Joseph's Journal--June

In June, Joseph is joyful!

How Does Our Garden Grow?

This morning Thomas came in from breakfast and excitedly said, "Mom! I have flowers on my tomato plants!" He could hardly wait for me to finish feeding Joseph before taking me outside to look at the yellow blooms. On two plants we even found some green ping-pong ball sized tomatoes. I'm amazed we've missed them until now, but we have been pretty busy lately.

Maria is boasting one carrot top and, full of hope, has replanted the rest of her box. Our most attentive gardener Anthony has corn as high as an elephant's eye...if the elephant were James' size. And Cecilia's marigolds have bloomed and completely covered her garden statue of St. Cecilia.

Only Charles' strawberries have been a disappointment (to me, not to him). After bearing a few red gems, the plants started turning red and spotty, then brown and dead. If I act quickly, we might be able to save a few, but I've hardly been home since May and don't have the brain power to pursue it today. I could hardly write this post coherently.

PS My new camera will be arriving soon. :)

One berry, two berry...

...drove 120 miles to pick me a blueberry.

Price of Gas: $4.03/gal

12 pints of blueberries: $20

Hearing ker-plink, ker-plank, ker-plunk of berries falling from a child's hand into a tin pail: priceless.

More about Joseph

Joseph is cooing and laughing and sucking his thumb. He has had 5 haircuts (and needs another one). At his well baby appointment he weighed 13 1/2 lbs and still seemed like such a little guy until we saw a newer baby. Now I think Joseph is growing up too fast.

First Day of Summer

The public schools ended Friday, and so did we. We have little odds and ends that I still want to pick up and finish, but I'm giving us all a week off before we do anything. It won't be a pool day today because of predicted thunderstorms, so we'll make banana bread and pick up a summer read aloud which I'm looking forward to. One thing I noticed is that even when we leave the formal work behind, we don't abandon learning. The kids read all morning, made up new board games, and begged to watch a The Way Things Work DVD. You can't really beat letting woolly mammoths teach physics be a TV treat, can you?

The standardized test results are in, and I thought I would share. Virginia looks for which stanine kids fall into overall. Each child must be in the 4th stanine or above to keep the parent off of probation. I'll give you the overall plus the individual picture.

Thomas (3rd Grade)
Word Analysis 6
Vocab 7
Comprehension 9
Spelling 4
Language Mechanics 5
Language Expression 9
Mathematics Computation 6
Math Concepts 7
Science 9
Social Studies 7
Overall 8

Anthony (3rd Grade)
Word Analysis 5
Vocabulary 7
Comprehension 8
Spelling 4
Language Mechanics 5
Language Expression 8
Mathematics Computation 8
Math Concepts 8
Science 6
Social Studies 8
Overall 7

Maria (1st Grade)
Word Analysis 6
Vocab 8
Comprehension 6
Language Mechanics 4
Language Expression 9
Math Computation 6
Math Concepts 6
Science 7
Social Studies 9
Overall 7

Some thoughts on the scores. Our curriculum doesn't teach all subjects in the same order or in the same way as a standard school would. This explains Language Mechanics for Maria and some of the Math scores since they covered material we haven't introduced. In other areas, like Lang. Mech. for the boys and Spelling, I thought those subjects needed a little beefing up,. I think the scores agree, although the spelling score is actually an improvement from last year. So there were no surprises, Bill and I are happy, and everyone scored well enough to satisfy the state. Next week I'll send these scores in, and our year will be officially done.

Distracted Mom

You know you are a distracted mom when you tell the doll on the toddler bike in the living room to pick up her shoes.....three times.

So what's distracting me? Well, I would insert a picture of Joseph's smiling double chinned baby face here, but my camera is broken.

What also occupied my thoughts that day and in the cracks of spare time since has been what went best with our homeschool year and what do I want to improve for next year. To jump start my thinking I have been following my friend Elizabeth's summer study on Charlotte Mason. Right now we are reading Education is... and thinking about Miss Mason's motto:

Education is an atmosphere, a discipline and a life.

I love this motto. It is a simple reminder that learning is always happening and should always be happening. So, following Elizabeth's pace, I've been pondering about the atmosphere of our home and the discipline in our home.

The atmosphere I would love to see is one of gentleness. One where brother comforts his sister whom he has hurt or sister chooses to show her knitting to little brother instead of hiding it if he looks interested. I want a home where Mother says, "Are you ok?" before "What happened?" I would love to see an atmosphere of hospitality and graciousness. I would like to have a home where friends big and small feel welcome and comfortable. I think this is especially important as our kids get older and are more challenged by life. I would rather see them and their friends occupied in a constructive way in our welcoming home (and under our watchful eye) than elsewhere. I'm not saying I want to constrain them. I want them to want to be here and to want to bring their friends too.

Right now, I feel like our atmosphere is often one of false efficiency. Don't bore me with details, just tell me what I need to do to fix it. But what sort of atmosphere is fostered by my interrupting a boring story to find out if there is blood and where (and if the story is long, there'd better be blood or you're wasting my time)? But I realize that efficiently dealing with this problem in front of me in the way I do isn't modeling empathy or gentleness or love. I'm trading taking care of today's problem for planting the seeds of virtue. So I am reminding myself to kneel at their level, to make eye contact and listen, to speak gently and softly, and to try to care that this child feels cheated and wounded because her 2 year old brother drank the last few ounces of her Gatorade. Because it does matter to her. And fortunately, I have a few friends who can model this sort of mothering on a daily basis.

As far as discpiline goes, I think the kids are being well trained in many ways. And the ways they are not well trained are due to me not doing my job well enough. Last night, Bill gently pointed out that you should not beat your boss to work regularly. So when I come down to breakfast 15-30 minutes after them and still in my pjs, they are beating me to work. I thought it was a very good point and getting up early has suddenly become true priority. Nothing else but Bill's insight and example has ever convinced me that losing 30 minutes of sleep was worthwhile. Now I feel ready to get up as soon as the alarm calls me. And I could immediately see that if I am faithful to beating the kids to work, my job of training them and helping our routines develop into habits will go much more smoothly.

This is really the Cliff notes version of my thoughts. If you are interested in reading Education Is...., click here for a free e-book. I printed mine since it is only 45 pages.

Here is a link to Elizabeth's insights about atmosphere. Here is a link to her thoughts on discipline.