school stations

In February I swapped our school days around so that most of our core subject work on formal instruction days is done at stations. The most basic version of the plan is that the four kids work individually and rotate among four stations at 30-minute intervals. I do have to read to Brennan (and sometimes…

scheduled plans

I tried (REALLY I TRIED) to set up and follow a plan for posts. The plan is more for me than you; I need to be better about attaching words to images for record-keeping. But. I’m typing on my phone. And that gets kinda obnoxious. Oh well. I cried (I CRIED ACTUAL TEARS) over the…

the view

These shots are all from the past two weeks. I’m so excited about how green everything is (the photos are ordered newest to oldest). It’s almost a surprise that it happens every year!

sharp

Yesterday I used a big blade to separate water irises to move them to better ground. I keep calling it a machete, but it’s not – it has a sort of hook at the end. Oh well. It’s a big ole past-knife blade. At one point I decided I had maybe lost my mind –…

[school] ancient americas

This week for school we’re talking about ANCIENT American cultures. We’re zeroing in hard on the Nazcas for some art projects – about Nazca lines and pottery. We’ve watched videos and I have a National Geographic with some EXCELLENT photos. But. It gets kinda tricky. Even after studying this five or six different ways, I…

Brennan’s birthday

My raspberry girl turned SIX on Friday!

growing up

Hang with me, please, because I’m sort of thinking out loud. I’ve been blogging since before it was called blogging. First it was on angelfire – where I had to learn just enough HTML coding to get anything to even show up on the screen, and I learned about intellectual property rights. Then I tried…

eclipse helmets

So. There will be a solar eclipse on Monday, August 21st, 2017. We’re in the 90%+ totality range, so we *need* eclipse glasses *the entire time* as we attempt to view the eclipse action directly (there will be harmful rays the entire time). But. Paper glasses. Let me back up: I knew in 2016 that…

[field trip] botanical gardens

Last week we went to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens.

change of pace

All year we’ve been up in the air and unsettled. For every one thing going to plan, there are a million billion trillion (so many zeroes) things going NOT to plan. I haven’t wanted to think. I haven’t wanted to have ideas. I haven’t wanted to record or ponder or even hope.  I’m weary. Being…