fiance, student, homeschool retiree, preschool teacher wannabe, Senior Living Coordinator, writer of many things unsaid, blogger, lover of the creative, most cheerful depressed person, devourer of books, crafty wanna be, amateur tech support, internet junkie, facebook stalker, tweeter of tweets, Pagan, friend, sister, daughter, aunt, karaoke super-star
I am so excited to start homeschooling using ideas from Charlotte Mason next year!! I am planning on using
Ambleside Online for our curriculum. We may substitute a few books, but will stick to what
AO has outlined for the most part. I will be using
Year 0 (which is their version of kindergarten)with Oliver(5),
Year 2 with Kaleb(7),
Year 3.5 with Ian (9), and
Year 6 with Josef(12).
I am most worried about affording all the books for 4 years of
AO. I already own a few of the necessary books. There are also many available online which is helpful, but I would much rather have a book in hand than a screen to look at. We'll have to see what I come up with over the summer.
This weekend I am clearing out all the items from our charter school and returning them. The boys have ISAT tests and the Idaho Reading Indicator to take at the end of this month and in May and then we are officially DONE! I had thought it was a good fit for us and have stayed with it for 3 years now. I just got to feel very bogged down and was beginning to feel 'school' taking over our lives and the joy of learning was just being leached out of us. It will be a refreshing change.
I feel really good about our choice and even my husband mentioned the change in my countenance. He said that we all seemed less stressed after we had officially made the decision. I will miss many things about using the charter school but they do not outweigh the benefits of using
CM methods or our general freedom.
Levi's cousin Stacy was in Boise visiting for Spring break and invited us to join her at the Boise Zoo. We haven't been in a while so it was a nice day out with 7 boys and 2 girls (I had Tanya's girls). The new African addition to the zoo was great. We loved the lion enclosure!
Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won't stay there.
~Clarence W. Hall
Happy Easter from the Mitchell Family!
...and we should be donning fuzzy pink bunny ears
but we'd all rather be Vikings today.
It has just been one of those days....
I feel a bit like her-except I'm not laughing yet. That's a toy gun she just stepped on and it really, really hurt. So she is slipping over the edge now...I'm not quite there yet.
But I am here.... Ya! What she said!
But way, way past this point...
Oh! Ya that's about right..right there!
and I just know it will be one of those weeks too. Spring Break cannot get here fast enough!
So goodnight! I am sending myself to bed with a Cadbury Creme Egg and a good (non-serious) book.
I hesitate....don't you?
Sometimes I find myself holding back, when maybe I should just let it rip. (I'm not just talking about cheeky comments to rude people. ) I hold back much more than people think. I was just telling my dear sweet hubby the other day how much I truly censor myself in the guise of being nice. I often squelch my own talents as well, in the desire to seem humble and not out doing others. I hesitate to offer help and assistance not wanting to seem too pushy and over step boundaries. I hesitate to ask for help because I do not want to appear needy. I hesitate to speak out against what I think it wrong or needs changed, because I do not want to seem like a squeaky wheel. So I hid my candle or my blow torch- whichever the case may be in fear of blinding others with my own light. I wonder-am I doing a disservice to myself and maybe to others as well?
“Audacity augments courage; hesitation, fear.”- Publilius Syrus
Mr. Syrus made a great point in the 1st century. There is such fear is hesitation. When you hesitate to do something your first instinct was to do that thing in the first place but then fear, pure fear, kicks in and you stop to rethink. Then it is too late- the moment is gone.
My new goal for this next month-April (my name. Which also means 'new beginnings'-by the way) is not to hesitate as much. I want to live in the moment more and stop holding back so much.
So prepare to be BLINDED...or maybe just for me to be a bit more cheeky with the comebacks.
I'm part of this Book Group and everyone always suggests such serious books (seriously like political autobiographies) and then when we chat about them we have to be all serious and positive and make them apply to our lives in some meaningfully uplifting way. While I think that most everything you consume-food or book- ends up affecting you in some way in the end... well all I can think sometimes is...Why so serious?
Can't we just read for fun? For a good laugh and little silliness? For entertainment? Can't we just pick apart the heroine and her poor, poor choice of men? Or say- what was the author thinking with that ending? Who cares if he is C.S. Lewis...it was dreadful!
I'm looking at my friends reading lists on
Goodreads and I am thinking
WOW! These are dead serious books. Are you people honestly reading these or are they just staring at you from your night stand. Because I have a whole stack of THOSE kind of books...but don't count them as being read.
I am not saying that I don't read serious books-cause I do. Between Oliver Twist and 1776, I just like to break it up a bit by throwing in a little Percy Jackson or some gushy teen romance by Sarah Dessen.
Am I alone?
Maybe I survive on this reading diet, because I teach and learn all day with my kiddos and we are very serious most of the time (learning is a serious businesses you know). Sometimes I just want to take a break from Science and History and Laundry and the News and escape to something not even resembling reality in any form and not really think too hard and just laugh and be entertained by some clever author who fills my head with a relaxing mush like Jane Austen (her books are mush heaven). Then I am ready to take on something more serious like War and Peace and the fact that this post was mostly run on sentences and fragments of thought.
Bless the hearts of the serious readers...may you sleep well tonight...because unlike me you do not stay up way, way too late finishing silly books to see if they have happy endings.
