One thing that has been a real challenge for us this year so far is figuring out how to get any learning time in with my girls.  Ben is much more independent this year, but the girls still need more of my one-on-one time with me (or they enjoy learning more and will do more when I do it this way).  But because of where Sam is right now, it’s hard to get much done when he’s around and awake.  So these days I try to do all of their learning time with me when Sam is asleep. He usually takes about a 2-3 hour nap each day.  The problem is that’s not quite enough time to get several “subjects” of work done.  I was just feeling like I was racing around for those few hours, trying frantically to accomplish everything that I’d thought we’d do that day (often over lunchtime) and not really feeling like we were accomplishing anything at all.  So a few weeks ago I started to do a block type of planning.  Each week we do math and one other subject that we focus on for the week.  One week we did Lentil Science, the next a week of history learning about Lewis and Clark, another week we had a geography week during which we learned about Ireland (the girls’ chosen country for our Around the World geography).  Last week and this we’re doing a special Halloween theme with all of our activities focused around Halloween.  So far this block planning has been working a bit better for us.  At least I feel that I’m a bit less frantic and that we’re able to focus more on one topic instead of jumping around.  The girls like it too because they know what to expect each week and we only work on something for a week and then move on to something else, actually finishing stuff in the process.  They tend to be ready to change topics about then anyway. 

So our Halloween themed weeks have been going well.  We’ve done the following things (to the best of my memory):

• read and discussed Halloween themed poems
• read Halloween themed books (mostly picture books but Madeline also read The Best Halloween Ever by Barbara Robinson and some stories from Great Writers and Kids Write Spooky Stories
• math activities from Mathwire and Mathcats (the links are to pages from those websites specifically geared towards autumn and Halloween)
• read/learned about bats, spiders, and the skeletal system (nothing very in depth, just a few books/websites and a worksheet or activity here and there)
• art projects including waxing leaves, making symmetrical ghosties (white paint on black paper folded in half to make a symmetrical design then draw on a face with black sharpie), and of course we’ll carve our pumpkins later in the week
• writing recipes for magic potions (complete with list of ingredients, directions, and explanation of how the potion works) – did this yesterday; they came out so well!  I should post them…
• writing description of Halloween related things (a monster, a haunted house, the perfect Halloween) using lots of great adjectives (we haven’t done this yet…)

I think that pretty much sums it up.  They’ve been having a fairly good time with it all.  I think that it’s been a bit light academically (for Madeline especially) but with the kids so hyped up about Halloween this week (and even last week – egads!) I figured if I couldn’t beat ‘em I’d just as well join ‘em!  So next week it’s back to another subject for our block studies.  Not sure what yet.  It might be Lentil Science again or it might be an intensive Language Arts block.  Need to get to the planning!

And by the way, is it considered bribery if they think it up themselves?  Madeline, upon discovering that I’d bought bags of candy corn, created an “incentive system” that could be called “Will Work for Candy Corn”.  They are to earn one regular candy corn for every “job” done (school work or chore) and then a chocolate-caramel candy corn for every three of the regular ones they earn.  They love this, and I gave in to this bribery system with the warning that after Halloween it goes back to business as usual.  In the meantime, I get candy corn for every job done too.  As determined by, well, me. 

A quick recap, in no particular order, of our learning (formal and unformal) this week.

Ben:

• Math U See PreAlgebra – began this, worked through first two lessons including the honors book pages that go with those lessons
• worked in his logic workbook
• did a few experiments from his chemistry kit from Thames and Kosmos
• reading various things – Muse magazine, a book about the presidents, Dragonrider (reread), The Puzzling World of Winston Breen, etc.
• playdate at his friend’s house – lots of Yu Gi Oh played
• drum lesson (first with new instructor)
• tae kwon do
• tried two THINK! challenges this week – the car challenge from this week and last week’s bridge project

Madeline:

• Math: Number Devil (read a couple of chapters together), played a dice game involving multiplying 3 digit numbers by 2 digit numbers, reviewed fractions orally using her Singapore book (adding and subtracting, mixed numbers and improper fractions)
• Geography: “traveled” to Ireland this week, learned about the country using the internet, books such as S is for Shamrock, a dvd from Netflix called Discovering Ireland.  Also read several stories (folktale type) that were set in Ireland.  Put together info in travel scrapbook.  (We’re “exploring” a different country every few weeks, creating a scrapbook as we go, and putting “stamps” in their passports to show where they’ve traveled.)
• gymnastics
• tae kwon do
• playground with hs group
• creating paper dolls of characters from her “world” Everland
• lots of reading – hard to keep up with her crazy-fast reading – The Best Halloween Ever, The Secret Scool and more
• THINK! projects (see above)

Ellie:

• Math: learned about concept of multiplication using manipulatives, played around with 100 charts – circling numbers of skip counting by 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, 5’s, 10’s, and odd numbers (she got started and just kept going!), read book Double the Ducks (simple book about doubling numbers) and looked for doubles around us
• Geography: (see what Madeline did above)
• gymnastics
• tae kwon do
• playground with hs group
• lots of reading
• THINK! projects (see above)

Seems like there must have been more, but I don’t know what… Was a blur of a week in some ways…

I want to start this post off by stating for the record that I love all of my children, deeply and truly.  I am so glad that I have them all in my life and that I get the distinct privilege of being their mother.  The next sentences come merely from a place of feeling utterly inadequate, constantly insufficient, and all too frequently ”splinched” (term taken from Harry Potter and used by another blogger – cannot for the life of me remember who, I fear - to describe the feeling of having to be in more than one place at a time, doing more than one thing at a time, and being pulled apart as a result). 

