Anna and Cathy's Andy Warhol Moment...

They're in the Denver Post online today! Check it out!  The picture is a hoot!  :)

First Day of School, 2011-2012

So, I arrived home from Omaha Tuesday afternoon; rechecked all the children's uniforms and school supplies Wednesday; packed the lunches last night, got everyone into the bathtub and into bed early -- and then got everyone out the door, happy, smiling, and on time this morning.  Everyone, that is, except this little guy:

William -- who is sick with mild flu symptoms -- bad cough and tummy troubles.  So, (heehee!)  Mommy gets a reprieve from sending baby #10 off to Kindergarten for a day or four...  I do still really have a difficulty with conventional schooling.  It's most unnatural for me to send my children away for someone else to teach them.  If it weren't for the world's best Kindergarten teacher and our stellar Teaching Sisters, I so would not be doing this.  Thankfully, I do still have Happy Homeschooler, Catherine, here to keep me company.  I'm so glad of that!  And William's kindergarten class has off on Wednesdays.  Plus, I still get to teach my awesome autistic high school buddy, Brian, history and English three days a week.  So I shouldn't be too lonesome. 



Cathy, such an indus-
trious little student,
playing the wii...


 Hopefully I'll have a chance (finally, maybe) this school year to tap out some ponderful  posts on the conventional school vs. home school, vs. boarding school decisions we've made...  and will likely continue to re-decide and re-defne and re-make as the years go on.

In the meantime, though:  Anyone else out there already starting the school season with sickness?  I hope this isn't a sign of things to come!  Ugh.  What are your immune booster methods of choice?

Monday, August 23rd

First Day of School

2010-2011

Gabe -- Kindergarten

Theresa -- 7th grade

Anna -- 2nd grade

"I'm going to miss you, Theresa"

(Cathy, above right, opted to homeschool for 4th grade, and William is doing preschool at home.)

Coming soon: Conventional Schooling vs. Homeschooling vs. Boarding Away

Homeschooling on a budget

1. Assess the basic workbooks (math, spelling); decide what worked last year and what did not.

2. Go through the catalogues and make a wish list of books and sources we'd like to try.

3. Add up the total cost.

4. Get on the internet and look for used editions of wish list books and sources.

5. Pare down wish list.

6. Add up total cost of used editions.

**

7. Add up the cost of the wedding tuxes, the children's clothes, and the gifts for the wedding.... (Coming up in October)

9. Hike out to the quanset hut to look through the book bins stored out there.

10. Realize we already own enough materials to educate a third-world country.

11. Research how to sell some of the extra books on E-Bay.*

12. Use the money to buy wish-list items to add to the pile gleaned from books we already have for this year.*

13. Take some time to meander through this terrific list of online homeschooling resources, check out these free resources from Catholic Heritage Curricula, and peruse this free online Catholic Charlotte Mason curriculum.*

14. Download some inexpensive online books, especially this Guardian Angel coloring book.*

*Haven't done these things yet. If you don't see much of me this week, you know what I'll be doing!

** The Bicentennial Lincoln Penny; so many of us are pinching ours that there has been little call for them to be put into circulation. I haven't seen one of these yet, have you?

One Problem Solved

Yesterday I mentioned the trouble we've had with our schoolbook organization. We have bins for each of the girls' every day work, folders, binders, and pencil cases which they carry in from our big school cabinet (pictured at right), which is now located in our living room. That hasn't been a problem.

BUT, we do our school work on our dining room table, which, of course, we also use for everything else under the sun, including eating, so we can't use the table top for storage. We have a big bookcase in the room, but it's filled with all our saints books, coffee table books, and works of classics. Then, we have the piano and only a little room for anything else. So all our every day reference materials, correction books, and "together work" has ended up stacked on the hearth right near Mom's end of the dining room table. It's handy that way, but it's rather an eyesore.

See? Here was the problem:

(The books, not the boys &:o)

And here's the solution we found:

(It's from Tarjay, it cost about $25, and it's on wheels. Note the matching waste basket!)

