May 2023 (the Second Half!) in Review

Mary's Third and Final Orchestra Concert

On Monday evening, I had the pleasure of attending Mary’s last orchestral concert of the year. She has worked very hard and it shows! For next fall, she is slated as assistant concertmaster of Preparatory Orchestra.

The Lost World

Joseph (10) has been reading voraciously lately, zipping through 200-page books at the pace of two a week. He always asks me to pick the next book for him "because you know what I will like!" So this week, I dug out my Angelicum Academy Good Books Lists, which are divided by grade, for suggestions in order to give him a bit more challenge. This week, he is reading The Lost World (1912) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Forget about fluffy Jurassic World . . . The Lost World is early sci fi at its best!

Mentorship Reading

I want to share a practice in teaching reading that I have found helpful in growing readers over the years. My "mommy blog" early on was basically an advice column because, as a Planning-to-Homeschool mother of babies, I knew nearly everything. Close readers may have noticed that about ten years into my blogging (and mothering), I switched to virtually never giving advice. It's not that I think there is no black-and-white truth or Best Practices, but I rarely feel qualified to give them and not to a wide-open audience.

ANYWAY, this little tip is helpful and, I hope, inoffensive, so I thought I'd share. When a young reader is stepping up to a higher level of reading, it can be quite a challenge and one way to get him through resistance, discouragement, and fatigue is what one might call "buddy reading" or mentoring him in the readering. Mom can take over the book and read aloud a chapter or two to re-engage the child who is reading outside of his comfort zone.

For example, 10-year-old Joseph has been devouring books lately, reading several hundred pages weekly, but I know he's comfortable. So this week when he asked me for the latest book recommendation, I handed him Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World to pull him past his comfort. For the first half dozen chapters, his enthusiasm carried him through and he was glued to the book. Then he hit a wall where perhaps the author was asking the reader to be patient for too long while he developed characters. Joseph was ready to give up and refused to read further. Instead of getting mad or telling him he had to read it, I told him to meet me at 6:30 a.m. the next morning when I am alone with coffee and said I'd read it aloud to him on the sofa. In my experience, hearing a parent read aloud with our greater understanding and the inflection in our voices causes children to relax and get back to enjoying the story. After only two sessions of my reading aloud that day, Joseph whisked the book away and read another several chapters--and staying up too late to do so!

My homeschooling approach to Literature (as a Lit major myself) is to encourage the reading of good Literature. I strew the house with great books. I don't like pablum. (Good vocab word: bland or insipid intellectual fare.) I don't like to leave children reading fluff, I don't like to allow much fluff in my home, and I don't believe children will naturally wade out into serious Literature without a guiding hand. Especially in my earlier years (when I had time on my hands), I read aloud vast amounts of classic literature to my young readers to accustom their ears to excellent language.

However, reading such advanced language oneself is hard and requires perseverance! A child at any given time may not yet be ready to push through, but any amount of reading that they can do while you read the rest is a benefit. (This hearkens me back to when I was teaching phonics to my very first child who couldn't sit still more than a few seconds: He would painstakingly read one sentence and then I would read two or three, then he would read his one sentence, and I would read more. It makes a child feel like someone is in the trenches with him. Mentoring in reading is not letting the kid have the easy way out, but is providing camaraderie through the process.

The above idea of buddy reading applies at any step along the way, even with the earliest of readers moving from very low level reading to slightly harder reading.

I hope this is helpful to someone out there!

Homeschooling Play Date

I did something on Monday that I don’t recall doing in years: I took my kids to a homeschooler meet-up at the park with a bunch of moms I didn’t even know. Thomas is currently stable enough in his health that I felt pretty good about being out of the house. They had the best time! They ran around for two hours straight, and Thomas and David’s favorite part was the pond and wildlife. As we headed home, Thomas told me wistfully, “Mama, I love ponds! I love ducks! I love turtles! I love tadpoles! I love fish! I love them all!”

Wrapping Up Teaching for the Year

Today was the last day of my teaching Literature to Middle Schoolers at our homeschool co-op. We had a delightful year, reading ten books together. For our last day of class, we enjoyed a potluck lunch and all brought in stacks of books for show-and-tell, each person sharing why they liked the various books and would recommend them. It made my heart joy-filled to listen to them talk enthusiastically about books for an hour.

