Our Week Thus Far . . .

Today is only Wednesday and we have already had a weeks worth of fun! On Monday we began the excitement by making paper mache mountains. I had forgotten how time consuming and messy this fun project was! We started around 2:30 and were still consumed in our mess when Daddy arrived home from work around 5:30. He quickly took over with the thought that he could do a better job, or maybe a neater job, than we were!

Monday night I began to read a book by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay (Frances and Edith Scheffer's daughter) called For the Children's Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and School (Child-Life Book). It has been such a refreshing, encouraging and convicting read! Macauley is a huge fan of Charlotte Mason and her style of teaching. We try to incorporate her philosophy into our schooling, but lately I have been ready to give up and resort to all textbook curriculum. Thankfully, I now have a renewed motivation to continue teaching my children through play and living books, which is honestly how they learn best and have aquirred a huge love for learning. So, naturally, on Tuesday we threw out the traditional school idea of sitting in a desk all day for learning and decided to have fun instead! We started with Skittle math, painting our paper mache mountain range, reading by the "fire" (which is a space heater in our house!!) and camping out in the woods pretending to play Swiss Family Robinson! It was fun, but I was ready for a clean house around 3:00 so that I could think about dinner (I have a hard time cooking when the house is a mess)!

Wednesday we got our annual snow dusting and went outside early to play and sled before the snow melted. Dad went in to work late so that we could spend some time playing as well! He gets another brag award for pulling all the neighborhood kids behind the 4-wheeler! Including our kids, he pulled or pushed 14 high energy kids this morning! Needless to say, he was ready to go to work long before they were ready to quit playing! We had our favorite neighbors over for lunch and fellowship before mom was ready to retreat to the bedroom for some down-time!

I guess it is time to pull out the books again tomorrow, but I am determined to make this short time in their life that we call "childhood" a time to play/learn and encourage the unique qualities God has placed inside each of HIS children!