Wordless Wednesday

L - R: Theresa (5th grade), Catherine (2nd grade), Anna (Kindergarten), Michelle (9th grade)

Celebrating the Feast Days

Remote preparation for:

Friday, August 29th

The Beheading of St. John the Baptist Paintings by Michaelangelo Caravaggio

I am finding more to study and discuss than to actually do in celebration of this feast. The facts surrounding St. John's death are difficult to explain to young children... though they can be carefully summarized. There is much in the life of St. John, however, to explore as a background to his holy death: his role as precursor of the Son of God, the fact that he was the nephew of Mary, the son of St. Elizabeth, the cousin of Jesus, his life of simplicity and sacrifice, all climaxing with the ceremony of Christ's baptism at his cousin's hands.

Here are some resources for the day:

Information about St. John the Baptist, in general

Biblical reference to John's condemnation of Herod and Herodias' unlawful marriage: Luke 3:19, Matthew 14: 3-5.

Biblical reference to Salome's demanding of St. John's head: Matthew 14: 6-8

The conception and birth of St. John the Baptist are recounted from the Douay-Rheims here.


Here is a list of all the places and things St. John is called upon as patron.

Here are amazing photos of the head and hand of St. John the Baptist, first class relics both apparently held by the Muslims in Istanbul, Turkey.



On the plaque by the relics found at the Treasury of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul - Turkey - can be read:
Skull
"The skull of St. John the Baptist was originally in the possession of the Byzantine and fell into Ottoman hands after the conquest. This relic was presented by Mehmed II (1451-81) to Mara Despena, daughter of the Serbean King.
Subsequently it became the property of Cezayioli Hasan Pasa and after his death brought to the palace around 1790."
Arm
"The (right) arm of St. John the Baptist and its case belonged to the Byzantine prior to the conquest. In 1484, Bayezed II (1481-1512) sent it as a gift to the knights of Rhodes. It was later discovered in Lefkose Castle in Cyprus and brought back to Istanbul in 1585"

A piece of St. John's skull is also reportedly venerated in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Amien, France.

A good discussion on the understanding of relics in the Church can be found here (New Advent)
and here (exerpts from Canon Law on the subject).

For the Wordies out there...

We Can't Go Back... Or Can We?

We've been reading the Little House on the Prairie series this year, the girls and I. It's hard not to get caught up in the simplicity of it. The Ingalls family worked hard, played hard, prayed hard. They appreciated the little they had with an intensity almost difficult to comprehend in our day; we have so much and complain about all of it. Even about the fact that we feel guilty for having so much. If we can only get "off the grid," if we can only buy and eat all-natural products, if we can only pare down to the bare essentials like the pioneers, we just might be able to get back to that beautiful simplicity.

But is the simplicity we're looking for a cause or an effect?

And are we missing the forest for the trees?

Almost all of my growing up years, I was a voracious reader, and loved, most of all, to get lost in historical fiction. Next to the romance, honor and beauty of olden days, modern times always seemed drab, coarse, and ugly, and I wished there were some kind of time machine that could transport me back. I would even have risked the lack of penicillin and television for a chance!

Just to get to wear the dresses!

Even now, I wish some afternoon digging around in our cluttered barn I could stumble across a time machine. Sure, I'd seriously think of squeezing the whole family in and transporting back in time. But, not so much for the dresses and romance. Not even so much for the simple, honest way of doing things, as for the ethic that drove the world back then.


Now, I know full well that life wasn't perfect in the olden days; evil has always and will always exist. Life was hard back then, and very fragile. But, there was a certain standard of behaviour that was the norm in the Christian world up until about fifty years ago that we've lost. Women knew what it meant to be ladylike, even if they didn't behave that way. Even the roughest men knew what it meant to be a gentleman. Hard work was honored. Before mass media confused the issue and brought the world onto our desktops, people, in general, had a better instinctive understanding of their place in the universe. Christ was still King and He held court in the living rooms and hearts of families, from where He ruled the world.

