Random Ramblings

I realized I haven't posted in a few days, but I've just felt somewhat off-kilter this week. My days have been full, and by the time evening rolls around I just want to kick back with a good book. Which, by the way, right now, is fiction work by Jodi Picoult that I checked out at the library, Plain Truth. It's a very hard book to put down. And I've found myself reading it way too late. So I've been neglecting my blog.

So here I sit this evening waiting for an E-book to download and I decided to pop on and post a quick update.

I recently posted that I was moving away from workboxes. They were just taking up too much of my time and energy. It was a lot to correct work and then sit and refill boxes, even if I had preplanned them. Most of the time the kids didn't want to do the fun stuff I put in. They would rather go off and do their own thing. So in the spirit of simplifying, I cleared the shelves of shoeboxes. The boys have now found all kinds of ways to sort Legos, Playmobiles, army men, etc. in all these boxes.

We're practicing the Charlotte Mason method more and more. The kids are getting pretty good at narrating, and I think Lulu will start written narration pretty soon. Her narrations are detailed, while the boys tend to pick out one thing in particular to tell about.

We're enjoying the artist and poet study, and still trying to get into the swing of hymn and composer study. Last week we listened to our chosen hymn and the history of it at the Center for Church Music website. They have a neat little five minute history segment for each hymn with the hymn incorporated in it. We also read a short biography of Bach, but have yet to listen to his music. I don't have a CD of his recordings, so I need to pull something up on the computer. We'll probably tackle that tomorrow.

Conman is studying plants and soil, so we've planted some basil and parsley to watch grow. He also has a bean seed experiment going. He's almost finished with his nature reader, and we'll just keep working slowly along with everything else. I also started a gentle form of spelling with him that is loosely based on prepared dictation. He tends to spell better orally than on paper, so after looking at a short sentence, I then ask him to spell a couple of the words in the sentence. This week he had trouble with January, so we spent the week mastering it. He had it down pat this morning!

Blakester is moving right along and will most likely complete his current science next week. He is also almost finished with his nature reader and I plan on having him start on a book called Science in Your Own Back Yard that I had on our bookshelf. It was a thrift store find, but very much a living book. He'll read Christian Liberty Press' Nature Reader 5 next year.

Lulu started on her study of government and the Constitution this week, so she'll be somewhat ahead for next year. She's using The Land of Fair Play from Christian Liberty Press. She's basically just reading the text and answering questions. I'll probably have her narrate some to me also.

So that's our status update. We'll continue to school through the end of July, with some subjects running their course before that, and some will take that entire length of time. August will be our off month, as we are planning for our move to Texas to come to fruition then! In September, we will start back up using the Simply Charlotte Mason plan, Year 1, full force. I am really looking forward to getting everyone together and on the same page for several subjects. So, as I am slowly introducing the different areas of CM study, the kiddos should be well adjusted to them by that time.

I will be back with my normal schedule soon. I promise.