Rutabaga Dreams

While I’m on the subject of homeschooling, here’s our homeschooling plan for the 2008-2009 school year when Emma will be (by age, at least) in first grade. She’s above grade level in several subjects, (after all, she’s reading at a 3rd to 4th grade level at this point!) and thankfully I can take that into account and still challenge her.

I’m still seriously considering doing the charter for next year, largely to get the money for Emma to take some sort of weekly lesson. I suppose I should at least give them a call to see what I would need to do to get signed up and what they would want from me in return for the moolah.

But anyways, without further ado, here’s our subjects and materials for next year:

Math: Math-U-See Beta
Frequency: Daily
Cost: $55 for workbook, DVD, and teacher’s manual

Reading: Continue reading out loud from various books.  (For example, right now she’s reading Little House in the Prairie to me)  I’m also wondering if she should also have some assigned personal reading (or at least reading time) as well, or if I should just keep a stack of good books from the library for her to pick from to read at night - perhaps a combination of the two?
Frequency: Daily
Cost: None, materials will come from the library

Copywork: Continue copying verses and quotes using the current system. We should move to a smaller size paper at some point.
Frequency: Daily
Cost: $3-4 for a new notebook

Memorywork: Continue to do what we’re doing with the index cards, check Harp and Laurel Wreath (which we already own) for selections.
Frequency: Daily
Cost: None

Latin: Continue with Prima Latina.
Frequency: Daily
Cost: None, already have the materials.

Christian Studies: Faith and Life Series, book 1 - Our Heavenly Father, also continue to do a short daily Gospel devotional with prayers (but perhaps move to after breakfast?)
Frequency: Weekly for Faith and Life?
Cost: $10 for the workbook, $7 for the textbook

Bible: Children’s Bible History
Frequency: Weekly?
Cost: $7.00 (at Kolbe)

History: Story of the World, Vol. 1
Frequency: Twice a week?
Cost: $12 for the book, $23 for the activity guide

Art: Child Sized Masterpieces (finally!) and perhaps Drawing with Children or Draw Write Now
Frequency: Once a week, alternating? Once a week for each?
Cost: None, already own materials

Science: Noeo Science
Frequency: It should be done 2 or 4 times a week and would probably take about 20 minutes if done 4x a week.
Cost: ~140.00

Physical Education: She obviously needs to get out and run around every day. Also considering some sort of lessons - ballet? gymnastics?
Frequency: Daily for running around, weekly for lessons
Cost: Uncertain, none if we sign up for a charter school

Read Aloud: Continue to read various children’s classics outloud before bed
Frequency: Daily
Cost: None, materials will come from the library

So, we need to cough up about $275 for the year (including shipping), which I suppose isn’t too bad. I’d also like to get some supplemental materials throughout the year, but we’ll see what finances will allow.

Around the beginning of the year I grew quite dissatisfied with how I was handling our memory work, so I decided to figure out a new system.  Previously we were going over most, if not all, of our Latin and memory work every day, and we were both finding this too time consuming and far too tedious.  I remembered reading about a Scripture memory system on the Simply Charlotte Mason site and I decided to adapt it for my purposes.

I decided not to do the monthly tabs at this point, because I didn’t think Emma would be able to retain anything that long without reviewing it more often than monthly.  We have  Daily, Odd, Even, and Monday - Friday sections.  Memory work and Latin are combined, and this system makes it really easy to figure out what we need to review on a given day.  Today, for example, we reviewed the following in each section:  Daily - Glory Be (in Latin and English), Prima Latina lesson 9 vocab, Where Go the Boats by Robert Louis Stevenson, Odd - Lesson 8 & 5 vocab, Thursday - the Sanctus (in Latin and English), Lesson 3 vocab and the alphabet.  The vocab for each Latin lesson is generally 5-7 words and we generally do Latin to English first, then English to Latin.  It seems like a lot when I type it out, but it only takes us about 15 minutes to go through.

Our copywork also goes in this box, with a tab for copywork to do, and finished copywork.  It is rather like Penny Gardner’s copywork jar (she used to have a description on her site, but I can’t find it anymore), but in a box instead.  Emma likes being able to pick what she copies each day, and I like not having to come up with something decent each morning.  I’m much happier with what she’s copying now, and I’m doing a better job at giving her good sentences that are the right length for her writing level.

