Family Keeping Meeting, Summer Edition

Last fall we started a new tradition in our family.  Just about every Saturday, we gather around the breakfast table at 7:15 and share a meal and pieces of our work for the week.  This isn't just for the kids, but also for my husband and I as well.  This acts as a time to check in our the kids' work, as well as an opportunity for my husband and I to share what we are learning about and our attempts to be lifelong learners.

You know, it is very challenging to take a picture of a large family sitting at the table and have it turn out decently.  But I guess that's just to be expected.  Photo courtesy of Gregory (and his new-ish camera with a timer)

In our Family Keeping Meeting, we share each item from youngest to oldest before moving onto the next item.  We don't all bring everything each week, but we all have at least something to share.

What we share

• Book of Centuries/Century Charts/Stream of History or other time keeping
• Commonplace or Copywork
• Drawing Practice Exercises
• Drawn Narrations
• Written Narrations
• Nature Observations
• Finished Books (which I note and add to their reading lists)

Then we review the activities for the weekend and discuss upcoming events for the week.  We also settle on a schedule for our shared family work in Shakespeare, Plutarch and Art.  The kids then have an opportunity to ask questions or make comments about the week past or the the one to come.  The whole thing takes 45 min to an hour, but I feel like it has a much bigger impact on our overall life as a family than that.  It keeps my husband and I accountable for using these various tools that we know are important, it allows all of us a glimpse into what we each are doing, and it gives us additional  opportunities for conversation about what we're learning.

Examples from a recent Family Keeping Meeting

Gregory (12) - From Top Left - Drawing Practice, Drawing Exercise from Masterpiece Society Drawing 101 Lesson, Drawn Narration of the layout of the fort complex he is building with his siblings, and Nature Observations

Nathan (10) - Drawn narration of watching the fireworks on the 4th of July, Nature Observations, Drawing Exercise from Masterpiece Society Drawing 101 Lesson, and Drawing Practice

Emma (16) - Written narration (on iPad), quote shared from PEAK packet, Lettering in her PEAK journal. 

My work - Written narration (on iPad), Drawing Exercise from Masterpiece Society Drawing 101 Lesson, Commonplace quotes from The Memory of Old Jack and Norms and Nobility

Matt's work - Written narration (on iPad), Commonplace (on iPad - he uses his Commonplace for quotes and images that come from his reading), Drawing Exercise from Masterpiece Society Drawing 101 Lesson, and his Book of Centuries entries

Checklists

And some might be wondering about how I manage to keep track of what we are doing, and what I give my kids so that they can be prepared for this meeting.  

I keep a general Weekly Reference on my clipboard - this isn't just for the weekly meeting, but also has my evening review steps, weekly review steps and Sunday activities.  I mark it up as I go through the Family Keeping Meeting and use it as a place to jot down what the kids have read as ebooks or listened to as audiobooks.  (I have a place by my desk where the physical books are stacked.)  Each week I print a new one on the back of my weekly overview sheet.

And since it is summer, the boys' list of weekly work is a lot shorter, and they do not have to bring time keeping or written narrations to the Family Keeping Meeting.  They are welcome to, of course, but neither has taken me up on that yet!  This goes on their clipboard and they get a new one each week.

From My Commonplace, Selections from 2016

In 2016, I used my Commonplace notebook, but not as often as I would like.  I spent a little time this afternoon reading through what I did write, and that little review was an encouraging reminder of the value of this practice.

I thought I'd share a selection of quotes from my Commonplace and finally join Celeste's Keeping Company link up.  In the new year I hope to return to blogging regularly and I want the Keeping Company posts to be a monthly occurrence.

"Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present Generation to preserve your freedom!  I hope you will make good use of it."   John Adams, in a letter to Abigail Adams, as quoted by Natalie S. Bober in Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution

"'What species is that?' is one of the first questions many people ask of nature. [...] The name is not the thing.  Identifying a species is only the tip of the iceberg of inquiry.  It is not necessary to know something's name to ask an interesting question or make a discovery about it. "  John Muir Laws, Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling

"Relationships with the land that are intensely metaphorical, like Kent's, are a lofty achievement of the human mind. They are a sophisticated response, like the creation of maps, or the development of a language that grows out of a certain landscape.  The mind can imagine beauty and conjure intimacy. It can find solace where literal analysis finds only trees and rocks and grass."   Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams

"The goal of science is to make the most useful and accurate explanations possible, based on the available evidence.  To have scientific integrity is to approach this process with humility and with the awareness that it is possible, even quite likely, you will be wrong. " John Muir Laws,  Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling

"Tears often release us from a great internal burden. Our weeping releases the grop we are trying to hold on ourselves by remaining 'strong', not letting ourselves feel some pain, not admitting our powerlessness and brokenness in face of some terrible loss or suffering."  Fr. Sylvester Kwiatkowski, church bulletin

"The key here is finding the glory of God within the practice or work and not only in the final product." Megan Hoyt, A Touch of the Infinite

"What distinguishes the work of someone like Vivaldi from another who, perhaps, remains lost forever?  The goodness of God? The patronage of other composers or benefactors? History can be brutal, and the quest for fame can be an enormous wild goose chase. I think we can safely say that any artistic endeavor is best performed to the glory of God, and not in pursuit of fame and fortune. History may forget your contribution, but God never forgets." Megan Hoyt, A Touch of the Infinite

"How imperishable are all the impressions that vibrate one's life! We cannot forget anything. Memories may escape the action of will, may sleep a long time, but when stirred by the right influence, though that influence be light as a shadow, they flash into full stature and life with everything in place." John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, excerpted in the Wild Muir by Lee Stetson

"The Psalter is the vicarious prayer of Christ for his Church.  Now that Christ is with the Father, the new humanity of Christ, the Body of Christ on earth, continues to pray his prayer to the end of time. This prayer belongs, not to the individual member, but to the whole Body of Christ. Only in the whole Christ does the whole Psalter become a reality, a whole which the individual can never fully comprehend and call his own. That is why the prayer of the psalms belongs in a peculiar way to the fellowship.  Even if a verse or psalm is not one's own prayer, it is nevertheless the prayer of another member of the fellowship; so it is quite certain the prayer of the true Man Jesus Christ and his body on earth."  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

"The person who comes into a fellowship because he is running away from himself is misusing it for the sake of diversion no matter how spiritual this diversion may appear. He is really not seeking community at all, but only distraction which will allow him to forget his loneliness for a brief time, the very alienation that creates the deadly isolation of man."  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

"The prayer of the morning will determine the day."  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

"Whenever escape is necessary, there is a great necessity for prayer." St. Augustine, Catena Aurea, St. John's Gospel 

"Personal sanctity, after which he had striven with such desperation ever since his sojourn in the Irish monastery, was not enough.  He had been regarding it as an end in itself instead of that which determines the quality of what a man can do for his fellow men." Elizabeth Goudge, Gentian Hill 

Keeping Company: Pilgrim's Inn

Lucilla knew always, and Nadine knew in her more domesticated moments, that it was homemaking that mattered. Every home was a brick in the great wall of decent living that men erected over and over again as a bulwark against the perpetual flooding in of evil.  But women made the bricks, and the durableness of each civilization depended on their quality, and it was no good weakening oneself for the brick-making by thinking too much about the flood.   ~ Pilgrim's Inn, Elizabeth Goudge, p. 48 

This is the first book I've read by Goudge, but it certainly won't be the last.  What a beautiful writing, and such memorable characters!  And her descriptions of the Pilgrim's Inn and Damerosehay...  I so hope there are places like that in the world.

