What Is This "Summer Break" Thing?

Summer break. 

I've been dreaming of it for months. That far-off, mythical time when we'd be done with our home education for the year, and when I'd finally have time to get to all the projects I wanted to complete - decluttering, deep cleaning, planning for next year's lessons. 

Apparently my delusion is widespread, because I am starting to see "plans for summer break" posts all over the homeschooling blogosphere.

But I'm now three weeks into "summer break," and folks, I'm here to tell you... there ain't no such thing. 

Or if there is, I'm really missing out. 

The problem, of course, is that home education is only a very small percentage of my daily duties. Every thing else - child care, baby care, laundry, cooking, cleaning, church, errands, outings, dishes, etc. - goes right along merrily, forgetting to respect the fact that I am supposed to be on this long-awaited summer break! But nooooooo. Life continues, and so does the somewhat frantic nature of trying to keep up with daily duties and activities, regardless of whether or not we're doing lessons. And for the most part, all of the tasks I had planned for the summer are not happening. 

And so, more experienced home educating mamas, I'd like to ask you, in all seriousness: 

What is this "summer break" phenomenon, and why does everyone keep talking about it when it doesn't exist? (Or rather, how are you all getting so much done with a houseful when I am failing so miserably to make progress with only a small family to care for?)

It sounds facetious, but I'm serious. Really, ladies, fill me in on what I'm doing wrong. I had oodles and oodles of plans for the summer - especially decluttering and planning for next year - but I am seeing days and weeks go by with only tiny and painstaking progress made in either area. 

And really, though my list of summer planning tasks seems (to me, a novice) overwhelmingly long, I'm only planning for one student in the early grades. Goodness only knows what state I'd be in if I were lesson-planning for a houseful! (Hopefully that will come with time.)

When I saw this article, which lists about five million things that the author is planning to do during her children's homeschool summer break, I almost cried. Whatever she's doing, it's different than what I am currently able to make happen during summer breaks. 

{Please chime in, experienced home educators!}

Another source of frustration during the "break" is that I don't so much have a list of things to do as a list of decisions to make - curriculum decisions. And being that I am a person who doesn't do so well when there are lots of choices (and there are thousands of choices out there), I am quickly approaching the hair-pulling stage as I try to determine curriculum choices for our first-grader. 

My primary puzzle is over Language Arts. Should I do it at all in first grade? If so, which one? I'm thinking of Alpha Omega's Language Arts LifePac (based on Erica's recommendation at Large Families on Purpose), but there's also a friend's recommendation for First Language Lessons, along with about a million others. 

If I ever disappear mysteriously, look for me in an over-the-border insane asylum, where you'll find me banging my head into walls and muttering, "Language Arts curricula... Language Arts curricula..."

But I digress.

Besides that knotty problem, I am also trying to make a host of other decisions (thankfully phonics and math decisions are already made):

- Should we try to teach any sort of formal history, literature, or science, or just continue with informal reading? If and when we start formal teaching, which curricula should we choose for each? 

- When, if ever, do I want to teach spelling?

- What extra-curriculars, if any, should we choose?

- Do we want to keep trying to do notebooking? How do we make that work? (For all the praise of notebooking that I've heard, I have found precious little about the actual technicalities of making it work.)

- Whenever I do choose a language arts curriculum, what additional curriculum will we need to fill in the gaps? (Some L.A. curricula teach spelling, composition, grammar, etc.; some don't.)

- Which home education style do we want as our focus - textbook, unit studies, Charlotte Mason, etc.? (Yes, I'm still enough of a beginner that I don't have that figured out.)

- What about the extras, like art?

- When should we start piano lessons?

- Should we start Spanish next year?

- Do we eventually want to include Latin in our curricula?

- Should we consider classical education choices? 

These, and many other questions, are currently swirling around in my head, making me into something of an emotional wreck. Though I am doing my best to bring my questions to the Lord (rather than running back and forth mentally like a rat in a cage) and consult my husband about them, these questions are driving me batty. Primarily it's about language arts, but the others are pretty problematic as well. 

And so, dear readers, that is my ongoing summer break - having no time for any major projects, and driving myself nuts with all of the questions I need to answer. 

Ah, the joys of summer. 

One thing that has become abundantly clear is that I do indeed want to make next year's summer break to be April. Much as I am trying to work on contentment with living in Phoenix weather (when my heart is aligned with the weather of the Pacific northwest), I do not enjoy getting outside in our broiling  valley summers. I would much rather use the summers for hitting the books and take our breaks during the temperate times of the year. With that in mind, I hope to start our school year at the beginning of June, so that we can be done in time. 

