Veronica Boulden

We usually spend a small fortune on the right toys for our sun conure, Arcus.  But toys are an important part of keeping caged birds healthy and sane.  Recently, however, we've tried hanging cardboard boxes in his cage.  He loves them!  He tears them to pieces, literally, bit by bit, making the happiest of chipping sounds as he destroys them, leaving a thick layer of cardboard confetti on his cage lining.  He enjoys boxes far more than any toy we usually buy.  This is good news for our budget! 

I'm finding a tremendous amount of satisfaction in my domestic life lately.  After dutifully cooking and baking for twenty plus years mostly because it was my job to do so, I've reluctantly reached a new level of mastery in my kitchen.  And when you combine that mastery with my new quiet resolution to be content with my domestic lot, I find myself  joyful and free.  Cooking and baking for my small family in my somewhat dated kitchen turns out to be downright delightful.  I used the same mushroom marinara sauce three different ways last week.  First, I served it fresh over spaghetti with grated parmesan and from-scratch, fresh, baked Italian bread sticks for a meatless meal.  Several days later, I still had leftover sauce, so I added some spicy Italian sausage to the same mushroom marinara and served it over spaghetti noodles again. (My family loves spaghetti, so they raved.)  It's quite satisfying to receive immediate positive feedback for work you do, and it's extremel

After eighteenth years of mothering, thirteen (or more?) years of homeschooling, and ten years of learning, teaching, serving, leading in different homeschool communities, I think I know a thing or two (or seven) about that homeschool life. Here's some sage advice from a somewhat salty veteran.  1. Be realistic about your children. Your children are not perfect. If you don't already know this hard truth, just attend any co-op long enough. The other people there will reveal (or try to reveal) truth to you when they confront you about your child's bad behavior. Humble yourself and just let the harsh realities sink in. It is good for your soul and the best thing for your child. All co-op veterans have had to do this again and again through the years to remain in community. You have to understand that your child needs a Savior just like you do. Their sin is real enough that Jesus had to die for it, too. So commit to remaining in community and dealing with the ugly issues as the

I am tutoring my youngest daughter's Foundations class for my Classical Conversations community this year.  We always do a Fine Arts lesson as part of our Foundations class.  For the first six weeks of Fine Arts, we teach drawing lessons based on Mona Brookes's Drawing With Children .  I decided to plan drawing projects related to the current history cycle.  Here are my plans for the six weeks of drawing for Cycle 2- The Middle Ages. Week 1- OiLS/ Crown Introduce The Five Elements of Shape (OiLS) using my homemade poster.  For warm-up:  Show the class three different pictures of crowns, each progressively more complicated, and ask students to break the images down into the five elements of shape. Ask them what shapes they see. I got images of crowns off Google by searching for "Crown Free Clip Art." For the lesson:  Show the students a finished drawing of a crown, so they can picture what their own crowns will look like. Then show them step-by-step how to draw another

Avril’s in a crochet class at one of our co-ops. She and and several other homeschool girls and moms (There’s one male student, too.) sit around on cozy couches and crochet for an hour. It’s just the loveliest thing to see them all working together and chatting quietly, happily. Avril’s making a lot of great progress!

Avril had to build a dodecahedron and use it to calculate surface area for math. (She's about half-way done with Math-U-See's Pre-Algebra.) There was also dodecahedron in Phantom Tollbooth , one of the books she had to year for Challenge B this year. So she added faces to the surfaces so it would match the dodecahedron in that story. She's been keeping this interesting, handmade trinket on her school desk just for fun the of it. 

After breakfast and chores, before schoolwork, the girls and I sit and listen to the audio Bible for about half an hour.  And as we listen, we need something to do with our hands, so we've taken to drawing or coloring.  I am currently illuminating a letter A, as shown in the photo above. This new addition to our routine has been a lovely, leisurely way to start to our homeschool day.  So far, we've listened to the books of John, Romans, Proverbs, Hebrews, 1 and 2 Peter.  After a half hour of listening and artwork, we go about our days as we always did before with piano practice or silent reading or math, etc.  All the schoolwork just begins a little later, and we have to work a little later into the afternoons or evenings, but it is so worth it.  Our entire day feels so much more leisurely, less harried.  We are finding time to be creative while also putting first things first. 

