Josh 2012-2013

I'm just noting ideas about next year for Josh and what seems to be falling into place:

1.  Josh really wants to get a part time job.  This summer he'll get his driver's license so he'll be able to get himself back and forth to work.  So when he gets back from his month in Spain, he'll need to start looking.  He'll need to figure out how many hours he can work and when he'll be available.

2.  Josh, of course, is planning on being part of CLC again next year so that is every Wednesday evening as well as some weekend events.

3.  Tuesdays and Thursdays for Josh will be major school days - he'll have his math tutor coming at 10:00 for Advanced Math, then we'll run to Latin class, then a quick lunch on the road and then onto his Physics class which is over at 3:30.  He's looking forward to Physics as really that is his favorite area of science.

4.  On Sunday afternoons, Rick is going to teach Josh and another teen boy, Government and Economics.  Government will be in the fall semester and Economics in the spring.  I want the boys stay after for 30 minutes and watch this Teaching Company lecture series I have but have never watched all the way through:  Natural Law and Human Nature.

5.  Folded in between these foundational elements of next year's plans are other things.   For instance, I want him to drive Sean to classes on Monday morning.  I want the boys out doing something useful while I am at Aquinas Learning with Becky!  I think Josh should take Conversational Spanish to keep his knowledge of the language fresh from his immersion experience in Spain.  He could also take art if he wishes.  Hopefully Sean will be taking Algebra I.

6.  I'd like to be able to meet with Josh most Fridays at some point during the day to watch The American Identity lectures and discuss American Literature we are reading.

7.  I hope Josh is on the yearbook committee again.  That was fun.

Memorial Day Weekend

These are scattered notes!

Didn't finish a book this week for my 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge.  I've been very scattered this week.  It is a big household change when your two college kids come back for the summer.  Plus we are trying to wind up our homeschool year and move onto summer.  It's funny but I've hardly thought about our trip to Europe!  I just want to really wrap this up this week and the beginning of next and then focus on the trip.  So that's the plan!  The only thing that will still be going on is the math tutor and Latin.  That happens right up until before we leave.

I need to contact our house sitter.  We need to find out if Rick is even coming with us.  I pray he is.   I don't wanna go without him!  Waaah!

Yesterday was nice.  Sean and Becky had friends over all day.  They played here then went to our local town fair that is held every Memorial Day weekend.  Then they came back and played and talked some more.  The two kids wound up staying for dinner.  We tried something new for our dinner menu.  Will had talked about eating chicken caesar salad wraps.  I threw Nourishing Traditions to the wind and bought some pre-made cooked chicken at Trader Joe's.  We heated these up, tossed ready made caesar salad dressing in romaine lettuce (shudder, shudder!  All that canola oil!) then wrapped them up in Lavash (again probably not optimum according to Nourishing Traditions).  But they were a hit!  Everybody loved them.  And we tried cooking our corn a different way.  Hannah brushed the ears with olive oil and salt and pepper, wrapped them in foil and Rick cooked them on the grill for 15 minutes.  Delicious!  We also had our first watermelon of the season and then (store bought) cookies for dessert.

Today is Pentecost Sunday!  Alleluia!  After Mass we'll probably do more of our town fair, then poor Seano and Josh have lots of math to work on for the tutor.  They need to get a lot done because Rick really wants to take the boat out on Monday, since he has the day off and we don't have Latin class.  Also, the kids need to get hair cuts.

I'm getting excited about Aquinas Learning again.  It seems there's a chance Sean could attend the Schola Alta.  Though I don't know 100%.  But it looks like such a great program, so I am hoping it will work out.  Hope we don't get disappointed again.

It seems wrong to say Happy Memorial Day weekend, when it is a day we honor the dead, but have a good time in their memory!  And may they all rest in peace!

More Planning

This time though I'm not focusing on academics in the fall but the summer and figuring out my household systems.

Yesterday, I found a template on line of a blank monthly calendar.  I printed off three and then filled them in with June, July and August.  I put down everything I knew would happen in pen and in pencil I put down the things I thought would happen.  Then I took over the side of the fridge.  That side was my daughter's art studio, but she hasn't used it that way in at least a year.  So I confiscated it.  I love it!  Several times yesterday I went over and looked at it.  Our whole summer stretched so neatly out before us!  It's those little things that give satisfaction!

The other thing I did was go to Like Mother, Like Daughter (scroll down and look for the links on the right margin)  and read all her food planning advice.  I started to make a list of all the dinners.  I got up to dinner no. 25 and ran out of steam, but I was only brainstorming with my eats-like-a-bird ten yo, who only likes about three foods right now, and my husband who was busy playing Plants and Zombies and wasn't hungry except that he was craving a fruit smoothie!  Not a helpful bunch.  Today, I'll try to survey the others to get ideas for finishing up a month's worth of dinner recipes.  Then I"ll write out another blank calendar menu with a month worth of dinners, well except we'll leave on our trip on June 23rd, so I don't even have to plan that much.

