Homeschool Update- Learning Continues Without CC and Through Summer

We are still doing some homeschool work through the early summer. 

In the photo above, both girls are doing their Latin. Adele is following my old Challenge A guide from Classical Conversations, but she's going much slower through all the same content. Avril is following my old Challenge 2 schedule, but we are also tailoring the work so that she does less Latin everyday. 

The girls are not in the same Henle book, but they enjoy working together, fellowshiping or commiserating as they work. Their attitude towards Latin depends on their mood and/or how hard the new material is at any given moment. I come in and help as needed, but Avril is often Adele's go-to helper. They work fairly independently, but I check their work at least a few times a week to make sure it's progressing and correct. 

This was the first year in twelve that we did not join a Classical Conversations group for support, so we did not have to follow their timing. For this year, we followed my old CC guides, but we made changes as often as we wanted to, and we usually took longer to finish everything. 

Sometimes, I feared we were not making good time, but as the year went on, I realized that those CC schedules for the schoolwork are, in fact, arbitrary, imposed on members because of the need to help community function. 

One of the real positives of homeschooling without Classical Conversations has been that we have the freedom to finally do what is absolutely best for us as far as timing goes. Who says you have to be done with your science fair project in one-two months? One real benefit of taking months to complete the project is that the science research, experiments, and conversations have gone on and on, and they became a more natural part of our everyday lives. How is that a negative? 

So taking it all slower was decidedly positive for everyone even though, yes, we are still working into June. But no one cried this year (including me) because they had too much CC stuff to do in one week along with all the other things our family was trying to do. 

Now, as we finish with math books, geography plans, or biology texts, the girls just stop that subject altogether until fall, so their school days get lighter and lighter as we go further into summer. By July, the girls should be done with everything, and we should enjoy a nice break through a few weeks of July and early August until we start again with next year's work. 

Next year will look very different. I don't plan to use my old Challenge guides as a base like I did this year. I'll be venturing into making my own plans, combining my favorite CC resources with many other excellent resources to make my own plan.  

Avril Begins Challenge 1

 

Avril started Challenge 1! 

In reference to the size of her book bag, Avril said, "I feel like Christian." (From Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress)

Annotating American documents on Day 1 Week 2 At Home 

Developing successful organizational techniques

I edited the seasonal decorations to capture the mood in our house as another school year begins.

Tradition!

My kids love to quote the quotes and sing the songs from Fiddler on the Roof as they go through their days. 

"If I were a rich man..."

And "Tradition! Tradition!" 

Speaking of tradition, my kids seem to love observing tradition so much, they will take every opportunity to make tradition out of anything and everything. 

When my oldest daughter went through Challenge B years ago, she made me wait until after her short story was written and published by her Challenge B director to actually read it. 

This somehow became common knowledge in the household, so my middle daughter wanted to do the same.  

As she went through Challenge B this last year and as she was writing her short story for Challenge B, she also insisted on making us wait to hear her story until after it was finished and after it had been published by her director. 

She read it to us the other evening, just as our oldest had done, and naturally, we discussed her story with her just like we did with our oldest. 

Interestingly, my middle daughter's story was about a boy who had to go through the same trials to earn his sword that his older brother did when it was time to earn his sword and that his dad had done before them both when it was time to earn his sword... 

Homeschooling all my kids with Classical Conversations means they are all basically doing the same assignments that their siblings did at the same stage of life. And this creates a lot of camaraderie and fellowship among my kids as they actually really enjoy talking to each other about the various projects and assignments they have all done even if they didn't enjoy doing the assignments at the time they had to do them. 

Having my kids all on the same homeschool path provides potential for just about anything and everything to become, "Tradition. Tradition!" And since these traditions seem so very important to my kids, we parents dutifully observe them diligently and joyfully.

 

Another Homeschool Year Done, Summer Begins

Adele is done with another year of Foundations and Essentials. Avril's done with Challenge B. 

Avril spent some time cleaning out her desk and notebooks. She felt so much pride and relief and excitement at having finished another year of Challenge and having started another summer vacation. 

That picture above shows the stack of papers she threw out, much of which was from Mock Trial. 

In the summer, my kids keep doing daily chores, of course. But I usually give them an extra chores that need to be done, since there is margin to do more housework when schoolwork isn't pressing. A few days ago, I had them dust in their rooms. Yesterday, they cleaned their bathroom thoroughly "as if we are having guests" and cleaned our big basement living room. 