Again, more experienced mamas, please feel free to fill me in with your wisdom, experience, and advice! 

One of our summer projects completed - our new compost bucket! (Anyone know why my pictures are coming out weird and stretched sideways, by the way?)

It's Time to Protect Arizona Midwives & Homebirth Rights!

Hello out there, dear readers...

As most of you know, big changes are coming down the pipeline in Arizona regarding licensed midwives and client rights for homebirths.

These changes are not good ones. In fact, they are disastrous. If the current proposed regulations go through, (1) Arizona midwives will no longer be able to practice safely, due to (among other things) a removal of their ability to carry and administer life-saving medications (such as pitocin for postpartum hemorrhage), (2) homebirth clients will lose the right to informed refusal of state-dictated prenatal, intrapartum. and postpartum procedures and tests, and (3) many additional restrictions and requirements will be added to homebirth midwifery that will prevent midwives from practicing and serving their clients well, and which will restrict client access to safe homebirth midwifery services.

Even I, who have had three safe and uncomplicated homebirths, will most likely lose access to legally-attended homebirth should these new regulations pass.

You can read an excellent summary of what's going on here.

You can leave your comments here.

Please take a minute to follow the above link and leave comments regarding these regulations. You do not have to be an Arizona resident or homebirth client to leave comments, and all are appreciated. Please remember to keep all comments calm, polite, and evidence-based. Flinging accusations or being rude or argumentative will get us nowhere.

Regulations will take effect on July 1st unless changes are made.

Thanks, everyone!

Happily Releasing Unnecessary Expectations! {Plain & Simple}

This post wasn't a planned part of this series - it just came to me randomly while I was showering a few evenings ago!

Here goes...

One great source of stress in my life (and, I expect, in the lives of many others) is the great morass of self-imposed expectations that I carry in my heart but cannot fulfill in my life. I'm not talking about the essentials (morals, health, real responsibilities), but simply those non-essential social expectations which I have voluntarily taken upon myself to fulfill (but cannot).

All of us choose, in many ways or few, to conform to various societal expectations. And many of these are very good things (like choosing to wear clothes or adopt a moral code). But sometimes conforming to non-essential societal norms can put unnecessary stress on us when we are trying to live up to something that we cannot do - to something that is not true to who we are.

I should again make it clear that I am not suggesting that people throw away morality, ethics, or culture as a whole - just that we should examine non-essential cultural expectations to see if they are benefiting or harming us.

I have found that as I get to know my true self, I can choose to jettison various self-imposed expectations, and it is very freeing - and a very important part of the pathway toward simplicity!

Here are just a few non-essential cultural expectations for which I have chosen the "opt-out" option:

Crafting - I am in awe of those ladies out there who scrapbook, decorate, and are otherwise brilliantly crafty. I love to admire their handiwork. But at the same time, I am simply not (for the most part!) a crafty woman. I do not have the creativity necessary, nor do I have that inward urge to create. But for many years, I have carried the guilt of that expectation. I should scrapbook. I should sew for fun. I should make homemade Christmas cards. And etc.

But the truth is that I have neither the desire nor the need to be crafty. And furthermore, if I do have any spare time, I would much rather spend it, say, scrubbing the floors with bleach than I would making hand-woven hazelnut-dyed wool rugs from fibers that I collected and spun myself. Bleach is just more my kind of thing.

Releasing that expectation was wonderful. So was throwing away all of my "should-do" clippings from Martha Stewart Living that I'd had tucked away in a folder and which had been on my conscience ever since. 

Martha Stewart, meet the round file. 

Pursuing the 'Do - When I was younger, I wore my hair in a braid or a bun... and loved it. But I always felt the social pressure to have a complicated, sculptured, modern hairstyle. And when I graduated from high school, I immediately cut all of my hair off and spent the next ten-plus years very unsuccessfully trying to learn to do a styled hair-do (the type that involves a hair dryer, a curling iron, and gobs of expensive hairstyling products). I never enjoyed it and I was never any good at it.

Recently, though, reality has slapped me in the face. I like plain hairstyles! (Or perhaps I should say Plain hairstyles!) I love the practicality, the quickness and lack of expense, and the look. Why am I trying to live up to an expensive cultural expectation that I don't even want?