That's where our world needs to find its identity again and save itself. The idea of rediscovering the simplicity of another time through homesteading or living "green" is a worthy cause, but that alone will not take us back to a better time. The more lasting and genuine accomplishment can only come as a byproduct of a greater goal.

Isn't it really that old fashioned work ethic we want? Don't we really want to see a return of personal responsibility and genuine courtesy? I know I want the world to just be a nicer place. None of these things comes from paring down our belongings. These things come from Christ's rule over our hearts.

~~~

Our families are the Church in miniature; they are the world in miniature. In the same way that we should never allow the worldly media to control the heart of our homes, we should never accept that the various world governments have a claim on our families. It is not only our right, but our responsibility to raise our families under the dominion of Christ the King. All other authority is secondary to His.

And parents have no greater duty than to educate their children in an environment that kneels before this kingship of the Blessed Trinity.

Over a hundred years ago, Laura Ingalls Wilder counseled the children at the end of her first teaching job to be grateful for the education they received through public schooling, but to remember that their education lay in their own hands. Abraham Lincoln was home educated and they had every opportunity that he had at their disposal to learn from home as well. It was an option that was taken for granted. Families took it upon themselves to see to their children's upbringing, and chose the methods of education they saw as best.

Today, in many places, that same option is denied families. In fact, California is on the verge right now of outlawing homeschooling. And in doing so, they deny the primacy of the family and inhibit the religious freedom of the families who live there. It's a sad time that such a thing could happen in our country.

I wish we could go back to a time where a move like this would be unthinkable.
I wish we could take the environmental movement and turn it into a re-election of Christ as King of America. Everything would be solved then.

Is it possible to effect this kind of change of heart in the world today?

Of course it is: "All things are possible to him that believes."

And this is how: "Ask and ye shall recieve: that your joy may be full."

They're still eight months away, and the airwaves are full of the U.S. presidential elections, but there is a more important campaign we need to obsess about as Catholics. We must fill the heavens with our prayers for Christ's rule in America.

This is the simple answer to all the complicated problems. And it's a way of going back and forward and upward all at the same time.

The Conversion of St. Paul

According to Cathy (First grade)...


I LOVE children's take on things! Is this not the soul of brevity? She got in the important stuff, though. &:o) You can see she had consultants on the big words, but not the punctuation and capitalization...

Michelle and Therese's versions of St. Paul's story were considerably more detailed , but too long to post. Here are their illustrations, though.

This one is Michelle's (Seventh Grade)
Here's Theresa's (Fourth Grade)

And, by the way, Happy Sorta Nameday to Number One Son, Paul! Praying for you today!

Too Much God?

Here's our basic philosopy:

I don't think it's very different from most of the visitors to AWTY, actually. In a nutshell, we love our children and want to be together forever with them in Heaven someday. If the children grow up knowing how much God loves them, they want to love Him back. If they love Him back, they want to know Him and serve Him. It's our job to provide the best atmosphere we can for this to happen in our home.

Here's how we try to do that:

* By consistently teaching all the rules and aids to leading holy lives, especially the frequent reception of the Sacraments.
* By reading and having available wholesome books.
* By providing the tools and instruction for learning, without making it drudgery.
* By closely monitoring possible negative influences, including the media and dangerous company and places.
* By teaching the value of purity, through modesty (dress), self respect (behaviour), and the love of the Immaculate Heart.
* By appealing to all the senses in wholesome ways ~ through music, games, and a beautiful and orderly home.
* By having lots of fun! Holiness does not have to be dull!

Is this God-centric philosophy overkill? I read a Catholic mother complain once about how she thought it was unnecessary, and perhaps even harmful to a child to "harp" on the Faith. But, if "harping" means directing every subject, every experience toward a lesson in faith, the popes counsel us that we should, indeed, harp. Pope Pius XI, in His Encyclical on Christian Education, agrees with Pope St. Pius X, saying:

