Ahhhh . . . after the busyness of December, this past week was a very welcome week of relaxing . . .
New Years just isn't something we bother to make a big deal of in our house, we took down the Christmas and Hanukkah decorations, we fell back into our normal school routine . . . it was nice :)
The girls had decided, in the midst of the busyness of December, that they wanted to rearrange their bedroom. For awhile now, Ashlyn has craved a more "just my own" space. Lexie and Little Bit continue to be happy sharing a bed (I must admit, I hope they continue to be ok with that until we do the new addition (hopefully in a few years), because the space fits a double bed better than 2 more twin beds, and the sloped ceilings don't allow for bunk beds). So they got out the tape measure and figured out exactly how they want things. But . . . first there was/is LOTS of cleaning up to be done. That was one of this week's projects. They still have lots to do, but we managed to clear out the area that Ashlyn wanted for her bed, which included rearranging the schoolroom to make room for the sewing stuff in there. And, much to Ashlyn's excitement, by the end of the week she was all settled in her nook.
One side of their bedroom had a closet built into one side and then, the previous owners, planning to use that entire room as a "dressing room/closet" had put closet rods across the rest of that side of the room. They're easily removeable but we've left them so far and Ashlyn chose that space as her nook, and hung curtains (that we had on their windows at the old house) on the outer rod to separate it from the rest of the room.
She decided awhile ago, that she'd rather sleep on the floor, instead of having a trundle bed under the double bed, so that made this move easier :)
She got the feather bed topper back out (that's what she used instead of a mattress at our old house) to use as a mattress, but during the day she kind of scrunches it up into the corner as a "chair" of sorts, giving her a place to sit, and the rest of the floor space free (otherwise the featherbed takes up the whole space).
There's no light in that space, so when we were using it for sewing, we had clamped a desk lamp onto one of the "closet rods", so she just continued with that, as lighting in her space.
The wall at the "foot of the bed" is for storage. She packed up the legos that were in a plastic drawer unit. Now she's using that as her dresser, and Lexie and Little Bit continue to use the shared dresser, which we moved closer to their bed.
When we shifted things around in the school room to make room for the sewing stuff, I had some "milk crates" that there wasn't really room for, so she took those to use as additional shelf space in her nook as well.
So that was the big project. It's still very much in progress, we need to do a bunch more rearranging and decluttering in the school room and the rest of their bedroom to get things to the place that we can try moving Lexie and Lina's bed the way they want it, and finish the rearranging, but Ashlyn's very happy.
And interestingly, at least for now, this change has brought her and Little Bit "closer". Little Bit is so excited that Ashlyn "invites her" into her space, and reciprocates by "inviting" Ashlyn to play with her on the bed.
In homeschool news we're back
Bible Road Trip for Bible, the girls were concerned about remembering memory verses after taking December off to do Jotham's Journey, but with a few reminders, they're doing fine. We've been using
Simply Charlotte Mason's suggested approach to memory verses for the past year plus, so we've accumulated quite a collection. Except I have them all nicely organized in an
Evernote notebook instead of keeping track of index cards.
History's been all about the crusades, and Robin Hood. Lots of interesting books and videos about that time period, I'm enjoying learning right along with the kids.
Spelling Wisdom continues to be a good fit for us for language arts. Little Bit continues to enjoy writing, but shows no interest in reading, so we're going with that for now. I think she's starting to read bits and pieces without really realizing it, so time will tell, if she ever has to officially "learn to read" or if, as I suspect, she'll learn to read by writing :)
With such a nasty flu season going on right now, our science has focused on herbal cold and flu prevention, and care. Thankfully, so far, other than some minor sniffles over the holidays, we've not had to put any of the actual care ideas into practice. As we get more fully back into our normal school mode, we'll re-add astronomy back into the rotation. Lexie got tired of waiting for the rest of us to find time, and is reading Signs and Seasons at her own pace (it's looking like 2015 might be the year of her shifting almost entirely to independent work, choosing to read things to herself even if I'm reading them to Ashlyn and Little Bit).
So that's at least some of what's been going on around here.
And yes, I've been scribbling all over it, and loving every minute. As happens so often, when I review a "how to" type book, I found that I wanted to take it slow with actually implementing, and I needed to read it in a certain time frame. So I chose to read it, and mark it up, during the review period. I've been praying and mulling over the ideas and keeping them in mind, but now I want to go back through and read this book one chapter at a time and really pray about, and discuss with my children, and focus on the ideas in that chapter, and then move forward.
As you can tell from the title, Motivate Your Child explains how to build internal motivation in your child(ren) so that they choose to do what's right for the right reasons! This book gives practical ideas and real-life examples from the authors' counseling experience. The first part of the book focuses on moral development and the second part focuses on spiritual development. Both are sooooo important to raising our children!
