Spinning Heads

Do you realize how many ways there are of learning the exact same material? And how many different people and companies have come out with books and other things to help learn that material? It is seriously enough to make one's head spin! Just when I think I have things pretty figured out with what I want to use, what I want the girls to learn, and how I am going to apply all of the methods I've read about...I read again and discover that there are yet more things to look at! This last week I found out about some more people with LDS curricula. Hmm...ever so tempting. Just wish I could look at everything and see which ones will work best for our family before I save the money and buy some of these!

Part of the problem comes with my being too ambitious. They must learn everything, and learn it NOW!

Yesterday Aurora developed a rather sudden interest in karate and has been pestering me to learn it for school. Couldn't make me happier, I can tell you! I have been dying to teach her some TaeKwon-Do, and for her to have an interest in it will make it that much easier.

Today for school we made a book. This came about because yesterday Aurora decided to write one. She cut up pieces of paper (all sizes, all small) and would draw a picture on it, then come to me and ask me to write down what she wanted to say for that page. Turned out the story was about a ballet and all the different people coming onto the stage. Very well thought-out for a five year-old. I was impressed. So today I thought we'd make an official book to put it in. Then we had company for awhile, whilst I babysat for a neighbor and ended up making a book for each of them, writing new stories. This is when I became really impressed with Rora. She drew pictures and narrated to me the story of "The Nutcracker", which I diligently wrote down for her. The neighbor girl's story was much shorter (Red Riding Hood climbed a mountain and then went to a party with Clara from Rora's story). After the neighbors left, I made a book for Rora's first book and we mounted all her little pages on construction paper within it. While I was cutting out the construction paper, though, Rora was hard at work on another piece of paper, drawing the binding for a hardcover book, then insisted that I put that as the cover for her book, so we had to mount that inside the binding of our little paper book. It was so cute and she was so proud!

It's moments like that which make the head spinning worth it.

How Early is Too Early?

You might think this question is only about the twins, who have decided to start waking up earlier and earlier. It's definitely harder to train two that 5:30 or 6:00 is too early for wee little girls to be awake than it was just one. Granted, I am really tired. Constantly. But the question is only partly about that. It is also about Aurora. When should I teach her certain things, and do I want to do too much too early? Goodness knows, I don't want to push her and turn her off learning. I also don't want to stick her on a conveyor belt of my own making. But I do expect a lot from my children and want to give them the best education possible, in academics, as well as in spirituality and in life.

The last month has involved my freaking out. Considerably freaking out. I think it would behoove me to sit down and calm down, praying for a few more weeks before taking a drastic measure and sticking Rora in a charter school (I've looked at around twenty in the last two weeks) just so I stop freaking out. The best advice I have received about this is that Rora is only just five and home schooling is supposed to be fun, so CALM DOWN! It is true. There are so many fun ways to learn those things that are important to learn. And, with the Culture Passes from the Library, we will have many, many fieldtrips to remember that learning is fun.

And I can always try making black-out curtains for the twins' room to fool them into thinking it's night time.

Introducing the Jolleys

My name is Aubree Jolley. I am wife to Don and mother to Aurora, five and precocious, and Aria & Isabelle, identical two year-old twins. We live in Arizona, cramming five people and two businesses into a little three bedroom condo, but at least we have a roof over our heads, as Don says! Don is a self-employed architect who works out of the house (bye-bye bedroom!) and also an ink-line artist who sells his art mainly to the history loving crowd - more specifically, the Civil War loving crowd; most specifically to Civil War reenactors. Don is a Civil War reenactor himself. I would term myself a living historian. I like the clothes, food, and day-to-day activities of history: the part that makes history actually live.

I home school the children, which is a funny thing to say when the oldest isn't even old enough to officially "be in" kindergarten. But we are half-way through a kindergarten curriculum, and the twins are getting their letters and sounds down, which is rather funny because they know their alphabet and letter sounds, but you can't understand most of what they say yet. My home school philosophy is slowly gathering shape. I've been researching and researching and researching and researching different philosophies to form my own from the best of each separate theory. There are so many similarities in the best philosophies that it is becoming fairly easy to see what needs to be done. I follow the best ideas from Thomas Jefferson/Leadership, Classical, Montessori, Suzuki, and Charlotte Mason. The core beliefs of each have a lot of similarities, such as surrounding young children with greatness, through literature, music, and example. Cram their heads with foundational or core knowledge repeatedly until that knowledge is imbedded deeply enough so know conscious thought is required when it is needed. Let them be self-motivating and the masters of their own education so that it becomes a life-long love affair with learning. Use great mentors and be a great mentor yourself. Don't move from one thing to the next until the concept is mastered, no matter how long you need to stay with that concept. I could go on and on about the similarities I've discovered! The biggest thing is to escape the conveyor belt mentality, because it is there even in different branches of home school philosophies. There are fanatics out there who only ascribe to one philosophy with all the rigor of a religious zealot and can't see beyond that to find the good in anything else, thereby creating their own conveyor belt without realizing it. I try to, as Aurora would say (quoting "Bridge to Terabithia"), "keep your mind wide open".

We are LDS and as such are devoted to the cause of Christ. I love being LDS and knowing who I am, where I came from and where I'm going. Since I've been blessed to have this knowledge from birth, I sometimes take it for granted. But I am working feverishly to try and make our house a sacred, special haven where the peace of the Spirit can abide and our children can grow into capable and eager disciples of Christ.

These posts will contain a smattering of this and that, hopefully becoming an all-around portrait of our family. Speaking of family...there are a couple of two year-olds who are smack dab in the middle of mischief stage trying earnestly to destroy the house. I'd better go and put family first....