Whatever a Christian does even in the order of things of earth, he may not overlook the supernatural; indeed he must, according to the teaching of Christian wisdom, direct all things towards the supreme good as to his last end; all his actions, besides, in so far as good or evil in the order of morality, that is, in keeping or not with natural and divine law, fall under the judgment and jurisdiction of the Church.

I think it's a common misconception with some that "too much Faith" will produce the opposite result intended, that children will get sick of hearing about God interspersed through math and science, and that a lot of eye-rolling will go on behind the teacher's back. (I was saddened to read this idea in a Catholic homeschooling mother's blog.)

I guess this certainly could happen if a child felt God was being crammed down his throat. But, how could a child feel this way if, from his infancy, his most nurtured moments occurred before a crucifix, if Heavenly birthdays were celebrated with as much cake and joy as family days, if conversations of love and affection always ended up referring to Heavenly Loved Ones, too?

I guess the question is "Can you have too much love in your life?"

This is the story of my life...

I've been reading a lot of wonderfully descriptive day plans and organization-focused blog posts lately and gleaning so many good ideas from them. I think the new year turns our minds in this direction, doesn't it? Streamlining. Focusing. Prioritizing. But, I've been sort of avoiding writing my own post detailing our daily routines. And, I wasn't sure exactly why I didn't want to do it, until it hit me today.

Today, in the Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett, we read a beautifully written description of the Wright brothers' first successful flight at Kitty Hawk. We all remarked on how well written the story was, and how it piqued our interst, even though we are a bunch of girls with very little interest in aeronautics. A little later, after lunch, I was sweeping the floors, thinking about what made that story so good, so much fun to read, and I was hard-put to lay my finger on one thing. Great descriptions. Appealed to the senses. Graceful flow of words. Informative. Kept our interest. Led up smoothly to the climax. All these things, yes, but more than each of these things.
And, that's when the connection came to me.

We have a basic routine to every day; we do have a chore sharing regimine and homeschooling guidelines that we follow. And they're important to the efficient running of our lives, but they don't tell our story. We're a homeschooling family and though that fact is important, it's not essential to our character. We have a large family, but we don't hang our hats on that. We run a fairly orderly home, especially for the numbers that shelter here, but that isn't what we're all about, either. All these things describe the structure of our story. First person, limited omniscient, prose. But, though they support and reflect it, they are not the theme of the story.

Here's the theme: We're a Catholic Family.

Everything else comes from that fact. In creating our home, we've always tried to make that the background, the foundation of everything we do, philosophically and physically. Every decision we make, from how and where we school our children to what we eat at mealtimes (esp. on Fridays and vigils) reflects our Catholicism. How we dress, how we decorate our home, the books we buy, the movies and programs we watch are chosen through a Catholic decision making process. We want our Faith to BE the very air we breathe. It IS who we are.

This is a subject I can warm up to easier than listing out our homeschooling schedule (Though I may eventually do that. Who knows?).

Tomorrow I'll jot down our family philosophy, which serves as a loose rule for our lives. Right now, I'm going out with my two sisters, to celebrate my baby sister, Donna's birthday. So, I've got to get a move on! But here's a thought to leave you on:

Do you think that Faith can permeate too much into family life? It's apparently a common belief among some! I'm thinking about that concept, too, and will tell you tomorrow what I come up.

A Place for Everything...

Hoping that everything stays in its place!

I was going to post the "before" picture of this cupboard, but it was just too embarassing... This old cupboard we inherited from an outbuilding in a former house. We think it started its life in an old general store or somesuch, probably around the turn of the 20th century, but I'm afraid its antique pedigree has received little respect. After its many years storing tools in an antique dealer's shed, we brought it out to the farm and used it to store dairy supplies in our milking barn.

