Homeschool Daze

That was us this morning!  I'd been up in the night twice with Pip and once with Benedict, certainly makes for a tired and grumpy mama!  Add to this chronic back pain,  Dave wobbly with MS symptoms and Benedict with high blood sugars and you have an interesting mix!

Despite the shaky start we managed to complete two rounds of laundry, general tidying of rooms, two home cooked meals and a run in the play park before it got dark.  Benedict's behaviour has been challenging today as a result of the blood sugars and I know I have responded less than favourably myself, so we've both done a heap of aplogising, ah well.

In order to prevent anarchy reigning during such difficulties, I've had to instigate an actions and consequences chart and the final result will determine whether or not he makes it over to Olen's at the weekend.  Currently he has redeemed himself and is working quietly in the lounge, so here's hoping and praying for a reasonably quiet week!  Well, I can dream can't I?!!

The ultimate antidote to difficult days is a quick, nutritious and very tasty evening treat:

Cheesy Baked Potato; Chorizo, Butter Bean and Onion  Salad and Green Beans.

Applied Maths and Martinmas

Dave was acting teacher for this morning whilst Pip and I attended sing and play.  The schools box of Lego Technic was brought into play and Benedict made a model of a wind turbine, with a crank reciprocating piston and several variants of lifting equipment.  The latter demonstrating mechanical advantage through the use of pulleys:

Our resident Wallace in action!

Just checking to make sure it works!

Lego bricks road testing the next piece of machinery.

Making some minor adjustments.

Concentrating hard!

The morning was a resounding success and Dave being an excellent teacher, even managed to incorporate some times table counting into the whole process.

After lunch we played catch up with a variety of chores and I checked the web for Martinmas songs and the story behind the feast.  This is a relatively new celebration for us as a family and as always everything was last minute!  It was Pip's turn this year to make a lantern and she had great fun with Daddy sticking gold stars onto an old jam jar.  The candle was lit during our evening meal and I shared with the others the story of St Martin.  I also found a lantern song which I sung to Pip whilst she had her bedtime feed.  Here is a version in English:

 I go outside with my lantern,

My lantern goes with me.

Above the stars are shining bright,

Down here on Earth shine we.

The cock does crow, the cat meows,

Rabimmel, rabammel, raboom,

Neath Heaven's dome til we go home,

Rabimmel, rabammel, raboom.

I go outside with my lantern,

My lantern goes with me.

Above the stars are shining bright,

Down here on Earth shine we.

So shine your light through the still dark night,

Rabimmel, rabammel, raboom,

Neath Heaven's dome til we go home,

Rabimmel, rabammel, raboom.

And a shorter version in German:

Ich geh mit meiner Laterne,

Und meine Laterne mit mir,

Dort oben leuchten die Sterne,

Und unten leuchten wir.

Meine licht ist aus

Ich geh nach Haus

Rabimmel, rabammel, raboom.

My rusty high school German stood me in good stead and I was able to sing both versions! 

There was no lantern walk around our bounds since we have been experiencing gale force winds and driving rain since tea time, any candle flame would have been extinguished immediately. The image of the flickering vulnerable candle flame reminded me that, we each carry the Christ light within us and like the small flame of a candle, we need to nurture it and protect it from the buffeting winds and storms of life.  How we do this depends on our own personal background but coming from a Catholic heritage, I'm reminded of my own weapons of defence:

Holy Mass, Rosary, Bible, Confession and Eucharistic Adoration.

I do not manage them all by any means but they are worthy signposts on this pilgrim journey.

Faith Matters

We've been using our faith as a vehicle for learning this week and so far we have been progressing nicely.  Yesterday we worked from this book:

We read the above chapter and then answered the accompanying questions.  Benedict gave some very thoughtful answers and I acted as scribe:

The above posting was based on questions you might like to ask God.  I thought it interesting that, Benedict's primary question was the whole issue of Heaven and Hell, who gets in and who doesn't!  I remember thinking that same thought as a child, "Why does God send people to Hell?"  Of course as an adult I know that, this is not the case!  God wants us all to be with him, but some folks choose to ignore him completely and are masters of their ultimate destiny.  It's that whole area of free will and God who is Love without measure, loving us enough to allow us to make choices good or bad.

