Feb
13

The Greatest Not-Quite-Love Songs of All Time

by heather | 1 Comments

Tomorrow being Valentine’s Day, I’m planning to publish a list of The Greatest Love Songs of all time (in my opinion).

Today being not-quite Valentine’s Day, here is a list some of the Greatest Not-Quite-Love Songs… those that just didn’t qualify for tomorrow’s list.

Not that these aren’t great songs.  They are.  In order to make this list, a song has to be both musically powerful and effective, and lyrically evocative and meaningful.  It’s just that these songs aren’t quite about pure, true, romantic love.

Perhaps they are about love lost, or maybe it’s obsessive love.  Whatever their flaws that kept them off tomorrow’s list, I still felt they are amazing songs that deserve recognition.   Don’t see your favourites on here?  Too bad.  These are, unabashedly and proudly, my favourites.   Feel free to post yours in the comments, though.  Click the titles to hear the songs.

One More Try – George Michael

Why the music rocks: Haunting sound, slow and simple, jazzy bass, juicy harmonies at just the right moment, vocals that float over it all yet give the punch when warranted.  An emotionally-charged performance by George Michael at his finest.

Greatest line: And teacher, there are things that I still have to learn, but the one thing I have is my pride.  So I don’t want to hold you, touch you, think that you’re mine, because there ain’t no joy for an uptown boy who just isn’t willing to try…  I’m so cold inside… maybe just one more try…

Why it’s not-quite-love: I’ll admit I almost put this one on tomorrow’s list.  But it’s just not quite “pure”.  The singer has given up on love, doesn’t believe the object of his affections will be true to him, he is dejected and defeated.  Only at the very last moment does the hope and promise of love stir his cold heart back to warmth.  It’s a very unusual turn for a pop song, which are usually consistent in expressing one thought or theme from start to finish.   Yet the darkness and sadness of the song before this moment — glorious as it may be — keeps it off tomorrow’s list.

Nothing Compares 2 U – Sinead O’Connor

Why the music rocks: Haunting sound, slow and simple, jazzy bass, juicy harmonies at just the right moment, vocals that float over it all yet give the punch when warranted.  An emotionally-charged performance by Sinead O’Connor at her finest.  Um, yeah.  Listening to One More Try immediately followed by this one, you really notice the similarities.  From the opening synth chords, to the final line of “but I’m willing to give it another try”…  Maybe that’s why I love them both so much.

Greatest line: All the flowers that you planted, mama, in the back yard, all died when you went away…

Why it’s not-quite-love: This is a song of love lost, of begging for your lover to return.  The heartbreak in this song is so intensely expressed that it’s almost physically palpable.

Bridge Over Troubled Water – Simon and Garfunkel

Why the music rocks: Thick piano chords.  A slow build to a huge climax.  Cannons.  And when Garfunkel turns the melody (and the intensity) up instead of down with the last utterance of the word “bridge,” you know you’ve got a serious torch song here.   And did I mention — cannons?

Greatest line: Sail on Silver Girl, Sail on by.  Your time has come to shine, all your dreams are on their way.  See how they shine.  If you need a friend, I’m sailing right behind.

Why it’s not-quite-love: This song never actually mentions romantic love.  It is devoted friendship, unwavering support, help and comfort in your time of pain, utter devotion.  But it could be a song for a relative, a friend… not necessarily a lover.  It is certainly love, and indeed love in its very purest form… just not necessarily in a Valentine’s Day sense.

Lean on Me – Club Nouveau/Bill Withers

While Bill Withers’ original is certainly the more ‘beautiful’ version, the Club Nouveau cover from the late 80s was my first introduction to this song.  It was “our song” with my first love.  Cheesy?  Maybe.  But it’s still a great song.

Why the music rocks: Four notes going up, four notes going down.  You know the riff.  Full piano chords in the original, awesome.  And the cover version has cool synth interjections, not to mention “we be jammin, mon” and “pump it up, homeboy, just like that.”  Yeah, baby.

Greatest line: Lean on me when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on.

Why it’s not-quite-love: This is another great song that’s about the love of devoted friendship, rather than romance.  You certainly can sing it to your loved one, as my first love and I did, but it is still not, strictly speaking, a “love song.”

The Rose – Bette Midler

Oh, how I rue the day that I would ever put Bette Midler on a “best of” list, but so help me, I love this song.

Why the music rocks: The simple repetitive piano chords opening, with the subtle shifting harmonies.