It's only taken ten or fifteen years for us to realize that the solution to our school supply organization problem has been right under our noses all the time. We've only just been able to eradicate the smell of iodine from it (from our kidding supplies), and we still need to finish painting and repairing it. The whole top of it needs to be replaced, as one corner has been broken off. But, I want to do that right and am waiting until I can get a good thick piece of hardwood to stain for it. I couldn't wait to put it into use, though, finished or not...

And here everything is, organized and labeled. The left side is for general use, the right side is my stuff.

=sigh= Storage. I dream of storage space. I live for storage space.

Hullo, Moon!

How cool is this? My brother, Daniel, a budding astronomer and computer enthusiast came out to the farm Saturday night with his new telescope and shot this picture of the moon, downloaded it onto his little computer thingy and sent it to us yesterday (The picture, not the moon!). What an awesome exposure to astronomy for our little girls!

At the bottom of his e-mails he signs off "Clear Skies," Don't you love that?!

Clear Skies, friends!

Our Little Prairie Chicks

So, we're living Little House on the Prairie these days. Using the Prairie Primer unit study guide as a roadmap for ideas and "prairie chicken paths" to follow, the girls and I are having too much fun to call it school.

Two little prairie chicks, Theresa (8) and Anna (5 this week).

My time and attention span being limited these days by our upcoming move, we're not getting in as much of the cooking and sewing, and deeper study that I'd like, but just reading these books together is such a wonderful bonding thing for us. We all cried together today, for instance, when Laura found her dear ragdoll, Charlotte, abandoned in the mud outside the house of that dratted neighbor child, near Plum Creek ~ and Charlotte was missing one shoe-button eye! =sniff=

(Above, a pic of 7-year-old Cathy, showing off her beloved ragdoll, Audrey Anne ~ This child, who almost never gets teary-eyed, definitely empathized with Laura's sorrow!)

A shot of the high prairie near where we live ~ west and over the mountains from where Laura's little house was on the prairie.

Especially since our girls were born on the prairie, and will be moving back there in a couple of weeks, we can associate with so much of the nature in Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. And her descriptions are always so perfect, so poetic. Everything about this read is good learning for the girls. The corner where we read about Laura's adventures every morning.

What better way to learn to write well than to read well? By reading the rhythm of words well written? These books are so alive with a sense of place and time, too. How better to gain an interest in natural science? And in the homemaking arts? In frugal living? In proper manners and respect? The Little House books are full of lessons. Every time I read them, I appreciate that more. They're a little blunt sometimes about the harshness of life in the days of our ancestors, but how better to learn the truth of history? The real-life characters who people these books suffered and sacrificed, but exhibited great patience and faith through it all.

What a good example they are to us who feel put out when the vcr doesn't work right!

And, talk about "prairie chicken paths" to follow! There's a Little House Cookbook, more than one Little House craft book, miscellaneous guides and historic accounts and picture books. There's even a Little House Paper Dolls book.

Paula at A Catholic Harvest suggested A Tribute To Charles "Pa" Ingalls, a recording of Pa Ingall's fiddle with Bruce Hoffman playing. We checked it out, ordered it and got it yesterday, then listened to it today while we worked. Even our little two-year-old danced to the fiddle. And it was perfect background music for our theme.

Send Souls to Heaven This Week!

Let's get out there and and be heroes to the Souls in Purgatory! They, in turn, will pray for us here in the Church Militant. There is no greater service you can do a human being. And you'll benefit, too!

To receive a plenary indulgence for the souls in Purgatory: While visiting a cemetery during the Octave of the Feast of the Holy Souls, after a pious Confession and Holy Communion, pray for the intentions of the Church, and offer prayers (silently or out loud) for the dearly departed. A traditional prayer for this occasion is the beautiful de Profundis. Some pray six Our Fathers, six Hail Marys and six Glory Bes. There is not a set of prescribed prayers for the dead that is necessary, so it's really up to you. You may gain this plenary indulgence once each day during this octave!

Cemetery Learning

Visiting cemeteries is an eternal work of mercy, and makes for wonderful field trips with our children. Not only does it bring uppermost to all of our minds the shortness of this life, and the reality of death, but cemeteries are actually just wonderfully peaceful places to visit. Many are actually registered arboretums.