They keep doing math through the summer. Trial and error has taught me that math needs to go on year-round unless I want my kids to totally unlearn the discipline of sitting, focusing, and thinking math, forget basic math facts and laws, regress in their ability to calculate mentally, and repeat several lessons if not half a book before catching up to where they were when the last school year ended. So we just do math year around, and I'm convinced it's something we actually enjoy more because it's something we do all the time.  

They keep taking piano lessons and practicing piano. They actually can do more piano in summer, a full hour of practice everyday, rather than the half hour I often give them during the school year when there is so much more schoolwork.

I make them read silently for at least an hour everyday all summer out of books I assign them. Adele is given a stack of books on her current reading level that I've carefully curated. Avril is assigned all the books she has to read next year in Challenge 1. They have to spend at least one hour in these books I assign them, but they are good books, so they usually get into them and read them longer by choice.

Note: I have my Challenge students read the books for the next year ahead of time during summer so they are more prepared when the pace picks up during the next school year and they have to reread novels and write papers on them and also do Latin and Logic and Math. So pre-reading the books gives them an advantage when it comes time to think about the books again. And reading in them in summer means they have time to just read and enjoy and relish the stories before they have to use the content for assignments. As a rule, we read books more than once, even many times each. So reading the Challenge books ahead and then reading them again during the official school year is no big deal in our home. 

Since the girls love reading, they usually read much more than one hour, but I officially assign this one full hour of silent reading in the books I've curated, and the girls love to retreat to their cozy spots with books when morning chores are done. 

I usually encourage them to watercolor everyday in summer, because there is margin in the day and light for such a lovely task. But the past few days they've been Smashbooking with photos and memorabilia from this past homeschool year, and that's an artful craft that they are enjoying together, so I am not pushing the watercolor yet. As long as they are using their time in fruitful, soul-nourishing ways, I'm satisfied. 

As a rule, screens don't really exist for us even in summer, and that's pretty much true for me, too, even though I check email daily and text and also blog. 

Screen time is very, very limited, again, because trail and error has taught me that screens don't have much to offer us and do more harm than good to everything I'm trying to cultivate in our lives. 

We've also started a new puzzle, something we do to mark the start of every break.

 

 

Smashbooks Begun

The girls went to a friend's birthday party last night. One of the party activities was creating smashbook pages. All the moms were prepared in advance, so we planned ahead and printed pictures and gathered paraphernalia that was all of the same theme, so each girl at the party could build her own page/s. 

I planned it so that Avril could do a smashbook page about her recent Mock Trial for Challenge B. And I planned so that Adele could do a smashbook page on Faces of History for Essentials. 

Their pages turned out great! 

As the party favor, the girls were sent home with their own smashbooks, blank scrapbooks, so that they could continue adding more and more smashbook pages. 

So today, the girls printed hundred of pictures and pulled out the stickers and scrapbook supplies and washi tape, etc. They added more pages with different themes such as field trips, sisters, family, and even pages devoted to specific friends.  

What a fun, new hobby! And now that summer vacation has begun, this is a great way to pass the leisure time, reminisce, and give thanks about the past school year. 

I'm not sure the girls would have ever started this hobby if not for a simple birthday party activity. This is just another way our friends bring so much richness into our lives!

Classical Conversations Review Game- Jenga

I found a miniature Jenga set at the Dollar Store while Christmas shopping, so I purchased that to use as a review game with my Foundations class. 

My daughter and I tested the game out at home before using it in class. The test was a fun review for her, and we confirmed that this will definitely be a fun game to play in class. 

Materials:

Jenga Game 

Sharpie

Memory Work Flashcards (or Foundations guide)

Geography Trivium Tables (or Foundations maps) 

Set up:

I labeled each Jenga piece with a subject "Science, Timeline, History, etc." on one side using a Sharpie. 

Then I pulled out the Memory Work Flashcards for the current cycle and the current weeks we are reviewing in every subject. 

I made piles for each subject with the weeks in random order. 

We also got our maps out and ready so we could easily point to the places on the maps if we pulled a "Geography" piece off the tower. 

We stacked the Jenga blocks appropriately (three blocks horizontal, three blocks vertical, etc.) and with the words facing down, so that way, we'd pull the pieces out and be totally surprised by which subject we chose. 

I left some of the pieces totally blank and those were "Wild." We could choose the subject we wanted if we drew a blank piece. 

We managed to play for about twenty minutes before the tower fell, and we'd worked through a good deal of review content in that time. 

I think this will be a big hit with my Foundations class next week. 

I've even decided to set this Jenga Review game up in the middle of our kitchen table and play it on and off all day tomorrow throughout our homeschool day; It was just that fun!