I need to work on lunches though.  That almost seems like more of a problem than dinners.

Breakfast is okay, except I need to rethink the oatmeal.  Everyone seems on an oatmeal strike right now.  Currently, the plan for breakfast is supposed to be: oatmeal on Mondays and Fridays, eggs on Tuesdays and Thursdays and cheese, bread and fruit on Wednesdays.  Saturday - bagels, Sunday, pancakes, waffles or french toast OR we eat out.

And snacks are a problem.  This week, I made wonderful roasted almonds a la Nourishing Traditions but they are already gone.  So it took a day of soaking plus a full 24 hours roasting and they were all eaten up in same amount of days!  And with the weather suddenly hot and guaranteed to stay hot all summer, I really don't want to have the oven on for a 24 hour period even if it is only at 170.  So I'm thinking of things like homemade ice cream once a week, frozen juice pops (2x), smoothies (1x), as well as popcorn (2x).  I think on Sundays I'll give myself a break and just buy cookies or a pie.

But lunches.  There's the rub.

This summer I'll be freer to grocery shop on whatever day I feel like.  I"m hoping to devote much of my time to working on cooking and trying recipes.

For the fall I think the weekly rhythm could be like this:

Weekends:  farmer's market, organic, local shopping, other more conventional stores (for things like Dial soap or those things that I just can't get other places)

Wednesday:  Sean may take a class on this day which is about 30 minutes away.   I'll need to wait around for him, so I checked and there's a Trader Joe's not far from where the class is held.  Yippee!  So this will be my Trader Joe's shopping day.  If he doesn't take the class, I can just shop at our closer Trader Joe's.  Either way, it works out!

Fridays:  I've decided that I need a day to be at home, just putzing around the kitchen.  So I've decided Friday needs to be that day. I'm burned out by the end of the week anyway, so I think this would be a good day to stay at home and focus on household things.

Okay, that's as far as I've gotten for now!  Time for me to go get Saturday morning bagels!

Change of Plans

Seano has been wanting to go to school.  He has not been happy at home, especially this year, with his favorite older brother off at college.  He needs to be with other kids and he needs a level of busy-ness and purpose that just doesn't happen here at home.  The school we set our sights on though didn't accept him.  Boo.  Hiss.  Sean was very disappointed and kind of mortified.  It is hard to be rejected, especially if you are an insecure 13 year old boy.

I'm ticked off and hurt too, but on the other hand I have to say I'm a bit relieved.  It was a going to be a major sea-change in terms of our schedule, our autonomy, our family rhythms.  We were going to sacrifice a lot in order to accommodate his going to this school.  So we don't have to do that anymore!  But I've got to come up with something to meet Sean's needs.

So I'm looking at combining two options.  We have about 30 minutes away from here, a Christian organization that has 7th-12th classes on Mondays and Wednesdays.  I have toyed with enrolling my kids there for a while but the drive didn't seem worth it and I always seemed to find other opportunities closer. However, next year Josh will be driving and it will ease my anxiety to know that the boys are gainfully occupied on Mondays when I am out at Adler Academy all day with Becky.  So I am hoping that both Sean and Josh will sign up for at least one class on Monday mornings.  And then I'm hoping that the classes aren't filled so we can register for them.  Ideally, Sean could take Algebra I there and then maybe another class.  I'd love Josh to take the public speaking class.  Maybe he'd like to take an art class too.

The other option is that Sean may be able to attend the Schola Alta in another Aquinas Learning Center a little less than an hour away from here.  That would be all day on Thursdays.  That way both he and Becky would be doing Aquinas Learning which would make for some unity in the home!  Though his Aquinas Learning week would start the Thursday before Becky's which would start the Monday of each week.  But I think I"ll just have to juggle that somehow.

So here's a very brief idea of how things might go:

Monday
Mom and Becky at Aquinas Learning all day
Josh and Sean go to classes (Sean:  Conversational Spanish and Algebra I; Josh: Art and Public Speaking)

Tuesday
Morning studies
Josh has math tutor, Latin class and Physics class
Becky has art class

Wednesday
Morning studies for all
Sean goes to Algebra I class

Thursday
Sean goes to Aquinas Learning
Josh has math tutor, Latin, Physics
Becky with Mom

Friday
At home day
I think we'll deliberately try to limit going out too much on this day.  A day for catching up, cooking, tidying, quiet times, book discussions, movies.

Saturday
Usually a free day in terms of academics

Sunday
Usually we do math and Latin homework
Josh and Rick will meet for Gov't/Econ study

You Are What You Behold; Nourishing Your Child's Soul on Truth

I'm listening to this talk by Andrew Kern.  Excellent, inspiring, and exactly what I needed to hear this morning.  Treat yourself to something beautiful and wise!

