The goings on

Spring is in the air and I am slowly becoming unfrazzled enough to realize that we should be thinking about Pesach, less than three weeks away.  So we started looking at the children's Hagaddah with the little ones, with the four year old leading the charge, she is still on the roll from all the megillah excitement of Purim.  We are getting back on track with the usual english reading, copywork and math lessons.  I bought a Charlotte Mason handwring program here and so far so good but the kids are not so used to writing on a slant so it will take some practice.  But I like the general look of the writing in this program and the directions.  Plus, the Charlotte Mason copywork concept is something I really wanted to implement in our studies.  I am really trying to get across the idea of striving for excellent work to the kids. I believe that it's important for children's self esteem to value the work that they produce and that a job well done should be a reward in of itself rather than some external inducement.  I was happy to discover that both the 8.5 year old and the 7 year old made progress in their english reading fluency.  History and geography and current events discussions continue to work themselves into our lives regularly under my husband's able tutelage during suppers and breakfasts and other opportune moments.  We are continuing with our reading aloud of various books of interest to each child.  There was plenty of outdoor play.  This time of the year, the sheep flocks come out to pasture, egrets and sea gulls and ravens are in attendance, there are stork sightings and all the local construction and lanscaping activities never fail to enthrall their appreciative audience across the board. Everyone is very into admiring the baby and all his clever and endearing accomplishments and I just have to make sure they don't go overboard or fight too much over him.  B"H to a large extent we managed to reinstate some normalcy this week despite some family stuff going on and a big siyum we had to attend.  I am finally beginning to get to some things that have been accumulating since before I had my youngest 10 months ago.  Which reminded me of the idea that Pesach cleaning is as much about getting rid of thing internally as it is about the actual physical chometz.  So it looks like we are moving in a right direction, thank G-d, if ever so slowly.  Some days are very tough and physically and emotionally exhausting but just today as I was looking around for some additional quotations for copywork, I came across one that said that it doesn't matter how slowly one is proceeding as long as one doesn't stop moving in the right direction.  Small steps, incremental changes, minor victories, big transformations.  So thank G-d for another busy, busy week.  Next week, I'd like to proceed with more of the same but try to fit in some gardening and some art projects, it's been a while.