A little game I play, especially on crazy-making days when I don’t seem to even have a sliver of time to myself to think.  Like today.  My introverted self just can’t seem to function very well on so many hours of constant companionship and noise.  You’d think I would have thought twice about having four children and choosing to homeschool them.  But I love them all and want to continue to have them with me, despite the desperate need at times for some time alone.  So, this game…  really just an elaborate imagined scene.  Here it is…

I sometimes wish that I could go away for an indefinite amount of time, away to a small cabin in the woods or cottage by the sea.  The location isn’t really too important except that it be beautiful and peaceful.  I would want the house to be serene and minimalistic in its decor.  Clean and sparsely decorated.  I would want to have access to books and more books.  I would want music and delicious foods.  I would read and read and read and read.  Then I might take a walk.  I might eat something.  Then I’d read and read and read and read.  (I haven’t read a book in a very long time, for me anyway.  I just don’t have the time and attention to devote to it these days.  So I’d read.)  I wouldn’t want anyone there with me.   I’m feeling a huge desire to be alone these days.  I don’t really know what else I’d do.  I’m not really sure I’d want to do anything else.  Just be.  Not have to be responsible for anyone but myself.  Not have to talk to anyone or do anything for anyone.  I’m not even sure how long I’d want to be in this retreat.  Some days it seems to me that I’d love to be there for a very, very long time.  But maybe even a few days might be more than enough to make me realize that although the crazy-busyness of life as a homeschooling mother of 4 seems too much at times, really it is absolutely perfect.  I’m not saying that I feel that way right now, but I think, perhaps, that taking even a small step away from this life might make me want to pull it near again.  

What is your fantasy retreat if you have one?

Yesterday I mentioned wanting to write a post about our Math Week, so that’s what today’s post will be (three posts in a row – a record for me!). 

Earlier in the summer I had an idea about easing into the school year with “theme weeks”.  Each week would be dedicated to a particular subject or topic and we’d do fun but Mom-directed activities to go along with it.  The first was Math Week.  I checked out a whole bunch of math-related books from the library (I’ll write a list near the end of the post) and jotted down some ideas of activities we could do.  We spent the week reading those books (most of them the kids read on their own), playing math games, doing some baking (kitchen math), and so forth.  We played a couple of games of Grasshopper (a game from Peggy Kaye’s Games for Math book) which the kids really love and can be adjusted for each kid’s level.  Ben and I taught Madeline how to play one of my favorite dice games, Greed (also apparently called Ten Thousand and other names), which involves having to add large numbers (multiples of 100, though).  Ben taught Madeline how to play Mancala and he and I also played a few games of that.  I taught Ellie how to play War which she loves, and we played a couple of times.  Ben made cupcakes by himself.  I was going to make him double the recipe (more math), but I realized that I really did not need 48 cupcakes sitting around the house begging me to eat them.  I attemped to have Ben do the assessments for Math U See so I could determine where he should start (hint: Don’t ask perfectionists to do this kind of thing and tell them just to skip the problems they don’t know how to do and not worry about it.  This is not possible for them to do. ) 

The very coolest thing that happened during this week, though, was spontaneous graphing.  Let me explain.  One of the books I’d checked out from the library was The Great Graph Contest by Loreen Leedy (love her books).  Each of the three older kids read this book independently at some point in the week and immediately informed me that they wanted to make a graph.  All of them!  Ellie made a bar graph (with help) of how many family birthdays in each month and a pie graph (again with help) of how much time she spends doing different activities during her days.  Madeline made bar graphs of how many of the various American Girl books she owns, how many of each color of cap erasers in the box, and how many of each color and shape of plastic buttons she scooped out of the box.  And she came up with all of those topics on her own.  Ben graphed how many of each type of fruit we had in the kitchen.  Then, because he had been reading some books on Presidents that I had “strewn” when he had expressed an interest in the subject (yay, successful strewing!!), he made a graph of the number of presidents from each of the different political parties.  Very cool.  We have them all up on our wall in our family room.  A wall of graphs.  Completely undirected by yours truly.  Only facilitated and helped along.  Really, I think they just wanted to use the new boxes of crayons and colored pencils I bought recently.   But they made some awesome looking graphs with those beautiful rainbow colors.  Yay math! 

Today I tied in our next week’s theme (which we started a bit early), Biography Blast, with the still-present excitement about graphs.   After reading a great picture book bio of Handel, we listened to some of his music and then (this has nothing to do with Handel per se) measured the kids’ body parts and – you guessed it – graphed them!  So now we have a visual representation of the lengths of their arms, legs, noses, smiles, belly buttons, etc.  They loved it.  

So I’m thinking that every now and then I’m going to mix things up a bit and have a theme week of some sort.  I’ll write more about our Biography Blast after we’re done and share another idea I have for ongoing literature-related theme weeks.  Seems like a way to keep them from getting bored with the same ‘ole, same ‘ole. 