Organizing the Library

I’m very pleased with my newly organized science bookshelves. Beneath the shelves are cupboards full of science kits. The children like to collect and display their best specimens from nature on these shelves. Right now, my plan for elementary homeschool science next year is to have the boys pick one science book off the shelf monthly and read it. They end up reading more than that anyway!

And for today's bookshelf tour . . . I had the best time reorganizing my history shelves! These particle board, IKEA bookshelves from probably ten years ago are barely hanging on by a thread. I removed all the historic fiction books and painstakingly went through each one, writing the setting (century and location) inside the front cover. Then I put them all back on the shelves in order (not absolutely precise order, because I'm not Dewey Decimal System crazy, but the various centuries clumped together).

Books sitting on top of the whole bookshelf are "spines," mostly actual textbooks or formal studies of History.

My goal next year is to get back to my first seven or so years of parenting in which my kids were reading historic fiction associated with whatever history we are studying more formally. Now, my middle schoolers have continued that practice, but my three elementary boys . . . not so much. They love reading off the History shelves, but it is totally scattershot. 

Now with the books organized by dates, I can much more easily grab some appropriate books and make them available for the boys. I need to keep things *really easy* for myself next year (in case it turns out anything like 2022-23), so I plan simply to ask them to read independently one historic fiction per month (and I fully expect they will end up reading a lot more than that).

Mary's End-of-Year Piano Recital

Tonight our family had the joy of watching Mary perform at her end-of-year piano recital with Francis Music Studio. Video here: https://youtu.be/JIYZUErkX1M

She played Sonata No. 13 in E Major, mvt 3: Presto by Haydn and Claire de Lune by Debussy.

This event was also touching because after May, Mary is transitioning to a doctoral-level piano teacher on the advice of her former teacher, Miss Linda.

Thomas Reaches Fifty Pounds!

On May 23, Thomas reached a milestone he's been working toward for months: he weighs 50 pounds! It is hard enough for adults with gastrectomy to maintain enough weight to survive, but it's a serious challenge for a young child with gastrectomy (and pancreatic enzyme insufficiency) to actually GROW UP. Thomas's growth is slow and he'll never reach the size he would have been naturally, but he has reached this symbolic 50 pounds and is growing in height as well! We told Thomas's life-saving surgeon the good news and he replied that we made his year. Thomas requested a pinata with his siblings to celebrate, so you know we did it!

More and More Snakes 

These aren't even all that we've found . . . . 

May Crowning 2023

Homeschool Graduation

Our homeschool community in Charlotte is so large and bustling, we actually have official graduations at at least four Catholic parishes that I know of (and, of course, that doesn't even count Protestant and secular homeschool communities). We attended the graduation at St. Ann's because we knew most of the graduates and it was so much fun, especially the family dance at the end.

Thomas (7) has possibly not a shy bone in his body. During the dance, he approached a gaggle of little girls his age and asked if any of them would like to dance, but they all giggled and decline. So, Thomas turned heel and approached Miss Naysa, who is about age 19, and asked the gentleman she was dancing with if Thomas could dance with her instead. The gentleman gallantly acquiesced and Naysa cheerfully danced with Thomas for a song before Thomas's sister Mary took over for the next song.

Great Weather, Great Outdoor Activities

Chickens at the Farmer's Market

Getting Creative

With a bit more free time, I am finding the children being creative independently, which is always a joy.

Margaret Gets Braces

Cousin's Graduation

Joseph got to take what was probably his first one-on-one Daddy-Kid trip, this time to celebrate Cousin Sophia's high-school graduation.

Memorial Day Mass and Church Cookout

Hosting Morning Play Dates

Let the weekly outdoor summer play dates begin!

Dogs, Dogs, and Even More Dogs

Sweet little Tilly, wishing she would be fed at the table!

For nearly three weeks, we are boarding a third Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, a little female named Bailey! Mary does a lot of pet sitting, but this is her biggest job yet! Bailey is a joy, so much fun, and fits in really well. We are going to miss Bailey when she reunites with her owners.