I'm trying to shore up my commonplacing habit this summer, and I've decided to take a cue from how I have my kids do some of their work.  If I plan to spend about 30 minutes with a "stiffer" book I'm reading, I break it up into about 20 minutes of reading and the remainder for writing in my commonplace.  I either write quotes from what I've just read, so I copy something from an easier book I am reading in the evenings.  I appreciate not having to find another chunk of time for just writing, and it makes the commonplacing much more likely to happen.

Currently Reading (by category)

Lighter Non-Fiction

• A Book of Bees by Sue Hubbell (because I am fascinated by bees and would love to have a couple hives someday)

Continuing Education

• The Liberal Arts Tradition by Clark and Jain (for the Scholé Sisters Summer book discussion - not that I've managed to find time to participate)
• A Touch of the Infinite by Megan Hoyt (because I've always wanted to know more about music study)
• Parents and Children by Charlotte Mason (for a CM discussion group)
• For the Children's Sake (for a 20 Principles Study group)

Fiction

• Pilgrim's Inn by Elizabeth Goudge

Faith

• Catena Aurea - The Gospel of St. John (I started this in January thinking it would be the year's focus...  but as I'm only about halfway through Ch. 5, I think I'll be working on it a lot longer than that!  But I love it, and I am so glad I'm continuing to read and ponder it)
• Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (ok, so I haven't actually started this yet, but I will - soon! -  maybe even today!)

This post is linked to Celeste's Keeping Company link-up in July at Joyous Lessons.

 

Identifying and Considering - A Wildflower Walk

Hannah, age 2, considering a Blue Dick flower

"What species is that?" is one of the first questions many people ask of nature.  Identifying plants or animals is challenging and fun.  Species names are useful for communicating with other people, but they can also be a trap.  Many birders will stop looking once they have identified a bird.  The name is not the thing.  Identifying a species is only the tip of the iceberg of inquiry.  It is not necessary to know something's name to ask an interesting question or make a discovery about it.  Ask as many questions as you can, and don't worry if an answer seems beyond your reach at first.  The process of asking questions in and of itself is important.

- John Muir Laws, The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling

I took a walk with my mom and the kids a couple days ago and I tried to keep this quote firmly in mind as we oohed and ahhed over all the spectacular wildflowers, looking up the species, noting them in a list on my phone, and flagging them in our wildflower book.  I tried to help us all linger a little longer, looking at the shape of a flower here, the growing conditions there, tracing the twining snake lily from ground to tip and marveling over the spectacular length of the stem, trying to look at each flower and know the name, but also to spend at least a few moments considering something else about it as well.

And largely thanks to my mom, we navigated the  challenges of walking a trail with five children, a stroller, and a 100+ foot drop just off the side of the trail into a river gorge very well.  We looked, examined, considered, and kept the four and two year olds from falling over the edge all at the same time.

And I was pleased that as I copied my list of our finds into my nature journal that evening, I could picture the flowers as I noted them.  They were still distinct flowers in my mind, not just a list of names.

The intricate pod of the Lace Pod is tiny - each pod is only the diameter of a pencil eraser.

Gratuitous kid picture - Hannah insisted on holding Nathan's hand the whole way back. These are the moments I hope to hold in my mind forever.

This and That

Since I didn't manage to post last week, I thought I'd take an idea from Celeste and put a few things together into one post.

~~~

Last week my husband and I celebrated our 15th Anniversary!

15 Years Ago - Anyone recognize this place?

We celebrated by shipping the kids to my parents for two nights and staying home all by ourselves!  It was really nice having the house to ourselves.  We like our house (we ought to, we built it!) and it was nice to get to enjoy it together like that.  We went out to dinner in town on the evening of our anniversary, and then the next day we drove about an hour further up into the mountains and went snowshoeing together.  We both really enjoy hiking and snowshoeing, but we don't get many opportunities to do it.  The weather forecast predicted rain, but thankfully it turned to fine snow shortly before we reached our destination.   

15 Years Later!

It was absolutely gorgeous out, with the trees flocked with snow and a light snow falling.

