Sometimes I feel like every other homeschooling family on the planet is more organized and effective than we are. There are the days when it feels like we cover so much and are taking advantage of whatever it is that is the current biggest advantage of homeschooling (time, freedom, opportunity for depth, flexibility, tailoring to each child's needs and strengths). And then there are the days when it feels like we should have gotten more done than we did.

The past few days have been very wide open, much more so than an average week. But it still feels like time is so short and there isnt' enough "free" time for hanging out and plain old puttering around. I have this nagging sense that if only my house was arranged perfectly, if only our rooms were bigger or we had less clutter or we were neater and tidier people in general that time would explode along with our creativity. Who knows?

Today was our traditional "Starbucks Thursday," which is an occasion we have instated for the final day of the week when Rutledge is in preschool. Today our Starbucks Thursday was rather short because I had a Freecycle person coming for a desk and a Best Buy delivery at noon. But we still get a good amount done in this altered circumstance, and I was proud of myself for restricting our food choices more today and not making it a $26 outing like last week's. I've broken down again and have the boys doing their grammar right in their book instead of writing it on the computer. This is based on the theory that it is better to do something consistently in a "less" kind of way than to do something intermittently and make it more difficult. We got a whole day's grammar work done in about 10 minutes in the focus of our caffeine-infused atmosphere. It's also a great place to do some of those mildly discussion-intensive things like vocabulary and word building. I have two curricula that I am using this year, kind of in a weaving type of way, for working with words--Megawords and this Morphics Literacy System thing I bought at a conference. Their favorite in the vocabulary/word realm is Wordly Wise, since it is bite-sized and generally fun. Walter, who used to hate this type of thing, now asks if it's possible for someone to major in vocabulary in college. Um, not exactly, but you can kind of make a field of study out of words, depending on what aspect of them interests you most. Ollie find the current grade level too easy, but when I tried bumping up to Vocabulary From Classical Roots and a book aimed more at high schoolers, he got a bit overwhelmed. Not only are the vocabulary words more challenging and less familiar, but the words to select from as synonyms and antonyms in the exercises can be very unfamiliar--"assiduous" and the like.

One of the hardest things for me about having responsibility for educating my kids is that I constantly feel the pull to push further, often quite a bit further than they would be pushed if they were in school. I'm struggling some with this with regard to Latin lately. Should they be doing a 1st year high school Latin program at 6th/modified 5th grade? Should I be taking them through what we have faster than we are going? As I write this, I wonder where I get my ideas. I mean, I guess the obvious question is, "Why?" But I feel like since what we're using can ostensibly be used as early as 3rd grade (not by most 3rd graders I know or have been...) that being on book 2 of it now is somehow not far enough alone. I suppose I need to keep my eyes on the prize of mastery and understanding, rather than the clock. Why is it so much easier to tell a new mother to "watch the baby, not the clock," and yet when it comes to older kids, that advice goes right out the window with me. Maybe it's normal to always have a nagging suspicion that somehow time is fleeting and every moment must be one of supreme challenge.

The best decision of the past week has been starting Rutledge in a dance class. He's the fourth kid, and that seems to be an explanation, excuse, and reason behind all kinds of things. In so many ways, he acts like and is treated as a really big baby, and yet he's going to be five in a very short time. At his age, Frances was already in a pre-team gymnastics program and had been dancing for almost two years. Rutledge has never really done any organized anything except for his private swim lessons this summer. I think I wrote about how Swim Lessons Changed Our Life--they tapped into abilities we didn't recognize and created a confidence in him and in us that he's ready for more than we give him credit for. But this dance class has been just what he needed. There are at least two other little boys around his age in the class, though other participants are as old as ten or twelve. He works so very hard to watch the instructor's steps and to be part of the group; he is capable of incredible concentration when he wants it. All week this and last week he has asked every single day whether this is his capoeira day. As I watched him tonight, I realized that I haven't been entirely fair to him by not giving him more opportunities to shine somewhere in an area beyond the letters and numbers academics that he doesn't give a rat's ass about most of the time. His preschool is pretty academic, and on my more stressful days, I compare him to the other kids, even though I know better. I can objectively stand back and say that this is, in some ways, not the best fit for him in terms of whether it plays to his strengths, but then my emotions and competitiveness will rear up and get the better of me. So the new interest in dance and the attention his is giving it is helping me to get back into the paradigm where I think children thrive best--where you put the emphasis on what they are doing well, on what excites them, on where they can be a star, rather than trying to fit some box that our culture says they should be in. Frances certainly wasn't doing any more (and probably much less) academic or traditional preschool/kindergarten work at his age, but because she was so obviously excelling in her physical pursuits, I didn't think of it so much; she felt successful, and I felt she was successful. I'm glad that I'm getting a chance to build up that feeling with Rutledge now. Parenting is just so darn hard, isn't it?! Doesn't it seem like you'd kind of get it by the time you get to the 4th?

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how today, a lovely day mostly at home, was heavy on the life skills education. With our broken dishwasher (and I'll spare the horrible story of today and why we still don't have a dishwasher even though one was delivered), we have had to revert to that chore of yesteryear--washing dishes by hand. Walter and Ollie were more than eager to do this, for a price, of course. I had to slow them way down so that I could clean up the sink and counters enough for them to have a safe and hygeinic setup for dishwashing. I am a strong believer that you can't just tell someone who is 8 or 11 to just perform a task; you must stop and give explicit training and ongoing instruction if you want them to do it correctly, and a task isn't worth doing if it isn't done correctly. And let me tell you, I'm meticulous about my dishes! I don't want to put my mouth on the lip of a glass that someone with a cold or other illness has been drinking out of until I know that it has been thoroughly scoured. Then we moved on to the leaves in the yard. It wasn't the ideal day for raking or bagging. There has been rain for far too long, including this morning, and the leaves were pretty damp, which is both a recipe for problems with leaf mold (I get pounding headaches and nauseous when I deal with leaves) and problems actually getting things up. But again, some working together, some cash incentive, and some instruction moved things along. We have five massive, oversize bags of leaves finished, which took care of about 3/5 of the back yard. I appreciated Frances's suggestion that we start in the front, since that would improve our image, but the back yard was absolutely carpeted with a layer of leaves, so it was a natural spot to tackle. Our deadline that has lit the fire under us is a free dump of leaves at the shopping center in our neighborhood on Saturday and Sunday. Too bad the weather is cooperating so poorly (it's pouring right now!). But I felt like we accomplished a good deal and they got a sense of how much work it can be to be an adult, which is something I haven't gotten across to them as well as I should have in the past.

So we're mostly plodding along, trying to stay on track before holidays get into the middle of our plans. Lots of dancing (Frances is at 4 days a week now). Lots of diving (3+ hours a week). Lots of trying to finish up those math lessons. We're reading a couple of things together this week--Squanto and the Pilgrims and the Odyssey. The older ones are still working through Oliver Twist. It's kind of a good place to be--settling into the late fall, when the days get dark more quickly and there seems to be more time for the games, the music playing, and the reading that make our life feel more harmonious and together.