A thought for my little lady...

My ten year old daughter is rather out numbered at our place; she was blessed to be the oldest child in a string of five - and the only girl. As I was planning out school for this term, and was thinking about some of the "home-ec." type things I wanted to make sure she mastered, we came upon this plan. (This is mostly meant as a place for me to get all the specifics written down before I forget and/or lose them...sorry if it's boring for any of you reading out there. :)  She and I will begin by having a biweekly "'Lady in Training' Tea", where we will talk about being a young lady and plan/talk about that month's project, which when completed to satisfaction will earn her a badge to be sewed onto her Lady in Training shawl.

There will be 10 badges:

Cleanliness (particularly learning how to clean a house)

Baking

Planning (such as a daily or weekly meal plan, or creating a weekly schedule)

Child Care 

Personal Care (both neatness in personal space and poise/hygiene) Might include for example, learning to braid her own hair.

Sewing

Nature's Care (which includes plant and/or animal care, whether for pleasure or profit)

Gracefulness

Strength

Generosity

Each Badge will have 3 levels, the first level of every badge having to be complete before going on to earn Level 2 Badges.  Our goal is that she will be able to complete all of the Level 1 ("Lassie") Badges this year. Next year she would again work on earning a badge in each category, only at a more involved, ("Maiden") level. The third and final year, we would work on completing the last ("Young Lady") level of each badge, and then when all were finished she would graduate with some kind of a fun celebration and earn the cumulative, "Virtuous Young Woman " badge. (fittingly, it is badge number 31. :)

Learning how to read the Charlotte Mason way...

Me, that is!....the kids have been reading small portions of good books, and then stopping to reflect and retell what they remember or thought was interesting ever since I started reading about Charlotte Mason's homeschooling methods several years ago.

When we weren't consistent, it was primarily because it was such an odd shift in how I was accustomed to reading.

 Here I must confess that I am a recovering book "gulper" who went through life LOVING books, but going about them in a very wasteful way. If they were fiction, I read them so fast, that within 12 hours, all I was left with was a pleasant warm feeling (and a pile of undone responsibilities. :) If it was for school, I sufficiently memorized what I needed to to make an excellent grade on the upcoming exam and then effectively cleared my short term memory to "make room" for the next term's reading.

My husband was the one who first encouraged me to "savour" a book, mostly because he enjoyed talking through a book we were reading. My self-control in that area was so bad, that really the only way we could discuss a book as we went through it was if I read it aloud to him. Left to my own devises, I could skim the whole thing in two days; but we would miss out on getting to think it through.

Now as a homeschool mama, I am trying to practice what I preach...and you'll NEVER guess what I found out! It's actually FUN to let a book's words soak in slow, to think about an idea, or a word picture, until you've weighed it, and lived it out in your mind!  (This sounds obvious, if not simply sarcastic now, but I remember in the beginning, I was NOT convinced that it could be as enjoyable to read this way.)

Besides still being enjoyable, I also found out that I am now able to make connections and contrasts between things that I am reading. See my post here to listen in on what Charlotte Mason and Tedd Tripp taught me one evening. :)

I still get lazy and read without thinking sometimes, usually when I am reading as a time-wasting activity instead of reading intentionally.  I still don't always make time to sit down and discuss what I've read, (either in person or print). But I'm learning. I'm learning that this way of getting living ideas from a printed page is really important; not only for my kids, but for their mama, too.

Ferns, Fiddleheads, and other Fun. :)

Being from the DRY part of Texas, ferns were not part of the natural world I learned about as a kid.

(Mesquite blossoms or cactus wrens, yes. Ferns, not so much. :)

That makes it all the more fun that our kitchen window looks like this:

Our nature "walk" this time looked more like a nature scavenger hunt. After we talked about ferns just enough to be able to find them, the kids went off to count how many, and of how many different kinds they could find in our yard. They came up with I think 23 plants, of 3 distinct varieties! Along side the tally lists of ferns they found, several of of sketched for a while in the Nature Notebooks. Incidentally, I have really enjoyed having my own book to sketch in. It is really the only time I sit down and try to draw.

They also counted the new, uncurling fronds, commonly called fiddleheads, and examined the undersides of leaves to see which had fruit dots for spores to come out. We found one frond that looked like we could collect spores from, so we set it on a white sheet of paper for a few days; it was pretty fascinating to see the print the fallen spores left. :)

This study made for an easy introduction of where leaves are attached to a stem. (Coming off in pairs, or alternating). It was also good to stop and count just how many separate "unfoldings" the frond had to go through before it was all the way opened.

