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The big girls are learning to play the piano. (Ivy is in her third year, and Charlotte is in her second year.) They love it, although it is often a lot of hard work for them. They’ve learned a tremendous amount from all the hard work, though, and both Scott and I see wonderful fruit in their lives from it.
They’ve had two recitals this Christmas season, and we’ve posted videos of them both. Watch them if you’d like. (Although they will probably be mainly enjoyed by grandparents!)
The first set of videos is from a recital hosted by CAPTA, at the arts center in Cary. It was a bit fancier (and bigger!) compared to what they are used to. (Big stage and audience!) They practiced for weeks on these songs (they had to be memorized!), and we celebrated with buying fancy new dresses for the occasion.
Click on the images to play the videos.
Charlotte:
Ivy:
Their second recital for Christmas was at their piano teacher’s lovely home. Informal and cozy…we love those kinds of recitals.
Christmas recitals are over (now we’re playing carols for fun!), school is winding down for the year, gifts are wrapped, books and curriculum are ordered for January, the tree us up, house is decorated, and the Christmas music is queued up in the cd player. Today is gray and cold, and on the list for this week: gingerbread men, sugar cookies, lots of icing and decorating, and some reading. (Scott started reading Redwall to the kids, and I am so excited. Many memories of loving these books as a child!) I am reading The Railway Children to them, and as I’ve never read it before, I can’t wait to get to the next chapter!
Most of our reading-for-pleasure books come from the thrift store. We thrift and yard sale often (a trip to the thrift store for books is often used as a treat for getting school done that day!), and our favorite place to buy used books is just down the road. Some of our book excursions are to our other favorite place to buy books, Reader’s Corner (I can’t find a good link for it).
Anyway, yesterday was a good day for Asher.
Someone must have cleaned out their attic and found a box of their son’s books.
I love the illustrations on this one.
These books are old Weekly Reader hardcovers. Remember those? I had several as a child and remember reading them constantly.
Some of the authors we recognize (this book and this one we use for school, both by Clyde Robert Bulla).
Although he’s not at the reading level to enjoy these quite yet, it was fun to find these for him.
Our little A-man started “kindergarten” yesterday.
We haven’t given up homeschooling. A friend of ours has graciously invited Asher to attend a kindergarten co-op class that she is teaching in her home this year.
His first day was yesterday, and he hasn’t stopped talking about it since he got home.
It’s a small class, with only six children. But it’s something special for him, and he gets to do special things that are harder for me to do with the big girls taking up so much school time.
Who doesn’t love a good before-and-after photo?
I sure do.
This is our craft/sewing/homeschool/games/everything room. Yeah. It was becoming a bit of a mess. It is just off the living room, with a door that can be conveniently closed when the mess gets overwhelming and company’s coming.
With school getting a bit more involved this year, especially with the number of books that were rapidly accumulating, something had to be done. It felt constantly messy, our homeschool books and supplies were in three separate rooms of the house, and I knew it could be organized more efficiently.
Off to Ikea!
I didn’t think to get a “before” picture until he had already started to put the shelves together. But this is a pretty good idea of what it was like.
Notice the precariously placed stacks of fabric on the shelves in the back. The games stuffed in the cabinet so wonky that even the doors wouldn’t close all the way. Overabundance of mis-matched shelves.
After selling a few cabinets and bookshelves on craigslist to make room, we ended up with something far better.
Probably not the most drastic before-and-after photo set you’ve ever seen, but it’s drastic to us. Really. All the homeschool supplies, books, planning notebooks, pencils and games are in one room! We can all see what’s available, clearly.
Don’t you love shelves of organized books? And a works-in-progress sewing project on the ironing board?
Something I learned whilst re-organizing all of our things: I have a lot of fabric.
And it’s really wonderful.
Something else I learned: fabric is much nicer when folded larger and flat. Not all bunched up and careening off the shelves.
And when it’s organized by style and color? Amazing. I think I could make an entire quilt out of most of these fabrics together, and it would look pretty great. Something I hadn’t noticed before.
Basket o’ scraps. Looks like I need to do something with these soon.
I also realized I have quite the collection of vintage bed linens. With which I am completely happy, because sometimes you get a little 8-year-old girl who asks her mommy to make a new summer nightgown for her. And these fabrics are my favorite to use for just that.
Our friend Tracy invited us all down to Angier yesterday to fill up some buckets with berries. We’ve discovered Dr Young’s Pond Berry Farm, and we are so happy about it.
If blueberries and blackberries grow in heaven, I think it looks a lot like what this farm had for us. Minus the blackberry thorns, of course.
A couple in the bucket, a handful in the mouth. We snacked all morning on warm berries.
