Work Stations

Almost every year I seem to design a new workplace. Last year it was downstairs on a side counter in the kitchen. The year before, it was a table right outside my room. This year, it is upstairs in our loft, where as you can see the light comes in softly. This round table was a card-playing table that belonged to my husband's grandfather -- it's a favorite of ours and has been the scene of many Lego battles and various kinds of re-enactments.

Right now my oldest, Liam, has his laptop settled across from mine (in front of the foreground of the picture). Before that, my friend Chari had her scrapbooking supplies set up across from me when she was visiting here with her family. My husband says it looked like we were playing some kind of Battleships. Here are a couple of pictures that Aidan took of me and Liam both at our stations ;-). .... see Liam in stealth mode behind the log there? But in this one, he is in plain sight.

















Liam was doing contract work on the computer for a company up in Oregon, but now gets to relax and enjoy his last couple of weeks of summer before his senior year at Thomas Aquinas College.

Now, this (below) is the bookshelf that contains the bulk of the books we are going to be using this year. Unfortunately, you can't really see many details, but the book titles are on my sidebar. A good percentage of them are books I printed from the internet and then comb-bound with my handy comb-binder.





I am still trying to decide if we are going to have our homeschooling take place upstairs, or downstairs. When this house was built, we thought the upstairs loft was going to be our schoolroom, but most years we ended up gravitating downstairs to the dining room table and couch by the hearth. Probably because in the winter we mostly heat by woodstove, so everyone tends to huddle /curl up beside that. Anyway, if we do end up downstairs again, I will be moving these books down to the shelves where they were last year.

So there you go -- our set-up! We will be starting today or tomorrow with a bit of math.... and then see how it goes from there. My 15 year old Sean went off on the school bus today -- our first day as parents of a kid in public school, as my husband said.

Here is a picture Aidan took of Sean on his last day home:


Oh, we miss him already; he went off on the school bus an hour ago and is probably now in Spanish class. He was tired when he left; had stayed up till eleven talking to a friend on the phone, and then couldn't go to sleep till after midnight.

So there you go -- endings, and new beginnings.

Transcripts and High School Outline

Since I have just finished helping my daughter pull together a transcript for college applications, I thought I'd share a sample. General Transcript (doc)

This one is sort of a mix of the three transcripts we've produced so far for the two older boys and my daughter. They had variations depending upon particular gifts and strengths -- for example, my oldest son had a computer programming elective and apprenticeship, while my daughter learned several musical instruments during this time period, and my second son embarked on an extensive dendrology (tree) study that included all sort of research and field observations (since we live only 20 minutes from a Giant Sequoia grove). He also studied much extra history and wrote a 400 page novel. I would try to write their transcripts in a way that showed their particular focus but still looked fairly conventional and easy to figure out for the admissions officer.

The basic outline of our high school course (based on Kolbe Academy's) is over here at the Classical Co-op. I made that wiki page several years ago when my oldest was a senior, and now I have 3 high school grads. Time moves fast!

Learning Log

Strewing works. I got those weather books from the library and pretty soon Kieron came up with one of them and wanted to try one of the experiments. So this evening he did it (it involved making steam come out of an empty soda bottle to show how clouds formed). He had trouble at first, and Clare ended up helping him.

Paddy asked a bunch more questions tonight as we read through Bible Stories to Read Aloud.

The older kids watched The Village (Sean hadn't seen it). Earlier, Mary Poppins was on regular TV and Aidan just LOVED it; thought it was hilarious. Aidan played with playdough this afternoon; we also made a puzzle together; and he found his brace and was SO proud he kept bringing it up all evening.

Brendan has been discussing plans for the future with me and has in general been more open and communicative (and restless too). I wish I was better at this mothering thing but I don't think parents have to be perfect to raise OK kids.

Sean weightlifted with his dad. It is interesting that he actually seeks Kevin out every other day to get him to spot him. In other words, he has internal motivation for this, for whatever reason.

Just a few things I wanted to note. I am trying to pay a bit of attention to the natural things going on around here. Oh, and I keep forgetting to mention that Clare and Sean have been on a Scarlet Pimpernel trail -- we have three of the books around the house and they have been reading those, along with Clare playing the Scarlet Pimpernel musical tunes from YouTube again and again. She continues to read the Aubrey/Maturin books too and comment on them as she goes.

Winter has such a nice pace. I don't know anything nicer than being snowed in, with a fire going, lots of books around, limited travel (only simple local errands where you meet the familiar local people), and projects in various stages of completion all over the place. By spring we're ready to be a bit more active, but winter, when Aidan's not sick, is definitely a delight (so far he has stayed healthy, Deo Gratias).