Today our faith trail led us on a patchwork discovery of prayers and hopefully by the end Benedict will have his own personal prayer journal as a result.  We used this book as our resource:

His first chapter was entitled "All About Me" and here are his thoughts:

A drawing of himself and his two best friends.

Something seemed to "click" this morning and the writing process came easily and naturally.  Benedict wrote with purpose and enthusiasm and was keen to display his spelling abilities!  He was justifiably pleased with his work.  We finished this morning's session with some shared reading and then it was time for lunch.

  Not to be out done Pip is making good progress with her jigsaw and shape sorting skills and  her language continues to blossom.   Her latest words are:

cot, all gone, oh dear, gee(for Jesus!) and her favourite, Amen!

Her understanding of language far exceeds her spoken abilities and she is more than capable of following a complex series of requests.  Like all children she loves praise and yet she  is also quite happy to applaud her own efforts for a job well done.

During our afternoon work time we have been concentrating on Practical Skills.  Both yesterday and today we have slowly been putting the garden to bed, no Sara to help this time!  Yesterday we cleared the leaves and branch cuttings from the tree pruning session that occurred a few weeks ago.  Today we cleared and tidied the greenhouse.  It was great to be out in the fresh air and the exercise helped enormously with blood sugar management!

Yes, he is wearing shorts!  Good job the rest of him is wrapped up warmly!

Leaves, leaves everywhere, all gathered and ready for the compost bin.

Since todays garden job was a fairly small task we also had time to complete one household chore before tea preparation.  The chosen activity was window cleaning and between us both we cleaned all the upstairs windows, six in all.

Working hard.

Benedict grabbed the camera and took this rather blurry picture of me!

Tomorrow we will hopefully be celebrating the feast of Martinmas, in theory there should be lantern making and some yummy food for tea; whether or not it transpires into practice remains to be seen!

21 TODAY!

November 1990

December 2009

No scheme or plan

Could ever stem the power of Your hand

You chose me from before time began

And now secure in Christ I stand

Nathan Fellingham

Our Family of Saints

Here is the first part of our November liturgical craft:

Each of these beautiful icons represents a family member.

The top two icons Saint Alexandra and Saint David are mine and Dave's patron Saints.  The middle three give you a chance to meet our older girls, so here they are :

St Emilia

St Sarah

Icons for these two gals:

Sara on the left soon to be 21 years and Sr Emma Maria aged 24 years.

St Catherine.

Our very own Katy Beth also 24 years old, taller than her twin but younger by fifteen minutes!

The last two icons are representative of Benedict and Philippa Josephine.  Since Pip is named after her Grandfathers we always knew that her patron Saints would be St Philip and St Joseph, we could not find an icon for St Philip so her other namesake was called in as the reserve!

In other news we have had a fairly low key day, Benedict's blood sugars have been very erratic and as always this leads to poor concentration and fatigue.  This morning we pottered around with household chores and reading some of our library books.  After lunch of homemade broccoli soup and the pumpkin pie which was very yummy, we cleared the table and spent an hour in free form art:

After the art session Benedict helped prepare the vegetables for our evening meal, a good all round family favourite, Cottage Pie.

Another good day despite wacky blood readings, this is only due to the fact that, for the time being we have abandoned a structured curriculum.  If we had been following a curriculum it would have been a very different story, by ten o'clock I would have been red in the face with frustration and Benedict would have been thoroughly miserable, not good!  Thank you Lord for guiding us!

