It’s been about a month ago that I found this book, The Quiltmaker’s Gift, at the thrift store.

Placed in a large stack of yet-to-be-read books, I actually forgot that I had it, until last week.  I’m surprised at myself over this, because as soon as I saw it I was in love with the illustrations and couldn’t wait to read the story. 

It also made me think of my sister, who is an amazing quilter.  I mean.  I’m always telling her that she should sell her quilts, and she says she likes to make them for people she loves and give them away.  It’s really something. 

Imagine my surprise, then, when Michaela and I began to read this story and found it to be about a beautiful, talented quiltmaker who will not sell her quilts.  She will only give them to the poor.  The quiltmaker is a lovely woman.  Her face is soft and gentle, but she is obviously a very strong woman.  It was a fabulous story and I thought of my sister through every word.   Which brings me to something I’ve been wanting to show you.

At Christmastime, I received a large box marked to “The Wilsons.”  The beautiful heart-covered quilt was in it.  From my sister.  Just look!

Some of the fabric has little paper dolls on it.  And the hearts!  How does she do it?  I cannot imagine.  She and I are so much alike, and yet we are so different.  She can do this.  I cannot.  It has always been like we walk to the same beat, but on two different paths.  However far apart we are, we are always close together.  I look at the squares and appreciate every single stitch.

So many memories…

By the way, the website to The Quiltmaker’s Gift was given in the book and is supposed to have games, stories of compassion, etc.  Michaela will be looking at it for school today.

On a final note, my little old man pin found a name.  Algernon.  Thank you, Audrey!  It’s the perfect name.  And into the shop this weekend went Old Man Mushroom and his baby.

It’s a work day for me today and I must get busy!  Have a lovely Monday.

As many of you know, my second son Joseph graduates from our homeschool this year.  Is he spelling like I wanted him to?  No.  But I know that learning does not stop just because someone hands you a diploma.  Spelling well is going to be a personal challenge for him his whole life.  It’s a challenge that I cannot undertake for him, though I will continue to encourage him to find ways to maneuver around and work with his dyslexia, and in spite of his dyslexia!

As a benefit of being a consistent member of North Carolinians for Home Education (NCHE), we can order a diploma for a graduating child by filling out a form and sending 5 dollars for postage.  It’s still up to me to put the transcripts together, but I think it is so nice to have a professional looking diploma for my son’s records.   We were all very excited (just like we were for Daniel) when Joseph’s diploma arrived in the mail.  Michaela took one look at it and disappeared.  I did not think much about it until she reappeared with a homemade “cap” to go with Joseph’s diploma. 

It’s made from a column of cardstock, upon which sits a lovely square of cardboard, and (leaving no detail undone) there’s a fancy link of blue beads for Joseph’s graduation tassle.  What a graduation ceremony they had in the kitchen!  I told Joseph he certainly needed to keep that cap forever!  It is indeed one of a kind.

When you have a child with special needs, it’s easy to feel like you failed.  You can think of the “what ifs” until you make yourself crazy.  I did that for a couple of years, and while I still worry some, in the last year I have seen Joseph begin to find some things in life that he is very interested in.  I have watched over the last four years as he read nearly 100 large  (500+ pages) books for pleasure.  I know that he has what he needs on the inside to work hard and to find a way to make it, and that is more important than anything else.

It’s rainy here today and it’s a work day for me.  Michaela will do timed drill sheets for math.  I have some of my garden pictures printed out of the butterfly lifecycle and will have her arrange those and label them for her school notebook.  She is continuing to read in her Ambleside Year 5 books.  She will do a geography word find and some writing today.  When you work and homeschool, it’s good to have some easy ideas before you sit down at your desk!

I’m thankful for a cozy little office in which to work, my rain barrel that’s running over, the near-by birdfeeder that I can watch, family, faith, my tea kettle, and so many other little and big things.  Have a good Monday.

Lynn

Thankful today, for many things.

• a job at home
• home — warm and cozy and where I’ve lived with my sweetie since the first year of our marriage
• a daughter who homeschools
• and has three adoring big brothers
• my three sons
• an absolutely amazing homeschool group
• my favorite tree, our Natchez crepe myrtle, which is dancing in red and gold leaves right now
• sweet and spicy chicken in the crockpot
• rice and stir fry to go with it
• another day

I hope you have many things to be happy about today.

By the way, my friend Leslie maintains an awesome blog and it has been nominated for a Homeschool Blog Award!  Her blog, Joyful Mother of Six Children is worth visiting even if you don’t vote.  But I voted for her for Best Homeschool Mom for 2009.    She’s done a ton of thoughtful and careful mothering and homeschooling this year!  Well, actually a bunch of years.  Yaay Leslie!

Anyway, I’m not telling you to vote or for whom to vote, but you might enjoy visiting HSBA Get Your Vote On! to see all the blogs out there that keep others inspired.

Lynn

Unfortunately for any of my children who would have liked to do something exciting today like visit a lake or have a picnic, Hubby and I both worked today.

