Catching Up

It has been a blur of activity around here for the last 8 weeks. Between our trips to Florida and Colorado and working like a dog to get my lessons ready for the first nine weeks, things have really been hopping. It was an amazing couple of months and now we are one week into our school year. We are off to a good start and my return to wheat has been the only rough part of the week.

I expected to feel really tired when I added wheat back but I was taken off guard by the dizziness, nausea and jumpy nerves. For the last week I have been eating a slice of wheat bread right before bed so I can go to sleep and not notice the reaction. Usually one slice doesn't bother me too much but two slices really get to me. Yesterday, the kids had just finished working with salt dough and we were doing a quick clean up. I took the tablecloth outside to shake all the excess flour off. I managed to throw a big pile of flour up in my face. I had not taken in a breath right before so I thought I'd be fine. I was wrong. About 30 minutes later the symptoms kicked in. Blech! I felt gross for the rest of the day. I decided that was my slice of bread so I didn't eat another last night. I'm wondering now if the reaction is more of an allergy than Celiac so I have just about talked myself out of continuing with the bread until I see the gastroenterologist on the 26th. I don't know if I'll ever make it up to the 2 slices of bread per day and maintain that for 6-8 weeks. Ugh!

On a happy note, we started a new curriculum this year called Tapestry of Grace. It unfolds history in chronological order, showing not only historical events but how God has shown his grace and strength throughout. This year we are studying 1900 to the present day. A friend advised us to start the program with creation and the ancients so we could see it from the beginning but we left off Story of the World with Early America and really wanted to see it full circle. This is our first complete trip through history since we started out in the Romantic Era when Leah was in kindergarten. Leah's favorite subject is history which is what prompted me to look at this program. She is really excited about this year and loves the change of pace that Tapestry has given us.

TOG really isn't a huge change for us since we had been going in order through history with SOW. What it has added is a wonderful framework for integrated learning. We have been pretty compartmentalized up until this point and history projects were just a fun add-on. Now all of our subjects except for Math and Science are woven together. Vocabulary and writing, and grammar

lessons come from the texts we are reading and the books the kids read to me are time period related as well. I have long believed that tying subjects together makes new information really stick but it takes twice as much work to make that happen. Tapestry has done that all for me and I am free to embellish as inspiration and time allow.

As wonderful as TOG is, it isn't the solution to all our schooling woes. We still have the usual grumbling about having to do school at all but once they forget about that part they really seem to enjoy what we are studying.

Theo's favorite new school room item this year is a large exercise ball. I heard a while ago that kids that need to move are helped by balancing as they sit on the ball and do their work. It has something to do with engaging the movement portion of the brain while they are working and it is supposed to help them concentrate better. I don't know about concentration but he sure is having a great time with it. He takes it wherever he goes, even when he chooses to sit somewhere else. He certainly is doing a lot of balancing on it too. He is constantly rolling off of it and crashing to the floor, laughing, and having a whale of a time.