The goings on

My editor has been complaining that things as of late have been sounding either too perfect or too morbid.  So in respect to his feelings, I'll try to stay away from the Arab-Israeli  conflict, or problems plaguing the Jewish community and reassure everyone, that indeed we are very far from perfect and there are plenty of hard and challenging moments mixed in with the happy and sanguine ones in this family's life and stick to education.  So now that I am done with the disclaimers, let me proceed with some of the goings on.  I've been doing a whole lot of reading and contemplating on the subject of the Charlotte Mason education and exactly what I like about it.  Being that I really like good books and beautiful illustrations and as the editor points out, am quite hung up on good middos and character, even before I've ever heard of Charlotte Mason and her ideas, we've been  using quite a few of them without even realizing it.  It also occurred to me, that picture study, with all its' pluses can be applied to any art or illustrations of quality and that children quite naturally narrate things read to them or whatever they happen think about.  So it makes me think, that what makes the great educators great, is their understanding of human nature, especially that of children and how they learn best . Hopefully, I'll write more bout all this soon.    But I digress, again.  I've also been rereading some of my education books for ideas and a book by Rabbi Emanuel Feldman called Biblical Questions, Spiritual Journeys, quite excellent.  I've perused quite a few book lists, always an exhilarating pastime for a book aficionado.  I've discovered that Amazon.com has a free Kindle for PC and some free Kindle e-books.  Otherwise, we've read lots of stories, did some math, enjoyed some science tricks and experiments, baked focaccia and breadsticks together, played outside and inside, colored, listened to classical music(which to my surprise they really enjoyed), looked at some art and made many messes.  The 4 year old is very interested in the Purim story so she likes looking at the illustrated Artscroll megilla and asking a million questions.  The baby is starting to roll over.  The three year old is being her exuberant self.  The seven year old is very into ball playing besides his normal pursuits.  The eight year old generally likes to keep abreast of all the current events but decided that things are just too scary (oops, danger zone) so he is planning on avoiding newspapers for a while and requested we keep temptation to a minimum by keeping them out of his reach.  We had lots of good conversations.  My husband is always talking about some historical or geographical or scientific something with them as things come up.  I am trying to make sure they progress in their reading fluency,  have good penmanship and learn some spelling and grammar.  So we do copywork, usually I make up some sentence relevant to their life.  And we read and read and read. So it's been a hodge-podge of this and that, I'd like to get back to making more projects, get them to read some poetry once in a while and in general be more organized.  But as long as the basics get done on all fronts,  I am pretty content. So on the agenda -more of the same, plus.   And this has been the latest edition of the local goings on.