the bits I missed...

Because of the way we do things here - a certain amount of planning and "scheduling" (to please my need for order) (Dan - stop laughing. I do have a need for order, it's, well, just not the same as your need for order...), and then a willingness to follow a flow where it leads - I find that the record-keeping that other homeschooling families might do, the grades, the checklists and finished curricula, comes more in the form of keeping track of what actually happened around here.  I obsessively write down the conversations, the book titles, the card games and art shows, and it grounds me to have a little evidence of What We Do.  This blog is also a part of that, of course...and so, the bits I missed from this week....

While Eliza had dance rehearsal, Ani and I got out for a short hike in the sunshine, finding animal evidence everywhere - tracks, woodchips - and stopping to soak in the winter beams when they came through the trees.

the kitchen floor is still a preferred place to play

Eliza rescued an abandoned bike that our old neighbor found, and discovered that it fits her perfectly, just when she was longing for a new bike.

Within inches of the doldrums securing their hold on my spirits, we made it out to the community contra dance; it was the best decision I made all week!  We almost didn't go; I was tired, Dan was working, I didn't think I had that kind of energy to expend on being with other people.  It had been a week of feeling let-down and disappointed and I was not handling it very well.

Oxygen (and a string band) to the rescue! It was so lovely, as always...

giving each other the eye, doing the "gypsy"

dancing with a favorite partner

I love that our science study - the periodic table of the elements and sooooo many tangents, like the stories of some of the scientists who discovered elements - has started to crop up in creative play.  Don't know why I'm surprised; it's how the girls often absorb and interact with life.

Dear Einstein - i hear you are a great scientist and you live right next door!  We should get together and talk "science" soon.  Sincerely, M. Curie

more play - not an "assignment"

 We also discovered a game in the closet that I've had for years and thought too dull to get out, but too "new" to toss without giving it a shot.  Turns out it suited Ani's love of putting things in their proper spots, and she talked through and filled in the entire table, with side comments but no help from me.  She's picked up so much from the past month and a half of playing with the elements.

tada!

 And one of my favorite moments of the week, sitting in my big girls' boredom with her for a bit and just being company until the idea to work on the gnome hat she's knitting in coop bubbled to the surface, and then I got to hang out and mend, with her feet in my lap, while we listened to stories of the Old Testament (Jim Weiss), which lead to a search for Bill Cosby's Noah skit online (voom-pah voom-pah voom-pah), a big favorite of mine from childhood.

Finally, there has been a lot of this:

Clementine, Ivy and Bean, biography of Marie Curie, books about extinct animals, old-school Nancy Drew (I think this has finally caught Eliza's imagination enough to pull her far enough into the book that she doesn't want to stop!! She is a notorious one-chapter and leave it kinda girl.)...many hours "lost" in reading...so good.