Michaela expressed boredom several times and I felt her pain. Though I offered many exciting activities to her such as reading, drawing, painting, resting (oh my stars the expression that elicited), she did not hear anything that sounded like something she wanted to do.

The fact that everyone in the neighborhood except us seemed to be gone only made things worse.

Finally an idea struck her. Could she work with mosaics?

Why, yes, she could.

Since I have jars and jars of tesserae already cut up and ready to be used, and plenty of mortar and grout, she was instantly set up to do a project with little help from me. I did put a mask on and mixed the mortar myself because I did not want her breathing that fine powder, but after that she began to decorate a stepping stone all by herself.  I told her to call me if she needed me and left her alone to enjoy the creative process. (Okay, I did peek out the office window to see if I could get a glimpse now and then.) 

Oreo hung around meowing and drinking out of the watering can that her head will fit into.

Here’s a picture of her halfway-done point! I’ll be sure to show you the finished product. Tomorrow she can grout. Maybe she’ll enjoy this enough to work on all of my plain stepping stones and get them to looking fancy!

It’s been a long time since I’ve worked on my mosaics and this really got me into the mood to finish a birdbath that I want to make.

As well, the whole act of Michaela coming to me and saying, “Cant I do this?” made me focus again on providing plenty of home-based activities for her in areas where she loves to express herself or in things she’s passionate about.

My online friend Heather just had a great article published about helping children grow their passions at home.  I read the article this afternoon and it tied in seamlessly with where my thoughts were for Michaela and exactly what, and how much, to get us involved in outside of our home this year.

You can read Heather’s article here:  Growing Your Children’s Passions In Your Homeschool.

Lynn

Oh, you know me and visual appeal.  I love the thought of having something visually stimulating when it comes to assigning lessons and inspiring children to want to create and write and do.

Narration, or the act of telling back in some form what she is reading, will be a bit of a change for Michaela.  I have always incorporated some of Charlotte Mason’s ideas into our schooling, but following the CM style and Ambleside very closely this year, Michaela will be doing a lot of narrating.

If I say, “You are going to tell me every day what you’ve read,” oh my does that produce some sort of expression!

In this pretty, old creamer are narration assignments.  I’ll continue to add to them as I get ideas through the year.

Here are the ideas written down so far:

• If you could send a postcard to tell me what happened, what would it say? Create it! Illustrate, including the stamp! 
• Reporter! Make me a news story to tell what happened.  In fact, do a newspaper page including ads, sales, whatever!
• Draw a picture of one of the scenes you read about today. You can add words if you like.
• Imagine! If the characters could magically fly to modern times, what would they think? Would things have been different for them?
• Use these words to write a creative story about a character you are reading about. (To do this I pull words from the reading and let her choose randomly as she writes.)
• You are the main character and want someone to visit you. Make a travel brochure telling them why they must see where you are.
• Pretend you are the main character and write a journal entry about what happened.

This idea came to me when I found a piece of bright red fabric at The Scrap Exchange. It already had two pockets sewn onto it, but nothing else going on. Except my idea to turn it into a pretty “in/out box” for our writing assignments!

I hot-glued one end over a hanger and then began to embellish it with pretty fabric and tags. I reinforced the back and gave it more length by hot-gluing a bright white and red piece of fabric to the back.

The out box is where I put outgoing narration assignments for Michaela.  I choose an assignment that I think is especially good for what was just read. For example, Michaela talks about Isaac Newton’s mother as if she knows her so I think for her to write a journal entry as Hannah would be good.

There’s a pretty strip of fabric that hangs from the top. It’s our “ready” signal. We can switch it back and forth from “in” to “out,” something fun to signal we’re done!

The “in” box of course is where she puts her assignment incoming to me. She can fold her paper in half longways and slip it right in!

I am already working diligently week by week on our end-of-year notebook (I ended up going with spiral again!) and all of her narration projects will be put into this as we go.

I feel like at some point we won’t be using this bright Narration Station day in and day out for every little thing, but as we make the transition into Ambleside and get Michaela used to narrating, it’s something to make it more fun.

I’m not sure at this point how Charlotte Mason would have felt about it, but given her respect for a mother’s need to lead and nurture and her awareness that children were individuals, after all, I think she would have known that I’m just a visually driven, artsy person who had to do this. 

Narration Help Resources

• Lapbooking and Charlotte Mason
• Simply Charlotte Mason Narration Ideas
• Ambleside Online Language Arts Scope and Sequence for Language Arts

More to come!

Lynn

I keep meaning to post this, and it can wait no longer because there’s a T-shirt involved!!!  (I know how homeschoolers love T shirts.  And a good comic strip.)

Betty Blonde is a comic strip published online by a very cool homeschooling family we know.  I’m learning more and more about Betty Blonde as I read the comic strip and keep up with their blog.

I think Betty Blonde is mostly the creation of Kelly Chapman, the daughter, but she gets help from her brother and parents as well, especially her dad.  He wrote a computer program especially for her comic strip.  How cool is that? 

