This school years blogging was a complete bust! School was not, thankfully! We are in our final 4 weeks of our school year which is behind when we usually finish up. But you know those "Homeschooling in Crisis" articles and posts. Well this year we have lived it. We have had plenty of hard years, some which could even fit the "crisis" label in the past, hard pregnancies and new babies, moves, unemployment, homelessness (without our own but family took us in)...we have run the gamut of life experience. Going into this year I knew we would need to be flexible, in April of 2015 my mom was diagnosed with cancer. She did treatment all summer, we went back and forth to help through those months, I expected to do that through out the school year. We pushed back starting school a couple extra weeks when she needed more care, I spent two weeks with her leaving my family behind at the end of August/beginning of September. With this in mind I was proactive and prepared everything ahead of time, including my handy dandy book I make each year. But I was not prepared for a phone call two weeks after retuning home saying I needed to come now. The three hardest phone calls I've ever had to make and an hour and a half later my kids and I were on the road for the 10 hour drive. And then she died. That was not the plan. The plan was to take care of her all school year. Not for school to be interrupted with death and estate needs and memorial travels. But it did. And we have four weeks left.

That said I have something more to share. All those crisis articles were good, it was stored up knowledge I had but there is something they did not cover. Homeschooling was an anchor. Yes I gave myself permission to be easy with myself, yes there were days I could not even muster enough to feed my family but schooling was an escape of sorts. We could compartmentalize the grief and open a book to escape and learn. I could be ok for that time I taught Leili the letter families, I could be ok while dusting off the parts of my brain that use to know how to do 5th grade math, I could be ok while learning about the beautiful art of the Renaissance. And those moments of being ok got us through. Homeschooling is an added responsibility when crisis comes but it can also be comfort and and anchor.

My handy dandy school book!

The kids on our first day of the school year.

This was an instagram photo of mine dated just 10 days after she died. I captioned it, "The tornado of a homeschooling morning and it's effects on my family room. Whew...I survived. This time." Looking back on any kind of journaling is interesting, I can see that I was not talking about homeschooling I was just surviving. But I was doing it through homeschooling.

A smattering of books from this week.

This weeks pages of schooling, Riley's are blank because he was taking online classes and finished the week before.

And the kids now...older, wiser, and more compassionate for the year we have had.

During the holidays when our studies where a little lighter and I wanted to share something interesting with the kids we did a couple weeks of learning about Julia Childs! I love to cook and I have a couple kids who enjoy cooking and well we all LOVE to eat good food so this turned out to be tons of fun! 

We watched a few episodes of her original black and white show, and some of the newer ones. PBS has some available and there a lots on youtube too!

This was such a treasure...so much so I *almost* was a bad library lover and did not return it. It was an original first edition! The Potato-Leek soup was VERY tasty and very yummy!

This was a fun comic style book all about her life, Bon Appetit! ~ the kids enjoyed it.

They also though she was wildly hysterical!!

This was the kids favorite book we read about her, Minette's Feast ~ its all about her cat!

And then we fell in love with her a little more when we turned to this picture at the back of the book...Minette was a tortie! It takes a special person to love and be loved by a tortie!!

Just a couple little snippets of schooling to share today!

Our fall nature table is always one of my most favorite!

We had the most amazing science class right out our front door. A monarch butterfly came out of it's chrysalis on our front porch in one of my plants. The kids named it Dotty!

Homeschool co-op went well, Fern my artist loved her second ceramics class.

Leili and I have been going through the capital letters, we are having a lot of fun (some of it sentimental as I think this is the last time I will do this)!!

My knitting class at our homeschool co-op finished up my dyeing yarn with kool-aid! 

Some friends and I started a littles outdoor school once a week for our 5 year olds, it is so nice to have a whole morning outside with these fun kids.

Fern and I did a little research on our foraging and Fern made it into a bar graph. Rose hips for us!