Greatest line: When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long, and you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong, just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows, lies the seed, that with the sun’s love, in the spring, becomes the rose.

Why it’s not-quite-love: This is another beautiful song about love, but it’s not, strictly speaking, a love song.  The context is of one person telling another (or perhaps herself) not to be afraid of loving, and that love is a beautiful thing that can grow despite pain and trouble.  But it’s not an expression of devotion from one lover to another.

A Letter to Elise – The Cure

Of course there has to be something from The Cure on any music list I make.  I waffled between this song, Disintegration, and From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea — all absolutely brilliant songs.  But I think this one fit the bill of not-quite-love song the best.

Why the music rocks: Robert’s voice, so open and honest.  The multi-layered sonic landscape.  The “toy piano” riff.  And that swelling, uprising solo break that bursts into the modulation back into the main theme, carrying you with it, the inevitability of the resolution, oh how glorious…

Greatest line: Oh Elise it doesn’t matter what you do, I know I’ll never really get inside of you, to make your eyes catch fire the way they should, the way the blue could pull me in, if they only would if they only would…  At least I’d lose this sense of sensing something else that hides away from me and you there’re worlds to part with aching looks and breaking hearts, and all the prayers your hands can make, oh I just take as much as you can throw, and then throw it all away…

Why it’s not-quite-love: This one is love that just couldn’t make it.  They keep desperately trying, they keep pretending, but the spark is gone, if it was ever even there.  Heartbreak, helplessness, longing, and regret.

All Apologies – Nirvana

Why the music rocks: A great simple riff over a pedal tone bass line, with acoustic bowed bass adding energy and impetus.  Quiet and sincere, it’s elegant grunge.

Greatest line: What else should I be?  All apologies.

Why it’s not-quite-love: Frankly, I’m not 100% sure what the song is about. Kurt’s lyrics are wonderfully strange.  I mean… aqua seafoam shame?  It’s evocative, but still mysterious.  My interpretation is that it’s a lover who has screwed up, trying to apologize for what he has done.  Maybe the screwup is that he’s not the lover he intended to be, he feels trapped in a marriage and feels shame for not living up to what he promised.  Maybe it’s something else.  Whatever the specifics, though, it’s certainly a song about shame, regret… and not pure romantic love.

You Don’t Love Me Anymore – Weird Al Yankovic

Yeah… after Simon and Garfunkel and The Cure, I’m going to close the list with Weird Al.  I told you, these are my favourites, no apologies.

Why the music rocks: Your classic acoustic folk guitar pop ballad.   It’s really quite beautiful, Al uses his pretty voice for this one.  If you didn’t pay attention to the lyrics, you could be fooled…

Greatest line: I even think it’s kind of cute the way you poison my coffee, just a little each day…

Why it’s not-quite-love: Seriously, you have to ask?  This is a parody of cheesy love/heartbreak songs.  It’s actually somewhat ironic that Al managed to turn this into one of his most beautiful and popular songs.  The juxtaposition of the insanely violent lyrics with the mellow, thoughtful music just adds to the hilarity.

           
Filed under: Random Musings
Dec
01

French and Main Lesson Books

by heather | 1 Comments

We’re a few weeks into our Waldorfy experiments, and things are far from settled.  I’ve been busy, and tired, and things just haven’t gelled yet.  We’re not getting much ‘work’ done, but we’re getting a bit here and there at least.

One thing I’ve loved about the Waldorf ideas, is the concept of drawing to learn.  This isn’t solely exclusive to Waldorf, of course, I’ve seen it pop up in many curricula and philosophies.  It’s just especially prevalent in Waldorf, and so it’s led me to re-examine the idea with more freedom and more deliberate cogitation… how can we work main-lesson-style drawings into Flipper’s other subjects?  It’s one thing when you’re working with a resource that already includes drawing, but it’s another thing altogether when you want to keep using the materials you have, but add/substitute drawings where appropriate.

Well, I had a flash of brilliance today (if I say so myself).  I confess it wasn’t entirely original.  I was inspired while reading about The Sentence Family.  This particular grammar resource reminds me a bit of Sentence Island, which I’ve been thinking of using with Pomme when she’s old enough.  They are similar in that they both teach the facts through interesting stories with anthropomorphised grammatical concepts, rather than dry academic text.

