Mother Culture

This time of year we are all about the school day, especially since the holidays have taken us off track a bit. Although I am happy to be getting our school work done, I can easily get burned out after a couple of weeks. I've been thinking about reinstating some "Mother Culture" back into my life.
I like how Karen Andreola descibes "Mother Culture". On her blog, Karen says;

Charlotte believed that this countenance of contentment, of serenity, can come about even during stressful times when a mother learns to occasionally do for herself what she does for her children - go out to play. Charlotte tells us we would have happier households if we mothers "would only have courage to let everything go when life becomes too tense, and just take a day, or a half a day, out in the fields, or with a favorite book, or in a picture gallery. . ." For a mother to allow herself a bit of leisure to rest and refresh herself by exploring her own interests, to find a little time for herself, especially when so many others depend on her, is a what Karen calls, Mother Culture ®.

I really need to remember to go out and play!! In the summer it's easy for me to find things to do. Winter on the other hand, not so much.

Her blog also says...

When a busy homeschooling mother takes part in Mother Culture she safeguards her enthusiasm, so she will be better able to cope with her responsibilities. To partake in Mother Culture is to feed herself with the Word of God, with ideas from books, nature, art, music, etc., thus taking care to keep growing spiritually and mentally. If there such is a thing as the joy of childhood, there is also such a thing as the joy of motherhood, and Karen admonishes mothers to recognize and live within such a blessing.

Love that!

Soooooo, this week here is what I have been up to.

Grabbed me a new skein of yarn in "oatmeal" to crochet a scarf.

Here's what I'm reading.

Listen to this from, Boys Should be Boys....

"Nature was impotant to Tyler, as it is for all boys, because boyhood is meant to be lived between a boy's imagination and his feet. He needs to move his feet in order to keep up with his sense of wonder. That is why boys are so physical, so rough. Life is a continual experiment to see what can happen if...."

So true! so true! But I would venture to say nature is just as important to girls too. I am such a nature girl!!

Here's what I'm listening to.

I can't tell you how much this CD relaxes me. I listen to it on my Spotify.
I hope this post inspires you to add in some "Mother Culture" to your week as well.

I leave you with this...

Homeschool Highlights

Happy Friday!

This week we worked a lot on our life size human body models. We still have to add our bones and muscles and faces but here's what we did this week.

J2 is really getting into the book, Microbe Hunters!

I'm enjoying the tidbits he shares with me that he gets excited about. Unplanned narraration is the best!
The last few weeks I have been dictating a passage to J2 from something he has read over the past week. Usually, it is something that stands out to me while I am reading it too. I am trying to keep up with some of his reading assignments so we can talk together about them. He no longer has his older brother to bounce things off of. This week I dictated a passage from Seven Men Who Rule the World from the Grave. Great Book! Once he's finished, I hand him the book to make his own corrections. I sometimes have him find the definitions of words he may not know or synonyms of others.

Also this week, J1 took all the ugly brass 80's hardware off of my kitchen cupboards! So glad to see it go!!

I've already picked out the new hardware!

Hopefully these little babies will make a big impact!
Have a great week!

I'm Back!

Wow! It's been way too long that I have been away from my blog!
We have had two family weddings (one in Florida), the holidays, and lots of family fun keeping us busy. What an amazing time we have been having! This week things are back in full swing with homeschooling. I was trying to decide what to share first on my first post back. So much has happened!!
While passing the long hours driving to Florida, I read a lot of blog posts! One that inspired me was, A Box of Goodies from Kelly over at Homeschool Co-op. Kelly shows what she sends off to a family in NY in their nature box. What a cool idea!
I was thinking about it while my kids were catching lizards and finding cool things within the first few days of our vacation. Then I thought, "Hey! We are already cross country ourselves and can make our own nature box to take home to NY." So we collected nature treasures that really cried Florida to us! Well, December Florida. :-)
Here's what we brought home.....

It's such a wonderful way to remember our vacation too!! Hope you all had an amazing Christmas and New Years!

Homeschool Highlights

This fall we have been participating in our homeschool co-op classes. They are on Mondays from 12:30-4:15. J2 has been enjoying his photography and graphic design classes. B takes cake decorating, theater skills, and an art class that I teach. J3 was taking chess but stopped because it was not a good fit for him. He also takes a Lego class. The session runs nine weeks and this coming Monday is our last class. My class is putting on an art show and B's class is putting on a play. I will include some photos next week.

