Celebrating family culture and peaceful days
As you may have gathered from my billion posts on the subject, my kids fell in love with the Blue Balliet books this spring and summer and along the way, fell down a bunch of different rabbit holes. Pentominos were one. Frank Lloyd Wright was another.
When they discovered Fallingwater was located in Pennsylvania, the children insisted on adding it to our summer fun list. And a few weeks ago, we were able to make that particular dream come true.
So, I’m still home. I’m facing the reality that life as I knew it might be a bygone thing, and I’m learning to find my peace with it. My therapist– and let’s face it, when you’re going through this sort of life upheaval, it’s really to your benefit to have a therapist– suggested, when I told her how much I miss writing and blogging that I channel that energy into writing about life with epilepsy instead. I thought about it, but then decided I really didn’t want to. I don’t like living with epilepsy and I certainly don’t want to write about it. Instead, I’ve decided to go back to blogging and writing about my passion– play-based early childhood education. At first, I wondered if I really could. I’m not homeschooling. I’m not teaching. I’ll have my children for the summer, but then they’re back to school. Can I really still blog about these things, or would I be a fraud?
Jasmere has organic soap, body oils, etc. from Moksa Organics. You get a $35 voucher for only $15! And that’s just the price for now- remember that with Jasmere, the more people who buy the deal, the lower the price goes. This looks like a great eco-conscious company. I would love to try the body butter.
Totsy has Sage Creek Organics on sale for 50% off. I love this company. I still have Sage Creek Organic clothes that my oldest wore– they’re long lasting and beautiful.
Groupon has $240 worth of Native Remedies for $20. They have some great stuff in their child health section.
Online, at least. In real life, things are hopping.
Sunday was the nicest Mother’s Day ever. It started on Saturday, with Katie Grace’s ballet recital. Usually I go to the rehearsal and take lots of pictures and videos. With the twins, I wasn’t able to. She did such a beautiful job and smiled her lovely smile the entire time. All of the dances were just beautiful and I was once again so grateful for St. John School of the Arts and Ms. Teresa’s efforts to protect her little ballerinas’ childhood innocence.
We have a dear friend who does our evaluations, gives our standardized tests, shoots the early childhood breeze with me, and every so often points at me, laughs, and insists we are unschoolers. I don’t know why I’m so resistant to the label, but I really don’t believe we are. I believe in curriculum. I believe in objectives and the authority of the teacher/parent. I believe in lesson plans and scopes and sequences and Bloom’s taxonomy and all that other good stuff I studied in educational psychology.
We’ve been here, there, and everywhere. OK, actually, we’ve been to:
1. Grove City, PA to have lunch with college friends
2. Wadsworth, OH where we stayed with college buddies for a few days. The boys visited the Football Hall of Fame and the girls (and Daniel) had a lovely tea
3. South Bend, IN, where we visited an awesome bookstore (only a homeschool mom’s husband truly appreciates a good bookstore!) and the campus of Notre Dame
4. On to Strawberry Point, IA for five days with good friends from Seminary. Daniel got to meet his godfather for the first time, and we got to visit many places, including a Laura Ingalls Wilder museum, the Effigy Mounds National Park, one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s homes, and the Dubuque Aquarium. The last day was my birthday, and it started with breakfast in bed, a bounty of homemade cards, and an “Angel of Learning” Willow Tree figure from my family. We had ice cream cake the day before.
5. Chicago, where we celebrated my birthday by visiting the Chicago Institute of Science and Industry
Ah, but it was not simply for the interactive exhibits that we came and bought a family membership. It was for the Harry Potter Exhibition.
