Flow

Every once in a while, it happens.  Everyone is engrossed in their work.  Thinking, planning, enjoying, not wanting to stop.  When flow hits, I want to stop long enough to recognize the moment for what it is and feel grateful.  That's why I stopped for 10 seconds and snapped this picture in the middle of a "school" morning last week.

Our work certainly doesn't look like this all the time (although snapshots from a blog can make it look like Heaven on Earth here.  Which it is.  SOMETIMES).  There are some days, or even, God help me :), a string of days, when icky moods and a lack of direction send me into a tailspin of doubt about the slightly unschooled route we've/I've opted for.   

Recognizing the almost magical moments of flow keeps us all going.  It helps remind me that the hard stuff is followed by more of the good stuff.  That flow will return. It also reassures me that the route we are on is a good one.

 In this particular case, J and C were enthralled with these paper dolls.  For three days or so, everything revolved around them, which led to looking at the map, perusing our copy of Material World, incorporating the paper dolls into our daily writing, and building homes for them.  Jenna kept going with this much longer than Caroline, so I used the opportunity to sew a pillow with Caroline. 

Caroline (staring at her camping pillow):  "I wonder how they make pillows."
A bit of talk about how they might make them and what they put in them.
Mama:  "You could make one if you want to."
Caroline:  "OKAY!  Can we do it for my school work?"
So we did.

The Places School Can Happen

Where does "school" take happen for us when we are at home?  Here are a few places...

On pallets...

In bed (reading before Caroline's nap)...

At the lunch counter....

 Under the cherry blossom tree...

Down the hallway (crazy math):

and back from the hallway into the living room

On the deck...

In the bathroom (Jenna reading the stories she wrote the day before to Daddy as he showers for work.  :))

In the kitchen...

In the backyard...

In the garden...

ALL over the house....

Learning and playing.  Everywhere.  It makes for a trashed house, but it's worth it.

A Letter to Little Squirrel

Jenna looked at Gerda Muller's Autumn book for a couple of minutes this morning and then said there was something she wanted to do "right now." 

This basket is waiting for Little Squirrel on the front porch.  If he doesn't come get the contents tonight, she will move the basket up to the barn where he might feel safer from the Doobus.  This was all Jenna, even the idea to add a list of nuts squirrels like, based on the information we read in a Berries, Nuts, and Seeds book we checked out from the library.

P.S. the pink paper is some leftover pokeberry paper from last fall she found in the secretary.

Hitting the Drive Thru For Lunch

I've tried applying author Gretchen Rubin's point that what we do a little bit every day matters more than what we do every once in a while, in several areas of my/our lives.

It works in homeschooling too.

I've served lunch at a "restaurant" before for fun.  We are doing it daily now and the girls love getting their paper money, ordering at the drive-thru on their trikes, parking in the parking lot, looking over the menu and then paying for their food.  Caroline practices counting her coins and Jenna figures out the change she is owed. (I started this because Jenna was very confused about when and why you get money back when you pay for something).  This little bit of math everyday is making a big difference in their understanding of change.  Even more importantly, it's a lot of fun.  This is "Sally's."

oh....and lots of times we serve animals too!

This Moment

The Spaces She Creates

Nearly everyday, Jenna builds a small structure of some sort.  She builds for her people, her Barbies, wondering fairies looking for a place to spend the night, and injured insects needing a soft bed and safe home.   Building, building, on and off, sometimes for several hours, with blocks and bark, legos and fabric, flowers and leaves and cardboard boxes.  Sometimes she plays only briefly with what she's built, declaring that her people need to move (and explaining to us that often the fun is in the construction itself).  Sometimes her homes are played with for many days, scattered in all sorts of random places. Only when they have been abandoned for a string of days do we dare to take them apart (uh...or when we need the coffee table back or keep tripping over them :).  Here are just a few I've caught on camera over the last couple of months:

Barbie Bed atop a closet:

   
A Fairy House in the works---she checked diligently for several days for signs of usage. 

I think this one was a Lego pontoon boat, or maybe a submarine

A Cabin with a Loft

 And then there are the mini-farms she creates with her red barn... 

 

This is the latest one she's worked on...A House for the paper dolls which includes a chicken coop....

and an outhouse...

When she saw me working on this post, she said, "Daddy, are you thinking what I'm thinking?  Will you please build a lego house with me?"  So, they were off and I've listened to the tink of lego pieces as I finish my computer "work."  :)

Some Firsts For the Four-Year-Old of the House

1.  The First Violin Lesson...

The student was quite shy at first, despite loving Ms. Olivia very much, preferring to keep a little hand on Mommy's leg for the first 1/3 of the lesson.  But then she began to revel a bit in the attention and I'm pretty sure she smiled the entire time. 

Note:  Not that either parent here thinks our four-year-old needs to start playing the violin, but we have a such a wonderful, sweet teacher, we are already going for lessons anyway, we thought it would be good for Caroline to get to share in the lesson she sits patiently in every week for her sister and when we asked her if she wanted to start she said, "Yeah."  This is her one and only "extracurricular" activity, beyond playing and naps.  :)  I'm still not 100% convinced now is exactly the time for her to begin playing, but given the positive atmosphere we are doing it in, at least there shouldn't be any harm in it.  :)

2. Writing Her Own Name

While Jenna was working on some writing, Caroline started making all the letters she knew (see the first line of letters in the picture).  Obviously wanting more to write, she asked me to please write her name on the paper.  She then promptly began to copy the letters on her own, struggling only a bit with the harder ones (but didn't need to ask for help), without having any idea what most of the letters were.  The three of us all "oohed and aahed" for a bit.  She wasn't finished though, writing her name several more times and requesting more words like "shirt" and "chicken." Sweetness, sweetness.  (oh and how much I love her morning hair).