October 11, 2015

Ahhhh, to be five years old again.  When everywhere you look is an opportunity for dressing up….and if you are my five year old, an opportunity to yield a weapon and make an explosion sound.  Influenced by a bigger brother and his friends, my little Huckley loves to dress up as a knight or a pirate yielding various weaponry.  (I particularly like his knife held to his calf with baling twine…such a farmer boy!)

This boy is so very passionate…in his play, in his ideas, in his love for his brother…and in his feelings.  He so desperately wants to keep up with the ten year olds, and so he is easily frustrated.  What a balancing act to meet the needs of all these very different people we mamas care for!  I find I am constantly worrying at night about how to better help them express themselves while also maintaining my own patience.  It truly is a spiritual practice being a parent.

One evening while I made supper and the boys did the chores, I spied a round of “applesauce baseball” happening by our crabapple tree.  Using windfalls that are beyond edibility, the boys take turns smashing the apples with a piece of tubing from the old waterline.

In late August and early September, the kids and I were all quietly itching to get back to more of a rhythm. The seasonal change was pulling us back home, slowing us down, returning us to those familiar activities focused on the garden and the kitchen and even schoolwork.  I repeatedly heard my children asking me when we would be starting schooling again…grade 4 for Forrest and grade 1 for Sunshine.  So we began gently with lots of “field trips”…

We visited a local mining/ghost town, we watched salmon spawning at a local provincial park, and with other homeschoolers, the kids figured out how to use ropes to cross a creek.  I think easing into our learning days is helpful when we do lots of hands-on activities.  We certainly do desk work at home, but I have found that balancing out the home learning with group activities is so important for us as a family.  We are fortunate to have a thriving homeschool community in our little valley…and this year is shaping up to be very promising with lots of  festivals planned.

However there are home days that look more like this…

And to balance it out, we love to be outdoors in the sunshine with books, pencil crayons, and sketchpads…as close to our creek as we can…