Where Sentence Family takes a step beyond Sentence Island is in the active, creative element from the student.  Given cues and suggestions, they are to draw their own pictures of the grammatical characters.  For instance, Verb is an energetic young boy who wears red, and he should be drawn doing something active.

This approach is similar in concept to lapbooking, narration, and Waldorf main lessons, in that the child does not merely parrot back fill-in-the-blank answers, but becomes part of the process, engaging in an act of creativity which helps to secure the information in their consciousness – not just their short-term memory.

I was so impressed with this, that it struck me, that this is the way to incorporate drawings for Flipper’s other subjects.

First up, was French.  He is currently on unit one of book two of L’art de lire, and in general is doing very well.  He’s remembering the vocabulary and the pronounciations, his translations are generally accurate, he’s even getting the hang of gender and number agreement (which we don’t have to worry about in English).

But for some strange reason, the basic verbs avoir and être cause him constant confusion.  Not for lack of practice – he’s actually been taught these as early as age 4 or 5.  He sings the songs I learned as a child (conjugating to the tune of Mexican Hat Dance) with joy and enthusiasm.  He translates them accurately from french to english.  But english to french?  He’ll mix up “vous” with “il”, “est” with “êtes”, spell them wrong everywhere (he even used “ill” and “ills” recently), confuse the avoir conjugations with the être conjugations… many of the mix-ups are understandable… but not really after this length of time.

He needed a way to make each one more concrete, more individual.  Enter the main lesson drawing book.

I had him divide four pages into 2 sections each.  Then in each of the 8 sections, he labelled and illustrated one conjugation of être.  I gave him some hints of ideas where needed, but for the most part I just let him be creative and draw whatever was meaningful to him.

So, for “je suis”, he drew a simple stick figure of himself, with an arrow pointing to it saying “me”.  At my suggestion, he added a background of grass and a beautiful tree.  Then he thought of adding another person to the picture, smaller and in the background, to differentiate between the “me” and the “other.”

Then, for “tu es”, he drew the same two figures, but this time the other was the one in center focus.  For “il est”, the same two figures were located one on either side of a new figure, both pointing to him. “Elle est” repeated a similar picture, but with a girl in the center.

For “nous sommes”, he created a soccer team.  Complete with matching jerseys, a soccer ball, and an intricate net.  “Vous êtes” became, of course, the opposing team, with a couple of the first team off to the side pointing to them.  For “ils sont” and “elles sont”, the solitary figure of himself again took the center, pointing off to the side to a gaggle of boys (or girls) in the background.

He loved every moment of this activity.  It remains to be seen how much different it actually makes to his retention of the verb conjugations, but I love this approach.  We will continue tomorrow with the “avoir” conjugation — I can’t wait to see what objects his little characters will “have”!

I have to say that I’ve tried to demonstrate the conjugations in a similar manner previously… by explaining to him, by speaking and pointing to imaginary people whiler reciting the conjugation.  The difference is that then, I was the one doing the activity, and he was a mere passive observer.  That’s fine for your pure visual learners, not so much for your kinesthetic ones.  With this project, he was doing the activity, he was internalizing the meaning of the verbs in a more concrete way than rote worksheet exercises.

And most importantly – he liked it.

           
Filed under: Homeschooling | Tags: , , , , ,

Nov
20

Knitting in the Round Lessons

by heather | 0 Comments

I’m learning to knit… I’ve got the basics and I’m trying some trickier stuff.  My new project is a pair of socks (from the toe up!) with a set of double-pointed needles.  Lessons learned so far:

Knitting in the Round Lesson 1:

Knit the outside, not the inside.

Knitting in the Round Lesson 2A:

When picking up your newly free needle, make sure you grab the right one.  From which follows:

Knitting in the Round Lesson 2B:

How to pick up and repair dropped stitches.  (Useful for all knitting as well)

           
Filed under: Around the house, Eco-stuff, Random Musings | Tags: , , ,

Nov
17

“Enrichment”

by heather | 0 Comments

I just heard a news report on the radio about some enrichment programs being done at some schools in the province.  You know, the kind of extra stuff that’s not part of the regular curriculum.  Stuff that makes school more interesting, stuff that’s related to the real world, hands-on experiences, fun stuff.

And I listened to it, and I thought, “Hmm, that extra “enrichment” stuff in public schools sounds a lot like our regular day-to-day life as homeschoolers.”

