Archive for the ‘Julie’s Life’ Category

Keep reading

Keep readingImage by Ally Mauro (cc tinted, text added)

In all our connectivity, we sometimes think we’ve read all day long, when in fact, we’ve absorbed bites of information as our eyes scroll over screens.

Read aloud time is one way to ensure that you get a dose of literature in your day. It nourishes you and your kids. It may take some work to find a way to fit it in (for me, I started the day with read aloud time—right after breakfast). But it’s worth it. If you have wiggly toddlers or fussy babies, try to read to the older ones while they are napping or at the breast (if the baby tolerates it – some do, some hate it).

In addition to reading to the kids, though, I hope you will read for pleasure yourself. Consider it a part of your “teacher-training.” You are a much better commentator on literature and movies when you, yourself, are reading adult fare. You are also a better human being when you connect to characters and their struggles/hurdles and discover new resources for how to meet your own challenges. You are a happier person when you are taken away from below zero weather, a computer in the shop, and an empty refrigerator to the tropics and a love story.

Reading for pleasure may seem like a chore initially. Who has time for that?

Here are a few ways I found the time when I was either pregnant, nursing, or both, and managing small children.

woman-reading 2

I read while I laid down to nurse a baby. This was my favorite way to read for years. I felt like I was being given the gift of a rest each time I did it. It didn’t work with nursing toddlers, but during the first year it did.

I listened to books on tape while making dinner. I put the TV on—usually Arthur—for the kids. Then I’d go to the kitchen and turn my tape recorder on low and listen while I prepared dinner. Totally changed how I felt about that task and time of day. I listened to so many books that way (I used to have a list).

Long car rides—I’d listen to a book on tape or CD. I had a few of these for conferences and instead of music, I would tackle Hemingway or Hugo or some other difficult to read book. The narration of the book helped me press through some of the difficult passages.

I used to read books aloud to my husband. We’d read a chapter before bed each night. We read some really long ones, including the entire Asia series by James Clavell (Shogun, Noble House, etc.).

I kept a book in my purse. All those visits to the doctor or dentist, sitting in a parked car during soccer or lacrosse practice, waiting for a performance to start for band or ballet—these moments are often crowded by cell phone scrolling now. But if you keep a book on your phone or if you tuck a paperback into your purse, you can use them for reading instead.

The benefits to reading for yourself are enormous. I recommend keeping one book going that is just for you. It’s like giving yourself a big chocolate bar and eating a square of it each day. It’s delicious, and you deserve it. Moreover, it makes you a better home educator and you’ll hardly even realize why.

Image of woman reading by Spirit-Fire

Posted in Julie's Life, Reading | Comments Off on Keep reading

If You’ve got a Passel of Kids

Homeschooling a Large FamilyBogart Kids, 1999

What I did when I homeschooled my five: I kept us all together as much as possible! Here’s how.

We started our days together every day. We spent one hour of the morning reading.

  • Devotional literature
  • Non Fiction (like books about nature or tanks or world religions or geography or the weather or how to make films…)
  • Aesop’s Fables or Greek myths (we did one of these each day for years)
  • Read Aloud (whatever novel we were reading as a group)
  • History book (we used a variety of narrative history texts over the years, not history textbooks)
  • Poetry (not every day, but many days—this is when we’d memorize poems together)

The kids usually knitted, or played with Legos or blocks while I read.

When we finished what we called Read Aloud Time, we would move to the table for math pages and copywork. These were usually according to level, but we did them all at once so that I could be in “math mind” or “writing mind” and not go back and forth.

Sometimes copywork came first, and usually passages were pulled from the same book, but different lengths per kid. Sometimes they picked their own copywork passages. New-to-writing kids used handwriting books.

Then we’d work on our history all together—same topic, same era. This might include preparing little oral reports or acting out a scene of history. It might include captioning an illustration of the reading of the morning or making maps or artifacts from that era. Sometimes we prepared a party to go with the era of history.

If we were working on a writing project, we all worked on the same topics or same concept for writing (posters – everyone, mini books – everyone, freewriting – everyone). Each child would write naturally at his or her level. It’s not like I had to drum up a brand new idea for each child each week. So exhausting! When we wrote descriptive paragraphs, we were all observing and note-taking and talking about our items at once, with me superintending. I didn’t create a project for each child, unique to that child.

Poetry Teatimes were always done as a group, poetry books of all levels available. I brought my adult poetry books to the table so I could share poems I found meaningful, even if above their level. I felt that was the best way to introduce them to some of the more challenging poets.

