School and life in the home....what we're doing

Warning: What follows is a lengthy post about our life and our schooling, a natural result of blog author's "absense." If pressed for time, permission granted to skip post.

It's no secret the posts on this our blog have been slimmer of late. (Is "slimmer" a word? If not, I think I'll make it one. I like it).

One reason, of course is just life. Man, it's busy! We have enjoyed visits to and from our dear family from July on to now. Though our local church is not a program-driven church, we do indeed stay busy just living life together with the body, our friends. We love weekly care groups and live for Sundays, when we worship corporately and get to spend extended time eating, playing and relaxing with our friends. Having two children in our church body's parent/youth ministry has been a fun time for us. And of course, life with a 4 year old, who wasn't here for years 1, 2 and 3 is always interesting - and a blast! She keeps us all laughing.

The fall is upon us and all that it brings - except the cooler weather...this IS North Florida, after all! Ladybug is running full force in Cross Country again. True to her word, The Elf is not running! Instead, she's enjoying recreation league soccer - and we're enjoying watching her play THREE evening games each week! Pooch and Emmy Xiang, who has lovinginly been dubbed, "Joe" are enjoying really playing together....nice to see that relationship taking on such life. I must state for the record that the Pooch and a friend have been exercising three mornings each week for MANY weeks now. Even Joe has been known to run (literally) around the house. Finally, our entire family is moving....regularly! To God be the glory. It's only by His grace that we have been the least bit successful!

We've been back in school for almost 9 weeks now. What fun we've already had in our history co-op (and I'll be recounting those adventures soon). We're studying 1600-1800 this year, with our "together times" through December being a living history Colonial settlement. The moms and many of the girls spent much time late summer planning, purchasing material and sewing Colonial costumes for all of the children and even some of the adults (I really should post some of these things to share....okay I'm getting inspired!). Mid-August marked the gathering of these historically based characters in the port city of Weymouth, England (think the Berry's house), who would form a company and travel by ship (our back deck) to the New World (Jammer's backyard). In real co-op time, the company is still on the Atlantic Ocean, hopefully weathering storms. Look for future posts.....

Our science co-op times together have been focused on learning about God's amazing creation of the Human Body. We've been introduced to the basic building block of life, the cell, read a bit of the skin and studyed the bones in depth. The children must write about each system in the style of their choice. I'm sure we'll be seeing some tours through the human body, science fiction stories, children's books, multi-media presentations and more when the year is through. Each family is also building a body (life size), so I should post some pictures of that, too. Note to self.

The girls have all been better about narrating this year. And all of the girls are slated to read some great literature books. So far, Pooch devoured Children of the New Forest and Ladybug is reading (and actually likes!) Sense and Sensibility and the Elf is enjoying Emma, Gulliver's Travels and Treasure Island. Together we're enjoying Pilgrim's Progress, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, reading about and ejoying some of Rembrandt's art works and listening to Vivaldi. On differing levels, the girls are dabbling in Spanish, perservering in Latin and their repective maths and "traveling" to different places in their living books on geography...Hillyer's A Child's Geography of the World, Haliburton's Book of Marvels and How the Heather Looks (a book about England).

A few new things for the Elf are reading a book on reading (How to Read a Book), reading about and summarizing weekly current evens, and the devolopment of a commonplace book, a book in which to record and comment on favorite or impacting quotations. We've tweaked this last assignment to a 21st century mode of recording, and thus the birth of the Elf's "commonplace blog." It's been a pleasant experience for her and for us to allow her a place to put in words some of the mediations in her mind. You are invited to her world. It's an interesting place!

So that's a run down of it. Maybe boring for most, but I thought I'd share. At least it gives a glimpse into my world.