Every semester it happens.
I come up with these ideal ideals, and then I feel obliged to come back and tell you how things really panned out.
This is what I do for some strange reason. I plan. I have this driving need to have a plan in place even if it completely falls apart. But plans are just ideals, and our family is the ideal example of non-idealness. (See photo above.)
So… once again I’m driven to share our reality.
Thus far this year, according to plan, we have…
- read our read-aloud books.
Well, not really according to plan, but we read all of our family read-aloud selections for first semester before Christmas.
And… hmmm. Yep, that’s about it.
What about the rest of the plan? Well, we worked through our Bible studies and focused on a virtue each week. We ciphered some mathematics fairly consistently. We read some of the picture books (but the boys took off on some great independent reading thanks to our collection of Usborne Illustrated Stories and Illustrated Classics). We referenced AiG’s God’s Design for Science – World of Plants, World of Animals, Weather & Water, etc. in a haphazard sort of way. (Mostly, these books have been excellent resources for Stephen’s weekly science papers for the research strand in the curriculum he’s using.)
The reality is, we let go of the plan for a more necessary season of pursuing beauty. (On those long months when my husband is in another country, and I’m juggling a blessedly energetic and feisty toddler, and I’m calming the sometimes emotional roller-coaster of a pre-teen, and it’s all I can do to get a supper of cereal on the table, I’m searching for the truth, beauty, and goodness all around me. And you know what? There’s a lot of beauty there. It just isn’t in the plan.)
Okay, so here’s what happened this semester instead of the plan (aka, our semester in review):
The twelve-year-old played wholeheartedly with the one-year-old countless times.
The two older boys created beautiful wooden models for 4-H fall displays.
Our science was interest-led (instead of mom-led).
This means the older two boys read through novels about Zoology, Botany, and Anatomy. (Thank you, Sassafras Science Adventures.) And the science experiments we did were either… a trial run of our earth science experiments (because I am directing a homeschool community this year and have to know what’s a-going on) OR they were random things like… “Hey, Mom! Can we set something on fire using Archimedes’ Death Ray?”
As an unexpected blessing this semester, we met Guy Gilchrist, artist for the Nancy comic strip, just because we are part of our local Community Kidz Choir. I still can’t believe he was in Carthage, TN, of all places.
Speaking of art, we didn’t stick to plan there, either. I have loved our Usborne Famous Paintings Flashcards because they’ve been such a simple way for us to include some art study in our school week.
By far, this has been the easiest way for us to incorporate art appreciation into our school week:
:: Study the picture for 3 minutes
:: Tell us about the picture without looking and read the back of the card to all of us (which includes interesting facts about the artist and the artwork)
:: Sketch it (Stephen likes to do this upside-down to ensure he is focusing on the elements of shape.)
The boys have enjoyed these 10 minute diversions each week. I enjoy it because it is so simple. [I love these flashcards! For real.]
We didn’t stick to our plan on composer study, but we did enjoy a few of the selections from our plan…
Our homeschool group enjoyed several field trips. At the beginning of the semester, we took a trip to Nashville’s Parthenon where the children threw together a spontaneous Greek myths dramatization.
Speaking of dramatization, the two older boys performed in a production (“Touched by the King”) set during the time of Christ , Stephen as the paralytic man (my mama-heart beat frantically every time they lowered him through the roof!)…
…and David as a demon-possessed boy. (My mama-heart wept at the sound of the melancholy and desperation in the mother’s cries for peace and healing for her child.)
Stephen enjoyed another fall season as part of our church’s puppet team.
Even without a scheduled performance in the books, we ended up with ongoing performances in our home.
Take our miniature version of Elvis, for instance.
That boy needs a karaoke machine. Wait. On second thought, maybe not.
We’ll interject a little bit of schoolwork here…
As part of his homeschool tutorial program, Stephen is memorizing how to draw (and label) the world from memory. To better prepare David, there’s a simple thing we’re now doing in addition to occasional blob maps: trace and label a continent daily. We’ve started with South America (more about that in this post).
We had a camping trip (in November!) to meet family at Fall Creek Falls State Park.
That falling-apart bridge, by the way, is not something I recommend. Neither is this cliff:
ESPECIALLY when you see your children at the top of said cliff. Thank you, Uncle Steve, for causing my heart to skip a few beats there. (What would you do if you saw itty bitty specks that happen to be… your children… at the top of a cliff like this one?)
We celebrated Levi’s 7th birthday…
…and ate a bunch of junk food in the name of holiday memory-making .
We kicked off our shoes and relaxed every now and then.
But mostly, I just tried to let go of the plan and embrace the fact (a fact I’ve known for a long time but I still struggle with embracing) that I don’t have to check boxes to have a fulfilling and rewarding educational experience with our boys.
Sometimes, it’s better to just sit back and laugh with them.