Anyway it’s Betty Blonde’s one-year anniversary and there’ll be a T-shirt give-away!!! 

This is about more than the T-shirt, however.  It encourages me to read the comic strip, laugh a little, and then be reminded what you can do if you have an idea, give it life, and persevere!

I enjoy reading Betty Blonde (you can subscribe here) and keeping up with the Chapman blog.  Just wanted to pass these links along so you can enjoy them too!

Lynn

Once upon a time, years ago, I had the prettiest, sweetest, most capable babysitter ever. In fact, she was a mom’s helper to me on many a Saturday for quite a few years. I always tell her she was my girl before I had a girl. In a house full of boys, I wanted a daughter, and she was like a daughter to me. Over the years she really grew into a good friend. Children don’t stay little, you know.

She went shopping with me and helped me watch my oldest two boys. We stopped at a photo booth and had our pictures made. Joseph wanted to be with her instead of me. In fact, I think Joseph thought she was his mama.

I had my picture in the booth made with Daniel.

She helped me with Daniel.

And she spent many an hour basically raising Joseph. Joseph was a hand full.  Let me repeat A HAND FULL.  He ended up being the easiest most laid-back teenager the world has ever known, but when he was 2…  Oh my.   I used to say with a half a smile that I thought my sciatic nerve was pinched in two from peeling him off shelves and table tops and out from under places he shouldn’t be.  I had to pull over on the side of the road and explain to him not to unbuckle his seatbelt and climb out of his carseat.  Mind you, he was too little to even be doing such things.  Do you think he listened to me?

My two oldest sons both walked at 8 months.  Have you experienced this?  Trying to watch a very curious and wide-open 8-month-old WHO CAN ALREADY WALK?

Many times when I felt like I couldn’t take one more step from exhaustion, my sweet little helper would scoop up Joseph and watch him.

My sweet little babysitter used to say she wanted a baby just like Joseph.

I am happy to report…
 

she got one.   Isn’t he just the most-cutest, adorable, cuddly baby you ever saw?  I think so.  When he sees something new he says WHOA.  That’s one of his new words.   He can also say kitty-cat. 

And guess what?

He even walked at 8 MONTHS. 

I just wanted to share with you that I had the chance to visit with this lovely mom and her son on one of my days off this week.  You know what was really sweet?  As soon as this beautiful little fella saw Joseph, he put out his arms to say “hold me.”  I think he’d met a kindred spirit.

On a homeschooling note, guess what arrived in my mailbox yesterday?  The newest issue of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, LLC.

Purple Chair + TOS + Hot Tea = Happy Homeschooling Mom

I wanted to give you a broader view of my chair this morning.   Just look at the stacks of folders.  What, you may ask, is all that!  Well, I’m putting together a representative scrapbook (or scrapbooks) of all Daniel’s years in school.  I do this for all the children.  Sometimes I do a book a year, sometimes I put two years into one book.  Would you believe none of Daniel’s is done yet?  I’ll be working on sorting for awhile.

On a shopping note, I got a new handbag yesterday.

I’ve been looking for one, but did not plan to get one yesterday.  I went to Rugged Wearhouse to get some clothes for Michaela and there was this bag on clearance for 5 dollars.  It has both a handle and a shoulder strap.  If only they were leather.  But for 5 dollars.

Last but not least, like mother like daughter. 

In a moment of boredom yesterday, Michaela made her own coupon holder.  I am SO impressed.  At the moment it is full of TOY coupons.  She’s been so industrious.  Should we go shopping?

Happy Friday!

Lynn

I wanted to share my science activity bags because I am so excited about them.  First of all, I wouldn’t even know science activity bags existed if it weren’t for my friend, Leslie.  She is an amazing woman.  If you visit her blog, you’ll see what I mean.   

What you see above is a large laundry basket full of almost-ready-to-go science experiments.  Each experiment came from a book from this website: 

–>  Activity Bags

Leslie organized a swap and she had 25 moms who were interestd and signed up for the swap.  Each lady took one experiment and made 25 bags of supplies for the same experiment.  So I arrived at the swap with 25 identical bags and left with 25 different bags. 

Do you know what this means?

I have 25 weeks of hands-on science for Michaela.  Each bag has pretty much all you need, though there may some small thing to pick up to go along with some of the experiments.  For example one of the bags is all ready to go except I need to buy a bag of mini marshmallows the week we do it.   The experiments are geared for K-6th grade, so I think we’ll easily get a lot of use from them.  (Michaela is entering 6th grade this year. )

Worm Farm, anyone?

How about Fly Cycle?

I’m psyched.  And Leslie, thank you so much.

Lynn

One of my online Five In A Row friends, Susan, shared with us an amazing claymation video that her daughter, Rebecca, made.  I know you will enjoy watching it as much as we did.  We loved it!  It was especially timely since we recently finished reading Hamlet.  Enjoy!

Happy Thursday!
Lynn

I thought I’d share this site:  Microscopy

There are some cool pictures and resources there.  From page above, be sure and click “smallest page on the web” in left-hand column.  I liked it, anyway.

Lynn