The Plan for Mary Beth

Mary Beth turns ten this fall and it promises to be a very big year for her. Truth be told, all curriculum plans aside, Mary Beth's biggest lessons will be those she learns helping to care for a new baby.  She was six the last time we had an infant in the house.  That baby--Katie--is her pride and joy and her constant companion.  Together, they are both going to so love caring for this new sister.

Mary Beth is a big fan of Catholic Heritage Curriculum.  She loves Language of God, handwriting, and the speller.  She drinks up the Catholic readers in big gulps.  The infusion of faith truly touches her heart.  So, she'll have a steady supply of those.

I'm so impressed with all things published by Hillside Education.  Mary Beth is still working through Stories with a View and enjoying it.  We'll pull some lessons from Primary Language Lessons as needed.  Those needs present themselves in the context of something real and meaningful for her:  blogging.

Her real writing progress is happening somewhere hidden.  She has a private blog and a circle of friends who both visit her blog and provide a wonderful example of fine writing at their blogs.  Every day, all of her own volition, she writes journal entries.  Following her big brother's example, she's even attempting to write a novel!  The only rule is that she is to edit with me before  she posts.  This is an incredibly meaningful and effective way to teach composition.

Much like her mother and her brother, she's not all that enamored of math.  The Math-U-See videos exasperate her. So, we're dialing back a bit.  She'll use some of the manipulatives her little siblings are using, but with a big kid twist.  We're planning to work through Multiplication and Division with Rod Patterns and Graph Paper and to make good use of our well-worn Math-It Kit. She'll also share Touchmath materials with Christian.  One way or another, she'll multipy and divide this year.

For religious studies I'm looking very forward to reading St. Patrick's Summer, The First Christians, and A Life of Our Lord for Children with her. These treasures have recently been re-published by Sophia Institute Press.  She'll narrate as we go and I know there will be plenty of discussion.  She has been devoted to the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd since she was tiny and we are eagerly awaiting Moira Farrell's third book.

She's already put all the Catholic Mosaic books on the shelf and is creating her own liturgical year notebook.  This is a child for whom literature-based learning is perfect!

I am determined to follow through on plans to learn to sew with her.  We are going to begin with Sewing with St. Anne. I inherited it from a friend who bought it sight unseen.  She found that there was nothing in it that she didn't already know and wasn't equipped to teach her daughter.  I, on the other hand, really need a basic, beginner's book like this.  And even with it, I will be constantly begging the intercession of St. Anne.

For art, her biggest brother will teach drawing lessons and we will all enjoy the art included in CHC's fourth grade lesson plans. Because of strict no-sharing policies, I can't use the plans for everyone and I'm not doing a different picture study for each of seven children, so we'll just use the prints and we'll all appreciate the art together.

Unit studies round out the plan.  It's not difficult to get her to add to our family nature blog or to draw for her own nature journal.  She loves historical fiction and has created her own impressive reading list.  I'll add to it as we study history units.

She's as physically gifted as her brothers are.  She plays a very competitive game of backyard soccer.  But, for our own sanity, we have strict policy of limiting "extra-curriculars" to one activity.  We do everything we can to help the children pursue that one passion as deeply as they desire.  And we have found that they tend to be very committed.  Mary Beth is no exception. Last Christmas she was the youngest child to dance Clara in her dance school's history.  She loves to dance! This fall will be full of rehearsals for this year's Christmas performances and she will be at the studio for three or four classes week. She's made it very clear though, that she wants those classes loaded into two days only.  There are going to be two little sisters at home and she doesn't want to miss these fleeting little sister days...

The littlest things...

I am so excited about this tiny little bud!

For nine months, I've told myself that that when the mums bloom, I'll be holding our baby.  This morning, in a light rain, I surveyed the garden and I found a little, tiny pink bud!

The rocking chair is at the ready.

We've had a lovely baby shower.

Soon, very soon, we will have mounds and mounds of sweet pink flowers.  Soon, we'll hold our baby.

The thrill of a new year!

A few weeks ago, I noticed that it smells like fall.  I wasn't outside, catching the first whiff of falling leaves.  I was actually at the mall, shopping for a few late pregnancy items.  The smell?  The distinctive scent of back-to-school shopping.  Though the fashions have changed, I am happy to report that new shoes, crisp khaki pants, and stiff backpacks still smell like they always did. 

I loved back-to-school as a child.  I loved it even more as a teacher.  And, I admit, I had considerable pangs of wistfulness the first few falls that I did not go back to school in either capacity.