~~~

Ever since the last storm system came through and dropped almost 30" (!!) of rain on us, we've had beautiful blue skies.  The kids, understandably, are not particularly interested in lessons.  Hours out of doors are definitely a good thing, but so are things like Math, Latin, and Spanish.  I've tried lessons outside, but anything involving writing is not working outside.  We are at least doing our readings outside in the sun, which has been lovely.

We've also taken the opportunity to plant some seeds, which has become far more enjoyable for everyone now that I've stopped caring if the seed trays are labelled correctly or planted evenly.  Right now the various trays are labelled with the children's names, and if that's good enough for them, it is good enough for me.

~~~

In a recent blog post Celeste mentioned her Calendar of Firsts, and it galvanized me to finally get our new year printed out and up to date.  There's two main styles of a Calendar of Firsts, a perpetual one where each day has a page and you can see entries for each year, and one where you add a new set of pages each year, and can see all the entries for the month on a single (or double) page.  There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but I decided I liked seeing all the entries for a month at a glance and went for the second type.  The main drawback is that I have to remember to print and add the new pages each year...  which seems like such a minor thing, but yet can stymie me for months! Ridiculous, I know.  But at least it is done, and after consulting my photo library, we're all caught up.  Here's a glimpse of ours:

Our completed page for February - The red tabs on the right are for the years.

The template is from Immaculata Designs, but it doesn't look like she has it up on her site anymore.

~~~

And last but not least, I should mention that CM West has a Facebook page.  I'm not a big fan of Facebook, but I'm going to try and post information there as well as on the mailing list and website. 

Keeping Company :: Our Nature Study Collection and Display

I was excited when I saw Celeste's prompt for this month's Keeping Company link-up because I am really pleased with our nature study collection and display.  Our display has lived in a few different places, and at one point moved to a temporary location on the hutch by our dining room table.  Well, this location ended up being not so temporary, because we all decided we liked it in this prominent place.

Yes, there it is, centered under that south facing window on our dining room hutch.

And here's a closer look of our display.  I got this wooden case from a homeschooler who was "retiring" because her kids were heading off to high school.  I'm not sure what she used it for, but when I saw it, it screamed "Nature Study Display!" to me.  My father-in-law informed me that it was a packing crate for soda bottles once upon a time, back in the days before plastic.  When we got it some of the smaller dividers were already missing, which has worked well for our purposes.

We keep bones, leaves, interesting rocks, pine cones, acorns, seed hulls, little things made of natural materials like a few pine needle baskets, dead insects and insect molts, dried lichen and moss, and sea shells on our shelves. We have a repurposed strawberry basket on the left that we use for holding feathers, and another basket on the right for bigger shells.  The wooden box on the right holds my rock, fossil and shell collection from when I was a child (I guess I've always been a keeper!)  My collection is a combination of bought and found, and I take it out periodically to show the kids some rocks, fossils and other things things we wouldn't find around here.

I've tried taking pictures at different times of day but the lighting is always difficult.  I wish I could share better pictures with you!

I lightly dust our display every six weeks or so, and twice a year - generally spring and late fall - I take it all off, dust, rearrange, and together sort through the accumulated treasures, deciding what needs to return outside and what is going to stay.  

Yes, it looks like a mushroom, but it is actually a growth we found on an oak branch several years ago.

The process of deciding what goes and stays has gotten easier as the kids have gotten older and more experienced.  We started this when my oldest was six or so, and it seemed like we had to keep everything forever back then!  But now they are generally a little more selective about what they want to see displayed, and about what they want to keep.  The youngers are a little less discerning, but they are generally willing to listen to their older siblings.  And I've been known to toss a few leaves and rocks outside periodically to keep the display from getting too overwhelming in between the big reorganizations.  I do try to ask first, and generally after something has been displayed for a couple weeks the child won't mind it getting put back outside.

