easing back in

The north wind doth blow, and there shall be snow....

And what will my family do then?

They'll snuggle in tight

And sleep through the night

And dream of an early spring.


Ok, so I couldn't resist sharing this photo (and being a little silly with the rhyme from one of my kids' new favorite seasonal poems/songs).

It's true, it's hard to deal with all this cold and ice and snow. But we can't help but smile a little at this VERY typical winter. The past several years (or longer!), it's been abnormally mild in January. It's much easier to plan snowy themes around January the way it's SUPPOSED to be -- cold, white, and semi-miserable. It's just not January without a touch of frostbite....

Seriously, though, I've been spending the week planning out our next couple of blocks. We'll be starting our 2nd Math Block of the year on Monday. During this block we'll be introducing the concepts of greater than and less than, and odd and even, amongst other things. These topics are typically covered during the same block at the numerals, but I decided to split up the material into two blocks. For my kids, I felt that the extra attention on comprehension and moving at a slower pace is a good choice. Add to the fact that Zoo Boy really isn't old enough for first grade yet, I thought the way the curriculum was written moved a bit fast for him. I'm in no hurry to get through the materials, and taking care to establish a deep understanding of the concepts is very important to me. No need to rush things!

Today I put the finishing touches on our new Adventure Circle (with a Snowy theme, of course!), which I'll share once we actually start using it and I can get some pertinent photos to go with it. I still have a couple of manipulatives to make and activities to plan out for the math stuff, but I will feel ready by Monday. Unlike this PAST Monday, when my kids were clearly ready to get started again, but I was not. Instead, I ramped up our daily rhythms a bit in preparation for next week.

So this week we're getting up at our "normal" time (rather than whenever we felt like rolling out of bed, like the past couple of weeks), which means that I've got breakfast on the table right at 8:00. We're doing some sensory-rich relay races instead of circle at it's assigned spot in our rhythms, and playing board or card games in place of story work, but it's giving our mornings a more structured feel. We're still having the longer rest (2+ hours) during the afternoon (which I honestly wouldn't mind keeping as a permanent part of our rhythms), but we've added Reading Practice time back into our afternoons again. (The kids wouldn't allow me to put that off any longer -- they insisted on starting with that again by the end of last week.)

So we're getting ready. Which means I'll soon have a reason to update the blog more regularly. Thanks for your patience in the meantime! I've needed the break, and have been quite enjoying being away from the computer a bit more than usual.