It has only been a week and a day, so not much of a so far. I had a great week last week with the kids.

Rhythms, Activities and Classes
I brought back certain elements that were solid routines around here before they went to their preschool and thankfully, they have fallen back into them beautifully.

Rest time was imperative because I need at least 1 hour of space in the middle of the day to take care of to-do’s, phone calls and emails. At night I am too tired and in the morning, I am trying to wake up. That is working really well. The kids are separating and are doing pretty good for almost an hour. We spend a lot of active time in the mornings, so they are usually ready for that rest time when it comes. They can play quietly, listen to books on CD or quiet music.

Over the weekend, I came up with our weekly rhythm and am really happy with it so far. Each week will include a nature walk with friends, painting, crafts, a core story from our curriculum, gymnastics, some Spanish, baking, and lots of outside time and creative playtime. We will also be working in some gardening, woodworking and adventures.

There will be lots to keep us busy. Today on our nature walk we brought pads and pencils for all the kids and asked them to take 5 minutes and draw a picture of something they had seen on our hike. It went really well and the kids did a great job.

Today I sent in their registration for a once a month homeschool class at the Austin Nature Center on various topics from geology to space and mammals. They tailor the information to 3 different age groups which is really nice. Fingers crossed that we get in!

The kids also start their gymnastics class this week. They have been so excited about this, so I hope they like it! It is a drop-off program so they will be there for 3 hours.

What I am Loving Right Now
The lack of structure for one. The freedom for us to pursue interests. There have been so many moments, some of which are documented below when I say to myself, “yes, this is why I homeschool”.

I had a consultation with the director of the company who created my curriculum and I think she said it best. “We give the kids a lot of experience and space before we give focused attention. Then they get to discover the learning and it comes out through them. This is opposed to an adult feeding them the learning – then the children begin to look outward for the answers and not within themselves.”

The Play
Tyler built all this during rest time and it blew me away. I loved the path built with game pieces and the acorn people walking on it. I loved the jewels all around. All of it. And then of course there is the having fun with each other!

The Discovery Learning

It happens at all times. While I was cooking dinner, I looked in the backyard to see what the kids were up to. I see a aloe very plant completely dumped out – dirt everywhere, plant taken apart – it was a mess. *sigh* Hadn’t we just cleaned up from the earlier mud bath.

Before I could prepare my “we don’t destroy the plants” speech, Tyler comes running in full of excitement saying, “Momma, we discovered what the inside of a plant root looks like! Look!” He was so excited talking about the inside of the plant, the inside of the seed.

Then they set about the yard searching for more discoveries quite intent on their work. And there you have it – what I viewed as a mess in the making, was a form of learning. They just performed their first rudimentary dissection.

What is not to love?

And just for fun, there is always something interesting from Quinn in the fridge and today was not exception. And I found a great sensory integration excercise – grinding coffee with an antique grinder. Fun for the kids and caffeine for Daddy – everybody wins!

So after a wondrous afternoon at Bull Creek, Tyler comes home with a plan of something he wants to make. He gets that art supplies out and sets out to work.

He created a game. It has a cover and when you opened it up it had the seen where he drew out the game screen.

Then he had all these buttons – the start, the stop and the the shooting buttons that would shoot different things depending on which one you pushed. He demonstrated this for me.

My favorite part though had to be the pockets he put on the back. One pocket held a spear and a sword and then other pocket was for a spare battery. I loved this!!

We don’t own the handheld games nor does he play video games, so it is not something he sees everyday. I just loved the creativity in all of it – and the pockets – I so heart those pockets.

This was in late July and we were entering a phase where he was blowing me away on a daily basis. Creating and teaching himself to read and spell. It is such an amazing thing to get to watch him grow into this amazing boy and I feel so very blessed to have the opportunity to do so.

So continuing on our farewell to the creeks week, we went to Bull Creek and enjoyed much exploration and swimming there. This day I began to realize that Tyler was changing, maturing, growing. I was falling in love with this son of mine all over again.

Oh Tyler.

The way you immediately went off and set about on your mission interested me so.

What really struck me is that later when your dear friend and sister decided to spend a good while sliding down the natural water slide, you chose instead to scuba dive. And for the next 40 minutes you would dive down with your swim mask and swim around near the bottom as long as your breath would allow. Each time you surfaced, you exclaimed, “Mom what rare and beautiful fish are down there!”. Later you would request oxygen tanks.

You had no interest in what they were doing – you were so very much engaged in what you wanted to do. You became more of an individual to me that day. Finding your own passion, finding your own bliss. I so enjoyed watching your exploration of that small pool and loved just how much wonder it held for you.

That was such a good afternoon. And later that night you would blow me away again with a wonderful art creation. You are blooming right before my eyes!

I love you so much my sweet, sweet, boy.

We were really blessed with a beautiful summer – we didn’t hit those oppressive 100 degree temps until August. A few degrees may not seem to make a different, but it really, really does. Here are pics from one Monday in July – full out outdoors while it is still tolerable and lots of play indoors.

Instead of WHO bread, we made cinnamon rolls. Y-U-M! And Tyler demonstrates his favorite way to enjoy one – the uncoiling method!

A bit of my Saturday…

Would it be too cliche to say that life is busy? Right now I am doing my very best to get on top and stay on top of things in my life. There are a lot of loose ends I am tying up, but hopefully by the end of September my plate will be mostly empty and I am very much looking forward to that.

School has started which has meant transitions for us and many of my friends. More on that later. I do have tons of posts to get caught up on, but just a few pics of the highlights of the last few weeks:

Lego Sumobot Tournament
Watching a lego sumobot competition was SO MUCH FUN! I can’t begin to tell you how much fun I had. We enjoyed renaming robots things like, “Slow Glacier of Death” (and that is him shoving all the robots off the playing field!). Yes, underneath it all I was so meant to be a geek groupie…..

Wine with friends
There is nothing more in this world that I cherish than my friends and the opportunity to spend time with them. Here was a perfectly lovely night to say goodbye to summer as the sun is starting to set earlier and earlier. And my what a sunset! I can’t wait until the timing is right and we start taking our family sunset walks again.

Closing a chapter with good friends
Most of my friends sent their eldest children to Kindergarten this year. It was the end of a chapter for all of us. All the play dates, adventures and support through those early years of childhood. And while these friendships are surely not ending, they will be changing. And so we gathered at our favorite park for some last play dates together.

Reconnecting with my husband
Life has been hard and stress has been high and we had not been getting along lately. We are blessed with both parents in town who love to take the kids, so we sent them off for an overnight and had some much needed “us” time. We had a lovely time doing things together – an amazing dinner at a new South American restaurant near us, playing racing games on the Wii, cycling and a long lazy breakfast. It was good to have some breathing room – we needed it.

I got to wear my new favorite, fancy dress!	I had my date!
And we look cute together!