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this might be a rant. or it might be the truth. or it could be both.
I’m not anti-higher education. I’m really not. (Although I think you already know how I feel about a system.) Shoot, I loved college. It was a good time. (Which promotes my point exactly.) I love learning. I mean, I’m dedicating my very life to the process, you know. But the more I teach, the more I learn, the more I realize that what I want to produce in our homeschool is not educated adults, per se. Not diploma-holding citizens. Not specific-abbreviations-past-your-given-name people. I want to produce learners. Thinkers. Imaginers. People who know how to find information and who want to get to that information. People who can think. And I’m…
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Wildwood Academy: Group Study
Homeschool is proceeding differently this year. A true statement I can make every year. Even though I waited in line a loooong time to get into a fabulous homeschool co-op last year, we’re not all doing the same co-op this year. (And it still is fabulous, mind you – just not what our house needs this year.) Riley is attending classes there but my younger crowd is heading in a different direction. I mentioned being excited (I might have said “wildly optimistic”) about an upcoming joint homeschooling venture with several other families. We’re two weeks in and it seems to be going swimmingly. The idea was born of thus: Four…
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Dear Every Friend I Have With Whom I Never Seem To Be Able To Spend Enough Time . . .
Dear Every Friend I Have With Whom I Never Seem To Be Able To Spend Enough Time . . . There have been times in my life when friendships were plentiful and times when friendships were few. High school was full of friends. Junior high not so much. Freshman first semester I was a little hard-pressed to land with solid friends, but by sophomore year I was golden. Post-college friendships took a pretty big fall. I think back then my only friend was my newly acquired spouse. (Well, I still had those beautiful college companions but we all lived too far away from one another to hang out regularly.) And…
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Today I Lived
Today I . . . Heard about cookie butter for the second time but have yet to actually see the food product. Forgot to bring the laundry in again after two days of rain showers. I think I saw a towel in the lawn but I just don’t want to walk over there and deal with it. Put off making applesauce with my bushel of apples for yet another day. Failed to have the girls clean their bedroom. Noticed mold growing on a book on our shelf. (This is the dampest house ever!) Wept with my husband over the heavy burden we feel to parent these sons and daughters tenderly…
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How To Celebrate Five With About That Many Dollars
1. Allow your daughter the rare (first in her lifetime actually) privilege of choosing three friends to invite over for an evening of fun. 2. Instruct the girls to all wear dress-up princess attire. 3. Have big sisters paint finger nails and toe nails, brush hair, apply sparkle lip gloss and show the girls their reflections in a handheld mirror. 4. Spread a cache of beads and girly-colored pipe cleaners on the table and create necklaces and bracelets galore. 5. Eat miniature snacks served in muffin tins. (Pizza bites. Baked mozzarella sticks. Broccoli and hummus. Apples with dip. Chocolate cupcakes with pink icing.) 6. Permit the princesses to run around…
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Book Club
I can’t believe we didn’t take a picture. Not one picture. Not this month. Not last month. Not the month before. Five mothers. Six daughters. That many cell phones equipped with efficient cameras and still no pictures. Three months ago several friends and I began a new venture together with a portion of our daughters. Book Club. It’s a Mother Daughter Book Club inspired completely by the book 100 Books for Girls to Grow On. (And I have been waiting all this time to write a post about it so that I could have photos to accompany words. But after tonight’s third time of forgetting to take a single photograph,…
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it is true
This is true . . . Bergen took a bath tonight using his snorkel and scuba mask. When I asked Otto what letter he learned in school today he said, “Two times”. I really meant it when I said to my friend, “I don’t mind the Legos strewn across the boys’ bedroom floor.” I almost refuse to clean out our stove. Mosely’s camping backpack is still not unpacked from last weekend’s trip. I frequently forget to return e-mails. I don’t always know when each child last bathed. We don’t own a regular vacuum. We use the shop vac for every day use. When I hang clothes on the line…
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Five Year Old Finnian.
There’s no end to the posts I’ve written about my youngest daughter. But when it’s your birthday – you get another one! Piper Finnian Willow Lacey turned five. Five! Half a decade. Little year on top of little year on top of little year. She only remembers ever having lived in South Carolina. She has no recollection of sleeping in a crib at the foot of our bed for the first six months of her life. Of loading all of our possessions in a U-Haul and moving two states down to as far south as I ever hope to reside. In her memory, her life began at Look Up Lodge…
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Keigley Campaign: The Idea(l)
I think it was May when we first had the idea. Yes, yes it was May. (I like how a blog reminds me of things I forget.) And it was also May when I said my plan was to tell you about our camping campaign idea. (I don’t like how blogs remind me of things I forget to do.) And so far, all I have done is tell you about one particular camping adventure. And that’s okay I guess. I doubt you’ve been hanging on to the edge of your seats waiting for me to follow through with that. (But if you have – I’m sorry.) And today I’m going…
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toy wedded bliss.
Kids get attached to specific toys. Growing up, my younger brother and I had our favorites. We loved Cabbage Patch Kids and we loved these two plastic Care Bears we carried in our pockets everywhere. My Buddy and Kid Sister were popular pals for us (anyone remember their theme song?) and we had two koala bears that accompanied us on many adventures. (We cleverly named them KB and Willie. KB for Koala Bear – get it?) Our children are just the same. And for reasons only totally understood by them, the five youngest of them have become strangely attached to a series of toys called Beanie Boos. We didn’t know…
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Wildwood Academy, established . . . uh, I’m bad with numbers
A few of our school supplies have not yet arrived in brown cardboard boxes at our door. However, we have officially begun the 2012-2013 school year. (I never have liked the fact that we tag on the next year’s date with this year’s date when we describe the school year. It makes the current year seem to go by so quickly. Why didn’t the inventor of the school year calendar just have school run from February to November or something? Anything more chronologically appealing than mashing two perfectly good years into one.) Like every parent out there, I am still in shock that I have a senior in high school…
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hello new school year
School’s back in session. And I’m snagging another one of Charlotte Mason’s ideas to encourage me to keep focus this year. I crafted a little art project with the quote and placed it in our school room. (I’ve been saving this ripped children’s book from my own kid days for a number of years, just waiting for the right art project to bring it out of hiding.) And now, I’m off to try to fill my kids’ days with something to love, something to think about and something to do!
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Weekend Company
It wouldn’t be a weekend visit from family if we didn’t introduce them to one of our favorite places. Sky Top Orchards, where the Honey Crisp are ripe for only a few weeks and the views from the orchard are life-giving. It’s so wonderful when an Ohio relative makes that long drive down South. The kids were thrilled to hear that Aunt B.A. was traveling our way with a cousin and a friend. For better or worse, our kids refer to Kevin’s sister affectionately as “the pickle aunt”. A name she has earned by presenting a giant jar of pickles to our many young ones upon each visit. (And then…