Then we might take a hike or kick a soccer ball in the yard or watch a movie or go to the store or to an art museum or the library…

The rhythm of our days was not determined by grade level. Rather, it was shaped by topics—each child would naturally perform at his or her level. That’s where “grade level” revealed itself. But I didn’t cater to it or pay it much notice, honestly.

It’s a shift in thinking. You are a one-room school house. You want to make the most of that environment. Create learning opportunities that call all of you together. Your older kids will inspire your younger ones, your younger ones will cheer up your older ones (and make them feel smart). They can work together, helping each other out, and making suggestions. They provide great audiences for one another too!

Brave Writer Family Writing Classes

Posted in Homeschool Advice, Julie's Life | 6 Comments »

It Really Does Go by Quickly

Kids_YoungerNoah, Johannah, Caitrin, Liam, and Jacob

When you are in the middle of the muddle (five kids under 9, all under foot), it doesn’t seem possible that you will one day emerge as a woman who will drive to a supermarket alone, buy herself a cafe latte, and stroll through the aisles putting juice and cookies in the cart—items never considered when seven people would devour them in fifteen minutes flat.

There are years where sleep is optional and comes in snatches between bed-wettings and breast feeding, uncomfortable belly bumps and night terrors. Sometimes insomnia strikes on the one night everyone sleeps through. Ah the cruelty. Ah the endless sleeplessness.

You live with an enormous amount of pressure to make it all work:

  • The stuffed bedrooms of two and three children sharing a space not big enough for one let alone two or three
  • The disarray of shoes with matches and mismatches and no time to sort out if you have pairs or not
  • The endless trade of strep throat cultures from toothbrush to toothbrush all winter long
  • The hotel-stays with children sprawled all over the floor to save precious dollars
  • The attempt to be at all soccer, lacrosse, baseball, and basketball games for multiple children with one car and a husband working on Saturday mornings
  • All ballet, band, Shakespeare, theater, vintage dance, and guard rehearsals and performances, sometimes on the same nights
  • All art and science fairs
  • All co-op and homeschool support group meetings (while finding childcare)
  • Saving money from grocery budgets or making trades for tutoring or online classes
  • Working part time with a newborn in your arms
  • Being so sick yet homeschooling anyway
  • Moving across the country in the middle of the school year and praying your children won’t be behind at the end of it
  • Unknotting tangled hair through tears
  • Giving haircuts to boys without any training
  • Living with a kitchen the size of a postage stamp
  • Never updating furniture, hairstyles, or wardrobes for years at a time…

You do it with energy and optimism (most of the time), right in the middle of your marital challenges, work pressures, and postpartum depression.

Your kids keep growing up despite your best and worst efforts.

Suddenly, one of them…goes! Right out the door and you’re packing his room into cardboard boxes…and the fact that you can see the floor for the first time in four years is cold comfort, while you hug this man-child and worry about him in new ways and he leaves, unaware of the big hole he leaves behind in the fabric of this family.

Then the next one: bam! She picks her duvet and laptop covers, drives 100 miles, and never returns…not really ever in the same way.

At the same rate they were born, they leave. Every two years like clockwork—while you try to stay present to the ones still home, still needing all that devoted attention. But a piece of you moves out each time the next one packs a box and finds a new bed. You suffer a little even as you gain old “pre-children” liberties long forgotten.

One day, when you least expect it (only you have expected it for 20+ years), you look up and know (really know) that you are at the end of this long journey called “stay-at-home parenting.” It happens when the last one is still at home, but receives her acceptance to college. It happens when your first one graduates from college. It happens when one of your children marries. It happens whether you want it to or not.

There’s no turning back the clock and all the hard things (the years that felt unending and tiring and overwhelming and difficult) are finished. Just. Like. That. What remains is this air-from-your-lungs-stealing awareness that you can never go back.

But oh how the good memories take over! Like a flood! Suddenly it’s as though your children were the most amazing people ever…because they were (and are), all along. You knew it! That’s why you stayed home with them. Those memories are warm comfort. They are the ones that matter. The long years seem incredibly brief in that light. Part of you wants those years back (oh the insanity!).

When you get to the end of your “small children under foot rope,” hold on. Do the best you can in that moment and remind yourself that there will be a day you will wish yourself back to this very moment, missing the immediacy of your family and their needs. The end will come suddenly, with finality. Then you will know what all these little moments really mean. They are the moments of your life—what you grew up to be and do (among other things, but maybe none so important as this thing—this ‘loving your children’ thing). Your life, written in your all-day-long shared experiences with your children. How lucky we are!

I wish you strength for the journey so you will know the joy of the memories in days ahead.

I’m nearly to the end of my journey. How I’ve loved it.

Kids OlderCelebrating Liam’s high school graduation

Posted in Julie's Life, Parenting | 14 Comments »