In other words... bring on the bun! For good. And this week, I finally tossed the last expensive gooey hairstyling product in the trash bin with a firm "Good Riddance!"

(Okay, I did hold onto one bottle of hairspray. I don't know why. But I'm guessing it'll hit the trash bin too in the next week or so after I release my last emotional tie to the stuff.)

There is great freedom in releasing unwanted self-caused expectations that are tying us to unwanted standards.

(My current plan is to become the sweet little old lady with a cotton print dress, apron, glasses, and wispy grey hair tied up in a knot. It's so adorable I can hardly wait!)

On the way!

Home Education Perfection - Round about August, something starts to turn up in the blogosphere... homeschool mothers posting pictures of their drop-dead-gorgeous homeschool rooms! AAAAAHHHHHH!!!

Now seriously, these homeschool rooms really do make me drool. I love them. I really, really, really love them.

But again... this is not an area in which I am skilled. (Having lived in our house for over four years, I hung our first picture... three days ago. Seriously.) It's also not an area on which I want to spend my time. (Again, the bleach is calling my name.) Furthermore, not being artistically gifted, I could never life up to the high standards set by some of the homeschooling mama-geniuses out there, so I would live in a constant state of envy, guilt, and disappointment should I even try.

Even more importantly, a beautifully-decorated homeschool room is not essential to a good home education. There are things that are essential to good home education - routines, real books, accountability, etc. - but a gorgeous homeschool room is not one of them. I can produce successful kids sitting at the kitchen table with no decorations whatsoever (my current plan). I could also have a beautiful school room... and still fail horribly as a home educator. But a beautiful room will not make or break our home education. If it's something that a homeschool mom wants to do, then that is wonderful! Post pictures and let me drool over them. But it's not something that I need to do as a requirement to be a good home educator.

So, instead of beating myself up over this ("You should have a beautiful school room too, you miserable failure!"), I will stop the guilt, accept that it is not my bent, and enjoy the beautiful school rooms that all you genius-mamas produce... vicariously.

***

Hopefully I'm making myself clear in this post! I'm not proposing that we become lazy, that we drop our morals and ethics, that we make excuses, or that we lay around all day saying, "It's just not in me to do such-and-such!" What I am suggesting is simply that we find out which non-essential self-imposed expectations are dragging us down, and that we choose to replace them with more down-to-earth guidelines for our personal situations.

Here are a few more self-imposed expectations that I have decided (or hope) to drop:

- We must always eat off of real plates! If I use paper plates, I'm cheating! 

- I must update my blog every day or two, or I'm a failure as a blogger! 

- I need to decorate for every season and holiday! Perfectly! 

- I need to do complicated unit studies that cover every subject under the sun and which are so successful that the kids are begging for more! (May I say.... HA!)

- I must bake my own bread, preserve all my own food, raise farm animals, and keep up with all of my other duties simultaneously and perfectly!

As they say in Hypnobabies.... "Release." Works for childbirth, works for unnecessary self-imposed expectations.

RELEASE.

Which expectations have you imposed upon your heart and your life that would be better released and forgotten? I'd love to hear about it!

Our latest family picture, just for fun. Don't you love how helpful the 3yo was being? 

Health & Safety Curriculum!

One of my many-many-many projects for this summer was to write a health & safety curriculum to use for our home education plans next year.

I know that there is a lot missing out of this curriculum (feel free to add, folks!), but this is a basic outline of safety skills that I want to impart to our children. 

Feel free to borrow!

(You will notice that outdoor skills are geared toward the Southwest... every area will have its own animal and/or hazard list.) 

***

Safety & Life-Skills Curriculum



1. Personal Information

- Full name

- Phone number

- Daddy’s cell phone number

- Address

- Parents’ names

- Birthdate


2. Personal Safety

- If lost… look for a woman.

- If lost in a wilderness area… sit down and wait for us to find you.

- If someone says “Don’t tell this to your mommy or daddy,” immediately go tell your mommy or daddy.

- If someone ever tries to touch your underwear area, or to touch you in any way that makes you feel uncomfortable… immediately go tell mommy or daddy or a trusted adult.

- If someone you don’t know comes up to you and asks for directions… leave right away and find mommy or daddy or a trusted adult.

- Never get in a car with someone you do not know. Run away and scream if they try to make you get in a car or go with them, and go right to mommy or daddy or a trusted adult.

- If you are walking and a car pulls up next to you, turn around and go the other direction – and go right to mommy or daddy or a trusted adult.

