Maker Faire

Saturday, we went with some friends to the NoCo Mini Maker Faire in Loveland and had a pretty good time seeing the many displays and learning about a number of cool things in our own backyard that we weren't aware of. The younger boys, in particular, though, loved seeing a life-size R2D2 (there were multiple R2D2s throughout the fair):

And the Star Wars land cruiser:

Yup. Fun times. :)

(PS The older boys also enjoyed themselves and truly were there...they were just much better at avoiding the camera, lol.)

Unraveling...

...the stream of consciousness line of thought from yesterday just a wee bit more... ;)

I wanted to mention, too, that I've been thinking a lot lately about what I want to be when I grow up. Lately, I've been seeing friends and family members getting jobs and trying to get jobs and trying to restart careers after raising kids. (This particularly plays in with homeschooling friends whose kids are heading off to public school.) I think that's fabulous and am so happy for them. :) Meanwhile, I also have people asking me periodically whether I plan to return to law (I have my law degree from Duke and worked in a city attorneys office before Asher was born) or publishing (I've written a scrapbooking book and had a monthly column in a national magazine for a couple years) or something else (I've actually held a lot of different jobs, lol)...and I found myself asking the same questions. 

The answer...is no. Actually, I don't have any plans or desire to return to work right now. I thought about it long and hard and wondered whether there was something weird about me that I didn't have any aspirations like that, lol. But, I came to the happy conclusion that I'm pretty darn satisfied just where I am. Whew. ;) My job and purpose right now is to raise these boys into men. It's what works for me right now, and I'm blessed to have boys who make homeschooling them mostly a pleasure. I sometimes even think I'm doing an okay job at it. ;) 

So. Here's to remembering that and making the most of these days that I've chosen... 

Balance

We're through our first six week homeschooling session for this year. We're actually almost done with our "off" time and ready to get back to it tomorrow. Before we do, though, I wanted to take a moment to ruminate on things...

- Mostly, things followed "the plan" and we tackled our varied curricula just fine. I'm happy with most of our choices and dropped a couple things that I decided were just busy work. :) (I find, too, that I'm very appreciative of curricula with clear instructions...ran into a couple that drove me batty, having to flip back and forth between numerous sources to figure out what the day's lesson was supposed to include. I also can't stick with a program with poor grammar...where reading things aloud to the boys requires me to edit as I go. Ugh.)

- I found, though, that I was distracted. With the combination of Noah getting older (7th grade) and a number of our homeschooling friends opting to switch to public schools this year, I found myself doing a lot of thinking and comparing and worrying. I started trying to add more structure to our days...trying to illustrate to the boys how public school might be and trying to convince myself that I was crossing all my "t"s, if you know what I mean. In doing so, though, I discovered that I was overlooking the point. Yes, I do want to prepare them for the world and some public school ways will help with that. But. I want to do it *our* way...that's part of why we homeschool, right?  

- So. I'm going to work during this next session to make sure to add the fun back into our studies and take advantage of the opportunity to direct studies and exploration to the interests of each boy...to focus on each boy's strengths rather than just worry about their weaknesses...to try to rediscover our balance and enjoy the time we have together. To that end, each year, I ask them for a list of things they each want to learn. Having filtered the lists (I'm *not* teaching Noah to drive quite yet, thank you very much, lol) and such, we're going to try to add electronic gadgetry studies for Noah, clarinet for Asher and astronomy for Micah. 

- (Actually, Asher started clarinet lessons at the start of September. He's loving it and is picking it up really well! He has his first recital at the end of the month. Feeling pretty fortunate that we were able to find lessons next door to karate and at a time just before karate class, thus saving us a trip each week.)

- I'm learning that trying to assign more individual work to Noah (essentially "homework") means more of my time...not only during the "school day" but also at night when he's working on his own stuff. Duh, right? ;) I can see that now, but it was a revelation at the time, lol. Trying to adjust...

- As I've been trying to communicate to the boys, I'm finding that every assignment I give actually has (at least) two purposes...the material at hand AND the importance of time management and responsibility. While I'm not yet ready to require as much work as public schools, I *do* want them to learn how to deal with due dates and personal motivation and tackling things that aren't always fun. I think/hope that I'm getting through to the younger two, who are usually pretty good about this and are diligent workers. Noah's more stubborn, lol. I suppose that comes from waiting to really push this until he's almost 13, right? ;) Lovely. (Yeah, we were butting heads pretty good at the start, but it's getting better as he's seeing that I'm not going to budge. Wish us luck!)

- Along those same lines, I'm realizing that I need to do a better job of letting them fail on occasion. I know myself well enough to know that I have a tendency to make things easy/smooth for everyone...it makes life simpler and less crazy and I appreciate that. :) But. Keeping track of things for them doesn't give them the opportunity to learn to do it for themselves. Working on it. Ugh.

- I'm continually thankful for how generally cooperative my boys are in the first place. I get it. They're pretty good. It's a large part of what makes this work for us. :)

So. Those are some of the things that have been floating around in my head of late. Whew.