A New Keeping Habit for a New Year

Let us observe, notebook in hand, the orderly and progressive sequence, the penetrating quality, the irresistible appeal, the unique content of Divine teaching [...] Let us read, not for our profiting, though that will come, but for love of that knowledge which is better than thousands of gold and silver. - Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education

This year I've begun a new way of keeping.  In the morning I sit with The Gospel of John and The Catena Aurea and copy a small section of the Gospel.  Then I read the commentary and write a short narration of what I read.  The Catena Aurea (The Golden Chain), was complied by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th Century then translated into English by Blessed John Henry Newman in 1841.  It contains excerpts from the writings of over eighty church fathers, and arranged such that it feels like I am eavesdropping on a learned discourse in Heaven.  I by no means understand everything I am reading, but it is a marvelous gift to sit with the Church Fathers in the morning and slowly contemplate the Gospel.  

From My Commonplace: Contemplation and Action

The activist may think himself the cutting edge of the future, but if he is not a mystic, he is frightfully narrow—and part of the narrowness is that he may not possess even a small suspicion of his myopia. [...] Rare indeed is the man or woman who, as Vatican II put it, is “eager to act and yet devoted to contemplation”
Fr. Thomas Dubay, Fire Within

Have you ever tried actually sitting in the position of Rodin's The Thinker?

We recently studied this sculpture as part of our artist study of Auguste Rodin.  During our study, we all tried this position and I suddenly had a new understanding of what it means to be "eager to act and yet devoted to contemplation."

Give it a try and see what you think.

The Commonplace in My Day and Family

The first couple quotes in my Commonplace are from 2012.  I put it aside for a time while I struggled through a tough pregnancy and a difficult post-partum period.  I picked it up again about a year ago, and while I am not as consistent as I'd like to be, I have copied about 40 pages of quotes in the last year.

I've tried several different ways of using it.  I've copied as I read, which was a dismal failure since I tend to read and nurse Hannah.  I spent about four months setting aside a morning or two a week to copy from that week's reading, which was successful until the baby decided that waking 3-5+ times a night for months on end was really the way to go.  I tried valiantly to still get up early even with this, but had to concede defeat in the face of sheer exhaustion sometime around the beginning of December.  I'm still struggling with this, but I've hit upon a solution that is working even better for me and has some additional benefits as well.

When I read, I either lightly draw a line in the margin of the book and circle the page number or mark the text with the highlight feature in the Kindle app.  If it is a physical book, the line is light enough that I can erase it without damaging the book.  The bulk of my reading is in ebooks, however, and the highlight feature is so convenient.

I've found the best time to copy these quotes is while I'm helping Gregory (9) and Nathan (6) with their math and copywork.  We do these subjects in the early afternoon once the baby and toddler are down for naps because I have a really hard time helping kids with this sort of work while they are  climbing on me.  However, I don't need to be - and shouldn't be! - spending all my time watching my kids' math and copywork because I tend to micromanage the work.  And if I don't have something of my own to work on, I tend to jump up and start working in the kitchen, washing dishes, tidying, or the like.  I need something reasonably simple and interruptible to keep me at the table so I can be present and accessible.

A great solution for me is to bring over my Commonplace, a book or my iPad and open it up.  Nathan really likes seeing me do copywork, because I think it somehow makes his easier to bear.  If I'm copying from an ebook, I really like using kindle.amazon.com because it shows just my highlights and notes in one place across all my books.  I don't lose my place in the book I'm reading, and I'm not trying to switch around from one section or another in the book.  It makes it easy for my to look through what I've read recently, pick what I'd like to copy, and write it down in my Commonplace.

I seldom write out more than two quotes at a time, but by steady effort I'm gradually filling the pages.  And after seeing me do this for a couple months, Emma (13) asked me one day, "Mom, do you think I could have one of those books too?  I think you call it a Commonplace?  I'd like to have a place where I could write down some quotes too."

Emma's Commonplace (age 13), copying from Tolkien's Silmarillion