- If an adult asks you for help (to find a lost pet, etc.), leave right away and go to mommy or daddy or a trusted adult.

- If you ever feel uncomfortable, leave and find mommy or daddy or a trusted adult.

- How to call 911 – mechanics of dialing, what information to have ready.

- Always tell mommy or daddy where you are going.

- Answer the front door only if it is someone you know, or if mommy or daddy says that it’s okay.


3. Practical & Household Safety

- House fire – How to get out of the house; don’t hide in the house.

- Fire – Stop, drop, roll

- Earthquake – Duck and cover

- How to use a fire extinguisher

- How to turn off the gas main

- How to turn off the water main

- How to turn off electricity to the house

- How to turn off the water to a toilet

- How to change a tire


4. Outdoor Safety

How to deal with…

- Snakes

- Scorpions

- Cactus

- Spider

- Streams and stream beds

- Lightning


***

What would you add, readers?

* Later note: See reader additions below!

Dealing With the Crazy in My Head {Plain & Simple}

Before starting, I want to make another book recommendation... a new find that I absolutely adore, "The Simple Living Handbook: Discover the Joy of a Decluttered Life" by Lorilee Lippincott (see her blog here). It is an awesome book with so many good ideas and new ways of looking at things! Thoroughly recommended - go check it out! (But not from the library... at least until I've finished it.)

***

And now to the subject at hand.

There are many ways to simplify. Decluttering the house, turning down the noise, unplugging from the electronics. Those are all important, and I'm planning to touch on some of those in coming weeks. But the most important place to simplify is a place that is not so easy to deal with.

It's inside my head. That crazy place that screams, "You're not moving fast enough! Go! Go! Go!" That place that keeps me going at a frantic pace, even when I'm outwardly calm. That is the place that needs clearing and decluttering.

Apparently I don't project a particularly frantic image, because I am constantly receiving the most surprising compliments on my calm demeanor.

"You handle parenting with such grace."

"You deal with things so calmly!"

"Wow, I wish I could keep as calm as you do with such a busy life going on."

While I'm always pleased to receive such comments, I'm afraid that the reality is too often quite different. Most of the time, my mind is frantically busy making to-do lists and stressing out over details, plans, and the much-too-busyness of being a mother, homemaker, and home educator to three boys.

Should I chance to have a few minutes of time to finally get something done, my mind looks something like this:

"Okay, I've got a few minutes - if the baby will just keep sleeping, maybe I can get something done. God, please let the baby keep sleeping! Hurry, hurry, hurry. Faster, faster, faster. Oh no, I need to do [A], [B], [C], [D], and [E], and there isn't possibly enough time. Go, go, go! Oh no, I forgot about [F], [G], [H], and [I]! Dear God, I'll never get it all done!"

I'm stressing out just thinking about it!

So here's the thing. My life is busy - true. My life is very busy - true. But a lot of the stress that I feel is stress that I am putting upon myself purely because of the craziness going on in my own brain. It's self-imposed. I am doing it to myself.

And that's where the comparison to the Amish comes in. The Amish people (and our ancestors from the Old World, to whom the Amish may be compared) do not have easier lives or lesser workloads than we modern Americans. If anything, they have harder lives and heavier workloads. (Just try plowing a field with a horse some time!) Yet with all of that, their lives are much calmer, their communities are much healthier, and their life-pace is much slower and more measured, as opposed to the crazy-busy pace that I maintain in my head regardless of how busy or non-busy I am.

Like most of us, I am used to frenetic levels of activities - constant to-do lists and deadlines, an over-stuffed schedule both within and without the home, and the constant dangling carrot of more-more-more productivity that we've been taught is the Holy Grail of modern life. Go, go, go. Faster, faster, faster. Move, move, move!  

We do it to ourselves. I do it to myself. But I don't want to do it any more, and I'm working on stopping.

But how do we stop the ingrained mental habits of a lifetime? It sounds simple ("Just calm down!"), but it isn't - because it's our status quo, our automatic habit, our addiction to mental stress. And switching to a slower pace of life is going to take a lot of practice.

When I realize (approximately fifty times per day) that I am operating in my usual frantic-rushing-crazy mode, here are the three steps I am working on:

(1) STOP - When I realize what I'm doing - making myself crazy by screaming at myself to go faster-faster-faster! - I stop! I force myself to stop where I am, mentally and physically, and I pause to re-set my mindset and my activity level.

