Nature often does not cooperate but every now and then all the stars align and there are happy children in a Bob, Mat Kearney on Pandora, temperatures in the mid-70s, and views like this. It is moments like this: when I am surrounded by beauty and love and I am in the midst of making a sweet, Sunday memory, that I pause. And I savor. And I am so grateful. So very, very grateful.
{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, visit Soulemama to leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.
This post is LONG overdue. I meant to write it during our Fall break, back in early October. But that week was overtaken by rearranging rooms. We bought bunk beds for the boys, moved their room into the schoolroom, moved the schoolroom to the guest suite outside, and moved the guest room to the boys’ old room. Lots of books to move, lots of decorating to do, lots of things to organize. After lugging what felt like the thousandth pile of books through the house, outside, and to the new school room, I actually considered becoming a minimalist with books. Really. For one brief moment, I imagined myself getting rid of all our books. No worries, once the books were moved, I laughed at my moment of insanity. But seriously…I do not want to do any book rearranging again anytime soon. Or even ever.
Now for the highlights of our first six weeks…
Our first day of school, August 18th. Joseph: 7 years old; William: 5 years old; Andrew: 3 years old; Katelyn: 1 year old
Geography studies: We covered China, South Korea, Japan, India, Israel and Thailand.
Chemistry: We began our Chemistry studies supplemented with lots of fun experiments…pretty sure these boys know more about the elements, the periodic table and chemical reactions than I knew after taking Chemistry in high school.
American History: We covered the early explorers including the Vikings, Columbus, Vespucci, Magellan, and a few other early settlers. Then we moved on to John Smith and Pocahontas (which we covered last year and I was amazed at how many details Joseph remembered!)
World History: We continued our Ancient History studies, covering the Early Church, the Age of the Apostles, and the Seeds of the Kingdom. Lots of saint studies, lots of stories of martyrdom, and lots of church history.
Wee Folk Art: This has been a fun supplement to our days! We covered vegetable gardens, dairy, tractors, the bakery, wool and yarn, and apples. After studying vegetables, we visited the grocery store and did a vegetable scavenger hunt; for dairy, we visited the Cheesecake Factory; after tractors, we visited the John Deere Tractor store; we baked bread, made homemade butter, spun yarn (or at least we attempted to using a drop spindle), learned how to knit using a french knitter, and tried needle felting. We made quilt squares with our hand prints and did a ton of reading.
Fine Arts Fridays: We began our Shakespeare studies (which have been a HUGE hit!), continued with our Lindsey Volin art lessons and Spot the Differences, listened to Vivaldi, practiced piano and did our Hoffman Academy lessons, and began our Nature Study lessons using Simply Charlotte Mason’s Nature Study book.
Memory Work: We’ve been doing an awesome job keeping up with our memory work, reviewing each day. The timeline song has been a lot of fun and I’m shocked at how many mental pegs these kids are making.
For a list of our daily activities including Faith lessons, Math, and language arts, you can glance back at the 2014-2015 plans.
Outside my window…the sun is shining, a breeze is blowing and four happy little children are running around, chasing one another.
I am remembering…our conversation this morning:
William: I’m going to be a geologist when I grow up.
Me: Oh really? That would be an interesting job.
Andrew: Ask me what I’m going to be.
Me: What are you going to do when you grow up?
Andrew: Oh, I’m going to be a dinosaur.
Pause.
Me: Do you mean a scientist who studies dinosaurs?
Andrew: A paleontologist?
Me: Yes, is that what you mean?
Andrew: (giving me a very strange look and speaking slowly) No, I’m going to be a T-Rex
I am wondering…we made the switch to cloth napkins about a year ago. Yesterday I caught myself about to throw away a cloth napkin…I guess old habits are hard to break. Now I’m wondering if Daxson or I have mindlessly thrown any cloth napkins away by accident. Think it’s time to revisit this post: something lost, something gained.
I am thankful…for another little book lover.
In the refrigerator…our farmer’s market finds.
I am wearing…black yoga pants and a burgundy Express t-shirt.
I am creating…Advent plans. Tossing around the idea of a Christmas Around the World plan. Any ideas you’d like to share?
We are celebrating…my birthday! The boys dressed me up (hence the purple bow), treated me to a special spa session (this spa uses A LOT of lotion), and humored me while decorating cupcakes with ice cream and toppings.
I am reading…The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma and I am thoroughly enjoying it, however it is taking me FOREVER to finish…I am embarrassed to admit that I have a new addiction…the show Once Upon a Time…I’m on episode 12 of Season 2 and I just can’t kick the habit…I was hooked after just one episode. Every night I wait for all the kiddos to be sound asleep and then I flip the switch on my Kindle and lose myself in Storybrooke, Maine.
I am thinking…about November Grace. I am especially reflecting on this thought, “Can we follow the example of G. K. Chesterton, who wrote: “ You say grace before meals. Alright. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.” Grace in everything. Gratitude all the time, without ceasing.” Hmm, grace in everything. Surely I can find that.
In our learning room…finally moving into the Middle Ages…so many exciting things to come…knights and castles, King Arthur and the printing press. Finally broke out the watercolors for nature study again…long overdue.
