total homeschooling-geek front, otherwise known as "I care about this, but who else in the entire California Sierras would?" my oldest son who just graduated from college this May gave me an article called A Definition of Comedy by Duane Berquist (brother of Marcus Berquist, brother in law of Laura Berquist).

I googled Duane Berquist and as a result found this cool site called Society for Aristotelian Studies which contain the Definition of Comedy article (pdf) plus lots more that looks interesting, should I ever get past my present TBR stack. See, the thing is, according to my son, that they think there is a missing section in Aristotle's Poetics -- he briefly comments on Comedy and seems to imply he will treat it in more detail later, but then never does -- oh, never mind. But if you're interested, the article really was interesting to read. Lots of Shakespeare quotations and references. Made me want to read more Shakespeare.

-----------

I guess that's all for now!

(I think I'll save Sunday for link day. The meme I mentioned on my Saturday post called it Sunday Six -- it's unfortunately extinct now, but hopefully Steph won't mind me borrowing her graphic. Maybe the Sunday Six-Pack? -).

Oh, I forgot one...actually two....

--6--

Link to the article on Robinson Crusoe at Wikipedia -- I posted it on Twitter but wanted to remember it in case we do some extensions after finishing reading the book together.

And a link to a page about the Steller's Jay -- with some activities like a coloring page, etc -- and information about its habitat and diet, and some nice pictures.

Being Boring on a Saturday Morning

Boring Posts for Saturday -- now there is a concept after this blogger's heart! I read about it at Dawn's Sufficient for Today, where she designed several pretty logos. Pretty is good, too.

To explain the meme, Mary at Hope Echoes writes:

I started my ever popular feature--Boring Posts for Saturday for two reasons. Reason one-- very few bloggers post on Saturday and that is when I have the most time to read, so I miss reading new stuff then. Reason two--I find that I write some opinionated and long winded posts that talk about things that I really believe or things that bother me and when I put them out during the week people comment around them--the day before, the day after, and I realize that most of you weren't as fascinated by my topic as I was.

Yep, me too, absolutely.

Now that I've gotten that down, I realize I don't really have much boring to write about -- besides the usual, of course! So maybe I ought to link to the meme schedule I put on my House and Hold blog one time. Or, wait, why not; I'll reproduce them below. I had collected a meme for every day of the week. Some of them are probably extinct now, and there are some that overlap, so I never really totally used them all.


Menu Plan Monday






Tackle It Tuesday












Weigh-In Wednesday










Works for Me Wednesday











Thankful Thursday














and Thoughtful Thursday (I couldn't find the original explanation for that one but here's a graphic)











Poetry Friday







Smart Habits Saturday
(Saving Money, Associations, Resources and Time)













Sunday Six

Others I have read about that might be useful someday are:

Wordless Wednesday (I have trouble being wordless, but I like the idea)

Dominion Family's 25 Things I Have Been Doing Lately,

Epiphany Spring's Think Upon These Things Thursday








Monday Memories












Seven Quick Takes










Small Successes:











The Simple Woman's Daybook:













I've never actually done any of these though I did have a modified daybook called Sierra Highlights going for a while, based on the Simple Woman one.

Oh, and how could I forget! Homeschool Weekly Reports --







I did quite a few of those, though sporadically, here and here.

Edited to add a few more I have found recently:

Hearts for Home
HT: Erin










I found the following two recently through Like Mother, Like Daughters

Make Do Monday










Food on Fridays












Frugal Fridays












Teaching Tuesday -- (I found it on Angie's blog Fostering Truth but I don't know where it originally started) -- I made a button though, I love making buttons!