We often combine Faith with science and history at graveyards. There are wonderful leaves to be collected this time of year, and we are literally surrounded by history. It's always interesting, for instance, to note the many graves from the influenza epidemic around 1917, as well as the wartime graves, and the high infant mortality rate is so sadly evident a hundred years ago.

Believe it or not, we do some math practice at the cemetery, too, by having the children cipher as quickly as they can the ages of the dearly departed, and how long ago they lived. While it may seem morbid to some, we think death should be understood as a natural part of life. And the departed are looking down from Purgatory, we just know, and are delighted to have us there praying for them!

There aren't any ghosts in a ghost town??

Well, at least there weren't any that we could see, though Michelle teased us about seeing "orbs" in the sunlight that filtered into the ghostly-looking houses we walked through yesterday.

Anna (4), who is our resident scary story teller (I'm not kidding, this girl will tell you a scary story about Slurpee if you give her half a chance!), was very disappointed that we did not run across any apparitions. Nevertheless, even without the ghosts, exploring Ironton , a ghost town at the foot of Red Mountain was a very cool experience.

We four-wheeled it as far as we could in our 15 passenger van (Hey, very little scares this Mom, or I wouldn't have 11 children, now would I?), then hoofed it the rest of the way. We had to walk down a riverbed, which the kids thought was pretty fun, though it was a bit chilly ~ especially for those people who insisted on wearing flip flops and sandals on this outing!

When we got to the site, we were delighted to find many of the original buildings, not only intact, but open to explore. Some of the floorboards were a little iffy, but with care, we were able to walk through most of the rooms in most of the houses. The Colorado Historical Society is working to preserve the site and seems to have kept it relatively safe, though I wouldn't let the Littles roam free here.

In a place like this, history really comes alive. The town site is a hop, skip and jump from the remnants of the mines where the original inhabitants worked. Four houses remain almost whole, as well as several outbuildings. We could imagine the sounds of the horses in the falling down stables, and the ancient wallpaper peeling from the walls left a sort of handprint of the people who had once lived in the houses. The nicest of the houses had built in cupboards, and the remnants of kitchen shelves still stand in another. Who built those shelves and who first used them to prepare a meal? Who was the first person to look out the windows at this beautiful scenery?

Very cool field trip.
The better road to the site which we found after coming in the harder back way. Gabe says,"Wait up, kids!"
This house looks like it has a face ~ and is saying "Boo!"

This white house was, by the far, the nicest and most well preserved. We expect that it may have been one of the last still inhabited into the 1960s. At first we thought it might have been a church, but looking at the interior, it had to have been a house.




No indoor plumbing in the heyday of Ironton. The remnants of this old outhouse probably hide a very scary hole underneath. Kept the kiddos a good distance from here.

More interiors...

We wondered what they stored on these shelves in the main room of one house.
This seemed to be a food preparation area in what we thought was a kitchen of the same house.
Just a square of old wallpaper over an interior door was left in this one.

A bit of very old linoleum... Looked like it was originally grey and blue.
The built in cupboard in what appeared to be the dining room of the nice, white house.
Look at this peeling wallpaper, in an interesting Craftsman style pattern of leaves on a brown background.

Hope you enjoyed taking a little bit of the tour with us! It was such a cool, crisp day in the mountains, the leaves were twirling down over our heads. The gold and pale orange against the white aspen trunks and the dark of the pinetrees... All you could hear behind the children's voices was the swishing of the breeze in the evergreens. Just the perfect autumn outing.

And, though we don't really go in for the "witching" part of modern Halloween celebrations, there's just something about October....

What is it? Maybe it's because it's the waning of the natural year and we are slipping into the slumber time of winter... October seems to be about memory, and, well, "hauntings" fit into that category.

I've always been a sucker for a ghost story. Must be where Anna gets it from. And what are ghosts but souls, lost or not? Begging for our prayers maybe. It seems fitting that October acts as a prelude to the Feast of All Saints and All Souls.