Improvement after \"True Confessions\"

Ha! I took that thread as permission to be this way. 🙂

I went to a meeting with a CM guru and came home both inspired and discouraged a few months ago. Since then, I’ve been looking at some Sally/Clay Clarkston stuff and have decided that for us, spreading the feast needs to be more relaxed. I am not running a Christian school, I’m running a home.

So, I think we’ll read a history book every day until it’s done and then do a literature book. Trying to read multiple books at a time is just overwhelming for me.

I’m trying to declutter the house before school starts so that maybe school will go more smoothly. 🙂

And I’m working on some habits with the kids that will hopefully help things go more smoothly.

I still have no plans for Shakespeare. 🙂

Well at this point, I’m pretty comfortable with what we are doing and even with what we are not doing. After nearly 14 years of homeschooling, we have settled into a rhythm that works for us and I am content.

I am more thinking about how I can pursue “mother culture” for myself. I think I’m going to get some books on nature study and start my own nature journal. If this inspires my daughter to keep a nature journal, all the better. 🙂

Starting tomorrow through the end of the week we are going to do a geography camp to talk about some of the topics we just haven’t gotten to cover.

Next fall, I am going to use the lesson plans for Enrichment Studies, volume 1 and Individual studies for grade 4  (and possibly 3) with only a little tweaking.  When things are laid out for me, we are so much more successful.  Hopefully, this will cut back on my overplanning and worrying that we’re not doing enough.

Ever since the true confessions post, I have been thinking about how I can educate my children with simplicity, striving for excellence and peace.  I have plans for mother culture too, but I’m off to decorate a Lego birthday cake for ds5 today!

Ok well I went back and looked at my “true confession”. Basically my kids are 4 and 6 and we’re doing Bible and the 3Rs daily with lots of arts and crafts. But no nature study, no poetry, no artist study, no music, no hymns and no composer study.

We have lots of tools and resources but nothing gets done or planned. So here are my baby steps:

(1) Last week I cleaned out all the homeschool stuff and separated resources by type – music CDs, art books, art cards, poetry books, nature study, etc. as well as all the other subjects. – DONE

(2) Make a list of all these wonderful resources. – NEED TO DO

(3) Make the decision that we are not going to do any formal CM art or music or poetry study or nature study. Instead decide that we are going to take the next year for exposure and pleasure. For example – just to listen to music. To get me in the habit of at least playing the music in the CD player. And just to read Mother Goose rhymes. And just to enjoy the art cards displayed somewhere – a few at a time. And maybe to do a nature hike once or twice a month, or a nature scavenger hunt in the yard. – DECISION MADE

(4) Make a list of nearby places to take a hike and collect in once place all the nature scavenger hunt printables that I’ve printed off the internet. – NEEDS TO BE DONE

(5) And now the hard part. Figure out how to do it. And for this I’ll probably try do one thing at a time. For example, to pick a music CD, any CD, and start playing it. And figure out what times of day are good for playing music. And which activities are good for also listening to music. Then when I figure that out, start adding something else. – NEEDS TO BE DONE

(6) Print this post I’ve written so that I don’t walk off and forget it all. – NEEDS TO BE DONE

🙂 Katherine