One of my favorite things…storytime with Grandma Nury.
A peek into my day…
Please visit The Simple Woman’s Daybook for more daybook entries.
Sometimes I feel a little torn when it comes to celebrating holy days that are saturated with pagan traditions. On one hand, I grew up celebrating most of the holidays with the traditional cultural traditions and I want my kids to experience that…I have lovely, happy memories of holidays as a child; on the other hand, I want my kids to have the opportunity to live in a faith infused environment…I want them surrounded by what is good and holy and beautiful and to be immersed in traditions that are rich in their Catholic heritage. So often times, rather than choose between the two, I end up doing a whole lot of merging. Halloween is no different.
A quick little history lesson…Halloween or All Hallows’ Eve is the night before All Saints Day (“Hallow” meaning…you guessed it, “holy” or in this case, “saint”). As Meredith Gould points out in The Catholic Home, “Although Halloween has been secularized since the nineteenth century, Catholics have a long history of observing evening vigil before the Feast of All Saints.” All Hallows’ Eve marks the beginning of the triduum of All Hallows Tide, which is the time when the church remembers the dead…saints, martyrs, and all the faithfully departed. Many of the traditions (trick-or-treating, included!) stem from ancient traditions, some rooted in Christianity, some rooted in paganism. For an excellent read, refer to Mary Reed Newland’s The Year and Our Children or read an excerpt from her book by heading over to CatholicCulture.org. The issue isn’t so much that Christianity and Halloween are in opposition to one anther, the issue is more one of education and understanding what the focus of All Hallows Eve should be and then making that connection for our children.
That being said, we, over here, are not immune to the cultural influences of Halloween. On the contrary, there are some things I just like to do with the kids (much to the chagrin, I am sure, of many fellow Catholics). In the days preceding Halloween, we do quite a bit of cultural Halloweeny (is that a word?!) things…we make jack-o-lantern collages, paint ghosts, decorate the house to look a little spooky, listen to Wee Sing Halloween, read lots of silly and scary Halloween stories, spend some time at the pumpkin patch and corn maze and of course, use an evening to watch The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. Sometimes I explain the connection and sometimes we just bask in the moment.
The day of Halloween arrives bright and early (or in this year’s case, dark and early as a huge thunderstorm rolled in and woke all the little critters) and we begin by reading Father Philip Tells a Ghost Story and Moonlight Miracle. The rest of the day is spent carving jack-o-lanterns and eagerly awaiting Halloween night when we can join all the other little ghosts and goblins as we go door-to-door trick-or-treating.
Our Halloween costumes are usually secular (although we try to veer from anything extremely scary or devilish)…from super heroes to knights to strawberries. Halloween night arrives and we don our costumes, grab our jack-o-lantern buckets and we’re off.
We come home, buckets filled to the brim with candy, eat a piece (or two) and head to bed. But here is where our Halloween differs from the majority of all those tuckered out little trick-or-treaters. We go to bed with the anticipation of what’s to come…we know that we have only just begun our All Hallows Tide celebration. Tomorrow we will celebrate All Saints Day.
All Saints Day is a joyful celebration around here! We usually begin with Mass and then we come home to celebrate. Some years our celebration has been as simple as saint stories (including a reading of I Sing a Song of the Saints of God) and some coloring, other years our celebration has been a bit more elaborate. Most years involve getting all the saint dolls out and singing a liturgy of the saints.
This year we decided to expand our celebration and throw an All Saints Day party. The kids each chose and dressed up as a saint. Joseph was Saint George, William was Saint William, and Andrew chose Saint Patrick (although I noticed that halfway through the party Joseph and Andrew had traded costumes). The supplies were bought, the games were prepared and the guests arrived.
There were Saint Guessing Jars…
Pin the Shamrock on Saint Patrick…
Works of Mercy stations…
Saint Anthony’s Treasure Box…
Saint Isidore’s Potato Sack Races…
Saint George’s Sword Fighting…
Saint Peter’s Keys to Heaven…
Queen of All Saints Ring Toss…
After the party, we worked on making our own saint dolls and had some afternoon saint treats (St. Isidore’s Pumpkin Swirl Bread (Pepperidge Farm special edition bread), St. Francis Tonsure Treats (chocolate frosted doughnuts) and St. Cecelia’s Musical Keys (sugar wafers lined up as the white piano keys with mini hershey bars as the black keys). And we may have had a little more saintly costume fun!
Tomorrow our celebration will continue with All Souls Day. The atmosphere shifts a little as we approach All Souls Day with a little more of a somber attitude, remembering those we have loved and lost and praying for their dearly departed souls to make their way to Heaven. All Souls Day is always accompanied by reading The Spirit of Tio Fernando and a visit to the cemetery. Our cemetery has statues for the Stations of the Cross, so we usually pray our way past those.
Our All Hallows Tide celebration is complete. I judge our celebration’s success based on one factor alone…do my children approach death as a celebration? Do they realize that there is no need to fear death itself, but rather to embrace it as a part of our Christian journey? If the answer is yes, we have succeeded. This year’s celebration? A success indeed.
With Every Intention 