Veronica Boulden

We usually wait until the end of January to take down the Christmas decorations anyway, but with all that's happening in our lives, it took longer. I got Christmas put away, just in time to decorate for Easter. It was an exhausting day. But we're ready to begin our Easter readings. We use story circles and Scripture verses to read the Easter story from the Gospels throughout Lent. 

The girls are taking a cookie decorating class at co-op.  So they're doing a lot of cookie baking in this season.  I've actually lost track of the number of batches they've made at this point.  They're learning a lot, especially with all this extra practice at home.  Here are a collection of photos from different batches.  Did I mention they're learning a lot? I just wish I could say they cleaned as well as they bake and decorate at this point.  Sometimes I wipe my counters and I can still feel the candy coating left behind by all the powdered sugar wiped up but not all the way gone.   It's a definite change for me to let them mess up my kitchen so often.  I would not have allowed my oldest to bake (mess) this freely or frequently.  But now that my oldest is in college and cooking for herself everyday, I have new perspective.  I can see how essential these skills are and how short the time is.  So I'm glad they're learning and practicing these things tha

At our local Dollar Store, I found a number of colorful buckets that matched the colors of the CC Foundations Memory Work flashcards.  So I purchased a yellow bucket (for science), blue (for history), turquoise (for timeline), violet (for geography), orange (for Latin), pink (for math), and multi-colored striped (for wild).  I gathered all the CC Memory Work cards that we needed to review that week in class (the current week plus the six previous weeks.)  I let my class line up and toss a pom-pom into the buckets one at a time.  I gave them a memory work question that corresponded to the color of the bucket (subject) their pom-pom landed inside. For example, if a pom-pom went in to the yellow bucket, I gave the student a Science question.  The class usually answered as one unless the student really wanted to answer alone.  If the pom-pom went in to the violet bucket, I gave a geography question.  Everyone gathered around the map on the wall, but the student who tossed the pom-pom in po

  I made a simple board game to use for review in my Foundations class.  I drew a winding path about one inch wide on an 11 by 17 sheet of paper with a sharpie.  Next, I portioned the path into squares of equal size.  I labeled one end of the path "Start" and the other "Finish."  With a black pen, each block has the title of one subject "History, Timeline, Math, etc."  I used colored pencils to fill each block with the color that corresponds to the CC Memory Work cards- Math is pink, History is light blue, Timeline is a blue-green, etc.  Each student got a different game piece.  (In my case, I actually made game pieces for each student out of unused Jenga pieces, acrylic paint, super glue, goggle eyes, and a Sharpie. The pieces look like the students with the same hair color and length, etc.) If I hadn't made custom pieces for each student, I could have used a collection of various game pieces from other board games. For example, a combination of Monop

It's a terrible season. Dwayne's dad is in hospice. The whole family took a trip to see him at his home in Florida. Even Norah was able to come from college in Tennessee. It was a mini-reunion for a few days filled with equal parts joy and sorrow, so lovely to be all together, so sad to be there for that reason. We spent some time on the beach everyday with cousins, nieces and nephews, and the great grand babies. The beauty of the ocean ministered to my sorrowful soul. As I played with my niece's babies, the same niece who was a flower girl in my wedding, and as I helped her hold their hands as they splashed in the waves, I meditated on how quickly life goes by. It was not long ago that I was a young mom with babies. Now I am a seasoned mom with lovely, older daughters, now big enough help with the great grand babies, too. I meditated on how unimportant much of what I spent much of my attention on for years was, but how important other people are, especially family. Dwayne&