Another thing we’re enjoying is our (rather grandly titled) Modern and Pratical Studies.  Each day we do some sort of different activity according to a theme.  Mondays are mapwork (think basic geography with wall maps - CA, US, and World), Tuesdays are dictionary work (I have her look up three words in her children’s dictionary and we discuss how to find them and the definitions), Wednesdays are money (we’re mainly working with coins right now - names, equilvancies, different ways to make the same amount), Thursdays are map skills (for example, looking at a zoo map or a fake town map and discussing how to find things, how to get places), and Friday is time (reading clocks, telling time).  Fairly basic stuff for the most part, but it is fun and it helps to do it in a systematic way like this.  We were doing most of these things here and there, but I was finding her retention was not particularly good when we weren’t making it a point to do it regularly and this helps me to remember to keep getting back to this stuff.

So there’s a partial picture at least of our homeschool work.  It is hard to believe this school year is soon going to be drawing to a close (and will we finish Math-U-See Alpha by then?  Right now it is a toss-up)  My goal is to be done by May 23rd - since I’m due the following week and all - but
maybe we’ll go just a bit longer.  Or who knows, the baby may come early and we’ll finish Alpha in August when we start up again!  Right now I’m thinking about starting on August 11th, but it looks like we’ll be moving at some point this summer (and no, not into our house *sigh*) so this date is definitely not set in stone.

My dear husband was kind enough to upgrade my blog software early yesterday morning, so of course I now have a case of blogger’s block. I wanted to try out the new software though, so I thought I would put together a little post with some projects and links I’ve been contemplating.

First off, isn’t this toad house cute? I want to make a couple of these with Emma and Gregory soon. We saw some sort of amphibian yesterday afternoon out at the property, but I can’t figure out for certain if it was a toad or a frog. I’m leaning towards toad, given that we saw it nowhere near water and the skin appeared fairly dry.

My little garden is going well, and my radishes are coming up nicely. The lettuce is nowhere to be seen though, so I’m thinking about reseeding if I don’t see any spouts by the weekend. I turned over a new area yesterday to plant potatoes (and yes, my 33 week pregnant body is protesting today) and we cut the potatoes up this afternoon in order to plant them tomorrow. I’m hoping they will grow well, because I’m sure it will be a lot of fun for the kids to dig potatoes when they are ready. Matt and I sure thought it was fun when we grew them a few years ago at our old house! I’d love to put in some tomatoes and some squash, but I need to do some tractor work before I can use more of my garden. My main garden goal for this year is to get the area cleared and somewhat leveled enough that I can put up garden fencing next year. If I wasn’t having a baby in early June it would be a reasonable goal… but given circumstances I’m not entirely expecting to make it by fall.

Spring is definitely here in force at my elevation, and I’m enjoying watching the trees blossom and the wildflowers bloom. Spring and summer always make me want to try my hand at sketching, but I’m generally too timid to put pencil to paper and do it. I was always the non-artistic one in a family with two artistically gifted siblings, and for the longest time I thought art was just not going to be my cup of tea. I’ve since read several accounts of people who have learned how to draw from books or classes, and I’ve come to realize that it can be an acquired skill. Granted, I won’t ever be a genius at it, but I can hope to achieve competence, which is far more than I ever thought possible before. Still, even though I know this intellectually, it hard to make myself sit down and do it. Drew had a nice post today about his first art class and it has inspired me to pick up the pencil and give it a go. I have a really neat nature journal book that I’ve been too timid to do anything more with than browse, and today I’m going to spend some time with it. I’m setting a goal for myself to draw something by the end of the week, and I’ll even, following Drew’s example, post it online (*gulp*).

Let’s see, what else. Jennifer at Et Tu had a great post today that showed me yet again how similar our paths into Christianity and our upbringings were. This paragraph in particular felt like something I very well could have wrote, if I could bring my thoughts together as well as she does.

Ironically, it was this very idea of fearlessly pursuing truth that led me to Christianity. As I’ve said before, I didn’t have a “personal encounter” with Jesus or a thunder-and-lightning conversion experience. I just did some research and thought it was true. And yet, that left me in a strange position. I had no idea how one gets to “know” God — how can you know someone you can’t see? I didn’t understand what it meant to “have faith” — did that mean setting all reason aside and believing all sorts of dogmas without question?