All Souls Pray For Us

We attended Mass this morning and I was taught a lesson in patience!  In between attempting to follow the service, I was preventing Pip from climbing up the pews and at the same time giving Benedict answers to his continuous questioning!  I should make it clear that, I'm not an authority on Church Catechises and at times my replies were quite lame!  However God smiled on us later in the day when during our family EWTN time, Fr Antoine of The Community of St John, explained the Mass to children and in this case the parents too!  I still reckon some extra reading from the Catechism would not be amiss.

The mass was quite beautiful with a small selection of appropriate hymns and at the end Father prayed the special prayers usually reserved for reading at the graveside.  The founder of our Church and her family members are buried in a square patch of ground just in front of the church doors, ideally we would have gathered there for prayers but it was teeming with rain, so Father said it was perfectly legit to pray the prayers indoors!  It was also a special day for Dave too as the mass was offered in memory of his Nanna H she would have been 100 years old yesterday.  We are hoping to make a Saints and Souls Wall, as a visual aid to our prayers, for deceased family members during the month of November.

After Mass we ran errands and then it was time for lunch.  The plan for the afternoon whilst I was at an acupuncture appointment was for Benedict to read more of his book entitled "Fighter Pilot" and also draw a picture of the Spitfire Plane on the front cover of the book.  He worked hard and both him and I were pleased with the result.

As part of our evening meal we made use of the pumpkin flesh from our jack-o-lantern and made a  Pumpkin Pie.  Here in the UK we don't celebrate Thanksgiving, the nearest we get to it  is a Harvest Festival!  Needless to say pumpkin pie recipes are non existent, so when you need a good recipe who do you go to?  Good old Martha of course and naturally there were over 70 recipes to choose from.  In the end I settled for a traditional recipe and I must say it looks and smells good.  The advice was to leave it in the fridge overnight ,so we will have to wait for our taste test until tomorrow.

Thanks be to God another happy and productive day.

Benedict's Spitfire Drawing.

Flowers for Our Lady

Our aim for the month of October was to rise to the following challenge:

In an effort to do little things with the love and cheerfulness as St Therese would have done, we are offering our efforts as a spiritual bouquet for our Blessed Mother.   Each time we manage to complete our tasks without grumbling, bear a suffering quietly without complaining and make extra special efforts to be truly kind to one another, then we will place a flower on the following picture:

Day One.

Day 31.

So, Our Lady got her garden after all; all credit goes to the littlest family members, Mummy and Daddy still have a lot of learning to do in this area!

A Happy Feast Day

We have had a blessed Saints Day and I thank God for that.  Benedict helped with food preparation this morning and as a result we had chicken soup for lunch and vegetable curry with mushroom rice for tea.  It was nice for me to have an extra pair of hands in the kitchen and Benedict really enjoyed learning new skills.

After lunch we packed ourselves in the car and paid a long overdue trip to the library.  Dave had errands to run first so Benedict, Pip and I made part of our journey on foot.  It was only a short walk but it was a lovely piece of uninterrupted talking and listening time with Benedict.  Pip was very happy to watch the traffic going by from the comfort of her pushchair!

We brought home a variety of books and during our snack and tea time there was a moment of absolute peace in the house as we all sat reading.  It was good to share that time together.  Our jolly jack-o-lantern finally got an airing during an our evening meal, an appropriate smiley face at the end of a very happy day!

Ready to tuck in!

Happy Feast Day.

Mid Term Round Up

We took a break from our regular activites this week.  We abandoned the workbooks, spelling tests and maths rhymes and spent time with our friends near and far.  It was good for us all to be out of the house, enjoying the sunshine in the brief snatches when it appeared.  Our local park provides a welcome chance to charge around, leap and climb, a much needed boost to flagging spirits and the chance for mum to make the tea uninterupted at home!

Growing up quickly, a soon-to-be two year old, ack!

  I'm having to rethink our home school schedule yet again!  I think there is an underlying math dyslexia, that is hampering Benedict's progress in this area.  To clarify and give advice I've booked a meeting with a specially trained teacher and we meet on Friday.  At the moment we are in ever decreasing circles and that is not good for his self esteem or my sanity!