And a little peek at our table, we don't always work at the table but sometimes it works well for us. I am thinking it will soon be time to spend a day a week doing our school work in the downtown library where it is full of plants, all warm and green!

We officially started school and I tried to get a picture with the kids all showing what grade they were in (I tried to get Leili to sign "K" but really it just looked like she was flashing gang signs...)!

Leili was up at the crack of dawn asking if she was a kindergartner yet, she got all of her school work done before any of the older kids were out of bed! Just she and mama.

The first week we of course started with the letter A, I can remember doing this with the other kids. It is sad that this is my last kindergartener.

We also made a morning candle for while we say our verses and do some finger plays. Leili really enjoyed this!

Leili and I also made bees for our nature table. We have so many bees this year!

Well here we go shoving off into the new school year! How is it that I have all 4 kids school age this year?!? Yes my little one is kindergarten so not major academics, but still this is crazy! Here is a look into this years mama's school book, things get wiggled a bit but for the most part this is the plan for the year. (Sorry some of the photos came out blurry I have no idea how that happened!)

Our mornings are slow, I am not one of those mamas who get up early and get things done. Too many years of sleep depravation is my reasoning but really Im just not a morning person if anyone is going to talk to me! ;)

This day is one where Dan is home, he travels frequently but when he is in town we often get days with him home all day. This was difficult for us the first few years of homeschooling, but thankfully we have found a rhythm that Dad fits into and can also slip out of.

Our morning starts with a warm breakfast, blankets, and heater vents. We also take care of animals, giving the cats attention and waking up the bunnies. Which is not so hard on this beautiful sunny morning!

Legos in the morning, Legos at night, LEGOS ALL DAY LONG in our house!! But I find it a gentle way for the kids to transition from morning time to schooling time so you'll often hear me suggest it! And yes there are legos all over my house!!!

Just before the call to come together my oldest comes to me with Cookie his rat who seems to have a mass, he also brings his rat book. So we take a timeout to check on her, read about rat ailments and call the vet to get an appointment. I love that his first go to was a book! 

Every morning I write out all that we would like to accomplish for the day, my kids like having all the information at once and I like that I don't get asked 20 times what else we are going to do! Its all right there! Our family schooling time is by far the largest chunk, but the kids do have some individual things that we do.

We have quite the mixture of homeschooling philosophies here in our home! A little Waldorf, a little Charlotte Mason, a little TJed, and a little crazy all mixed together!! Its great! I am a firm believer that your philosophy/curriculum should serve your family not that you should be a slave to your philosophy/curriculum. We start our day with a Waldorf-ish verse and a scripture we are memorizing. After everyone memorizes the scripture we go out for a fun family activity. Today our family study activities will be after our individual work because of their length. But usually it is done right after our scripture.

Jake learning how to read Fahrenheit and Celsius on a thermometer...

Fern writing numbers...

Leili acting out our story of the week with finger puppets (Little Red Ridding Hood)...

Brother and sister are drawn to the puppet theatre like magnets!!

Riley is reading Matilda and LOVING it! This is a picture that just makes my mama heart go pitter-pat. This guy, my first born threw me right into trusting in schooling. Reading just did not click for him when society says it should. But we took the leap of faith in just trusting that he would get it when he was ready as long as we did not squash his innate love of learning! Now I have to tell him to stop reading and go to bed!!

Our kitchen table turned into math central today and Dad was the central command! Whew! One day off for Mama in the math dept!!

Beautiful Fern LOVES writing notes and now she has found she LOVES writing numbers!!

Leili is being like Little Red Ridding Hood and baking muffins for the family, she chose Coconut Banana! 

Usually Fern prefers to wait for me to do her reading with her, but Little Bear just could not wait!

I have a couple volunteer responsibilities and since today dad is home I run out all by myself for a quick visit. Dad finishes up the school work for the morning while I am gone.

Leili's muffins came out great! Riley played the piano! And lunch was made! Wahoo!