Re-starting

We have accomplished quite a lot this week. I am surprised since I have been sick. The Lord has been good to me though. I have usually felt well enough in the mornings and didn't start to feel bad until the afternoon. This allowed me to get school done. Praise God!
All the planning that I did before school started has payed off. The plans have been in a place so even though life has come in the way, I have a starting place to get back in the routine. I am also glad that we have a certain rhythm to our days rather that a strict schedule.
I am happy that the main things have gotten covered and there has been even time to for some extras!So far we have accomplished almost everything I had planned.
This year I have introduced two major changes. The first is regarding how we start our days. I have decided that instead of having the A. and N. start with individual work, we will start with a family learning block on those days that we are at home. On those days we start with a Spanish lesson followed with a Catechism lesson. We have been using The Fun Spanish and are reading through Inos Biffi's The Apostle's Creed. I am very happy as how this is working. We stayed at the table after the family learning block and each child then start working in their individual work. This has make A's transition into Math smoother. He doesn't seem to complain so much and is "digressing" less.

The second change has been more of an attitude adjustment. I am determined for us to have teatime on Tuesdays. This will give us some time to seat around the table listening to good poetry. For this we are using the plans that Elizabeth Foss et all have so generously shared at Serendipity I say that this is an attitude adjustment because in the past I had an all or nothing approach. This year I don't want to feel pressure by time. I don't want to feel that I have to cover a certain number of poets per year. I have a main plan and I am going to follow at our own pace. I am making it a priority but if we missed, I know where to start again. That is freeing to me.

I also want to use one afternoon a week to do some art. The ladies at Serendipity also have some art plans. The thing is they are using a book that I don't have. I don't want to invest more money on books this year so I am thinking on doing something with what I have at hand. I found this lessons that use a book we have at home. I am planning to look into it this weekend.

This post is getting too long. In the future I intend to write something at the end of each school day that summarizes what we did that day. Hopefully M. would find time to read it and get and idea of what our days are like.