           
Filed under: Random Musings
Nov
16

The Big Day – Trying a New Schedule

by heather | 0 Comments

Today is the Big Change — we’ve wrapped up several topics for now, and I’m implementing a much more Waldorf-inspired block.  Form drawing is the focus for the next two weeks, starting from grade 1 and moving more quickly than the 7-year-olds would through the basic forms.

We actually started a little form drawing — just curves — the last couple days of last week.  And it’s obvious how much he needs this.  A simple, regular, large curve from him is alternately too narrow, too pointy, too small…

There was also a nice confirmation on Friday of the effectiveness of including story in the work, as recommended (nay, as insisted upon) by Waldorf methods.  When I wanted to do one more form (consisting of a half-dozen curves in various locations) and he balked, I started relating the curves to dolphins, his greatest love.  This one is a dolphin leaping out of the water, this one is a dolphin diving, these ones are two dolphins kissing.  He grinned, lost his grumpiness, and eagerly drew the form himself, telling me the story of his dolphins as he went.

Great for form drawing, and for everything.  I need to remember this, it obviously works for Flipper.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how the day goes.  We’ll probably be experimenting with the plan for a little while yet, but basically we’ll do form drawing for at least an hour, along with his math and french and spelling and call that a ‘main lesson.’  Then after lunch, we’ll do some art and some knitting and some pottery — he’s eager to try a kid’s pottery wheel we just picked up.  Music time and a walk in the morning as well… and a visit to nanny and grampy’s… Yikes!  I’m exhausted already!

           
Filed under: Family, Homeschooling | Tags: , , , , , ,

Nov
16

Knitting With an 11-Year-Old Boy

by heather | 2 Comments

Flipper actually learned to knit many years ago, I think when he was 6.  He got a few rows done of what he intended to be a pillow for the cats, and then it was forgotten.

At the same time, the cushion I had started was also left aside, never to be picked up again.  My foray into learning to knit came to a halt.  But I’ve always wanted to get back into it, and also to get Flipper interested again as well.

With all my Waldorf research lately, of course knitting came up again, in a big way.  According to Donna Simmons of Christopherus, if you do no other handwork at all, at least do knitting.  With Flipper’s issues of focus, hand strength and coordination, patience, perfectionism, electronic/plastic toy addictions, knitting seemed like just the ticket!

So I picked up a Waldorf-based book of knitting for children, which includes rhymes for remembering the different stitch techniques as well as some simple projects — little toy lambs, elephants, horses, dolls, etc.

My plan has been to start including knitting in his ’schoolwork’ starting tomorrow, Monday.  So this weekend while he was at his dad’s, I pulled out the box of knitting supplies and got to work re-learning the techniques myself.  There was a skein of fun fluffy pink yarn, so I decided to work on a scarf for Pomme as practice.

I also had my “hook” for Flipper all set.  On Friday, we volunteered at a fundraiser bake/craft sale.  There were some fluffy handknit scarves, and Flipper wanted a blue one.  I told him he could knit his own, and he thought I was joking at the time.

Tonight, he saw me working on Pomme’s scarf.  “Is that a scarf???”  “Yes.”  “Cool!”  Now here I’m expecting him to say “can you make one for me, too?” and I would answer, “I could, but instead I’ll teach you to make one by yourself.”

What he actually said was:  “Can you teach me to knit a blue scarf myself?”

Hallelujah. That part was easy, anyway.

In fact, he wanted to start right away.  So I gathered up the book, some needles, and some practice yarn — with the promise that when he’s got the hang of it, we’ll go to the craft store and he can pick out his favourite yarn for his scarf.  And we started casting on.

Right away we had problems.  He kept wanting to lie down on his right elbow, which obviously can’t work.  He kept trying to use his left hand to do the work.  And whenever there was a problem, he would throw it down and cry!  I had warned him ahead of time that casting on was the hardest part, and that it would get easier after this.  But he kept crying, and wouldn’t let me help him, just kept trying it his way and having the same problems repeatedly.

We ended up having a talk about how you need to keep trying, not everything is easy on the first (or second or tenth) try, but that doesn’t mean you give up.   And that you need to let the people who know how to do something, help you.  I came this close to losing my cool and blowing up at him, but thankfully I kept my self-control this time.

Eventually, of course, he started to get it, and it’s just mind-boggling how his mood changed.  “Oh, I’m getting the hang of this now.  Heh, this is pretty easy.  Look mom!  I can do it!”  Oy vey.

