Veronica Boulden

This lovely verse in  Paradise Lost  reminds me of our Foundations Memory Work, so I put it on the front of our Foundations guide.  "For wonderful are all His works, Pleasant to know and worthiest to be all had in remembrance always with delight." -Milton All his works- The facts our family has been putting to memory for the last ten years of Foundations with Classical Conversations compass all God's works, all subjects from Bible passages to math and science laws to world geography.  Pleasant to know-  It's pleasant to have a storehouse of knowledge including a timeline and a map of the world to constantly reference and feed your imagination or inform whatever you are doing, reading the news, taking nature walks, visiting museums, or reading stories. In Remembrance always- We share beloved books and poetry and music in common, and this shared content builds our family culture. Memory Work builds this culture, too. Since we all share them in common, the facts come b

Adele is writing stories in her free time. In this photo, her older sister, Avril, is reading them. But she is also editing as she goes and complaining about all the spelling and grammar mistakes. Adele is looking on in frustration, wishing Avril would just focus on the content. I found this funny, since I am always editing and complaining about Avril's spelling and grammar mistakes in her writing, and she is always wishing I would just focus on her content. 

A precious family friend recently gifted the girls adorable, matching pajamas. I love the bookshelf pants. Both girls also happen to be reading matching books. They are both in the middle of the Harry Potter series. 

It's the beginning of our third week of Essentials, so Analytical Task Sheets begin.  Last year was my youngest daughter's first year in Essentials, so I scaled the work down.  I felt confident doing that, since it's my eighth year of Essentials and she is the third child I'm taking through this program.  I knew there would be time to do more in years 2 and 3 of the program.  So last year, we did tasks 1-4 with 3 to 4 out of the five sentences each week.  Of course, we also studied the charts and wrote the papers and drilled math facts for Essentials, and we did all her other homeschool work, too.   So scaling was a good choice to make the work load appropriate to her age and within everything else we were doing.  But as we started on our first Analytical Task Sheet yesterday, we breezed through the first four tasks with the first sentence of week 3.  So we moved on to sentence two, then three, then four, and even sentence five, finishing all four tasks for all five se

This is the testimony of Jan, unfortunately, when she met a group of other homeschool moms in the park. "What kind of homeschooler are you?" they asked.  Jan confessed, she did not deny, but confessed, "I use a combination of resources." And they asked her, "What then? Would you say you are a Charlotte Mason homeschooler?" Jan said, "No."  "Are you Classical?" Jan answered, "What does that mean?" "Are you Neo-Classical?" "No." So they said to her, "What method do you use? We'd like to make some broad, sweeping judgements about you. What do you say about your homeschool?" Jan said, "Our education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life."  They asked her, "How can you quote Mason if you are neither Charlotte Mason nor Classical?"  Jan answered, "I have the Holy Spirit, and He guides me into all truth."  At this, they went away murmuring, offended.  Some of them dismi

I am tutoring both Foundations and Essentials this year, and honestly, it takes quite a lot of planning and organizing.  It's the second week of our CC year, and I already find that the various tasks involved with tutoring can constantly loom over me and distract me from giving my kids the focused attention they need.  And that's going to keep happening unless I'm careful.   So I'm trying an experiment.  I just finished all my plans for the week, and it's more than twenty four hours ahead of the time we have to leave for our community day.  I even made a list, checked it twice, and packed the car with all the little stuff I have to take.  The only thing I'll need to do to prepare for our CC day is help the girls pack lunches the day before.   My daughters still have a full day of homeschool tomorrow before community the next day. So I'm really looking forward to being totally free to focus on them.  We'll see how this goes.  But having it all done this

One Sunday afternoon earlier this month, a big storm was rolling in, the kind of storm with serious thunder, big enough booms to make grown ups jump and take notice. I was already baking a berry crumble and brewing tea to have in place of dinner. (With late lunches on Sundays, sometimes all we have room for is dessert in the evening Sundays. And since I don't often bake desserts, that makes Sunday dessert even more special.) Adele was helping me in the kitchen as always. When she kept hearing the thunder, she thought of Thunder Cake and asked to read it to me. So it was that I was listening to a storm roll in as she read Thunder Cake as we baked a desert together. It felt like I was inside a storybook for a few moments.   