(2) BREATHE - I physically slow down my breathing, and as I do so, I try to slow down my thoughts and set my mind on something positive (instead of worrying frantically about political or spiritual issues), and breathe slowly so that I can calm down the crazy that's otherwise going on in my head.

(3) SLOW DOWN - Yes, that's right - I physically slow down my movements. Instead of frantically scrubbing dishes and tossing them in the drainer, I'll slow down and force myself to enjoy the process and to feel it and do it calmly. Instead of racing through the house trying to get chores done faster-faster-faster, I'll slow my steps and make myself take a saner pace.

The habits of a lifetime aren't easy to break - but it's worth the effort. Why? Because all of the external work that I'm doing to declutter my house (and I'm on a roll right now with that!) won't matter if I can't tame the raging beast within my own mind.

Stop. Breathe. Slow down.

I think many of us need to escape from the bondage of "faster is better." We may technically get more done (though that's doubtful), but we enter into a dreadful mental bondage that enslaves us to a schedule that we can never keep up with and which makes us miserable and constantly stressed-out. It's worth the work to escape from that slavery.

Who wants to join me? 

Have a wonderful Friday, everyone!

Our Life: The Mother's Day Edition

Because every mother deserves a flower on Mother's Day... Here ya go.

Isn't it heart-warming?

Actually, I told my husband several years ago to PLEASE stop getting me flowers. Of any kind. Ever. I can't stand to watch the poor things die, and I'd much rather have something else - like a book. Or plastic storage boxes. Mmmm... plastic storage boxes.

My dream world would be to wake up surrounded by these wonderful creations. 

But this year I did end up with a flower! However, after four hours out of water plus the tender ministrations of a curious toddler, it looked pretty sorry (see above). When we got home, we put it in water - and then laughed till we cried.

Happy Mother's Day!

(Or Mothers Day. Or Mothers' Day. That question has driven me to near-insanity more than once. Whatever it was, enjoy it!)

Introducing Our Wee Slimy Friend (WSF)

Recently a sweet friend blessed me with a kombucha starter, also known as a SCOBY (a Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast), and thus I have joined the community of kombucha-brewers! Hurray for lactofermentation!!

Kombucha, like yogurt, kefir, pickles, kimchi, etc., is a lacto-fermented product that produces a wonderfully-powerful dose of all-natural probiotics (beneficial bacteria), and can be an awesome addition to one's diet, especially in a day and age when most products that were formerly probiotic have now been nuked (i.e. heat-treated for shelf-life), thus eliminating the beneficial bacteria that we all need.

Can kombucha help nausea and vomiting of pregnancy? Maybe. Read about some possibilities here. However, the truth is that any steps to improve one's health can't hurt, and it's always good to do anything to bump up one's health before facing the monster of hyperemesis.

Because I am doing a low-carb diet, I am letting my kombucha do a longer brew, to allow the colony to consume more of the sugars. This makes the resulting product much less sweet and much less pleasant to drink (my weird-stuff-loving husband won't touch it), but I'm actually getting used to it! Now I'm thinking of brewing even longer to kick the carb count down lower, so we'll see how that goes. (If you brew it for a shorter time, this stuff is awesome - and I don't even care for tea, as a rule!)

Every time you brew a batch of kombucha, your mother SCOBY will produce a baby SCOBY, so there are always plenty of SCOBYs to go around. Grab one from a sympathetic friend and brew away!

(If you end up with baby SCOBYs that you can't give away, add them to your garden or compost pile for extra bacterial goodness!)

My first brew with the WSF - I have made two more batches since then. 

Directions for Making Kombucha Tea

Use a 2-4 quart glass container. All utensils should be clean, but don’t use antibacterial soap (can mess up the SCOBY). If you want to disinfect, rinse with apple cider vinegar.

Pour boiling water halfway up your container. Add 1 teabag per quart and let steep 20 minutes. Stir in sugar (1 cup per gallon, or ¼ cup per quart).

Add cold water to fill (leave room for SCOBY and starter tea) and wait till water has reached room temperature.

Add reserved SCOBY and tea (reserve about 6 oz tea per gallon).

Cover with paper towel and rubber band and place in dark location for 6-10 days. Less time = sweeter taste. More time = less sweet taste, more vinegar. Label with desired bottling date so that you don't lose track!

Bottle in clean glass containers. Strain if desired. Will carbonate, so cap loosely if you don’t want carbonation to build up. Will last in fridge for quite a long time!

Enjoy!