Autumn Colors and Hot Spiced Apple Cider

The view from my back deck this afternoon...

...complete with a steaming mug of hot spiced apple cider.

It was a nice, quiet moment.  Yeah, I actually do mean just one.

Quiet.  Moment.

Isaak was with me, and he was not happy.

Not cheerful, either.  Downright grouchy, as a matter of fact.

And he thought that the entire neighborhood should hear about it.

I disagreed.

So we went inside.

It was a nice, quiet moment.  While it lasted.

Our House

Our House

Come on in!  :)

The "old Dining Room"...someday a Sitting Room:

Kitchen and "new" Dining Room:

Living Room:

Master Bedroom:

Master Bathroom:

"Tornado Closet" -- we DO live in the South!

Upstairs we go!

Jaela, Macey, and Anya's Room:

Office/Music Room/Guest Room:

Schoolroom/TV Room:

Isaak's Room:

The Backyard:

Wanna come for a REAL visit?!?  :)

A Brief Glimpse

A brief glimpse into my day (any deeper of a glimpse, and you'd either be bored to tears or as exhausted as I am!):

Dirty laundry waiting to be sorted and washed, and clean laundry waiting to be folded

I barely made a dent in either pile...

On the other hand, I cleaned and tidied up the ENTIRE house, taught school, ran a few errands, and picked up a few groceries!

And at the end of the day, there are clean dishes waiting to be put away, dirty dishes waiting to be washed, a full garbage waiting to go out...

...and two freshly baked loaves of bread waiting to be sliced and put away.

A very satisfying end to a satisfying day!  :)

Little House in the Bark Mulch

The kids have designated the bark mulched area among our trees in the back yard as their "house", and whenever we go outside to play, that's where they head.  If I remember correctly, in this picture Macey is in the bedroom, Anya and Jaela are in the living room, and Isaak is in the kitchen.  They have a garden and a farm, too.  :)

Yesterday as they played in their house, I heard Jaela say, "Ok, now everyone line up, and I'll give you your chores for the day."  And her sisters cooperated too!  They lined up, Jaela assigned them each some chores, and they all ran off cheerfully to "do" them.  Maybe I should try that "line up" system in MY house!  (Although if I'm being honest, their house looks like it's more fun!)  :)

Chores

"A chore is something that we do to help the whole family." 

-- L. Elizabeth Krueger, author of Raising Godly Tomatoes

It wasn't that long ago that I finally realized two very important things.  The first is that the girls are actually old enough (and have been for quite some time now, actually) to have some responsibilities around the house, and the second is that I am not Super-woman and I don't need to be, either.  Shortly after this realization, the word "chore" became a part of our daily vocabulary!

We started simply.  Every morning before breakfast, the girls are all three required to get dressed and brush their hair, and make their beds.  Then Macey takes the bathroom garbage downstairs and replaces the liner, and Jaela takes the dirty laundry basket from their room to the laundry room (Anya's job is to help her if it is overflowing.)

Whenever the dishwasher is clean, I call all three girls to help empty it.  Lately, Isaak has taken over the assignment of putting away the silverware and utensils, and he actually has developed a pretty good grasp of which drawers things go in!  The hard part is then filling the dishwasher with one hand and trying to prevent him from putting the dirty silverware and utensils away with the other!  :)  His desire to help combined with how well he completes his self-appointed task have made me begin to question WHEN.  If he does this task so well and eagerly at 17 months, when do I begin to give him ACTUAL responsibilities...chores of his own?  Not TOO soon, but then again, does he need to know that it's not necessarily supposed to be fun?  :)

All three girls take care of their own laundry.  I wash and dry it, then sort it into their baskets for them to fold, hang up and put away.  It sometimes takes them a while to get their basket emptied, but the system has worked well so far!  I'm thinking that they might be ready for some new challenges.  As capable as my children have proven themselves to be so far, the possibilities are endless!  :)

Beginning Narration

The concept of narration as a learning tool is not a new one, but as I learned today, it is a very effective one!  Charlotte Mason wrote that a pupil should learn to be able to "grasp the sense of a passage of some length at a single reading: and to narrate the substance of what they have read or heard." (from the appendix of School Education, Volume 3 of her series).  Narration is:   "Quite simply, it is the art of 'telling back' what you just read or heard from a book." -- from Lindafay at Higher Up and Further In (Which, by the way, is my favorite Charlotte Mason method homeschooling blog.)  :)

