summary -- week #13/winter #1

It was a really good week to start our Winter semester. It started with an ice storm. It snowed twice after that. Of the 7 days in the upcoming forecast, winter precipitation is expected for 5 of them. Unfortunately, most of what is expected is more ice. That's really bad news if you make your living chasing sheep around with dogs, because I've yet to be able to fit sheep and/or dogs with ice skates that stay on their feet. (Even if I could, I'm unsure of my ability to teach them to skate -- but I'd be happy to charge their owners for trying!)

Because of the winter weather, we spent a lot of time playing indoors this week. At some point, the kids obviously wished on a Thanksgiving wishbone, because here's a picture of them doing it in my camera. Guess the camera elves were busy at work again....

J had his homeschool chorus class and drum circle on Monday, and then participated in a museum class called "Fun with Fungus" on Tuesday, where they learned about mushrooms and made yeast bread. Meanwhile, I spent a lot of time mulling over my kids' educational plan and reaffirming my commitment to following the path I've chosen. I'm in a good place with it all now. I opened the curriculum package, sorted and loaded the binders, flipped through the pages a bit (and the 1st Grade Enki Education materials are every bit as wonderful, and more so, as the Kindergarten materials are), and cleared a space on the shelf for them. There they sit, happily awaiting my finding time to read them in depth. It will happen -- I'm fiddling around with our daily and weekly rhythms to make being at home more of a priority for the Winter semester.

(J works on creating with blocks -- he made a huge structure, and when The Map Man commented on it, J said "I had an idea in my brain and I builded it." How great is that?!)

We changed our Movement Circle to jive with our shift to Winter. Some of the songs and verses were purposely changed over the course of the last few weeks to selections that were appropriate for either late fall or early winter (about squirrels and nuts and hibernation and wind and such). Some of our regular pieces have slightly different verses/movements for each of the seasons, yet stay the same tune/story, so those were the ones we switched to this week. I also added a song about snowfall, since we've been having some this week. And we changed one of our opening songs completely (although it's the same basic types of movements that were in the other song), as well as swapping out the months/season academic verse that we used throughout the fall semester for an alphabet verse that we'll use throughout the winter. I was a little leary about changing so much all at once, but the kids took it in stride. In fact, Zoo Boy is more apt to participate fully in circle when there's something new.

As I wrote about on Friday, our curriculum story for the week was Stone Soup, and we brought the story to life by making the very soup they talked about throughout the story. It had such a nice effect of bringing the week to an integrated end that I'm going to try to do that sort of thing more often. I'm also going to try to cook more often with them as well, since the kids really enjoyed it, and The Map Man and I enjoyed eating something that wasn't from a box for a change.

The weekend's big project has been setting up new quarters for our sheep. Check it out! Doesn't it look cozy? Now we've got room to spare in the barn, a private suite for our ram when he's done visiting with the ladies, and luxury accommodations with a spectacular view of the pasture for the rest of the flock. Seriously, The Map Man is threatening to run an extension cord from the barn and set up a TV, a sofa, and a small fridge in there so he can use it as his own private get-away.

Books for Family Story Time this week were: It's Winter!, by Linda Glaser, illustrations by Susan Swan; Winter: An Alphabet Acrostic, by Steven Schnur, illustrated by Leslie Evans (we just love Schnur's seasonal collections of Acrostic Poems!); and Snow Ponies, by Cynthia Cotten, illustrated by Jason Crockcroft (THE BEST winter story EVER!!). For Special Story Time on Friday evening, by the fireside, I read "Old Man Winter", an Enki Nature Story verse.

We're well on our way with our Winter semester!