Super Slack Six Weeks

I've been super slack about writing on this blog for the past uh . . .six weeks maybe?  We returned from Indiana and were home for three weeks before leaving for WA, home two days and off to CA for four more, then home for two weeks leading up to Turkey Day and Daddy's birthday and well, it's just been a bit of trying to keep it all together at the moment.

There's no way I could possibly quantify the learning we have done, but let's be honest. . .I've also been super slack about doing focused learning time with my 1st grader as well.  As the holidays begin to pass and colder weather has us inside more often, and we are on the ground for a while, I find myself getting a restless feeling that says we are ready to really take on some routine again.

We will begin our second session of our co-op classes this week.  I have taken on some new personal health goals.  I'm trying to create a plan that will suit our current situation, watching a toddler until noon, having my own toddler who only naps about an hour each day, wanting to soak up any remaining ray of sunshine with my daughter's new found love of riding her bike in the park (which we've done once), and balancing my own personal needs/goals with a houseful of people who also need me, and a very crowded schedule, none of which seems to be able to go to the wayside.

I'd like to tackle a craft a day through December.  Begin work on our ABCs with my younger one.  Get some 18mo appropriate ideas for the little one I watch so we can all spend an hour or so at the table crafting/creating/learning each day.  And just get down to business with a regular school routine for my oldest.  Alani is NOT a child who does things on her own.  Another mother might be able to leave an instrument lying out in plain site with music sheets open and available so that her child would pick up and do a practice on her own now and again, but my child wants to put on a concert each and every time, wants me to write down the name of the new piece she "plays" each day :)  (free play of course and never written down, so it can never be repeated).  My child wants me there to count out every half note and quarter note and every note we're playing, walking her through her practice.  Therefore, if I do not make the time in my life for 30 minutes of violin practice each day, she will not be able to practice each day.  This is why I always have to admit to her teacher that "we" did not get in much practice.  I should just learn the violin along with her. . .wait, I AM!  I feel like I can ply the violin just as well at this moment, as she can.  I wonder if I should rent an instrument and pay her teacher :)

Alani and I have little discussions here and there "what's a mineral?  why do we have them in our bodies?"  Four thousand questions as we go along in Little House on the Prairie, stopping me every third sentence to repeat words or phrases she finds funny, but mostly doesn't understand.  We talked about organically and non-organically grown potatoes and food last night, which stemmed (bwahahaha) from Little House and how sweet potatoes and have eyes.  I had to tell her that these days, you can only plant organic potatoes, because those grown with a special pesticide INSIDE of them, are created so they won't sprout at all and we have to buy that company's products in order to grow our own.

She has continued in her weekly art class, where they are writing and illustrating a story at the moment.  She's running around trying to teach people hand games and working on jumping rope and other things.

I wish our lives and our space were more organized, and maybe just MORE. . .

I talked to her about women's suffrage when I voted earlier this month, which piggy backed a discussion we had with her Girl Scout troop a few weeks earlier  about the Millennium Development Goals of the UN for the GAA, where we had to tell a bunch of six year old girls that girls don't have the same privileges everywhere in the world.  We didn't tell them that women still don't have equality in pay in the work force. . . heavens. . .my friend Amy's daughter said the funniest thing "Mom, I jumped really high and I broke the glass ceiling and I brought you back a man's job."

We are learning all the time, I'm trying to take more opportunity to stop and explain when she has a question, because she's more ready now to hear the explanations.

But this one. .. she's a lap learner.  She reads better if I have my arm around her, than if I just sit next to her. She is proficient in math while she sits in my lap during her sister's naptime.

She has a mind for memorization.  She does better to memorize the note patterns (DEF#) on a page and then play them from her head, than to watch them as she plays.  She is learning sign language quite well and very excited about it.  This week we will begin sewing and yoga and she'll continue in sign and art.  I PLAN (ha) to do a T/Th/S routine of morning schoolwork while setting the littles to busy things, Airi with Alphabet work and H with. . .who knows what. . .coloring.