And Another Thing...

Instead of school...

Olivia started writing her first book entitled "The Missing Tiara".  She is currently working on the first chapter after creating a rockin' front cover.

Anna drew illustrations for her own book, most likely a graphic novel. 

Benjamin created another HUGE LEGO vehicle.  It's so awesome, he looks up pictures and videos online to get an idea of construction and then he disappears for several hours and comes back down with a perfect replica.  Amazing.

Braidon continued working on his snow structure, which is beginning to resemble a small city and he also cleaned up the yard without being asked.  He's my favorite today ;o)

Saragh did all the things that Saragh does best, no one is quite sure what that is, but she was quiet and engaged and the house is still standing, so I'll take it!

They always come up with activities that are WAY better than anything I could have dreamed up.  I love our life and I'm so glad we chose this path!

Reading...

We read our way through the seasons.  With a few helpful friends, I bring the world and all it's joys into our home for every season and holiday.  Short of selling everything and traveling the world (Sigh.  My dream.), this is the best way I can think of to help my children learn how everyone else celebrates, plays and works.  I have had lots of help over the years, building a list of favorite books and adding new ones.  Elizabeth Foss and her lovely, soul-feeding book was my first introduction to holiday reading.  Then, like most mamas I know, I happened on to Amanda Soule and her wonderful holiday reading list.  From there, my obsession took off and for years now, my hold list at the library has been consistantly full.  Hopefully these lists will inspire you to create your own list of holiday and seasonal reading!

On My Bookshelf...

The Kitchen Idea Book ::  This has been instrumental in the kitchen redo project.  The inspiration for the room and the banquet came from this book.

Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding :: This is the book that we use as the spine of the girls' science studies.  We meet with another family every other week to do simple science activities which are forming the basis of the girls' scientic knowledge.  There is a second level book coming out in a few weeks that we will use with the boys.

One Year to an Organized Life ::  I bought this earlier this year, but with the kitchen hullabaloo, it won't get put into use until next year at the earliest.  I'm very anxious to try it!

Honey for a Child's Heart ::  This book of book lists has been a staple in our house for years now.  I loved reading it the first, second and third times through and I am sure I will love reading it again!  I keep it next to my computer so I can use it as a quick refernce to put library book son hold.

Radical Homemakers :: I'm reading this book bits at a time between other things.  I love it, but there is a lot to process, so I'm taking it slow.

The Mother's Guide to Self Renewal :: After reading about this book on a blog (can't remember which one now) and then a friend started facilitating a group, some of my friends and I decided to get together and go throught this book over the next year.  I'm very excited to get started in a couple of weeks.

Third Base Ain't What it Use to Be :: This is a great book about how to talk to your kids about sex.  What I particularly love about it is that it's "value free" meaning that the author just gives information and suggestions about how to talk to you kids and does not really insert any of her own personal or religious beliefs.  She expects that parents will be able to put their own spin on things if they feel they need to.  

The Well Trained Mind :: Even though we dropped the "classical" method long ago, I still keep this book around because it is a great resource.  With Ben, Braidon and Olivia all studying different areas of history this year, I'm keeping this close at hand.

Mad Hungry :: Now that my two pre-teen boys are practically eating me out of house and home, I decided that I needed to include some "man food" into our diet.  This book has great recipes for hearty food that actually consists of more than meat and potatoes.

Born to Run :: Since I decided to start running, I became interested in different schools of thought on this issue and this book has come up in forums time and again.  I'm not quite a hundred pages in yet, but it's already quite intriguing.

A Picture Perfect Childhood ::  This book is a wonderful collection of picture book titles.  There are several different groupings within this book, but my favorite are the monthly groupings.  There is a list of books that correspond to events during the month and then a list of books that have seasonal recipes for each month.  I love this book so much that I had it spiral bound so that it would be easier to use when I was putting books on hold.

Steadier Days

For the past few months, I have been reading this blog about becoming a more intentional mother.  I have to admit that until last week, I was still reading it through heavily skeptical eyes.  For those of you who don't know me all that well (and to make those of you who do chuckle) I may have a slight problem with authority and rules.  Therefore, it follows that I also have issues with schedules and organization.  I mostly feel that all of those things cramp my style.  I like to be able to run off and do things on the spur of the moment without worrying about what I'm not doing. 

