Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Good feelings

It has been a great week of home schooling. The main highlight has been the peaceful tenor in our home and a general love- love of each other and love of learning. I believe this is because I recently refocused my lens on my family. I have prioritized getting enough sleep to meet their needs as a thoughtful mother and facilitator. Some highlights from this week have been:

*deciding to let Torpedo (my two year old son) let go of our hug first. I held him for 20 minutes and he fell asleep in my arms.

*letting the kids spend half the day exploring with our new set of 50+ gel pens They created imaginative and beautiful pieces

*sledding at noon when nobody else was on the slopes. My Hero sat in his beach chair bundled in winter-wear and a blanket and wrote in his journal. What is not abundant about this life?

*discovering that my 6 year old is happy to do "lessons" with me if we set up a "desk" and let her call me "teacher"

*playing Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader with the whole family on a Tuesday afternoon. we made up our own rules and would run to the maps to check our answers or look up works of art and geographic wonders on-line

*reading aloud The Swiss Family Robinson and The Old Testament with loads of commentary and conversation. I never knew Leviticus was so pertinent!

*My tween writing a business letter on her own. Granted it was to the Twilighters Anonymous podcast, but she wanted to clarify some minor character descriptions she felt they had overlooked and included quotes from the saga to support her claim.

*getting together with friends

*trusting and encouraging their initiative as learners

1 comment:

SumGreater said...

I think Torpedo's name is perfect. And I love that you just held and held him. Beautiful.

All that stuff sounds so fun! I'm really proud of you.

With the adjusting of your schedule to meet your kids' needs, does that mean you're not running in the morning anymore?