During the week, we started our lifesize body models.

B worked on finishing her art portfolio for my art class.

J2 worked on Blender for awhile. It's a computer animation program he downloaded for free. I'm counting it towards his Art survey course I created.

He's also been studying for his permit. Hopefully he will be taking his test soon.

The rest of our week can be filled in with the usual. Math, Language Arts, and yadda, yadda, yadda! :-)
Tonight we are hosting a homeschool highschool get together so I'm off to make sure all our games are ready!

Enjoy you weekend!!

Weekly Wrap Up -

I've decided to link my "Homeschool Highlights" up to the "Weekly Wrap Up" at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschooler's blog. I'm still new to all this linky parties and bloggy stuff so bare with me.

This week in Human Anatomy we did an experiment from Food and Nutrition to show how bile in our body acts as an emulsifier breaking down fats into small globules.

The blue bowl is the example of bile doing its job! B and J3 had a light bulb moment when they saw the results. I love it when experiments go well!

J1 helped me tremendously this week. He helped with math corrections, projects, and reading about the brain to B and J3.

B and that hat! She was wearing it all week! I'm not sure what that's all about. :-)
In Early American History we are finishing up the Seminole Indians. We are making Chickee huts as a final project to present at our quarter celebration. B and J3 went outside and gathered things from the yard they may be able to use on their models. J1 and J2 partnered up with each of them to help them costruct them. We will be working more on them next week.

J2 and I are still working our way through The Grapes of Wrath. Both of us are liking John Steinbeck's writing style. Pictures easily form as I am reading each chapter and I can at least understand everything that is going on! We can do this! We can do this! We can do this! (highschool literature that is)

Have a great homeschool week!

Enjoying Fall Art

For some reason fall is the season that brings out the artist in me. We all seem to make more time for art in the fall. Harmony Art Mom had some wonderful links here and here that inspired us.

We decided to try our hand at some apples and pumpkins from Hodgepodge
I was originally trying this out myself to see if my co-op class would enjoy doing this as our final project. Then the kids joined in on the fun.
Here's some of our finished work.

Then J2 and I moved onto the Tree Reflections project also from Hodgepodge. Loved it!!

The top one is mine and the bottom one is J2s. I love seeing how our styles differ. We are loving this fall art!!

Homeschool Highlights

I have not written a homeschool highlights post yet this year. It has taken us quite a while to get into a grove. I think we are still working on it!
This week was B's 12th birthday. We included a lot of games into our homeschool days. Scrabble is back "in" I guess. It's funny how something they have not been interested in for months is now something they want to play all the time. I'm hearing alot of, "Is such and such a word mom?"

B got Monopoly with electronic banking for her birthday and they are having a blast playing it.

Mozart is our composer this semester and we are listening to Serenade No. 13 for Strings in G Major. We listen to it using a video from You Tube.

Notice my son J3's face? He's always making silly faces when he sees I am taking pictures of him. :-)
We are continuing with Sonlights Human Anatomy. I had used it with J1 and J2 when they were younger. I ended up buying the updated guide for the younger two because there were so many updates. To my surprise, J3 really loves this science! He actually looks forward to it everyday. Who knew?! We finished up the digestive system this week.

J2 is taking a photography and graphic arts course through our homeschool group. A dad who is a professional in both of these professions teaches the courses. J2 is really enjoying them and learning so much. This week he had to design buisness cards and a bookmark based around a book you love or are currently reading. I was thrilled when he showed it to me and it was based on the Grapes of Wrath (since we are reading it this semester).

J1 is home with us during the days right now and it's proving challenging.
It's hard to have one home and not schooling when all of the rest of us are trying to keep a schedule all day. He's planning his next move after interning for three weeks for an editing company. Lately, he has been thinking about how to expand his portfolio. We talked about him possibly shooting a faux commercial for his grandparents restaurant, which got him researching better cameras that have more professional microphones built in. He's showing me all of the info his research has turned up and it's foreign to me. I'm just glad he has a focus again.

Onward and forward!!