We do our Bible readings every morning before we do any of our other schoolwork.  It's the most important thing we learn, so we do it first to make sure it gets done!  :)  It takes so long for me to read it aloud, though, that I have started assigning chapters for Jaela and Macey to read on their own in their NIVs, while Anya reads a Bible storybook.  They read so quickly that when they told me they were done with their SIX chapters this morning, I asked them to narrate to me individually so I could make sure that they actually read it.  (My mom is thinking right about now that this sounds awfully familiar!)  :)

They read the first six chapters of Exodus today, so I told them to start from the beginning of the story, and pretend that I didn't know anything about Moses.  Macey went first, and it was like pulling teeth to get any details out of that child!  She had the storyline completely correct though, and told me everything in the right order, but it took a lot of prompting and patience on my part to get it all told.  Jaela, on the other hand, went into so much detail that I found myself thinking more than once, "I'd forgotten that!", and even "Did I ever know that?".  She too had the storyline in perfect chronological order, and they both proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had read what they were supposed to!

I have to admit that the differences between their narrating styles really surprised me, although I WAS forewarned that there could be such differences.  Lindafay wrote about her own children on her blog in a post titled Detailed Narrations and The Summary:  "One of my children loves to give very detailed narrations.  She can remember details so well that when she narrates, she sounds like the author....However, she shows a weakness in her ability to summarize a passage so that just the most important people and events are mentioned.  My other daughter has the exact opposite strength and weakness.  She summarizes beautifully but doesn't pay attention to details as much as she should."  

I am so grateful (as a mom and as a teacher!) for Lindafay's insight!  While I might have considered one narrating style only a strength and the other only a weakness, Lindafay points out that BOTH styles have equal parts strength and weakness, and she lays out a method for me as the teacher to use to strengthen the weaknesses and teach the proper use of each style.  Not only that, but in her post she continues on the subject of narration, giving more ideas and backing them up with examples from her (and her children's) experiences.  I really, really like her blog (can y'tell?!?).  It's nice to have an example to follow as we're beginning this new method of homeschooling, and yet I don't feel compelled to do everything the "Lindafay way", either.

And, OH, this new method is fun!  :)

Are You Ready For Some FOOTBALL?!?

The Tennessee Titans are 8-0!!!

The kids and I spent part of Saturday afternoon watching college football (Georgia vs. Florida), and the girls were fascinated by Tim Tebow, quarterback for Florida.  Not only is he a Christian, but his parents are missionaries AND he was homeschooled!  He plays with a Bible reference painted in white on the black stuff they put under their eyes: Phil (under his right eye) 4:13 (under his left eye)  "I can do everything through him who gives me strength."  When I read it to the girls, Jaela's first question was:  "Is he so good at football because he's a Christian?"  :)  

Yesterday afternoon we watched the Giants/Cowboys game, and Anya was fascinated by the difference between their uniforms and the uniforms the Titans/Green Bay wore in Tennessee.  It was in the high 70s here yesterday, and the players were all in short sleeves.  In the Giants game in New York, some wore short sleeves, but Eli Manning and a few others had long sleeves on underneath their short sleeved jerseys.  (Sometimes the things my kids notice absolutely amaze me!)  After a while, Anya came running back into the school/tv room dressed like this and exclaimed, "Look, Mommy!  I'm Eli Manning!"  :)

Today, the girls spent almost an hour upstairs working on writing and illustrating stories while Isaak and I made dinner.  Jaela and Macey are working on stories about queens, kings, and princesses.  This was Anya's:  (from top to bottom, left to right, pictures of) "a helper" (she means trainer), "a cheerleader, Eli Manning, and Peyton Manning."  Then she drew Peyton Manning's helmet and labeled it PATINMANINES, followed by Eli Manning's helmet, and labeled it too (backwards) ELIMANES

It's definitely football season at my house!  :)

(Dad, go catch your eyeballs!  I think you just rolled them right out of your head!)  :)