A Typical Day

Today has been typical of many of my days as of late. It involved helping the girls with their school, doing some housework, running by the library, running a few errands, and cooking. At times I feel like a dog that has caught its tail, but isn't quite sure what to do with it now that it's in his mouth. There are many things I need to be doing, but it seems that only the urgent are getting attention. I think part of my problem is derived from my lack of lists. I always get more accomplished when using a list. I need to put list making at the top of my mental list wink

For school this year, we are doing things very differently. We are using a quasi-Charlotte Mason Method. I'm doing many of the things she recommended, but some things are different. One of the things we are doing is reading lots of good books (or whole books, for those familiar with the term). I have planned out a 12 week term and broken down what I want done in that term into weekly segments. The girls are getting into the swing of things, though at first the pile of books looked daunting. After explaining that they don't really have that many pages per book each week, they weren't so overwhelmed. We have two books that we will work on together from our two history time periods. We are studying both Ancient Egypt and the Colonization of America. For Ancient Egypt, we are going to read aloud Henty's Cat of Bubastes, and for our Colonization we are going to read William Bradford's journal. We are also studying Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven, and Robert Louis Stevenson. For science, our nature focus will be birds and trees. This is the prime time of year for studying birds, as we have so many that will migrate through here over the next few months. It’s also a great time for studying the trees because of the great changes they will be going through as our term advances.

One of the most time consuming things for me has been the research I have done for school and the writing of my lesson plans for the term. Now that the planning is done, I believe things will go relatively smoothly. With the girls getting older, they will also be pretty independent in their work, which will free up some time for other pursuits.

I will deal with my homemaking and cooking things more on my homemaking blog; yes, it's still there and I need to post on it. I hope to start doing at least something quick on each blog most days.

The big errand for the day was for fish. Not the kind you eat, the kind you watch. A few weeks ago we were given a book on aquariums. Hannah read it and decided that she wanted an aquarium. Hannah, Rachel, and Caroline divided up purchasing some of the things they needed for the tank, though Hannah bought the tank kit, and began planning. We set up the tank a couple of days ago with water and the filter running, and today was the day to add fish. We bought 4 male guppies, 2 Black-skirted Tetras, 1 Neon Tetra, 1 Glow-lite Tetra and 2 African Dwarf frogs...I almost forgot the snail. He's very important for ecological balance in the tank (or so I've been told). I must say the girls have put a great deal of effort and research into their tank, deciding which fish could live harmoniously together because of temperament, water temperature and size. They pored over library books on tropical fish and Hannah has I don't know how many lists about what is needed. So today was the day of the big purchase. I will try to download pictures tomorrow of the tank as it looks now. It has already brought us a great deal of enjoyment watching the fish dart and the frogs race from the top of the tank back down to the bottom. Don't ever let anyone tell you that snails are slow! This little guy gets around, and quickly.