Mothering Many

I popped in to say that I am still here, and ask if you are. Last Tuesday, after my wonderful tackle, I went to bed around 8pm with a fever and hard chills. And that was the last cleaning I did until today. Nothing like going out in a blaze of glory, eh? I seem to be on the mend, if by mend, I can mean able to get through the day with less than 2 naps, and so I attempted some light housework today, just my bath and bed room, and not even the floors in those rooms. And that is why there is no Tuesday Tackle for you today. The only thing I am up to tackling is a pillow!

We’ve started new years/terms for three students this week, and I am making a more conscientious effort to include the extras that make a CM education so much fun: art and music and Shakespeare and such. To do that, I have back on some of the extra history readings I was requiring. Part of the beauty of CM is the free time it allows to pursue interests that the children have. It took me awhile to see that, to let go of what I think they want/ought to know, to stop trying to make my favorite subject their favorites, too. We’ll see how it goes.

Wow. We got done. With all of it. The new schedule worked, everybody learned lots and it was a good day. But let me just say that if you plan to start the school day after lunch, and someone gets stuck on something, you may be doing school until after 8 pm. Just sayin’.

PS: Yes, we stopped to prepare, eat and clean up from dinner. We did not put on our Adidas golf gear and go play the back nine.

Our Christmas Festivities wrapped up this weekend, and it’s back to school for us today. I finished the lesson plans right on schedule last Friday, so I didn’t have to spend the weekend in a near panic, which was really nice since it was already scheduled full, LOL.

I have put all but my youngest student doing a good deal of work independently, instead of having to wait for me to get to it. Hopefully, they will be too tired to bicker. It’s certainly a big step up for a couple of them, but I am pretty sure that they are ready, and that the increased bickering is a sign that I am not allowing them to be engaged enough in their work. Time to quit spoon- feeding them and teach them to eat, yk?

Of course, if they are also tired enough to go to bed without arguing and sleep past 6am, that would be a bonus. Too bad they don’t make amby baby beds for 9 year olds. Mine wakes up at the crack of dawn no matter what time he goes to bed, and always has. Unfortunately, he also hates to be alone, so he wakes up a brother to fight with once he gets bored. Yay!

Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow. Dh got up last night and started moving furniture. If you don;t remember what it looked like yesterday, go ahead and scroll down and have a look. The library is now done! I am so excited. Here’s what it looked like when we began this morning.

Library area:

Front door area:

The front door area still looks much the same, but the library has undergone a miraculous transformation! There are a total of 5 sets of shelves here. (We have 2 more, one by my desk that holds my manuals, cook books, knitting books and scout books, and one by the front door for active school books.) This just feels so good! I have missed my books.

I will work on the front door area tomorrow. I’d consider putting one of the computers there, except that I don’t have a long enough Cat5e, and my kids are internet junkies, just like me. This afternoon will be spent on a couple of short blog posts, and then lesson plans and paperwork.

Because I guess I thought writing the lesson plans, filling out some government paperwork and planning the pack meeting, and scheduling the youth group were not enough of a to-do list to keep me busy. But daggone, it is exciting to visit all my books again! Here’s what it looked like late yesterday when I got started, and by late, I mean after supper, ya’ll.

This is a shot of the front door, where shelves are being moved from and the couch is going:

There is a set of shelves you can’t see behind that cabinet.

Here is where the library will be:

My husband does laundry on the weekend, but he does not fold. Don’t laugh, but it makes Mondays real touchy in the laundry arena. Also, there are still some Christmas presents under there.

And here is what those same areas looked like when we started again this morning. Country is helping, because she is almost as excited as I am to have all the books back. It’s…..wonderful.

Do you remember yesterday I said I thought I would work on a todo list? Well, as if in cyber-confirmation, Carmen, otherwise known as Mom to the Screaming Masses said today should be about doing something for me, even if that meant crossing something off my to-do list. Since my most aggravating issue is the fact that I can’t remember all the stuff I need to do, I plan to gather up my scraps and cards and notebooks and make a master list tonight. Since I have jotted some stuff down on blogs as well, I’ll pull those in, too.

As for the rest of what I said last night, I did not get up quite as early as I wanted, but I did get to spend some time with the Father, and we did get some tidying done. Tomorrow: lather, rinse, repeat! No need to polish the kohler faucets, but I would like to see all the dirty towels washed, dried, folded and put away. Today, I’ve concentrated more on the clothes we wear.

Let me tell what else I have discovered: I am way to easy on my kids in school. According to the children, DH made Stuntman write his numbers correctly and Batman re-read the page until he got everything correct. Now, I had been reading the numbers as written and asking for clarification if I needed it, and I had been gently leading Batman through corrections and letting him do it again tomorrow. That mess stops immediately, muhahahahahhahahaha. Let’s pick up the pace a bit, umm-kay? Kay!

I just saw this neat night light over at Edmund Scientific. Isn’t that wicked cool? Of course, they aren’t calling it a night light, but that is totally what I would use it for, after I used it to teach an astronomy lesson, of course. You know it fits right in with our Science theme for this term. Too bad we are almost done with the term. Why didn’t you guys tell me about it?

They have so many cool things there! When I do school planning again, I’ll be scoping out www.scientificsonline.com for some cool toys teaching tools.

Edited to add: ok, you can’t see the nifty-ness here. The light changes to show the cycles of the moon. Click it and you will go to the page where you can scope it out. “Scope it”. Ha! I slay myself again!

Here’s a site I have been meaning to tel you about for quite a while. I think you home-schoolers will find it very useful. World Cooking has a nice collection of recipes from around the world. And don’t forget the flags. They’d be great printed out for you note-bookers, along with pictures of the foods!

And yesterday, there was art. Art of the plaster and paints sort. We made frescoes. I had never worked with plaster of Paris before, so that was quite interesting. I will tell you that it is lighter than water, and so you need more of it by volume. The instructions are to mix by weight. Because, yes, we all have precisely calibrated digital scales in our kitchen, right? Whatever.

I took pictures. Now I can prove to you and them that we do fun stuff in school, occasionally.

It’s been almost three weeks! I cannot believe all we’ve accomplished in school in that time! I’ll be writing more plans this week, believe it or not. I”ll post a littl eon it, but nothing like the in-depth series I did when I charted the term. In fact, I plan to use those posts I wrote befre to help keep me on track when I write the next 3 weeks worth of plans.

Things are a bit tighter for us this period, what with the sports and all, so I’m glad there isn’t much to buy. The way the term falls on the calendar, I won’t need anything except art/craft supplies until after Christmas. And that’s good, because I really don’t want to deal with private student loans at this stage of the educational game, ykwim? We all know that leads to student loan consolidation later, and with the number of students I have, I don’t think even student loan consolidation would help us out of that debt spiral.

Back to the art stuff: The kids seemed excited in a rather vague way about a couple of projects in the DaVinci book, but not enough to remember the projects when I asked what they wanted to do. However, frescoes were covered in the history I do with Batman and Spidey, and they were quite intrigued with that, so that’s what I bought supplies for. Not having to go to BigTown to get what I needed did weigh heavily in my decision, considering that Sunday was the only day I could do that, BUT the brakes on the van were gone to the point that I could hear metal on metal, and Sunday was also the only day dh could do that, and so, brakes win. Anyway (darn those rabbit trails), I got pie pans, plaster of paris, pipe cleaners, watercolors and brushes. We will make a mess and have great fun, and perhaps some art will even occur, as if by accident.