Then we spent the afternoon preparing and putting away. I know we’ll enjoy these come January (when summer seems a million years away), so I froze some plain berries by themselves. Then I whipped up a blueberry lemon pie (from Joy of Cooking), a blackberry pie to freeze, and one each of a blueberry and a blackberry buckle to freeze (found here, from MommyCoddle, a favorite blog).
After all this sugar, I now am thinking I’ll save some blueberries to make this delicious Chicken Blueberry Salad.
“What to do with your [children]? Cuddle them. Talk to them. Answer their questions. Play games. Read picture books. Let them help bake bread, sort socks, and plant the garden…
“Make play dough. Sing silly songs. Feed the birds. Scribble with crayons and sidewalk chalks. Experiment with finger paint. And just watch: Amazingly, as they grow from infants to toddlers…they will acquire an ever-expanding vocabulary and amass an astonishing fund of knowledge…
“Cherish these early years while you’ve got them. Henry David Thoreau could have been speaking to the parents of small children when he touted the beauties of daily living and the importance of taking time to pay heed to the marvel taking place about you. ‘It is a great art,’ Thoreau once wrote, ‘to saunter.’…
“Such is my advice… Saunter. Hold hands and giggle while you’re doing it, and bring some bread along to feed the ducks.”
Rebecca Rupp, Home Learning Year by Year
(Charlotte’s reading Two Bad Ants by Chris van Allsburg)
We managed a trip to the library this week; which in retrospect turned out to be a wise move: yesterday it rained all day. We had a busy school day, and by the evening the children were all curled up in the living room, reading books and listening to the rain outside.
(Some of Ivy’s library favorites are Freddy the Pied Piper by Walter Brooks, Tumtum and Nutmeg by Emily Bearn, and Rufus M. by Eleanor Estes, from The Moffatts series)
I could probably go on all day about what fantastic fun it is to find great children’s literature. I feel like I’ve spent years reading books about children’s books, reading books about homeschooling methods that incorporate literature (For the Children’s Sake and The Well-Trained Mind, for instance).
So instead of going on all day, I’ll just fill this blog post with a bunch of links and great book titles!
Sweet Charlotte started piano lessons last month, and she has jumped right in. She’s getting the hang of it fairly quickly, and loves to play and sing her little beginner songs.
When she gets a little excited or nervous about a song, she starts wiggling her little 5-year-old body on the piano bench. (Cowgirl hat not required.)
Asher, in the meantime, is mastering the art of the kazoo.
(Superman pajamas not required, either. He also taught himself to whistle. When I am feeling very sick, he asks if I’d like him to whistle me a quiet song.)
Speaking of feeling very sick, many of you have asked how our family is doing. We are hanging in there: it ain’t over yet, but I think we see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. My mom was here last week to stay and help our family, and just in the past few days I have been able to be out of bed (for a whole day! almost.) and do something “normal”. Like sweep the floor….sit outside….and the best part…
it looks like sewing may be working its way back into my life.
So on my to-do list for a long time has been to make my girls each a quilt. Remember Charlotte’s?
Well, I am so happy to announce that Ivy’s is finally finished, too. (Along with some fresh-for-summer gingham sheets from The Company Store.)
(sorry about the dark pictures. we’re having sunshine/clouds/sunshine/clouds weather today.)
So now that the quilt is done, I think I’ll take a break from sewing for a little while. Who knows…I’ve said this before and ended up making something anyway. For now, I’m happy with just adding away to my sewing wish list.
:: this will be near the top of the list. Don’t these look wonderful? Citronille. The name alone makes me want to move to the French countryside, live in a stone farmhouse and dress my children in whites and pale blues. (And I’m happy to have a husband who knows a little French. There is hope for figuring these patterns out!)
:: I’d like to make something from these fabrics. Can’t decide what, though. New quilt for a little niece? Twirly skirts for the girls?
:: I recently acquired this book, One-Yard Wonders, and I think I’m going to really like it. Most books like this I always feel like the project ideas are time-wasters, but I liked a lot of the ideas in this book. First pick from the book: a sewing machine cover.
:: sewing aside, this looks like a lot of fun. a paper city you can color? with stick people? yes, please.
:: I’ve been wanting to do this as a piece of art for Scott and myself, but I wonder if the girls would enjoy a little version of their own? A poster of things they love, via MommyCoddle.
A tiny superman at the end of a very long table.
He really loves his Superman pajamas. Especially the cape.
Not sure what’s going on here, but it looks like fun!
We’re pretty full swing into summer here, and with that comes one of our favorite parts of May in North Carolina:
Strawberries! (Not cats. Although this is our neighbor’s cat and we love her.)
Another big part of summer that we love is time outside. We love doing many of our family activities outside (eating, talking, exercising) but probably one of our favorites is reading.
We get out the big blanket, gather a pile of books, some pillows, and pick a shady spot.
Since another favorite summer past-time is thrifting and yard-saling for books, we feel pretty set with reading for the summer.