And on a completely different subject - I can’t decide. Would this be yummy or gross?

I managed to drag myself to Babies R Us this afternoon and I tried out carseats.  I even found one that worked with our two other seats - so yes, you can fit three carseats across the back of a Subaru Impreza Outback Sport (longest model name in the world, I know).  I bought an EvenFlo Tribute V, which not only fit in my car with the other seats, it also only cost $60.  Amazing.  That is substantially better than  buying a different car!  I also spent another $20 on a soft snuggly thingy to put in the carseat to minimize my guilt about not buying a cozy bucket seat for the baby.   I think the whole set-up is going to work quite well for another year.  Hopefully by then the house stuff will have settled down a bit and we’ll be in a better financial position to buy a different car…  because once the baby goes forward facing, there is no hope of putting three seats back there.Ah, the things we modern first-world types have to deal with.  :-) 

For some reason I get a very strong urge to clean my car when I’m about 7 1/2 months pregnant.  I’ve done this in each of my pregnancies, and last time I even cleaned Matt’s truck too.    Since I’m down visiting my mom, I figured I would take advantage of the extra eyes to watch the kids and tackle this project.  I think this becomes necessary because I know it is only going to get harder to do.   Now that we live in a more rural area, we get a lot more rocks, mud, and dirt in the car, which when combined with the usual crumbs and such adds up to a pretty gross car.  Perhaps I should start doing this more often than once a year!  I pick up trash and such regularly, but the whole scrubbing dash and doors, vacuuming the seats and carpets, cleaning the floor mats, etc. doesn’t happen any more often than annually.Now that I’m done, my lower back is really sore but I am very pleased with the results…  and I’m very glad it is done.  Now I’m trying to motivate myself to go out to Babies R’ Us to try out carseats.  After all, it isn’t going to get any easier to do!

Andrew Campbell recently linked to an article called “Humble Pie:  Putting Organics in Perspective” from the Frugal Abundance website.  The article contains some rich food for thought about the whole issue of the quality of food we eat.  In particular, I found this passage quite thought provoking.

Another thing is that I am a little bit resentful that I would have to work so hard and pay so much for good quality food. I deserve good quality food no matter what my circumstances. We all do. Be that as it may, we live in a capitalistic society and those who can afford to buy the best are the ones who get it. I’m not a member of the elite who can afford to buy the best. So I don’t get the best. It’s not pretty. Some would say it’s not fair. But that’s the way it is. Instead of getting the best, I get the best I can afford.

As another member of the non-elite, this passage struck a chord.  It also dovetailed nicely with a post from Bearing Blog this morning, where she reviews, in part, The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

Pollan’s schtick is to follow four different meals from production through processing to dinner.  One thing I like about it is that he has made a distinction between two extremes of so-called “organic” food — the industrial, and the “beyond organic” movement that’s trying to stay true to its roots, probably as a niche.   I for one am glad for industrial organic, as it’s opened up the only way I see two goals to be accomplished:  (1) agricultural chemical pollution to decrease significantly world wide and (2) to bring quality produce within the economic reach of the world’s urban non-rich.  Without industrial organic, I can’t see how “organic” would ever be anything but a niche reserved for the privileged few who are able to pay a premium price for it.  Your Prius may be able to drive out to the co-op farm, but the city bus ain’t going there.

This all is making me reconsider my attitudes towards “big organic” and the possibilities contained therein.  Definitely something to think about in the idle moments (mentally idle, that is - there isn’t much of the other!) in my day.

Elizabeth Foss recently wrote an excellent post entitled Why Bother? in which she discusses why the role of a home maker is so very important in the life of a family. The post is quite serious and well worth reading, but nonetheless I’ve been chuckling over a quote she shared from the Book of Sirach.

A gracious wife delights her husband,
her thoughtfulness puts flesh on his bones;

So what does it mean for me as a wife if my husband has lost 50 lbs in the 7 years we’ve been married?