The girls don't know that I know that they have already been awake for hours. I have the almost-supernatural hearing of all mothers, so I sense they are up there shifting, turning, reading, snuggled between the pages of their latest books.  They will often read for hours in the mornings, depending on how early they wake.  And I let them, especially when we have extra time, especially when the day before was so full and exhausting to us all.  They may not realize it yet, but I am often also downstairs under a quilt or in front of a fire reading, praying, thinking, enjoying the quiet morning before the day's work and study begins.  I am lingering now, but it feels wrong to go just yet. If I hold on a little longer, I may receive a blessing.  And it would be wasteful, indulgent to leave the fire to burn in an empty room.  So as the sun comes up, and the logs burn out, some final change will be my signal to rise.  It hasn't come yet.  In this season, the Lord is teaching me to

Adele had a cough, congestion, and a sore throat this morning, so we decided to keep her home from church. I stayed with her while Dwayne took Avril.  If it's the same for her tomorrow morning, I will call her pediatrician to see what is up.  As I gave Adele medicine this morning, I noticed we were inundated with laundry, somehow, though we do at least a load every single day.  So with all the extra hours at home, I did at least five loads of laundry today. I've lost count of the actual number.  I also read my Bible, spent extra time in prayer, listened to the end of two audio books: Orthodoxy by Chesterton and Till We Have Faces by Lewis, and listened to a few more chapters of The Penderwicks.  I even made Italian bread sticks from scratch to go with with homemade sausage marinara, spaghetti, and the fresh Italian-style salad I made for dinner.  My breadsticks weren't uniform and beautiful, but they tasted very like Olive Garden's breadsticks, only better perhaps, sinc

It was the most beautiful fall day in Connecticut. The sun was gentle, bright, and warm and the leaves are at peak color.  I left early and attended a Women's Conference at my friend's church until the afternoon. It was nice to be with my friend all day and share two meals together. I saw a few other friends as well, which was a nice surprise, since I wasn't expecting to know anyone else at the conference.    Dwayne took the girls to our church's Pumpkin Festival in the early afternoon. Avril volunteered at the pumpkin painting table for a few hours. Adele is still young enough to enjoy the games and activities with the other kids. She actually painted a pumpkin at her big sister's craft table. Dwayne talked to some of the dads and pastors there while the girls were busy.   Later, when we were all back at home, we all went to Sycamore's for dinner. It's one of our favorite, local places. We usually sit at the exact same table and order the exact same things

We love our home in the woods.  We don't have to go far to see something wonderful at least once a day; We need only go to the closest window and peer out.  Two female deer have been coming by to graze on our native woodland plants.  The other day, we managed to get the photo above before she moved on.  Today, we saw two large woodpeckers hopping and eating insects in our yard just like robins hunt for worms.  The wonders never cease, and we are thankful and don't take this home for granted.  Before we moved here, I had a spiritual dream of a home that brought me great joy as I looked out its windows into a wood; I knew it was a promise about this house.  And though it was a brief vision, it was certainly a prophetic of the realities I experience here day after day.  Seeing the daily wonders brings the joy and the joy reminds me of the dream and remembering the dream builds my faith and brings even more wonder. 

Each week in Foundations at Classical Conversations, there is a Fine Arts lesson of some kind.   For the first six weeks, Foundations tutors teach a drawing lesson using Mona Brook's Drawing with Children .  I have so, so, so enjoyed teaching drawing this year.  So far, it has been my favorite part of teaching Foundations.  It has reminded me just how much I love to draw.  Each week, I joyfully, diligently plan the projects for my class ahead of time by doing one for myself at home.  Tonight, I planned our final drawing project by making an illuminated letter as a test.  I will have to seriously simplify this project for the students, but I love how it turned out.  Maybe I'll do another illuminated letter with just one outside border, the simple inside border, and the letter.  That would make the project much more doable in the given thirty-minute time frame.  But I am very excited about letting students paint their letters with the metallic acrylic paint, and teaching drawing

Avril tried out for the youth worship team at church, and she made the team! So she'll start playing keyboard in the children's services, learning how to play with a band and help lead worship. We're pretty proud and happy. 