Since today is the feast of All Hallow's Eve Benedict and I baked some treats for our Sunday afternoon tea:

  
Mixing and Stirring.

A cheeky Miss Philippa.

It's a Bug's Life

As part of our nature science this week we are looking at the environment of the ant.  We are fortunate to have nearby a wildlife centre housing a whole variety of mammals, fish and mini beasts; so yesterday we ventured North as part of our Tuesday field trip day.  We saw meerkats, degu, dwarf mongoose, monkeys, birds, squirrels, cavy, bugs, butterflies and snakes.  Pip's favourite was the dwarf mongoose she was fascinated by them.  Benedict enjoyed looking at them all but I think the new adventure play space won hands down!

Today our written work centred around yesterday's trip.  After writing a short account of our visit Benedict then drew a picture of one of the meerkats and their environment.  In addition to our times table work we have been working on telling the time, Benedict filled in a printed sheet of activities and there corresponding times.  Our final task for the morning was our weekly spelling list.

After lunch Benedict watched Bug's Life  in the hope that it will give him some clues pertaining to the environment of the ant and other related insects.  Hopefully we will be continuing the topic on our next official work day which is Friday.  I must admit we are all feeling pretty jaded at this end, both Benedict and Pip are weary with minor colds and coughs and not sleeping too well.  Naturally all of this adds up to crabby behaviour and poor concentration, good job we are on a non teaching day tomorrow!

Here are the pictures of our trip:

 

First Things First

The firsts are Benedict attending Beaver camp on Saturday.  A whole six hours of running, climbing, fire building (under supervision, naturally!), orienteering, friendship making and eating.  Dave went along to monitor diabetic control and act as blog photographer!

Getting ready to play

Collecting wood for the fire

Toasted Treats

Eating the evidence!

Burning off the calories with a stint on the climbing wall

For tea the Beaver leader Tess had made beef and vegetable pie with cake for dessert.  Since Benedict is gluten intolerant aswell as diabetic, he ate the casserole mix and Dave took along an alternative sweet.  He benefited enormously from the day and came home very tired and happy.

Pip was also experiencing a "first" that day, not only was it the longest she had ever been apart from her daddy and big brother but she also refused to nap that day, ack!  Despite having been on the go since 7am, she was quite happy to help with household activities aswell as play time with mummy.  It was a rare treat for me too as so often I'm either caught up with "teaching" Benedict or playing catch up with the never ending chores.

Our other first has been an attempt at putting God first at the start of our day and throughout the day as it unfolds.  Yeah, I know it's a no brainer!  Sometimes spiritual common sense fails to prevail in this household, sorry Lord.  So today after breakfast and chores we headed off to Mass, both Benedict and Pip were really good at sitting still and reading/listening to the Mass.  Once home I prepped part of our lunch and put it in the Remoska to cook, then it was down to work for Benedict and I.  He completed three pages of cursive handwriting practise, two pages of sticker Maths and then using the cheery maths gnomes, looked at how many ways plus gnome could write out twelve.  We used standard math format aswell as pictorial representation to reinforce the learning.

After our lunch break Benedict wrote out plus gnomes evaluation in his Main Lesson Book, whizzed through his spelling sheet using Rummikub tiles as a concrete tool and lastly we shared the reading of the next chapter in " Five go down to the sea".  As a reward for all the hard work we stuck flowers on our picture of Our Lady and baby Jesus and both him and Pip  Hermie.

Pip is also learning too, her latest batch of words are as follows: off, car, cat, down, dink,hat,hair,chair,tractor,book and boots.  New words seem to be appearing nearly every day and her understanding of complex set of instructions is wonderful to see.  She certainly is a very loving and happy little girl.  Hard to believe that she will be two in a matter of months.  Now where did the time go?

All in all a peaceful and productive day.

Twenty Two Years

You ask me now to marry you,

You ask for my reply,

And if I turned you down my dear,

Your heart might wonder why?