However, I was definitely finding myself and the children to be in a rut.  I noticed that the TV was slowly taking over our lives again, I was on the computer all day long, nothing was getting done around the house and we weren't rushing off on any exciting adventures; planned or unplanned.  I felt as if we were slowly coming apart at the seams and life felt chaotic and harried all the time.  Every member of the house could feel it too which was just making things worse.

So, last week while I was perusing Amazon, the book "Steady Days" kept popping up on my recommended books list.  On a complete whim, I put it in my cart and then ordered it.  When it arrived, I was still very skeptical.  This book had the potential of ruining my life and making me do things that I didn't want to do.  For whatever reason, I picked it up before any of the other books (that I was much more excited about) and started reading.

One of the first thing I read as I flipped through the book was this,

Some people think that if they become organized, they will lose their spontaneity and passion for living.  Because they really value these qualities, they think they must accept their disorganization in order to maintain their free spirit.  This doesn't have to be the case.  Having a flexible structure helps you enjoy spontaneity.  If you have taken the time to be organized in the things that matter most, then you will not feel behind.  So when an opportunity comes your way, like the first warm day of spring or a special concert for the children, you can ditch the rest of  your plans and go for it.  You can enjoy without guilt because your other responsibilities are up to date.

That simple paragraph really clicked with me and I was hooked.  Over the past few days, I have written and implemented a morning and afternoon routine for the kids and I and we are all adjusting to it rather well.  It made the days flow much smoother and we all were engaged and interacting with each other.  I am really looking forward to this becoming the norm here and where that will take us.

I'm not saying that this was a miracle cure for all the ails my family, but it is certainly clearing up some of the symptoms!  "Steady Days" has become my new go-to book for getting through the day with grace and making the changes that are necessary.  I encourage you to get a copy of this book and check it out for yourself. 

Discovering Pippi

I recently discovered that one of our favorite author/illustrators, Lauren Child,  has illustrated a version of Pippi Longstocking!  Even though I could have gotten this book through our inter-library loan system, I knew that we would need to have this book in our personal collection.  Something about it felt just right for a certain girl of seven that we have in our house right now.

The much anticipated book arrived while we were away this past weekend and Olivia could hardly wait until we could sit down and dig into it.  We read 3 chapters last night and I discovered that Olivia has the perfect sense of humor for this book right now.  She got all the jokes and laughed at all the right places and then promptly declared that she needed braids in her hair, 500 gingersnaps and a horse on our porch.  The braids and gingersnaps I can do, the horse...

"B" is for Banana

Anna is learning all about the letter "B" this week.  Today we read My B Sound Box and My Blue Boat.  She made a Banana B for her letter book and chocolate covered bananas for a snack.  Everyone got to benefit from that! 

Tomorrow we will be reading The Berry Book and Beverly Billingsly Borrows a Book.  We will be making a soft and fluffy bunny craft and baking a Buttermilk Blueberry Cake.

Not-Back-to School Blog Hop - School Room Week (late)

I just found out about this blog roll, so I am a little late with the school room week pictures.

This is our dining/craft room where we spend a big portion of the day.  Please excuse the photos, it's a cloudy day, so they're very dark.

This is the craft cabinet that my fabulous hubby put together for us.  It's an old cabinet from our kitchen that we removed when we put a pantry in.  He repainted it and put a nice new counter top on it and wha-la! We have a great storage space for our oodles on craft supplies!

This is our library/family room.  We just switched our house around so that the books would be in the bigger, brighter room.  We're loving all the space we have to spread out and read and play games.  This room is really warm in the winter when we have a fire going.  We almost never leave it. 

Since we're mostly unschoolers, we don't really "do" school.  When we do work on something, we just find the place that is the most comfortable and well suited to our project and set up shop.  Sometimes that's at the kitchen table, sometimes it's snuggling on the couch and sometimes it's sprawled out on the floor.  I think it really suits us to be flexible and respect the different work needs of each member of the family.

Fairies and Flowers

 

 

Matthaei Botanical Gardens Enchanted Spring with Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairies.

Cheese Pies for Lunch!

I made these yummy cheese pies for lunch yesterday and they were promptly devoured by the kids.  I only got the one in the bottom right corner there.  This is another recipe from Apple for Jam.  I love this cookbook so much!  Rush to your nearest local bookstore and buy this book right now!   If you are in or near Ann Arbor, you should go to Nicola's.  They can order anything if they don't have it in stock already.

Look What I Found...

You can even pre-order and then sit on your hands until August!  So far away!

I cannot believe that someone so nice would would tempt me so cruelly!