And here we are

Moose’s first grade year starts a week from today.  I think I’m ready.  Hope I’m ready.  The planners are 95% prepped, the books tabbed and shelved, the library books being sent to a central location for easy pickup. I have a few things left to print and organize, but mostly, what I need is a clean house and a few good nights’ sleep. I'm thinking of enforcing a bedtime for myself, but that will have to start...tomorrow.  Sort of like my diet that will start tomorrow.  Some tomorrow, anyway. After coffee.  A babysitter for the younger three would help, too.

For the record:

• ·        Language Arts:  Finishing Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading (4x/week), beginning First Language Lessons Book 1 (2x/week), and doing the Level 1 writing from Tapestry of Grace
• ·        Math:  Singapore Primary Mathematics 1A & 1B
• ·        Handwriting:  A Reason for Handwriting Manuscript B
• ·        History, Geography, Bible, etc.:  Tapestry of Grace (Year 1, lower grammar)
• ·        Science:  Elemental Science’s Earth Science and Astronomy for the Grammar Stage

Our morning basket will include read-alouds, Scripture memorization, music, We Choose Virtues character training, and calendar/weather time.  Bee and Bear aren’t doing any formal schoolwork this year, but they will take part in morning basket time as much as they can.  We’ll also be continuing karate for Moose and swim lessons for both Moose and Bee, and hopefully the Engineer will begin working more consistently with Moose on his piano lessons, though I’m not counting on it.

I’m looking forward to Tapestry in particular.  The program covers history from creation to the present day over the course of four years, allowing each child to learn about the same time period simultaneously at their own level.  With Moose only being six when we start, he’s very much a lower grammar student, and he’ll be learning only the most basic level.  Our focus remains on reading, writing, and math at this age, with history and science for exposure rather than mastery.  Since we’re doing the ancients this year, we’ll wrap back around to it again when he’s in 5^th grade at a more detailed level (Bee joining him as a 2^nd grader and Bear as a 1^st grader), then again in 9^th.  Because of this, I only need to use very little of the Tapestry program this year.  I’m really enjoying reading through the teacher’s guides and the information for older students, however.  My history knowledge, despite years of classes in public and private school, great AP scores, and doing living history for a time several years ago, is dismal.  I’m also hoping to have my own “morning basket” of Scripture, poetry, and other “beautiful things,” though that might be a bit optimistic at first for someone who can barely roll out of bed in the morning.

I picked up several poetry anthologies from the children’s section of the library over the weekend, hoping to find a few that would be good for Moose to memorize this year and possibly a few to replace the informative but horrible ones in his science curriculum.  I didn’t manage the latter, but I spent a good hour this evening immersed in fantastic poetry, eventually reading several aloud to Moose at his request.  I’d almost forgotten house much I how much I love it.  Poetry and music speak to the soul in a way that prose rarely can.  I have to admit, too, that I love reading poetry aloud.  There are few things I will admit to myself that I’m good at that I still have the opportunity to do, and I’m feeling a little guilty pleasure that I’ll be able to exercise that talent this year during morning basket time.  The Engineer does not read for pleasure, and despite his obvious intelligence, he seems to take pride in pointing out that he’s never read a non-picture book other than the Bible cover to cover.  Poetry does not speak to him.  One of my goals in life is to instill a love of reading, poetry, and music into my children, if only because I can’t imagine a joyful life without those things.  The world is so often a dark, horrific place, and the written word allows us to both share and to disappear for a while.

I began blogging something like fifteen years ago, when I knew no one else who did.  I never would have dreamed that I’d be sitting in my messy kitchen someday, still pecking out my wishes and dreams, though they’re so different than they were half a lifetime ago.  I thought then that I was too much and that I might explode before I found an outlet for myself.  Now I wonder if I’m enough.  I have been entrusted with the care of four tiny humans, and the best I can offer is hot tea and stories and a frantic scrambling to make this world a little better before they inherit it. It’s not enough.  I can dance with them and sing the Elmo song a million times and listen to Moose’s obsessions and it’s not enough.  I have books of poems that say, “You’re not alone, and you together can make a difference” but when my own world has become so much smaller, it feels deceitful.   Maybe this is why I focus on things like homeschooling curriculum choices.  At least it seems doable.

Sweet children, what will you be writing when you’re grown, and in what world?

“Good Bones”

by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.