This term we have been trying to do nature study every Wednesday. Sometimes it is a large part of the morning; most times it is just a chance to get outside together. Last time we just went for a walk I asked the kids to try to notice one thing growing, one thing moving, and one thing they had never noticed before. It's not always some amazing learning experience, but it IS time scheduled in to stop and smell the roses. (or pond scum, or what have you.) We've enjoyed having it every Wednesday for a couple of reasons. First, I have found that when I didn't pick a specific day of the week, I would inevitably push it off to the infamous "manana" which never actually comes.

Second, Wild Things Wednesday is just fun to say. :)

Nature Notebooking

Watching the kids swim with their friends, I was enjoying the various styles of getting wet. (Some people dive in and get it over with. Others creep in deeper, inch by agonizing inch, letting the cold wick up their t-shirt.) Today, however, I saw a new method. As one young lady was hesitating, trying out the t-shirt-wicking method, her friend splashed up and gave her a sloppy hug. :)  THAT, I believe, is very similar to how we came to be using (for the most part) Ambleside Online as our curriculum. *See! This did have something to do with CM and Nature Notebooks after all! Thank you for your patience. ;)* Just by general bent, we have always had a Charlotte Mason flavor, and in recent years I have dabbled around on the AO website, using it mostly as a resource for finding quality Kindle books. However, after some blog following (Thanks, amy-in-peru!), I must say, Ok, Ok!! I'm in! :)

We just finished our first term - and although our Nature Study was more sporadic than I want it to be, it was still one of our favorite parts, I think. 

We learned a bit about how drawing helps you to really notice an object as we made portraits of our parakeet. My Teacher/Mama heart was warmed to hear Dan, my five year old, upon being asked if his bird was green, describing it as, "blue on his tail. His tummy is green and he's green on his wings. Yellow on his forehead, and his beak is skin color - a little bit darker than our skin color". (Probably more info than the 'is it blue or green' question required, but lovely as spontanious retelling/ proof we actually LEARNED something. ;) 

Here is Glory's parakeet pic.
We did start by looking at a black and white outline to observe shape
 instead of just looking at the live bird.
 We found it useful in that it didn't move around so much. :)

...and here is Levi's. He added the leaf rubbing to it the next week to make it "prettier".

Our other favorite project was leaf rubbings of tree leaves we could find in our side yard. This was good on several levels. First, I have a couple kids who are still a bit intimidated to draw something they are looking at. They have been less tense about the whole Nature Notebook concept. They have since mixed more written descriptions in, too, which I'm glad of. My prime bug-gatherer sees the real value in his notebook as this: "if I draw it, it will be there, and after it's dead, I can still see what it looked like". 

Plotting and Planning

The time has come again...time to plan out the next section of our school year! I try to plan out our school schedule in 3 month segments. I find that I have NO idea what our life will look like farther in advance than that. :) Actually, we "ran out of school" several weeks ago, and have been continuing on by the seat of our pants, so to speak. We had assumed to be in TX visiting family this month. God in His sovereignty (by the hand of the interminably slow visa processing office) decided to delay our vacation. And...it has been good - I'm glad we've been here this month. (Just like God knows better than me how to arrange my life, huh. :P) Yet, in hopes to go about school with a bit more direction and purpose, I am back at the plotting and planning. :) Yeah! Once I make myself sit down and do it, I really like this part. :)

Hurray for internet!

What a crazy month! We are moved, unpacked and online. :) Here is a family blog update:

http://thetaylorites.blogspot.com/2012/06/were-back-on-line.html

Because of His mercy, 

 - Alesha<><

Nature...in the midst of concrete

Moss we scraped off the building and an airplane plant baby

 Until a few months ago, we lived on four acres of fairly wild West Texas. Our closest neighbors were my parents with their livestock almost a mile down the road. "Nature study" came almost as easy as breathing. We currently find ourselves living in a second floor apartment in Quito, and car-less; from a language learning and ministry viewpoint, we are extremely glad we are here...from a Nature Study perspective...well, I'm learning to be "content with such things as I have". We've also realized that there IS creation to be observed, even here... it just is taking more creativity to make it available for viewing. :)

Journaling the carrot seeds Glory planted :)

We also found that the sparrows would come to our balcony if we payed them in oatmeal. :) It has been really fun to observe something living (besides brothers, of course...though they are interesting :).