Have you ever wished that you could have each of your children as an only child for a day at a time?  What I mean is that you would have only one of your children for a day, to do things just for them and with them and to focus on them completely and fully.  Then for the next day you’d have another of your children for the whole day, just you and that child.  And then the next and so on.  I so wish this some days when it feels as though I’m not doing a good job with any one of my children.  As though I’m neglecting everyone by having to divide myself four ways.  Of course I don’t love any one of them more than another.  And I don’t wish that they weren’t here.  We had four children quite purposely.  I just so often feel that I’m quite bungling the whole thing and that maybe I’d have been better off just focusing on one.  Actually, I do think that Ben in many ways would have made a good only child.  He’d love to not have to share us or the house with siblings.  He’d love to not have to compromise and put up with others’ quirks and habits.  But for these very reasons I think that it’s good that he does have siblings.  And I also think that while it might be easier on me to have only one child, I think it’s better for me to have many.  I believe that it’s helping me to learn how to be patient, how to listen better and see them each individually, and how to let go of not being a “perfect mother”, whatever that might be. 

But back to my wishful thinking.  I’ve just been entertaining this little daydream for the last day or so about how I would spend the time with each of them if I could have a day (or more than one, even) to devote to each of them.   Sam’s easy… I’d start by playing on the floor with him for as long as he wanted, giving him a bath and letting him play in there for a good long time, not hurrying him out to move onto something else that I “have to do”.  I’d take him to a playground and just follow his lead, then we might go to a toddler storytime, the kind we never go to now because of the older kids.  I might just get out some of those toddler crafts that I don’t do so often anymore (even Ellie seems to be outgrowing playdough now).  I’d read him his favorite books over and over and over and over.   We’d probably go to a farm where he could see his beloved horses and cows up close and personal and then stop by a construction site to let him just watch the trucks that he’s begun to be so fascinated by.  Perhaps after that we’d sit at the end of an airport runway and watch the planes take off and land.  He’d probably love that.  We’d eat all of our food with our fingers and then maybe take another bath.  And he could have his whole nap without having to be awakened to take some older kid to some activity or other.  That would be Sam’s day.

Ellie is easy too.  One sadness I have with her is that I’ve never felt as if I’ve had the time to do all of the “preschool-y” kinds of things that are so fun at this age.  The great arts and crafts projects, the just plain exploring with the things around our house, going on simple nature walks, etc.  And there are a whole bunch of things that I did with the older two years ago and tend to forget that we haven’t done them with Ellie, as if it’s checked off as “done” in my head for good.   So we’d do many of those types of things.  We’d bake things (which we actually do pretty often, but she loves it so it would have to be included in our day), go to the children’s museum (she’s been there but it’s been awhile – the older kids are too oldfor it right now and Sam is still a bit young for it – gotta figure out how to get Ellie there again sometime soon, though), play games and do puzzles together to her heart’s content, read stories together that are just for her (not one’s she’s listening to because she’s tagging along with her older sibs), and just plain snuggle.  And really it’s not that we don’t do these things, it’s simply that I don’t do them nearly often enough.  Or so it seems to my perfectionistic mind. 

Madeline is harder.  She’s quieter in many ways than the others, less likely to make waves or make her wishes known in an obvious and vocal way.  I think that we’d start by going to the botanical gardens or a park and just going for a wandering stroll around the place.  She loves to be outdoors and loves to explore.  I’d let her take the lead.  We’d probably draw together (or I’d watch her draw, anyway…) and I’d listen to her tell me about her Everlands world for as long as she wants to talk.  I’d ask her questions and listen carefully to find out the answers because I really do want to know all about this place in her imagination.  We might bake something or play a game, but really I think she’d just like to have me pay full attention to her, not to a sibling and not because she’s my best resident-babysitter, but just pay attention. 

Ben.  Hmm.  He’d want to play a bunch of games, ones just for older kids with strategy involved.  And he might like me to watch him play some of his video games and explain them to me as he goes.  Or he might like to try (again- the first time was an utter disaster) to teach me how to duel with Yu-Gi-Oh cards.  He probably will talk to me, but I’m not sure about what.  I’ll be able to pay more attention than usual, though, and really be able to focus on what he’s explaining to me (usually it’s something quite complex and I’m not able to focus my brain on it due to the other things going on around me).  We might listen to some music together since he’s just starting to develop his own musical tastes (mostly coming from his dad’s cd collection, but still…) and maybe he’d let me in on what his favorites are.  Probably we’d have to be driving somewhere for that which we most likely wouldn’t do since he’s a bit of a homebody.  We’d probably mostly play games.  He’s most likable then too – easier to get along with and relate to. 

So.  Those are my only-child daydreams.  Thing is, now that I’ve taken the time to write them out and think them through a bit, I see that there isn’t really any reason to not do these things.   Maybe not all at once, but more often and more consciously.   I tend to think that there are a thousand reasons that I can’t do these things very often with my kids, mostly relating to the fact that there are four of them clamoring for my time and attention always.  But really all I have to remember is this bit of very important wisdom from Alicia at Magic and Mayhem, and it all should come into sharp focus.  I can’t *not* do these things with them.  And I definitely should do them now.