We took a break when it was time for his bedtime routine, and took it up again for his quiet time.  He had cast on 25 stitches so we decided to start a row of knit.  This, of course, was much easier than casting on, so things went along swimmingly.  When it was time to go to bed, he asked if he could continue knitting while I read to him.  I figured, why not?  It’s better than him fidgeting, squirming, biting his covers and cracking his knuckles constantly.

When I told him that knitting was going to be part of his schoolday tomorrow, he was excited.

He knit in bed until he started to get drowsy.   Before he put it down, though, I had noticed every so often him mumbling to himself “get the sheep… off we leap… under the gate…” — from the verses used to learn the stitches.  It works!

           
Filed under: Family, Homeschooling | Tags: , , , , ,

Nov
15

Ah, To Sleep, Perchance to… Be Sick All Night Instead

by heather | 0 Comments

Pomme slept all night last night in her room.  Most nights she ends up joining us sometimes between 3-5am, and nurses back to sleep.  Most days now, that’s also the only nursing we do.

But occasionally, she stays in her room until we go in and get her (or she comes to get us, saying “wake up mommy!”).  Last night was one of those nights.

So I got a good night’s sleep, right?

Wrong.  Exhausted and looking forward to a great slumber, I ended up with an all-nighter IBS attack.  No pain, just nauseous and unsettled enough so that I couldn’t sleep.  Then I’d have to run to the loo and spend some quality time there.  When I start falling asleep on the pot, I head back to bed for a quick snooze.  But 1/2 hour later, I’m awake and dashing back again.

Sometimes this goes on for a couple hours.  Then whatever was causing the trouble passes… and I sleep peacefully the rest of the night.  Other times, like last night, I’m back and forth until 5am.

I’ve learned to roll with it.  I don’t fret and despair, I just take a book and camp out in the bathroom for an hour at a time.  But seriously, 5am?

So I’m functioning today on about 3 hours sleep — not consecutively.  The rain all last night was very pleasant to listen to, though now there’s a swamp in our back yard.  Pomme’s in great spirits today after her long sleep.  I guess she stole mine.

           
Filed under: Family, Random Musings | Tags: , ,

Nov
13

How We Spent Our Remembrance Day

by heather | 0 Comments

As I am the director of the Fredericton Concert and Marching Band (as of this past June), I was going to be involved in the Remembrance Day parade and ceremonies whether I really wanted to be or not.  As a member of the band from about age 12-19, I’ve sure participated in my fair share of Remembrance Day parades!  But it had been over 15 years since I’d been directly involved like that… last year was the first time I was a part of it again, and at that time I was still “just” a band member, not the director.

So it was with a fair bit of nerves that I went about my morning duties.  Would I catch the parade commander’s cues to march off the colours?  Would we be in the right place at the right time?  Would I be able to hear them announce the hymns?

Adding to my nerves was the fact that this service would probably be more watched than usual, thanks to the idiots who vandalized the cenotaph a few days ago.  This is, by the way, the official provincial cenotaph, not just the local one.  Here’s a great video by Charles Leblanc showing the damage:

But in the end, Remembrance Day isn’t about me, is it?  I gathered up my guts, had a great chat with the parade commander before we started who set me straight with a cheery smile, and off we went, without a hitch.  Well, no major ones anyway, but if you didn’t notice then I won’t tell.  ;)

Flipper and Pomme came to watch, of course.  Here in New Brunswick, Remembrance Day is an official holiday — schools are closed (not that it makes a difference for us, but for most families it certainly does), offices are closed (so hubby was able to take the kids), most stores are closed.   Apparently there were about 5000 people in attendance, and 300 soldiers in the parade.  That’s young soldiers, not counting the elderly vets who were also out in great numbers.

Flipper took a great video of the parade arriving at the cenotaph.  I’m so grateful to him, since I never get to actually see parades anymore!

Not bad for an 11-year-old with a cheap videocam, eh?

Charles also captured a nice picture of the spectators showing Flipper (in the grey jacket with yellow shirt) and Pomme with daddy (sitting down beside Flipper).

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http://charlesotherpersonality.blogspot.com/
           
Filed under: Family, Music, Random Musings | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Nov
09

Study Time for Mom with Christopherus

by heather | 0 Comments

It’s always exciting when you get STUFF in the mail, isn’t it?

This week, my order from Christopherus arrived.  I’m not planning to implement full-on Waldorf homeschooling, anthroposophy just isn’t my thing.  But there are several elements I want to incorporate, and I need to learn more about them.

