CM Conference

Tim and I went to the Childlight USA Charlotte Mason Conference in Boiling Springs, NC - we got back yesterday. As always, it was great meeting new faces from the list and seeing familiar friends from past conferences.

The theme was on the relational aspect of CM - not only "Education is the Science of Relations," but relationships in general: relational Christianity, relational parenting. Even in homeschooling, we can allow lessons to become the focus of our school and lose sight of the relationships we're building with our children - which is often a primary reason that most parents continue homeschooling, even if that wasn't their original reason.

For me personally, I now feel better about tweaking the AO Year 9 booklist for J. He'll be doing a weekly co-op this year because he's a social person and needs to be around friends, but it means he'll have a four-day work week. I planned to cut out some books to make that do-able for him (and to make less friction between us), but I had some guilt about the books he'd be missing. Now I feel okay about it. In fact, he'll probably get more out the books he does do because he can take his time with them. This year will a year of focusing on our family relationships, even if it means relaxing our academics.

I'll also be working on narrations this year - it dawned on me during a discussion at the conference that I've been letting my two younger sons do quick summaries instead of real narrations, and I feel like I need to go back to square one, re-read CM's sections on narrations, and start at the beginning with them again.

Dawn ;) (Excelsior Warriors) drove us there, and we stayed in a four-room dorm/apartment with her and her two daughters during the conference. They're the fun-nest family I think I've ever met. They stayed overnight at our house on their way back home; this is them just before leaving (posted with their permission). Miss M was sad that her new friend was leaving, so she's not in a very photographic mood.



One conference highlight was when Tim, Dawn's daughters, and another AO high schooler spent some time in the empty auditorium singing and sharing music they all knew (show tunes, Phantom of the Opera, Gilbert and Sullivan, movie songs). Tim had access to a piano, and the other AO high schooler had a violin, so they played for each other. They all like the same books, have done the same curriculum, and found that they had lots in common as a result. They hope to do more of that at future conferences, with more AO teens.

One area I see improving every year is the cooperation between homeschoolers and teachers at these conferences. Both groups have much to learn from each other, and share the same goal of using CM's methods to benefit the next generation.

I have notes from specific lectures/classes that I hope to post, and we haven't forgotten that we still have Tim's graduation to post about.

(complete list of conference posts here.)

Graduation

Tim's graduation was last night; we did a dinner party at home. We're on our way to the Charlotte Mason conference in NC right now, so we'll have to post more later.

for future reference...

...pomegranate juice and maple syrup do not go well together. At all.

Ignore the Hair

The lighting was right, so I snapped away. Miss M started posing as soon as she saw the camera, so there's a bit of ballet and a bit of silliness. The hair is a mess, but the likeness is good and, I have to admit, these capture her personality.

let them eat cake

(May is a month of birthdays for us...)

Alice Walker's Daughter on Being a feminist's daughter

Rebekah Walker (daughter of Alice Walker, who wrote The Color Purple) writes, "I love my mother very much, but I haven't seen her or spoken to her since I became pregnant. She has never seen my son - her only grandchild. My crime? Daring to question her ideology. Well, so be it. My mother may be revered by women around the world - goodness knows, many even have shrines to her. But I honestly believe it's time to puncture the myth and to reveal what life was really like to grow up as a child of the feminist revolution."

Read the complete article here.

A Visit to My House

I created my own meme!!

People who visit us get a taste of who we are, what we're into, and what we're like. I notice that my kids tend to show new visitors the same computer things they like, or play music for them that they love that our guests have probably never heard, and offer the same snacks.

Since there are lots of people I know via the internet who may never get the chance to visit us, I thought I'd offer a virtual glimpse of a visit to our house.

If you came to our house--

You would see:
Art posters on the walls (Mona Lisa; Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott, Miranda and the Tempest, The Shrine; Constable's Hay-wain; Bouguereau's The Bird Lesson; Edmund Blair Leighton's The Accolade; Sir Frank Dicksee's La Belle Dame Sans Merci; John Singer Sargent's Garden Study of the Vickers Children)

We'd probably feed you:
corn chips
Red Vines, if they aren't rock hard

And offer you this to drink:
diluted juice, or your choice of hot tea (we have lots of varieties!)

We'd undoubtedly ask if you'd read:
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Lord of the Rings
(If you said yes, then we'd ask if you'd read The Space Trilogy or The Silmarillion)

We'd want to play this music for you:
Whirlwind of Leaves by Tom Root (our best friend's CD!)
Celtic Skies (unknown but great Celtic praise music)
Vienna Teng
Sara Groves
If you were a true Narnia fan: Roar of Love (2nd Chapter of Acts' Narnia album)
If you were a piano fan: Julianne Markavitch's CD of Tarentellas

We'd want to tell you the latest about:
The Prince Caspian movie we recently saw

We'd probably suggest a game of:
Quiddler (inside) or Frisbee Golf (outside)

We might show off:
Tim's graduation announcements, which are still in progress (if you wait a couple of weeks, we might be able to show you his actual diploma!)

We might get on the computer and show you:
Lego Beowulf (parts 1, 2, 3)
Weird Al's Star Wars American Pie


If it was a long enough visit, we might watch:
The Climb (a movie about two mountain climbers)
Our Mutual Friend PBS miniseries (it would have to be a really long visit for this one!)
The Sandy Bottom Orchestra
(Have you seen the Julie Andrews version of Cinderella?)

___________________________________________

What would a visit to your house be like?

We're tagging:
The Squirrels at Dewey's Treehouse
The Common Room
The Beehive
Liberty and Lily
U Krakovianki
Miss Roxie
Athena in a Minivan
Shilohmom at The Country Cottage
Katie at CM, Children and Lots of Grace
Excelsior Warriors Dawn ;)
I'm tagging Thimble Cottage, too - even though I'm there every week.

We Saw Prince Caspian

And I liked it. But my real post must wait till I'm more cognizant, because we went to the midnight showing (oh yes...) and my brain isn't used to functioning at 4:30 in the morning.

*yawn*

Useful Online Converter Software

Media-Convert can save a file that you upload to another file type. In my case, I can convert an Open Office (.odt) file from Linux to a Word doc, or to a pdf file. I can also now convert files to pdb files so my PDA can read them.

Text Fixer has tools for removing line breaks from Project Gutenberg texts, adding

tags to convert a page of text to html, and other useful tools.

Pink Dress