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.

As I was posting my preliminary goals for the year over on Midlife Musings, I noted that I wanted to get the kids through thier current year and one more, so we’ll be putting our noses to the grindstone. We have fallen behind because life has just been going at a wicked fast pace. I’d love to say we’ve learned to handle change with grace and aplomb and courage and a willingness to be of service to others. That would sound so good, wouldn’t it? The truth is that we’ve learned to struggle, adapt, make do and wait. I guess that means we’ve learned to live life on it’s terms, and there’s some value in that. But I really wish we had at least learned to find the joy in the process. Kinda like in the movies. Ha!

Anyway, I need to write plans, and I’ll start on that today. I actually arranged my desk the last time I cleaned it so that I could have a big work surface by sliding the laptop over to the side. We’ll be using Ambleside again, and I’ll fill you in on the details after I write the plans. One thing I really wish I could put more attention on is music. We have an electronic keyboard, but we don’t have any space to put it up. I kid you not, there is not enough un-used wall space in this house to put it. We have utilized our space to the extreme, LOL. If I could put it up, though, I would subscribe to these Piano lessons & piano chords by email. It’s free, and you know that price suits me just fine.

I also noticed while I was on the site that he has a course specifically for hymns and gospel music. Oh, it was good! Our church is piano-player-less just now, and so we have to use recorded instruments. As if I have the ability to add one more thing to my plate. There’s just no way I can do that. At all. But it would be wonderful. He uses the chord technique, which I have enjoyed before, from both sides of the piano.

Back to the school planning: I’ll be sticking with composer study for music for now, but I will be filing this info in my brain for later use. You know–when we build that addition I want. I’ll have room for the keyboard then.

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!

Do your kids ever come up with really cool ideas? Mine do. Now some of them are just crazy. Cool, but crazy. But some of those “what ifs’ are actually cool in a realistic way. Like, what if a dvd player could clean the dvds before it played them (we had a dirty dvd last night). If you’ve ever lost your place in a movie because you had to take the dvd out and clean it, then you can see this would be a totally cool thing. And with hordes of little people, you can bet that’s happened to us quite often.

Now, today, I read about a site, aptly called RaiseCapital, that allows people with cool ideas to present them to investors. Young (or not so young) entrepreneurs can create a a marketing pitch for their idea, including video and other media, and then potential investors can have a peek. Venture Capital Funding can mean the difference between getting an idea launched and letting it languish.You know there are people who are just waiting to invest in the next great idea? Not having the money to develop an idea doesn’t have to mean the death of it. If it’s a good enough idea, there are people lined up to offer the money to develop it. RaiseCapital even emails them when someone posts a new idea in their field of interest.

I’m glad I found out about the site, because the next time one of my kids has a knock-out idea, the first words out of my mouth don’t have to be, “do you know how much it would cost to do that?”