You Are What You Behold; Nourishing Your Child's Soul on Truth My very brief notes:

Teach your child:

To notice things - use examples - perceptive attention - the ability to behold

To remember and order our thoughts - in recalling, we learn how to sort our knowledge. Memory is a sacred faculty

To compare things to understand and know them better

The ultimate goal in teaching a child is at the end to have them standing before the Lord and the Lord saying to both of you: Well done, good and faithful servant.

Strewsday Tuesday - May 22, 2012

I haven't done a Strewsday Tuesday in a while.  A couple other moms offered to take up hosting Strewsday Tuesday but both were so overwhelmed by life, it just wasn't a good time for them.  So maybe I'll go back to doing this.  Before I felt inadequate and burdened by it, but now I miss it!

Bikes:  the spring weather has returned and my kids have suddenly taken out their long neglected bikes and they are biking all over the place.  Will is home from music college (where I might brag he is on the Dean's list and also received an email from one of his teachers (who played for many years with Chet Atkins and also wrote the music to one of the Zoombini games!) saying that for the first time ever in his teaching career, a student of his, um, that would be Will, got 100% on his guitar performance final).  Will doesn't like to drive very much, but he is used to the hyper-social life of living in a college dorm, plus he's used to walking around the streets of Boston all the time.  So here he is back home stuck in suburbia where you really can't go anywhere without driving.  He's also back in his old bedroom with his adoring younger siblings who won't leave him alone.  So he's taken to biking everywhere and he's catching up with his long time friends who are also back from college for the summer.  I don't know how educational bikes are, but they are great exercise and a gateway to the world so I think they can legitimately get listed under the strewing category.  Both Sean and Becky are also biking a lot too, following Will's example.

Books:  Started the reading routine yesterday, which actually wasn't much of a change from the way we usually do things, just now I'm more conscious of it.  Joshua hadn't been doing any reading though, so I asked him to.  He's decided to reread Swallows and Amazons.  Good choice!  One year, many years ago, maybe eight or nine, Rick read most of the Swallows and Amazons series to Josh.  It was a nice bonding time for them.  So I think it is great to revisit those books.  Another neat thing is that Will introduced us to a new author, a Canadian Economics professor, named Stephen Leacock, who wrote hysterical funny nonsense books.  He's been reading these stories out loud to Becky and Sean.

Since I seem to have a begins-with-b-theme going here, here's Becky being a ballerina.

Baking:  Hannah's home!  That means there's a lot of baking going on around here.  She's not hip to my new Nourishing Tradition ways so I was a little dismayed when she started bringing non-kosher (so to speak) things back into the kitchen.  Things I'd been trying hard to get rid of.  Sigh.  I have so little control over things.  She is very skeptical of it all, but we've had a few conversations and I have decided to look upon this as a teaching opportunity!  What's nice is how much Becky likes to help Hannah.  The younger kids are so happy their older siblings are back.

So what's strewing in your home?

Reading

This week, I want to focus on reading.  I've had several books going as read alouds, but life has been filled with interruptions lately, from me getting an increased number of migraines to college students coming home, to winding up the year events, etc. etc.  It just seems like we are getting more and more spotty about sitting down and reading in a routine fashion.  So this week I really want to concentrate on reading, both out loud and independently.

For me:

A.M.  I'm still reading the Gospel of Luke.  I started it for Lent.  I just read a couple paragraphs at a time and then read all the excellent commentary in my Navarre Bible Study.  After I do other things, like unload the dishwasher and have my coffee and computer time (like right now), I'm also reading The Evidential Power of Beauty.

P.M.  I want to start up a reading hour after lunch on most days.  I sort of do this now anyway, so I just want to make it official and also ask the kids to participate.  At this point, my current read is Aristotle for Everybody.  Then before bed I am currently reading The Song of Bernadette.

For read alouds:  I happen to be reading four read alouds, mostly directed at Sean:  The Creed in Slow Motion (Becky listens to this too).  A Little History of the World, The Screwtape Letters and Across Five Aprils.  I don't know how I got so Sean heavy and so light with Becky's read alouds, which right now is just Anne of Green Gables, though Rick is also reading her a book aloud too.  Anyway, these books have been taking an inordinate amount of time to get through even though each one is excellent.  I feel like we are dragging them out too long which is lessening their impact.  So this week I want to tighten this up.

After lunch independent reading:  I don't really need to do this with Becky.  She's often got her nose in a book.  We went to the library on Thursday and I think she's well into her third book by now.  But Sean is trying to make his way through Shane.  He actually seems to be enjoying it, but you have to remind him to read.  He just goes to the computer first thing and that crowds out other things too easily.  Also, Joshua is finished with Shakespeare and Chemistry now.  He just has Math and Latin left for this school year.  It was a heavy Shakespeare year and he really did very little other reading than that, so I think he needs to get back in the habit of just regular recreational reading other than reading fan fiction for Manga novels on the interweb.

So, I think I'm going to have a read aloud marathon this week, to see if I can't finish up a lot of these books.  I want Rick to read Watership Down aloud to Sean and Becky this summer.  It's a long book and he's been working late a lot, so he'll need a few months to get through it.