As I mentioned in a previous post, we had a family wedding over the weekend.  The person getting married was my cousin on my father’s side - someone I used to see a fair amount growing up, but not at all as an adult.   It was strange to be a relative at a wedding and still feel like a stranger…  yet to still have some common background because of shared holidays and other events as children.  The wedding was fairly nice, although I don’t think any aspect of it would be a winner in the best wedding <whatever> I’ve seen.  The actual wedding  ceremony was very different from the last couple weddings we’ve attended.   As Matt said afterwards, “it is interesting that they cared enough to have prayer in their wedding, but that neither of them or their families knew someone that could perform the ceremony for them.”  (or something like that…  Sorry if I’m misquoting you, hon!)  It was all about God the Creator, and nothing about God the Redeemer.  A casual observer would probably have considered the prayer Christian, but there was no mention or even space for Christ in it.   I’m guessing this is what is meant by that growing American category, “spiritual but not religious”.  It was a strange feeling to sit there and listen to it - I found myself wondering who or what exactly they were praying to and I found that I couldn’t, in good conscience, join into their prayer.

We went back to San Francisco on Sunday morning for a brunch with the family, and had a nice time visiting.  Since were going to be in the city too late to go to any of the Masses in the town where my mom lives (where we stayed the night) I found a church close by the brunch location and we went to Mass there.  I used to resent the Catholic obligation to go to Mass every week (it was one of my very last sticking points, actually, but after much prayer I ended up realizing I needed to just submit and to trust God) and now I’ve actually come to like it.  I love celebrating the Holy Mass where ever we happen to be, and seeing other pieces of the Body of Christ, worshipping together.  The church was a small, lovely, and well kept one with beautiful stain glass windows of many different saints and scenes from the life of Jesus.  The homily was quite good, and the choir, while small, was beautiful.  The organist did justice to their lovely pipe organ and the Mass was a beautiful and reverent one.  It was quite interesting to hear the same music for the Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei that is used at our little church for the earlier services (more traditional sounding pieces, but not Latin like we use at 11 o’clock Mass), but performed on a much grander scale.  On our way out Matt noticed some pictures showing the history of the church, including one from just after the 1906 earthquake.  The church was almost completely destroyed then, all that was left was the front stone fascade and a little bit of a back corner.  It reminded me of pictures I saw in Austria and Germany of churches after the WWII bombings.

And what did I wear to the wedding (since that was the whole point of my original post about this event)?  Well, I did buy that dress from Old Navy, but I never found anything to go with it to make it not quite to monochromatic.  I had one other maternity dress that I bought on eBay for a whole 99 cents and while I liked well enough,  it also needed something I didn’t have.  After ransacking closets with my Mom, we found a dress that she had bought for herself.  Since it had a rather flowing skirt, we thought it would be worth a try.  I tried it on, and it fit.  So now I can say that at 32 weeks pregnant I can still wear a size 8 dress. 

Matt and I were talking last night about our car situation and we started wondering  if it might be possible to fit three carseats across the back of our Subaru Impreza, at least while the baby will be rear facing.  We never carry a baby around in a bucket carseat, so if we needed to always leave the carseat in the car to make it easier, that wouldn’t be a hardship.  I started doing some research on the matter last night, and while my results so far are inconclusive, they are at least somewhat promising.  We figure it would be much better to spend several hundred dollars on carseat(s) rather than thousands on a new (to us) vehicle.

I was tired last night, so my notes aren’t particularly good…  but here’s what I have so far if anyone is interested or has anything to add.  BTW, right now we have an EvenFlo bucket style infant carseat, a Britax Roundabout, and a Graco something-or-other 5 point harness booster.  The EvenFlo is probably old enough to be replaced anyways as it is six years old.

My notes (such as they are):

Fisher Price Safe Voyage Carseat
http://www0.epinions.com/content_261928619652
Made by Britax, supposed to be narrower.  Like the Britax Marathon.

Combi is supposed to make several narrower seats.  http://www.combi-intl.com/ (but wow do they have a lousy website)
Threads on narrow seat recommendations.
http://www.car-seat.org/showthread.php?t=5239
http://www.car-seat.org/showthread.php?t=3598

Sunshine Radian is 17″ at shoulder part of seat, 14″ at foot part (pricey tho!)

Lots of car seat info:
http://www.car-safety.org/guide.html

Anyone know if Babies R Us will still let you tote carseats out to your car and try them out before you buy them?

I’ll post more (and hopefully better info) as I go along as I think this might be useful.