 

 

A Book of Christmas Songs for the Tin Whistle

Classical Conversations Foundations students learn basic music theory with the tin whistle. 

I'm tutoring a Foundations class this year, and we're in the middle of our six weeks of tin whistle for this year. 

As a Christmas gift to each student, I've made a book of thirteen tin whistle Christmas songs for each student in my class. 

I made the copies of sheet music, drew a cover and then made colored copies of it for each book.  

My Foundations director let me borrow her binder, use some of her supplies, and showed me how to put the books together. (Thanks, Rachel!)

I already had the sheet music for several Christmas songs accumulated over our previous ten years in Foundations, but I got several more off  the new CC Connected. 

I plan to give these books as Christmas gifts to my students when we break for Christmas; That's right at the end of our six weeks of tin whistle. 

I wanted to give an educational, useful, thoughtful, enriching, handmade gift that also didn't break the bank, if possible. 

This book of Christmas songs for the tin whistle checked all the boxes. 

Paint Your Way Through Medieval History and Literature - A Review

Adele is in Paint Your Way Through Medieval History and Literature.

Once a week at a certain time, she meets with her art teacher and her art class live and online to discuss a story from The Middle Ages and complete an art project that goes along with that story. 

The students are given a suggested reading list ahead of time, but the reading is not required.  

Specific titles and authors in the suggested reading list have included: 

King Arthur and The Nights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green

One Thousand and One Arabian Nights by Geraldine McCaughrean

Queen Eleanor: Independent Spirit of the Medieval World by Polly Brooks

The Adventures of Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green

The Magna Carta by James Daugherty 

We managed the reading in ways that worked for our schedule and budget: 

I had already read King Arthur and The Nights of the Round Table to the girls a few year ago, so we just skipped that title, since Adele was already familiar with the stories. 

I already had versions of Arabian Nights and Robin Hood with different authors than the titles above, so I assigned those to Adele instead and that worked fine. Adele read through the books portion by portion during her daily, silent reading times. 

I already had the audio book of The Magna Carta, so we listened to that as a family at mealtimes. 

We entirely skipped the book about Queen Eleanor, since we didn't already have it, we already had a few read- alouds going, and I knew Adele just wasn't going to be able to read fast enough to cover all the titles in the class during the time period. Adele heard more about Eleanor in class, so she is very likely to still want to read that book, but she didn't miss out or feel left because she didn't read that book. 

Adele is in Foundations and Essentials at Classical Conversations, so she is learning history sentences and timeline facts about Cycle 2- The Middle Ages right now, and she is using source texts about The Middle Ages for her essays, so these stories and art projects have done even more to bring the history content to life. 

I'll include pictures of Adele's art projects and the art techniques taught with them below.

Coat of Arms to go with King Arthur 

Holy Grail to go with King Arthur 

Islamic Architecture to go with Arabian Nights

Islamic Geometric Tile to go with Arabian Nights

Illuminated Portrait to go with the book about Queen Eleanor 

"Stained Glass" Window to go with Queen Eleanor 

Acrylic Painting of Sherwood Forest for Robin Hood

Wanted Poster to go with Robin Hood

There will be a few more projects before the semester ends. 

The tuition and time commitment are manageable for us, and I love that someone else (besides me) is inspiring creativity and providing enriching experiences for Adele. 

Adele is learning some legitimate art techniques and concepts like graphite transfers, shading, etc. that she might not be learning otherwise. 

We heard about these classes through another Classical Conversations family with daughters a few years older than ours. I was really impressed with some of the art projects those girls were doing, but I hesitated to sign-up because I tend to be so practical it's shameful. We already have a lot to manage by completing all our regular schoolwork. 

But I am becoming more and more convinced that art in all its forms is something that brings glory to God and inspires worship, something that is a form of worship, so I am trying to make more time and opportunity for enrichment like this. 

We signed up for one semester of this class, but we are likely to continue with this class through the entire year and continue signing up for other classes in years to come. 

Tutoring Foundations and Essentials

This year, I am tutoring both Foundations and Essentials.

It's a lot of prep work! 

But it's manageable so long as I work on it consistently throughout the week. 

I do not like waiting until the day before community to prepare, so I try to spread out the preparation into small increments throughout the week.

I created a checklist of the specific tasks I follow each week, and I put them in the order I usually prefer to do them. 

This way, I don't have to constantly remember and reassess what I have to do or have already done.

I can just refer to my lists to see what needs to be done next and check by check, I prepare for the next week.  

It's been remarkably helpful. 