Adele, my youngest daughter, did some new independent work this week. She added her own dress-ups to the rough draft of her weekly essay for Essentials, and she did her own research for a presentation on the Joan of Arc for Foundations.  I usually sit with her to add dress-ups to her Essentials paper, but I was busy the day it needed to be done, and I realized she was probably more than ready to add dress-ups on her own, so I let her try it alone. She did great! We've done it so many times together that she may be ready to continue doing this on her own every week from now on.  I don't normally make her do research for Foundations presentations, but she needed an idea for a presentation, and she was interested in presenting on a history topic. So she used the keyword outlining she is learning/ has learned in Essentials to read the source texts and create a keyword outline of facts from our books about the Middle Ages. She ended up narrowing her topic to Joan on Arc, specificall

The girls painted adorable, funny faces on our tiny pumpkins. They got ideas online using Google Images and used our acrylic paints and brushes. 

We've been keeping our Sundays restful, and it's been lovely.  We will go to church in the morning, but that's usually it.  Then we come home and eat a simple meal.  Maybe we take naps or play a game or bake a dessert.  We always do a lot of reading.  Last Sunday, Adele helped me make a batch of sourdough rolls.  Then, instead of dinner, we toasted blocks of cheddar on the fire and smeared it on the fresh-baked sourdough.  And we sliced apples.  Toasting cheese is something we've always wanted to do since reading Heidi.  The cheddar got smoky-flavored and all warm and soft.   Long, leisurely Sunday hours provide some margin to be creative in simple ways and just enjoy the live we have been given.  Thank God, in His wisdom, He commanded us to give a day to rest.  We've been taking that command more seriously lately, and it's only been to our benefit. 

Dwayne and I went to a Murder Mystery party at our friends' house. It had a Colonial American theme. He was given the part of George Washington and I was Martha. The wine and hors d'oeuvre were excellent and it was fun to be around old friends. Dwayne and I certainly followed as many clues as we could in an attempt to win the game. I took every advantage I was given, even reading one secret clue over a man's shoulder before he saw there and had figured it out for himself. Ruthlessly, I made people, even friends, pay for information I had.  I even took a stack of coins that counted towards my total that someone carelessly left out on a table.  But alas, cheating doesn't prosper. Neither of us won.  

There are a lot of books suggested to go along with the current history cycle of Foundations.  Everywhere you look, there seems to be another list.  In the ten years we've been homeschooling with the help of CC, we've ever been able to read all the books that are suggested, so we settle for picking some of the titles each year, all of which are usually excellent. We either read the books aloud together, or I will assign them for silent reading.  Right now, Adele is reading Arabian Nights  an hour day during her silent reading time, one of the titles suggested on one of the reading lists for Foundations Cycle 2- The Middle Ages. 

  Our Classical Conversations group had Animal Day on Week 3 of Foundations this year, the day in Cycle 2 when Herbivores, Carnivores, and Omnivores are introduced as part of the new grammar for Science.  Kids could dress as any animal or wear a t-shirt with an animal print or picture, etc.  Adele wore an old eagle cloak we had on hand in our dress-up supplies.  Then, in free time, she and her big sister used a You Tube video to create an eagle mask.  This is the kind of enrichment and fun that our CC community constantly brings into our homeschool days.  I've grown to really appreciate the way community activities like Animal Day shake us up and out of our regular routine, adding small enrichments to our days and lives. 

Since I last posted about my reading this year, I've read all of: Doom's Day Book by Connie Willis A Severe Mercy by Stephen Vanauken (for a book club with friends) The Singing Bowl by Malcolm Guite The Intellectual Life by Sertillanges The Phantom Tollbooth by Jules Feiffer  I've read portions of: The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron God has a name by John Mark Comer (for a Bible study on Exodus at church) The City of God by Augustine Paradise Lost by Milton The Odyssey by Homer (for an evening discussion at our house) The Collected Works of PG Wodehouse Dante's Inferno (for a book discussion via webinar with two of my mentors)

The night before our weekly CC community day, I always make the girls practice any/ all of their presentations for the family after dinner.  It's a way to rehearse for the next day, but more importantly, share what they are doing with their Dad who is finally home to see what's happening in our homeschool.  Adele, in Foundations and Essentials, usually has a Foundations presentation to practice and an IEW paper to read. Avril, in Challenge B, usually has a Science research project on a famous astronomer to share, at least that's true this first semester, and every few weeks, she also has a Lost Tools paper to read.    Both girls have been presenting at home like this for years, but they still have to overcome some nerves every week to present whatever it is they are currently working on to the family.  But overcoming those nerves and practicing at home just makes presenting to their director and their class of peers even easier.