Author: Angela

I write so my family will always have letters from home.

Happy Labor Day Weekend

I hope your Labor Day weekend is happy. Are you going to have a barbecue with family? Will you take a drive to the mountains? This picture is of my mom and me. Sarah, do you see your reflection in this picture?

Of all the seasons, I love autumn best. Labor Day signals my brain to start thinking in jewel tones. Cozy thoughts such as pie making and plans for homemade Christmas gifts (So what if I never actually make them!) give me hope for happy times during the next few months.

My week has been stressful. I was summoned for jury duty and I was excused. I prepared and taught a science lab to 35 kids on Friday. I made calls for church and prepared a monthly newsletter. I fixed our broken washer this morning… I think. I used up almost a ream of paper making copies. I worked on a website for a homeschool group. We dissected a frog. We raced homemade boats. We swam, we danced, we drove. We read, we built, we solved.

I prepared comfort food all week. I just felt like I needed it. Have you had a busy week leading up to Labor Day? Maybe the contrast of such a busy week will make Labor Day seem more restful. I hope so…for both of us.

Camping

We went camping this weekend on Mount Lemmon with our church.

What is that you have, Mark?

Oh, a tiny horned lizard!

Timothy found one, too, but it was much bigger.

Daniel whittled.

Paige was great at tent setup and cleanup. Yes, she IS that incredible.

Everything was packed and ready to go, but we lingered. The pleasant temperatures, the pines, and the company kept us there. Just ignore that odd expression on my face.

Sometimes it just isn’t pretty

Sometimes homeschooling means smelling up your whole house. And getting bone chips in your hair as you try to expose fish brain.

My younger children are scarred for life over the dissections we’ve been cramming in this month. Emphatically spoken, “Mom, I don’t WANT to do dissection when I’m in high school!”

To which I reply, “Okay. You don’t have to.” And I mean it. I don’t know if we will do this again, even if we do it in the winter when we can do it outside.

I took pictures of our last dissection because it was incredibly smelly and difficult. Just skip them if you’re queasy about this kind of thing. Paige and her friend have one more dissection next week: a big old frog.

 

Timothy’s Spring Piano Pieces

Timothy began taking piano lessons last fall. He loves to play. His piano teacher often assigns him songs from our church. She is not of our faith, so it’s especially thoughtful.

 

Love is Spoken Here

And who can forget the essential Indian dance during the first year of piano study?

Indian Song

I love this old photo of Timothy and Daniel on the horse.

Horse Sense

 

The Lego Library

It’s fascinating to listen to people’s reactions to our home. We have a tile (I won’t tell you where) which must have some magic. Whenever someone steps on this tile, they compliment the house. Is it perfect feng shui from this tile’s perspective? Is there a conduit of light that touches a person’s aesthetic sensitivities just the right way? It’s not the furniture… it’s not the decorating. It could be the shiny black piano, but that would give away the relative position of the tile, so never mind.

Besides this one spot from our hallway, I receive compliments about our plastic Lego drawers. They are 12×12 inch drawers with lids which fit in a tower of seven. They were made for scrapbook supplies, but they can contain even large Lego sets. I stack them recklessly and precariously. I call them our Lego Library. In this library, each child checks out one box at a time, so to speak. I bought them at Target, but I’m afraid they are no longer sold at my store. Drat.

Most of the Legos in this collection came from a yard sale and we paid $4 a set. Smokin’ deal. I wish we had bought more. I scanned the original nicotine-riddled boxes and printed them for the front and top of each plastic box.

When you want to play, you just pull out your box…

and play with the set. Remember: you must clean up your set before you get another one. Only one set allowed per child. When friends come over, I say no more than 3 sets out at a time.

I also bought drawers without lids for Mark’s Legos.

When I give a big Lego set to the kids, we give them a new drawer for storing it.

Most of our Legos are not this organized. I see these lidded drawers as a place to keep special sets intact, and the Legos in the bedrooms are for more creative play. In the bedrooms we store Legos in long under-bed boxes. The Lego Library is kept separate from the other Legos in the house.

As a mother of 3 boys, a lot of energy is spent dealing with Legos… and dirty socks.

Thanks for listening.

Fifteen!

I have a tradition of decorating the birthday child’s bedroom door. This year, I enlarged and printed some of Paige’s dance photos. I cut out the dancer, traced the cutout on dark paper and cut out again.

We decorated sugar cookies, went out to eat, and went shopping for clothes.

We ended the day with a chick flick with Paige’s best friend. We munched on Paige’s signature gourmet sandwiches and sat down to watch the 2009 BBC version of Emma.

The little brothers contributed sweet and thoughtful gifts. Timothy made a mouse out of Sculpey clay for her. Mark wrapped each gift… several days early.

Here is Paige playing Mazurka in G Minor by Chopin:

and Minuet in G Major by Beethoven:

Our Paige is quite a person.

artist

great big sister

helpful daughter

peacemaker

dancer

pianist

math wiz

beautiful

great sandwich maker

well-read

righteous

kind

My Life as a Schoolmarm

I’m a teacher of many grades. It’s been done before and it has been done more efficiently by countless schoolmarms in sparse schoolhouses without math manipulatives, microscopes, or the internet. I don’t count myself as being remarkable or unique, but it IS a very exciting life.

My subject matter ranges from early phonics lessons to Dante’s Inferno. In the same day I will answer questions such as, “What is a mushroom?” and ask, “How do roots help trees?” Later I will teach teach field markings for birds. Then I’ll correct errors in scientific method questions and give directions for a dissection at my kitchen table. I juggle time periods in history, algebraic algorithms, and geometric proofs. I drill basic addition and multiplication facts and direct Mark to color the longest snake orange and the shortest snake blue. I snicker at inventive stories and correct grammar in book reports; I dictate sentence after sentence for my young elementary student to write. I search out and make up thought-provoking essay questions for the study of classic literature.

Why do I do it?

I have insatiable curiosity, I perceive a necessity, and I love teaching.