Our homeschool days

I am asked frequently how I balance work and homeschooling, and what our days look like. We basically have four types of days:

1. Our "full homeschool" days, when I am focused mainly on school and housecleaning (2 days a week)
2. Our "half homeschool" days, when I do office hours at church (3 days a week)
3. Saturdays that I don't work and we have family day
4. Sundays and some Saturdays, when I work and the kids either go with me or stay home with their Dad

Today was "full homeschool" day, and it looked like this:

• We all got up tired, around 8 am
• We had breakfast together and I read a history book about Rome to them
• They spontaneously decided to build a roman fort out of legos, and played together for awhile with a roman storyline
• We went outside and cleaned out a raised bed in the garden, and the kids collected worms and grubs
• They set up a habitat for the worms so they could keep watching them inside
• We went to the YMCA, and they played in the playcare room while I worked out
• We went to the library, and the kids picked out new books and movies for the week
• We went to Goodwill to buy a "disposable" soup pot that I can fill with soup and give to the homeless camp for dinner tomorrow, and the kids picked out sweaters and Christmas nick-nacks
• We listened to an audio book as we drove around
• I took them out to lunch at an independent burger place
• Carbon did his Math-U-See while Hypatia practiced counting blocks
• I read them a non-fiction science book from the library
• Hypatia cleaned bathrooms (with my help) and Carbon took out all the garbage and recycling
• Carbon did his five minutes of vision therapy
• Carbon and I each practiced piano (I give him a little lesson and then I practice my own pieces)
• Carbon read me a Bob Book
• The kids and I made soup together for dinner (they really are good little cooks)
• Carbon worked on cleaning his room
• They each got a bedtime story read to them

A fairly typical homeschool day around here.

picking our next read-aloud

I was trying to interest Carbon in The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, so I told him it was a story about two kids who run away from home an stay in a museum. We had other options, but he was leaning toward this selection.

Then he said "I can't decide, my heart and my head are saying different things."

I asked him what he meant, so he explained:

"Well, my heart tells me that a heart is for love, and that I shouldn't hear about kids running away from home, because it would be bad for love. But then my head is saying 'hey, don't worry Carbon, you would never run away'.

When I asked him which was going to win out, the heart or the head, he laughed and patted his head. So The Mixed Up Files it will be, and it's good to know that Carbon would never run away.

Sunday - Here comes the Yule Play

Today we start rehearsal work for our Yule Play during the religious education classes. This is a very long tradition at my church, to do a play with the kids in December.

Here is the newsletter article I wrote about this year's play:

A Christmas Play
One of our stated goals for Religious Education here is to give our children a basic level of religious literacy. This means that we will recognize the stories, beliefs, traditions, holidays, and history of different faiths and religions, so that our children have the understanding and the language to engage with other religions and with people of different faith traditions.
This year our Yule Play is part of our religious literacy effort. I have noticed that our children tend to not know the story of Christmas, illustrated by a child asking me last year “what’s up with that baby in the pile of straw in front of that other church?”. Although many in our congregation come from a background where we can assume a basic knowledge of Christianity, this is not true of our children. They are not coming from another faith tradition, but are rather being raised in this tradition of Unitarian Universalism. And for much of its history, the UU tradition has been a Christian tradition, with its own interpretation of a human Jesus and a loving God.
Our children still need to know the Christmas story, of the birth of a baby that is remembered and celebrated every year by people all around the world. And we can celebrate that birth, remembering the words of the Unitarian Universalist religious educator, Sophia Lyon Fahs:
Fathers and mothers –
Sitting beside their children’s cribs
Feel glory in the sight of a new life beginning.
They ask, “where and how will this new life end?
Or will it ever end?”
Each night a child is born is a holy night –
A time for singing,
A time for wondering.
A time for worshipping.

While still maintaining our OUUC tradition of writing an original and humorous Yule Play, we will also be honoring this spirit of Christmas with our play on December 13th. Additionally, the RE program is collecting food for the Salvation Army that day, so please bring non-perishable holiday food to church that morning.

funny kid story

Tonight we had to go to the mall and hang out for a long time while my husband was getting himself a new cellphone (his own birthday present to himself). They are already set up for Christmas there, which we are not allowed to do here at home until December 1st. And we hardly ever go to the mall or other major stores, so the kids haven't seen any early Christmas stuff until tonight.

So the kids were excited to see a sign with a picture of an elf on it (it was advertising pictures with Santa coming soon). Hypatia ran up to the sign, folded her hands over her heart (like namaste) and bowed to the sign.

And then she lifted her hands up, like a priestess worshipping an ancient icon, and then she folded her hands back down and bowed again.

It was so strange a thing to do - so very strange and funny. When I asked her what she was doing she said: "I am consulting the Oracle of Christmas."

Oh. Well that explains that.

Committee work as a spiritual practice

One thing that happens a lot at church are committee meetings. Lots, and lots, and lots of committee meetings. We talk. And we talk. And we debate. And we send a round of emails. And we talk some more.

This is the process, and how decisions almost always get made at church. And for all of these decisions and this work I have no control. This is a big thing for me, because I'm a bit of a control freak. I have strong opinions, and I am strongly attached to success.

But I have to let it go. In the end, it's not my church, not my space, not my program, and not my success. This is a group process, and all I can do is say my piece. It is an ongoing practice for me to work on letting go of attachment, whether it is to the color of my office (which the minister reminds me is not really "my" office, but is "the church DRE office"), the activities the youth group engage in, or the number of people who show up to family game night.

I still care - I have to care. I have to throw myself, heart and soul and willing hands, into a process but all I can do is try. I still have no control over outcome, and therefor I better not feel attached to it.

Here's somebody who says it better than I can: Monkey Mind has a "Small Meditation on Letting Go of the Results".

My "mom" job description

Sometimes I marvel at all the areas of responsibility that are covered under my title of "Mom". Things such as:

• nail trimmer
• hair dresser
• personal shopper
• archivist
• photographer
• dietician
• reader
• driver
• cook
• nurse (both for when they are sick and for normal monitoring of health routines)
• recreation director
• matchmaker/playdate maker
• mediator
• cheerleader
• judge and jury
• lifeguard
• librarian
• cleaning service
• role model

No wonder it's so exhausting!

What we've been listening to

Despite losing some conversation time with the kids, I still love what listening to books on CD in the car does for us. They make for nice calm family drives, and it tucks another learning activity into time that was mostly just wasted before.

In the last month we've listened to:

The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, read by Jim Weiss. Short, funny, and full of wonderful language ("he was a man of infinite resource and sagacity"), but the CD only lasted us one day of errands.

Freddie Goes to Florida by Walter R. Brooks, read by Jim McDonough. In this Freddie installment, the animals decide to migrate to Florida for the winter, so it was perfect for the turn to cold weather around here. I like McDonough's reading style, which is not too dramatic or full of silly-voices, and it's a long book so it lasted us for over a week.

The Stones of Green Knowe by L.M. Boston, read by Simon Vance. The Green Knowe series is about a very old house and how the children who have lived there are able to journey through time and have other magical experiences. We've read most of the series out loud in the past, so this installment was nice to find on CD.

Catwings by Ursula LeGuin, was sweet, but very short, so we listened to it all yesterday and today.

Any suggestions? It looks like we will keep on doing this, so we're going to need to find more titles!