 

The History-Based Writing Lesson in Essentials this week was on Justinian and the Hagia Sophia this week. The Hagia Sophia really captured her imagination. So she wanted to illustrate her paragraphs. Using a picture of Hagia Sophia for reference, she made her own original drawing by copying the basic shapes or oiLS from Drawing With Children, something she is learning to do in the fine arts portion of Foundations.

Me to Avril: There should probably be a semicolon here... Avril sighs and puts her hand on my forearm: Mom. Listen. Anytime I put a semicolon in there, you say it should not be there. When I don't add one, you say it should probably be there. Me: No! Really?! Avril, now laughing so hard she can hardly breathe: It happens... every... single... time! I watch her laughing for second and realize she's probably right and that's when I laugh, too. *hysterical laughter all around*

Me: You look very studious right now.  Avril: I feel very cozy… here in my nest of my books.

Moms often express doubts about homeschooling through high school.  Homeschooling means parents have to take responsibility for teaching or at least facilitating their child's learning in all the subjects at a high school level including math and science. Most reasonable and thoughtful people hesitate at the thought of doing this; They don't feel entirely confident or qualified. So parents are drawn to traditional high school because experts are teaching the various subjects, and having experts delivering information seems like a way to ensure kids will learn all the different subjects as well as they should.   But as I discuss homeschooling vs. traditional school with doubtful moms, I find homeschooling is actually essential to me and to what I want my children to understand about leaning itself and what I believe about how everyone actually relates to Truth.  Speaking generally, in school, students will face an expert teacher and that expert will deliver selected information

  There's a meme that says, "No one has more false hope than a homeschool mom with a new chore chart."  The same could probably be said about a young wife with a new cookbook.  But in this case, I'm not a young wife.  And in this case, I've already made four of the recipes in this cookbook that I recently bought on impulse at the book fair. Four recipes is four more recipes than I made in the last four cookbooks I bought before I realized I don't actually ever cook anything in the cookbooks that I buy.  And I've been cooking and buying cookbooks that I don't use long enough to know when a cookbook isn't going to work for me. I only need to read it for about one minute.   And most cookbooks don't work for me, so I usually don't even buy them anymore.  But after scanning this one for a minute, I knew I had found a unicorn.  So I keep reading, and I kept finding more and more recipes I knew I'd like.  This cookbook uses ingredients I usual

We've started another year of CC. This is our tenth year homeschooling with CC! I'm tutoring a Foundations and Essentials class, and my youngest is in my classes for the first time ever. It's not we haven't gone to CC together every week for literally her entire life. It's not like I haven't taught her everyday of her life at home. But as far as CC jobs go, I've always been teaching someone else's class, so it's special that I get to be her teacher this year. Her older sister, Avril, was nice enough to pose for a picture with her little sister. Avril is in her second week of Challenge B. 

We volunteered at the library's book fair setting up one day and tallying sales the next.  And we're already keeping a record of Avril's volunteer hours in a blank composition notebook.  It might be a little premature, since she's only in what may be eighth grade or even seventh, depending on how long she stays home learning before going off to college.  But it's important to start establishing the habit of recording hours now, so that it becomes second nature once Avril really gets into actual high school years and she's piling up the volunteer hours then.  I learned that lesson with her older sister.  When it was time to complete college applications, it was quite difficult remembering all the details about volunteering dates and hours and details from years before.  So I know it's wise to start a notebook for those records and just fill it up as we go on from here.  

We purged hundreds of books we aren't going to read again/ don't want to keep.  Shown here is only a portion of the boxes and bags we donated.  It was an important exercise, since we are constantly adding books, but we're almost totally out of space for more shelves.  Unless we add shelves along the walls in the hallway... 

I checked Avril's Latin without the key.  And it was a few of those exercises that the Henle Answer Key doesn't even provide answers to, maddeningly, because the content is just supposed to be so easy and the answers so obvious.  But at this point, it actually was so obvious to me that I checked it all and found errors without the key, and I am still in total confidence that I was correct.  And when Avril needed help with some Algebra in her not-so-Pre-Algebra math text, I helped her with that.  There was not even a moment of knee-jerk, internal panic or an ounce of beady, outward sweat like there used to be when my older daughter needed help with math.   I knew just what to do and more importantly perhaps, I knew why.  I do read the Vulgate almost everyday now.  I did just finish directing Challenge 4 with Advanced Math and Physics included.  But it was this, this helping my middle daughter Avril with Henle 1 and Pre-Algbra without any trouble that made me realize how far I&#