Before I answer let me ask,

"How old are you today?"

Not by the numbers of your years,

But what you think and say.

"What are you really looking for?"

The moon and stars above?

A paradise of happiness

In everlasting love?

Or will you keep your faith with me,

In sickness and in health?

And whether we are lucky or

We never live in wealth?

If love is really in your heart

Forever deep and true,

Then be assured my darling one

I want to marry you.

                             James J Metcalfe

Twenty two years today we made promises to love and cherish, honour, care in sickness, manage our finances as best we can and welcome a family.  There have been inumerable ups and downs and like any good wine we have matured with age!  God has and continues to be the cementing in this partnership, without Him I'm sure we would have floundered long ago.  He endows us with His grace and makes many a crooked path straight.

" The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered towards the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptised persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament"

Article 7 " The Sacrament of Matrimony" Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Sunshine and Showers

This in truth has been our Home Ed story for the past few weeks.  We've been averaging a hit rating of two good days out of the five and although I always start the week with enthusiasm, it slowly dissipates as the week progresses.  I had acupuncture on Tuesday and apart from being very good at her job, Cathy my acupuncturist is a very good listener.  She commented yet again that I needed to take greater care of my own health and with that, comment once more ringing in my ears. I decided "something" had to change.
First up I moved all the Home Ed stuff into the caravan at the side of the house.  Essentially we walk out of the kitchen door into a five berth caravan, with stove/oven, CD player and radio and warm air heating and fire.  No excuse for being cold and a great place for extra cooking activities if needed!  My dining room is back into an eating/play area and that suits me fine, I now can switch off at the end of the day instead of feeling obliged to spend my evenings reviewing curriculum material or planning lessons.
Our weekly routine has changed yet again and at last I feel that we have something that is workable for us all.  Using the Oak Meadow materials as a guide we "do" school type stuff on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  The work covered on those days will be language arts and math problems.  Tuesday is our field trip day to places of interest, nature walks or even visits to family and friends.  Thursday will be our town based day: Dave and Benedict to visit the library/museum and then Nero's for a coffee and juice, Pip and I will attend our weekly sing and play toddler session.  Thursday afternoons will also be a chance for Benedict to cook or bake in the kitchen or have a go at some hands on science.
I think the days off in between are important for the health and well being of the entire family.  We've felt bogged down with everything and sometimes it is a very painful process getting Benedict to sit and "do" something formal.  This way he knows it is only for one day and then a break, it also means that I can get on with much needed household activities, instead of feeling frustrated about the jobs that are not being done.  From a social viewpoint we also need to be mixing with people from all walks of life, learning isn't just restricted to bums on seats education, there is a  whole world out there waiting to be explored.

Oak Meadow Curriculum

After much discussion Dave and I both felt that, using a pre-planned curriculum would help enormously with our home school journey.  We decided to buy from Oak Meadow and were not only impressed with the speed in which the package arrived but also the quality of the materials supplied.  Oak Meadow can be found here:
Oak Meadow
Our new routine for the week includes Language Arts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings and Math Stories on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.  After lunch we have a variety of afternoon activities recorder practise, craft,humanities, science and handicraft.  The subject areas incorporate stories, practical activities and a small amount of writing and art to reinforce each concept.  Today's lesson was Language Art and our Animal Story for the next few weeks is The Jolly Robin, to be read at bedtime.
The first chapter was entitled "Nestlings" and centres around the main character Jolly Robin and his nestling brothers and sisters.  We are given hints relating to his temperament, his relationships with his other family members and even his favourite food!  This morning our task was to remember and narrate the story and from that write three sentences and an accompanying picture.  Initially I was amazed by how much we did remember, but upon reflection I should not be so surprised, this just confirms Benedict preferred learning style, which is auditory in nature.  Here is our list of remembered items:

Jolly Robin is the biggest of the nestlings for he loves his food.

His favourite meal is angleworms.