I print the lists the day after community and start working on some of the tasks that same day. 

Macaroni Salad for Homeschool Co-op and Community Days

I have started making a big bowl of macaroni salad the day before our CC community meets so that we can take it for lunch. 

I also make this the night before our regular homeschool co-op meets so we can take it there, too. 

The girls usually took sandwiches for lunch on CC days, for ten long years, sandwiches. 

But half the time, I'd open their lunch bags the day after community to find their sandwiches only partially eaten, sometimes totally uneaten. 

They ate the chips and other small snacks they took to go along with the sandwich, so they didn't go hungry. 

But I finally found something they'd actually eat every time. 

They eagerly devour this macaroni salad. 

Even better, this is no-fuss lunch that doesn't require reheating. 

That line for the microwave in the church kitchen grows long when all the other CC kids are trying to heat leftovers, too. 

It's just:

elbow macaroni, cooked al dente and drained

cubed cheddar or colby jack (Really, this entire salad is a conduit for delivering the sharp cheddar cheese blocks into your mouth.) 

chopped celery

chopped purple onion

salt, pepper, and dill to taste

Sometimes I also add: 

frozen peas (they will thaw) 

chopped carrots 

Then I mix in mayonnaise to taste. 

After ten years of trial and error, mostly error, I've discovered our perfect lunch for CC and co-op days.  

Illuminated Letters

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 is reminding me how much I love to draw for myself. 

Suggested Reading for Cycle 2 of Foundations

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. 

Animal Day at Classical Conversations

 

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. 

Wonderful are all His works

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 back into our thoughts and lives and conversation constantly. 

With delight- The way we go about storing and recalling the information with chants and games and motions and songs is delightful, particularly for the youngest people in our family. But even the grown ups and teens still enjoy singing a history sentence with the family when it comes up and just for the simple fun of it.  

For no fact stored in a living mind remains unrelated to other ideas for long. Minds go to work at once clothing bare facts with layers upon layers of understanding, relating one fact to another fact already known and loved, weaving a beautiful tapestry of related ideas, and making all into one glorious unity which fosters imagination, curiosity, wonder, and doxology- for wonderful are all His works.   

Managing Tutoring Foundations and Essentials

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 far ahead feels so lovely right now as I sip tea and type this, this may be the way I strive to manage tutoring Foundations and Essentials in addition to homeschooling my own girls. 

Don't misunderstand me. 

Tutoring at my CC community is a gift and reward, and I've done it for years and years and years, but the workload is real. 

And this post is about managing the workload for Foundations and Essentials so that I can still give your kids the best portion of my attention.   

If you tutor, too, and the workload threatens to loom, distract, and overwhelm your homeschool day, especially the day right before community, it might help if you, too, just dive in days ahead and plan and settle all the details (and even pack your car) long before it's actually necessary. 

Hagia Sophia Captures the Imagination

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.

First Day of Foundations and Essentials

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. 

Here I Raise Mine Ebenezer

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've come from where I started. 

When my oldest was at this same age and place in her homeschool journey, I was utterly dependent on the answer keys and thankful and happy to have them. 

But now, I have subsumed some of those answer keys at least.  

It was a glorious moment of realization, and I gave glory to God for His help.

It was not always easy. 

And knowing what's coming in the upper Challenges, I know it won't always be this easy.

But now I also know it is actually getting easier, and that's exciting. 

Here I raise mine Ebenezer. 

Hither by God's help I am redeeming my own education as I homeschool my kids. 

Frank Talk About Ensuring Success in Challenge

Avril started Challenge B yesterday. 

This morning of the day after our community day, we sat down with her guide and her schedule and portioned the work out day by day by day... 

We left time for volunteer work, piano practice, art classes, doctor appointments, etc. 

It took more than an hour to get it all planned out. 

It always does take that long to schedule the week. 

But I have found that this time scheduling makes all the difference. 

Planning like this the morning of the first day right after community usually means: 

My kids get a good start on the work for the week; They aren't waiting around a half a day, or a full day, or a full day and a half until they start doing their work. 

Hardly anything ever gets left until the last minute, so it's a fairly stress-free week. The work is portioned out evenly. Even the day before community feels normal, sometimes even light, as far as work load goes. 

My kids actually end up with quite a few hours of free time everyday and several hours of free time on weekends.  

And most remarkable of all, my kids usually manage to do almost all the work in the guide with very little need for scaling. 

I credit the scheduling for all of this.  

Because my kids are regular kids. 

I find that scheduling is one of the most important things I do as a Challenge parent.  

