Mom Remembers

Homeschool this month started out so promising.  I had a lot of enthusiasm for the new year as well as for a fantastic book that I read ( Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov).  But that enthusiasm fizzled out pretty rapidly in the face of winter blahs.  I think we even totally canceled kindergarten 5 times this month!  In Kindergarten The Three Wise Men - This is the unit I was really trying to incorporate new ideas in.  I wanted to hold the kids to a higher standard and help them really learn about and from this story.  So every day, I had a learning objective for our little class.  For example:  "Learn the meaning of the word jealous ", "Tell the story of the three wise men in your own words" and "Identify the gifts of the Magi in the song We Three Kings ".  Stuff like that.  I really enjoyed the way these objectives made our Kindergarten seem more purposeful and effective.  It was also a lot of mental work.  I accomp...

Yesterday morning, Sven used his first sign: "All done." He was standing up in the high chair, so I sat him back down.  Then I asked, "Are you all done?  Would you like to get down?" I reached to grab his hands and help him say "all done".  But before I could get there, he was flipping them back and forth and making an approximation of the sounds all on his own!  So I swooped him up, kissed him, and took him for a bath.  He was very happy.  That was exactly what he had wanted. Then, this morning, he used the sign for "more" while making a very distinctive "mo" sound.  However, he did not actually want more.  When I tried to give him another bite of cereal, he pursed his lips and turned away.  So I asked, "Are you all done?"  Once again, he lifted up his hands and flipped them: palms in, palms out, palms in, palms out.  I put down the spoon and lifted him out of the high chair. This is such a fun age!  He is learning so...

SOREN:  On the Langers label, the blue represents green and the lion represents white.  That's because Langers is an Italian company. ME:  The lion represents white?  That's really confusing. SOREN:  That's the science of representing.

We got a jar of homemade marshmallows for Christmas.  They were very yummy and we have been slowly enjoying them with hot cocoa for the past month. This past Friday, I gave quite a few of them to Sven.  He was cranky and I was being a lazy mom; marshmallows worked.  He was very happy to plow through a substantial chunk of the jar and subsequently forgot what he was so cranky about. Apparently, he will never forget the marshmallows.  They made quite an impression on him, as the following story will show. Yesterday, Scott opened the jar to put some on his cocoa.  Sven was in the other room but he crawled as fast as he could to the kitchen.  He climbed up Scott's leg and began fussing rather pointedly.  Marshmallows were exchanged and then Sven was satisfied.  It all seemed very deliberate so we hypothesized that Sven could hear the click  of the jar opening and had made an indelible connection between that sound and the most deliciou...

The Bible tells us that in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, there was nothing but darkness and God said: "Let there be light."  And there was light. Many years ago, the prophet Isaiah lived in a dark time for his country.  The wise king of Judah had died, and powerful enemies threatened to destroy his tiny land.  But Isaiah believed God's promise that the people who were living in darkness would someday see a great light.  This Christmas I have been thinking a lot about light and darkness, knowledge and uncertainty, faith and doubt.  For me, this Christmas has been about strengthening my trust in God and believing in His promise that someday, the light will return.  At a time when my future feels dark and uncertain, this season of faith has been exactly what I needed.  I'm relying on the light within , rather than without, and it is ultimately a light that comes from beyond . Here's how we tried to kindle that light ...

December really shook up our homeschooling routines quite a bit.  For starters, the snow started coming down and we had to cut out our time playing outside.  We still take a daily walk but the kids don't stop on the lawn for snacks and games anymore.  This, in turn, cuts down our homeschooling time to just one hour a day.  I used to be frustrated with the way wintertime wreaks merry havoc with my carefully structured days but this year I am enjoying the change.  Our whole routine is different this winter and I finally know to accept the season for what it is.  Spring will come again soon enough.  In the meantime, I have been much more liberal with media access.  I have also used some of our down time to teach the kids more household skills: cooking, cleaning, and knot-tying. But it was more than just the cold weather that made homeschool unpredictable.  For the first two weeks of December, every child  in the neighborhood got really si...