Walking, Words & Reading

A Few of My Favorite Things

Gardening. Put seeds in the dirt. Turn on the garden hose. Good, clean, fun.
Walking. The bad news is my son and husband can jog 3 miles in the time it takes me to walk 1. I have never walked so slowly in my life. The good news is that I can walk. Booyah, baby! Deliberately and sore at the end but my knee is working. Praise God. Mobility is highly underrated.
Walking while the notsolittles ride, ride, ride. Johnny Whiplash and Moped Jane are back in town!

Words, Words, Words.

Flower has discovered the joy of musicals so I have Eliza Doolittle or Maria singing in my head coming and going. Speaking of words, check out, "How to Create a Literature Rich Environment" at HSV this Saturday.

Addressing the same theme Susan Wise Bauer wrote a fascinating article on Disapearing Words.

And I'd love your feedback on my latest HOTM article What do You Have in Your Hand.

Books

Between the husband and myself:
The 5 People You Meet In Heaven  - interesting perspective. The last 2 "people"" were very poignantly written. Not at all how I view heaven. Did not change my view. Darn good writing.
Old Men at Midnight; another brilliant novel by master story teller Potok. My review here.
Wanderings - dh has been sequestering himself in secluded places every chance he gets to read.
The NotsoLittles:
Queen Victoria Princess Diaries ;I'm not a huge fan of this series, seems like a lot of fluff to get to anything historical but it was suggested reading for SOTW IV. Flower loves it, so we carry on.
Children of Hurin- Feeche is reading outloud to Cub. Cub loves every minute of story time with Bro.
The Littles; the never ending series. Flower loves.the.Littles.
ManChild:
 MacBethHe's sharing the part of MacBeth in the play. He gets to off someone and die. He is quite pleased with this.
The Old Man and the Sea; last classic of the year complete.

In the Courts of the Crimson Kings & The Sky People; his choice, fun stuff.

Planning

Summer school. Cruel and unusual punishment or Mom's Sanity Saving Solution? Viking Man said this week that we had Cub and Flower so that we could experience bickering children. Oy vey. These 2 bicker like an old married couple.

Not only do I have a plan, I have created a check-off sheet for each kid, which. I am going to laminate. Completed list per day = a calendar check off. Those displaying diligence and excellence throughout the summer get treated to something wonderful (You should probably know that when we say, "Something wonderful," we try our utmost to say it like Tim Allen in "For Richer or Poorer," during the engagement scene in the barn. It's taken on a life of its own in our family.

Lots of practical skills this summer like typing, driver's ed, grammar, etc. along with gardening, regular chores and work on the re-build. They don't call me PaxRoMomma for nothing!

I've had 3 people tell me how organized I am in the past week. This makes me happy and my husband laugh.(He was an officer in the Air Force, what can I say?!)

Blogging

If you want to check out some great homeschool blogs you'll find a slew of them here: Circle of Moms.

Found a couple fun blogs last week:  Choose to Thrive. I love her "about me." And she has some darn cute projects. And Jen at Finding Heaven combines writing with speaking and artwork. My kinda life!

My irl friend, Lydia, whom I've known since she was 15 and who is now an artist, wife and mother, has a lovely blog, LydiaLark.

School 2011-2012

I over plan for school the spring before (normally I do. The past year and a half have been anything but normal) and then flow as I go. I think Feeche is going to embark on a 2 year 20th century by the decade history course. One of the gals on TWTM boards cooked something up and a bunch of the rest of us added to it. I am fascinated. What books and movies do you recommend to get a rock out understanding of the last 110 years?

Ordered R & S grammar. I wish I'd done it years ago.

 Summer Reading and Watching
Compiling a list forme and the kids. What's the top 5 books/movies you've read/watched lately?

 

Linking up all over the place Conversion Dairies; The Homeschool Chick; Mama