When my daughter gets a little farther into this Challenge year, I will give her the opportunity to plan her schedule herself, and then I'll check it. 

I did that last year after a few months of doing the scheduling with her. 

And by the time she's in upper Challenge levels, particularly Challenges 3 and 4, she'll be scheduling for herself almost entirely. 

I'll still "inspect what I expect," but at that point, she'll be almost an adult, so I'll give her lots of freedom to decide for herself and give her enough rope to hang herself, so to speak, and institute some tough consequences if enough of the work isn't done. 

But I'll wait till she's old enough to actually understand that the failure of judgement and action is hers, because she will have had several years of success in Challenge when her mom was helping her schedule..

That's what I did with my oldest. 

But this daughter is not ready for that much freedom yet, and she won't be for years. 

Even if I didn't feel that I had to help her schedule her work, I would probably want to. 

Reading the guide in detail and helping her plan day by day, hour by hour, makes me aware of what is going on. 

It allows for fellowship and coaching and encouragement and sometimes rebuke and admonishment. 

But we actually laughed a lot today as we talked through everything. 

This skill of scheduling work and life will come in handy. 

My oldest is off to college, and she's scheduling everything for herself now. 

But she's been reading the Challenge guide, which is basically a collection of syllabi, and portioning work since she was twelve-thirteen, so she was good and ready to do that. 

After ten years in and around the Challenge program, I find that the parents who don't inform themselves about what is in their student's guide and who put all or most of the responsibility on their students to read the guide and figure out how to do it all are the people who end up most disappointed in their student and/ or with the Challenge program. 

They usually have to leave. 

When you ask the non-schedulers where they are going, the "better fit" for their student is always a learning environment that provides scheduling, structure, oversight, involvement, accountability- all the things involved in scheduling.  

Of course, people leave Challenge for lots of other valid reasons. 

But those people usually know why they are leaving, and they leave quietly without bitterness or disillusionment, understanding it's not Challenge's fault or their kid's fault. 

It's the non-schedulers who unfortunately seem to suspect something's inherently wrong with their kid and/or wrong with the whole program. 

But when a parent doesn't schedule, it is not the student's failure or the failure of the Challenge program. 

Leaving any teenager to figure things out for themselves, especially as many things as they have to figure out in a Challenge guide, is like tying a millstone around a little one's legs and throwing him in the deep end of the pond then blaming him or the millstone for his drowning. 

Some kids are exceptional. 

In my time, I've seen some of those, too, and I'm always impressed with the students who are self-motivated enough to do all or even most of the work independent of their mom's oversight.  

But most regular kids just sink without this kind of help, support, and accountability. 

My kids are the regular sort. 

So we plan and of course, we work the plan and then I check up to see the plan is mostly followed.  

So my advice to young parents who are still aware that they are weak enough human beings to actually ruin all their plans to homeschool through highschool if they don't get enough things right, who still actually hope their student can get all the way through Challenge, is to stop thinking or expecting their regular kid to be exceptionally, supernaturally mature for their age, and just sit with their student and schedule and then check up after them, of course. 

It's the most important thing I do to ensure success in the Challenge program.  

Scheduling is the greatest commandment, and the second is like unto it: Check up to see the plan got followed. 

 

The Cloisters

We spent Friday at The Cloisters. What an other-worldly place! The gardens were magical and beautiful with medicinal and edible and even poisonous plants. The herb room with all the drying herbs was the most delicious thing I’ve ever smelled. Think of prying the lid off a tin of the best loose leaf tea then multiply that sensation exponentially.

We sat here for lunch and enjoyed sights of interesting carvings hidden on all sides of the columns and walls surrounding us, the birds that flew over the roof and into the garden, and the flowering plants and  busy bumble bees. 

We watched two juvenile pigeons peck, peck, peck their mom and each another for several minutes. The nest was in one of the fruit trees inside a cloistered garden and close enough to touch. 

So many images and symbols to interpret and inspire the imagination! 

We begin Cycle 2 on The Middle Ages in Classical Conversations soon, so the timing of this visit was perfect. As we admired and discussed each piece, we could often recognize the images from the Bible stories we know, or place it on our Classical Conversations timeline, or locate an items original place using our memorized geography facts, or use our Latin Grammar to puzzle out meanings of words. I think we enjoyed pouring over the details drawn on the playing cards and in the illuminated books best of all. We were thrilled to see a set of the playing cards in the gift shop. We use a set of playing cards everyday for our math calculating games in Quick Flip Arthimetic, so we got a set to bring home for our games.