He likes playing tricks on mummy bird, if she isn't moving quickly out of the nest, he encourages his brother and sisters who are nestling underneath her, to jostle and push her out of the way!

We remembered the description of the nest; it was made of twigs, leaves, moss and mud.  Benedict recalled a nature programme he had seen whereupon a bird had used sheep's wool to line the nest.  The sheep's wool helped keep the eggs warm and also acted as a protection; he likened it to the bubble wrap used when sending fragile items through the post.  He also talked about nesting boxes and why the holes in them are small, in order to protect the eggs/baby birds from predators.

To prepare the birds for leaving the nest, one day daddy bird sits on a branch with an angleworm in his mouth.  Since angleworms are Jolly Robins favourite treat he leaves the nest to devour this delicious morsel.  From that day he does not return to the nest.

The three sentences that Benedict chose to say and write are as follows:

The Jolly Robin loves angleworms.

Jolly Robin loves playing tricks on mummy bird.

To get Jolly Robin out of the nest daddy bird sits on a twig with an angleworm in his mouth.

Here is the accompanying writing and drawing:

Our next task was to tackle this week's spelling list.  Benedict used the Rummikub tiles as a tactile  lettering system and did well considering he had only briefly looked at them late last week.  Free time and chore time was next on the agenda, Benedict and Pip played with the modelling clay whilst I caught up on kitchen chores.
After lunch Benedict read the first chapter of "Five go down to the sea" by Enid Blyton.  He also typed out his narration from last week relating to our Ravenglass trip, he did this using Microsoft Word.  We chose our poem of the week and here it is:

An Autumn Greeting

" Come" said the wind to the leaves one day.

"Come over the meadow and we will play.

Put on your dresses of red and gold

For Summer is gone and the days grow cold"

Whilst I worked on finishing tomorrow's Math Story Benedict played with the Lego outside.  

Early days I know but so far so good.  It is the first time ever Benedict has not moaned about having to put pen to paper!  He has worked diligently and quietly.  Our flower garden for Our Lady over  is also shaping up nicely too!

Railway Stories and St Therese

Benedict was back on form today and so he worked on his narrative from our family trip on Tuesday:

On Tuesday we went to Ravenglass to see the trains, as a birthday treat for Daddy.  We met Nanna and Grandad H, because we missed the first train we had a cup of tea in the cafe.  Daddy talked to the engine driver and had a footplate ride.

After Ravenglass we went to a cafe and I had egg and chips.  The weather was good and I had a lovely day.

He also copied out the following railway poem:

The Song of the Engine

When you travel on the railway,

And the line goes up a hill,

Just listen to the engine

As it pulls you with a will,

Though it goes very slowly

It sings this little song.

"I think I can, I think I can,"

And so it goes along,

But later on the journey,

When you're going down a hill,

The train requires no pulling,

And the engine's singing still.

If you listen very quietly

You will hear this little song,

"I thought I could, I thought I could!"

And so it speeds along.

                                Christine Weatherl

Today was also the feast day of St Therese of Lisieux.  We didn't manage a liturgical tea as we were pressed for time but Benedict did manage to draw his own picture of The Little Flower using this image as a guide:

A very happy St Therese, after all her greatest wish was to spend time in Heaven doing good on earth.

God, Our Father,

You promised Your Kingdom

to the little ones

and the humble of heart.

Give us the grace

to walk confidently in the way

of St Therese of the Child Jesus,

so that helped by her prayers,

we may see Your glory

and share in Your Kingdom.

Amen

Flowers for Our Lady

October is recognised as the month of The Holy Rosary and the particular feast day associated with this  is on the 7th October.  In an effort to do little things with the love and cheerfulness as St Therese would have done, we are offering our efforts as a spiritual bouquet for our Blessed Mother.   Each time we manage to complete our tasks without grumbling, bear a suffering quietly without complaining and make extra special efforts to be truly kind to one another, then we will place a flower on the following picture:

I hope and pray that come the end of the month the picture will be carpeted with flowers.