Here is the list of math books we used:

On Beyond a Million by David M. Schwartz

Anno’s Mysterious Multiplying Jar by Anno

One Riddle, One Answer by Lauren Thompson

A Million Dots by Andrew Clements

Math Curse by Jon Scieszka

The Great Graph Contest by Loreen Leedy

various Math Start books by Stuart Murphy

Greg Tang books (The Grapes of Math, Math Potatoes, Math Appeal, and The Best of Times)

The I Hate Mathematics book and Math for Smartypants by Marilyn Burns

G is for Google by David Schwartz

 Hopefully when we get back into our regular math studies in a couple of weeks, memories of this week will help to ease the transition.

I decided yesterday after talking to a friend that I’m going to stop try to stop using the baby as an excuse for not getting things done.  I created this blog for a few different reasons and I’ve not been keeping up with it as I’d hoped.  So I’ve decided that even if it means I’m going to be a little more tired, I’m just going to stay up later to get the stuff done in the evenings that I’m not getting done during the day – and that includes blogging! 

 So I wrote yesterday about our close encounter with a bat and a bat man.  And several people actually read and commented!  I was so thrilled – thank you all so much for taking the time to comment on my story of our unschooling moment!  I really enjoyed reading your comments.  I had planned to write a post tonight about our Math Week we had last week (my little way of easing back into some Mom-directed learning while still having fun and reminding the kids that we’ll be starting up our “school year” soon).  But after reading Steph’s post tonight about Getting Real, I’ve decided to write about something else … real life.  I mean,

Okay, I had to stop there because … the baby woke up and needed to be rocked back to sleep!  Yes, just a tad of irony, folks, to illustrate my point!   But I forge on now…

 So, anyway, I wanted to make sure that I’m being real, not just with the readers in Blogland, but more importantly with myself.  So I thought I’d make a list of the good and the bad from this week so far.  My hope is that, while I usually tend to focus on the bad things that happen and find them more easily in my day, I will also see the good things that I’ve done.  When I started this blog, I did so with the intention of having a place to sort out in my head (so to speak) all of the crazy things that happen in our days and the difficult things, but also to record some of the great things that we do and that make our kids who they are. 

 So here goes… some of the good, the bad, and the ugly from my week so far.  There have been episodes of each of the following:

• laughing (probably could do more of this; I tend to be too serious)
• crying (more than one of us and not just the kids)
• hugging (probably could do more of this; I tend to be too task-oriented and business-like)
• yelling (again more than one of us and not just the kids)
• drawing
• reading (need to get back to read-alouds, though; somehow they got left in the dust since the baby was born)
• cleaning (enough, but of course there is MUCH left)
• cooking (looking forward to left-overs tomorrow night)
• computer time (but not by one kid who has lost his for the rest of the month due to some behavior issues)
• medicine taking (by one little sniffler)
• late hours at work (by one very dedicated husband who still read to his kids when he could upon arriving home)
• late night feeding sessions (way more than usual – growth spurt??  Ugh…)
• pretending (American Girl Hospital is set up in my daughter’s room and a bat cave in my family room)
• comic book writing/drawing (Bionicle – need I say more?)
• emailing (trying to set up a class for Ben, arrange book club, etc.  I think I’m almost set.)
• blog reading (not as much as usual … I think that’s good, but I miss it…)
• planning and ordering (feeling behind and not seeing a way of getting to all I want to this year with the kids because of baby – need to find a way to be okay with that…)
• lots of mental stress because of above planning and feeling behind
• bat watching/investigation
• laundry (keeping up with this fairly well – it’s one of my strengths as a housekeeper.  Dusting and vacuuming, not so much…)
• game playing
• library visiting

… I’m sure there is more, but then, it’s only Wednesday.  It’s been a fairly low-key week and I’m feeling okay about things.  But I do have this constant worry in the back of my mind that I’m not doing enough, not doing things “right”, not doing things ________ … whatever.  Trying to feel okay with how our life is while trying also to keep improving is a constant balancing act for me.  Perhaps for you too.  I hope this evening (or morning or whenever you read this) finds you at relative peace with the way things are in your life.  I’m trying to be there, trying to find that peace.   And if I can’t seem to find it, maybe a bowl of ice cream will help…  Note to self:  get some ice cream… tomorrow may require it!

Every now and then, along comes a moment during which natural learning occurs without any plan or forethought or special materials procurred.  Today we had one of those.  I awoke this morning and was informed by my husband that I needed to make a phone call or two to find someone who could remove the bat from our fireplace.  ????!!!  A what in our where???  Well, apparently late last night Charles discovered a bat flapping around inside our fireplace (behind the glass doors).  He took some pictures (from outside) and left me this morning to find someone to remove it.  I made the calls and while we waited for the Bat Guy to come and take our little friend out we did some searches online and looked through our books to learn a bit about bats.  Madeline made bats out of paper for herself and Ellie.  Then when the guy arrived and took the bat out, he held it in his thickly gloved hand and expertly told us about the little guy, a Common Brown Bat.  He let the girls touch its back and told them about its hearing (better than a dolphin’s) and that bat poop is called guano.  Then we took the bat outside and set it free.  It flew to a pine tree nearby and landed on the trunk where we could still watch it and listen to it squeak.  Madeline took a bunch of pictures and asked some questions.  It was all in all a neat(although expensive) experience.  The man was very nice, very knowledgeable and obviously loves bats, and was very willing to share his interest with the girls.  Cool stuff.