I ordered several books: “Joyful Movement” and “Form Drawing for Beginners”, as well as the massive “Waldorf Curriculum Overview for Homeschoolers.”  If you’re not using their full curriculum but putting together your own, this is the book they recommend using.

I also bought their Botany Unit Study, which we will use next spring.

So far, I have to say I am both impressed and disappointed.  I am very impressed with how the Form Drawing book answered most of my lingering questions quickly and clearly, and with a good number of interesting form examples.  I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t go further into certain areas — it’s quite limited in examples of metamorphosing forms, for instance — but to be fair, it is only intended as an introduction, for beginners (as the title says!).  For many users, it’s all you’ll need.  And if you do want more, then she suggests various additional resources with helpful reviews of the pros and cons of each.

Joyful Movement was also disappointing.  Not because it isn’t great — it seems a fantastic resource.  But it wasn’t exactly what I was hoping it would be.  What it is, is mostly a collection of songs and verses to be used in your “circle time” or throughout the day.   They are well-organized and presented, and I’m sure I’ll refer to it often for ideas.

What I was looking for, was more about the movement aspect.  There are many suggestions along the lines of making up your own actions for a song.  But I was looking for the more therapeutic form of movement, not just ‘actions’.  Something like what Enki provides, with exercises devoted to crossing the midline, for instance.  The Christopherus book does talk about the value of this kind of movement, but doesn’t actually provide much direction.

The Botany Unit Study is similarly sparse on direction.  It is not a complete unit study by itself.  You do need separate resources — and I wish they had been mentioned on the website (if only so that I could have been looking them up ahead of time).   It is not a fully constructed unit study — it is a set of suggestions on how to create one yourself.  Many instructions are in the form of questions, which you then have to research and answer, then figure out how to present it to your child.

I would assume that more details about how to present the material would be included in a grade 5 curriculum book, as well as in the Overview which I purchased.  Also, a homeschooler who has been doing Waldorf for years would know precisely how to do it.  However, as a newbie, just looking for a single unit study, it wasn’t what I was expecting.

Still, there are many good ideas included in it.  I’m sure we’ll enjoy it.  As a beginner, I would simply have appreciated more “hand-holding”!

My main study for the next little while will be poring through the Curriculum Overview.  This is proving to be fantastic, and I’m only 40 pages in.  There are bits that I am glossing over, I’ll confess… the bits that go into the elements of Waldorf that I don’t agree with or don’t apply to us.  And I still have many questions.  But there are many, many pages of answers still to read!  And even things that I haven’t agreed with have been thought-provoking.

Tomorrow we’re going to begin some form drawing.  Over the course of this week, we’ll be finishing up some units or chapters in certain subjects, so that we may take a break from them, bringing them back up in block unit studies later in the school year.  Then next week, we’ll dig into two weeks of intensive focus on form drawing — this will be the “main lesson” — while continuing math, handwriting (copywork), spelling, french, and music, for about 2 hours of work outside the main lesson.  (And once he’s completed this section of his handwriting book, we will simply do related copywork as part of the main lesson).   The main lesson will also include art and handwork.

Phew!  It’s a busy time and changing a routine is always fraught with peril as well as excitement…

           
Filed under: Homeschooling | Tags: , , ,

Nov
07

Nature Walk

by heather | 0 Comments

Today we went on a nature walk.  We’ve been taking walks most mornings for the past week (as part of our drift towards Waldorf-iness… of course it’s also very Charlotte Mason but we never got into it for some reason…), but generally they’ve been along the streets, not into the woods.

We started off the day with a new approach to managing our daily schedule — writing it on our big whiteboard, which I appropriated from the downstairs playroom for this experiment.   It worked pretty well, until Pomme erased it around lunchtime… But here she is getting ready for our walk:

Schedule Board

I didn’t really want a long walk today, for various reasons (you can see all the stuff we had on our list!) – and I wasn’t sure how much Pomme would actually walk (and I wasn’t planning to take a sling, so I didn’t want to end up carrying her the whole way).  There is an entrance to a trail just a few minutes’ walk from our house, but I actually didn’t even know where it was.  Flipper does, however, so my suggestion for today was for him to take us to the trail entrance, then we’d come home.  We also needed to collect a few nice leaves for today’s art project.

Street Walk

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Filed under: Family, Homeschooling | Tags: , ,

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