We try to school year 'round here, at least to keep to some maintenance level in the summer.  So, back-to-school can sort of disappear into the ordinary days. This year, when the neighborhood children board the bus, I will be about three weeks from delivering a baby.  Since this is my fifth baby born between the last week of September and the third week of October, I know that back-to-school for us will be followed in short order by "Fall Break,"  even if fall has just begun.

Charlotte Mason wrote that "education is an atmsophere, a discipline and a life."  It's oft-quoted, simple, and direct.  That's been the guiding principle for my summer--a summer I've spent at home, preparing for the baby and hyper-focusing on meeting the individual needs of each child in this house.

With the encouragement and support of much good conversation, I've looked at atmosphere.  The good and generous Lord gave us this home and yard.  Have we used it in a way that is pleasing to Him? Does the atmsophere welcome Him to the home that is His?  We're trying.  We've gardened and cleaned and organized and spruced things up.  I've kept my eyes and my heart on the goal of Marian loveliness.

Then there is discipline.  That's more than a paragraph in a post about learning rooms, but discipline is key to making home education work.  We have our household routines down.  Really down. Order is the backbone of executing all the lovely plans we've made.  If we can't find the pencil, if we don't get up in time, if there are no clean socks for the big game, we will be frustrated and cranky and--before long--despondent over our failures.  There must be order and there must be time planned into every day to maintain that order.  It's not optional.

So it is with preparing the learning room. I take comfort in an ordered environment, probably too much comfort, as if I really have the control that a clean room promises. Just invite a toddler in, all delusions of perfect control will dissipate rapidly.  I've shared much of our "atmosphere of learning" in the preschool posts.  There are lots of pictures there.

• Our arts and crafts supplies are  actually two floors down in a cabinet in a room that has lots of lights and a vinyl floor.
• Language arts materials for little ones are described in this post.
• Math manipulatives for one and all are detailed here.
• Hands-on materials and picture books for to encourage growing closer to Jesus, the Bleesed Mother and the Saints are pictured here.

Here is the big picture of the room where we spend so much of our time.There is only one working computer for the eight of us (Dad has a laptop).  It's a mixed blessing--no one spends too much time on the computer and I definitely can see what people are doing there all the time and we get lots of practice sharing cheerfully but, well, there are eight of us competing for the machine;-).  The computer on the desk with the pink lamp isn't functioning, but we are hoping to refurbish it so that it can run a word processing program, at least. In the clear plastic shoe pockets behind the door are all those little office supplies that tend to walk away--pencils, staplers, postit notes, sharpies...

The basket to the right of the main computer desk holds teacher's guides and books for mom.  The basket on top has nature notebooks in it. Scrapbook/notebook supplies are in the clear plastic drawers beneath it.

There is a big, unfinished (the plan was to paint it to match the table, but I had a baby instead) armoire cabinet filled with all sorts of paper and other lapbook supplies.  On top of it are finished lapbooks and books to ship.

The big baskets are labelled with the children's names and hold their current workbooks, living books, and notebooks. (Michael and Christian have theirs in their room.) The peach crate on the floor holds all the Five in a Row volumes and picture books.

 

Finally, there is the "room" that was my husband's vision and ranks right up there among the most romantic things he's ever done.  When this house was being built, it was supposed to have a two-story family room.  He asked that there be a room above the family room instead. That's the learning room you see pictured here. In that room, he drew plans for a large walk-in closet--the biggest closet in the house.  And the day after we moved in, he installed shelves in there.  And now, we have a real live library!  Some people buy their wives jewelry, mine buys me books!

The shelves are all labelled according to subject matter.  The children all have bookshelves in their room for books that are extra-special to them, but most other books find their way here. I love this closet.  I love the many, many things in those books that are mine to discover and to share with the people dear to me. I love this lifestyle of learning alongside the dearest people in the world.

Education is a life.  It's my life.  I'm learning all the time--learning about my Lord, about my children, about my husband, about myself.  I'm learning how to teach and how to learn.  Real Learning is a lifestyle; it's embracing with humility the idea that no matter how much we've learned, there's still much, much more to know.

Now, THAT's a big family!

I lumbered to the computer this morning, feeling the full weight of Baby Number Eight, who is just a few weeks from making her appearance and I saw that The Bearing Blog brings us the story of a woman who had 22 children. Read the links for a look into a remarkable life. I'm awed and inspired!

And another from the wise one...

Nicholas is sick today.  He has taken to pondering lately.  He wonders why there are mosquitoes and hurricanes and hornets--why "bad things" in general.

Nicholas:  "It all started with misbehaving.  If Adam and Eve hadn't disobeyed God, we'd never get sick and we wouldn't have bad bugs..."

Pause for musing. And then the closing thought:

"You'd think if you had the whole perfect world to yourself, with no one to bother you, you could behave better than that."

You'd think.