Reflecting

I've been thinking this week about the current rhythm of our daily life. If there were a soundtrack to match our life these past few weeks, it might be something like Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee. In short, life is feeling a bit rushed, a bit frenetic, and a bit chaotic lately, which is never a great way to feel. Full to the tipping point is fine, but full to the point at which the cup runeth over and spills onto the floor so that you are standing in ankle deep muck is not so great. Am I even making sense? I am feeling so very tired tonight. Anyway, some things will need to change around here for next year if not before, like limiting the kids activities to a few things during the week, no matter how much they love their artmusictheaterskatinghockeygymnasticsviolinpercussionlessons, we need more down time at home together, more time to truly investigate and explore our interests, and more time to recharge, relax, or just be together as a family and see where the day takes us. I've also been thinking about the way in which we homeschool, the curriculum we follow, and our educational philosophy - which could sort of be summed up as relaxed classical homeschooling with a love of Waldorf and Charlotte Mason-inspired learning. And as we go through each year I find myself letting go more and more, discarding ideas that I once thought were so vital to learning - moving away from worksheets and more toward projects and unstructured learning. And I find myself taking on a different role with D and facilitating his learning, rather than actually teaching him.

So this week D worked with Math U See, focusing on word problems with division, and writing remainders as fractions. Bleh. I feel bored even writing that sentence. Next week we'll be working with estimating and rounding, which will be a welcome change as I feel math has become a bit redundant and repetitive the past few weeks. Of course, repetition is a good thing, but too much can start make one start to feel stagnant. He did some creative writing in his journal, and worked a bit in our language arts book. He finished the first part of his science project and learned about the Belgian Congo and Argentina post World War Two. Lately D has begun to really question things he's learning in history, rather than just absorbing the information. Last week he asked me why the Israelis and Palestinians couldn't find a way to share the land they both wanted. Good question buddy, good question. And why the Danish people were the only ones, by and large, to help the Jews escape the Nazis? I love to hear his deep thoughts these days. He also drew a beautiful owl picture this week in art.

J has had an explosion of reading this week. Suddenly she is reading everything she picks up, all the time. It's great. She's decoding words I never thought she would be able to read at this point. She also worked with her Math-U-See blocks quite a bit, and had fun making place value houses. We read some stories about Africa from Around the World in 80 Tales, read about amphibians, and worked on her science project on dolphins. She learned the very final notes of Suzuki Violin Book 1 today!

K continues to be my wonderful, feisty red head. She wants to be outside all the time. I just want it to warm up around here!

To hear the current soundtrack of our life click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X04jDNHFjBU