A Common Shepherdess

I always knew I was living in the wrong era. :-) 107 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Superior Take the test!

Well, I have been really lousy at these Weekly Reports! This new job of ours is taking much more time that I had anticipated. It has been a good thing though. We have always lived out in the country where our kids were free to roam. Since moving to Arizona, we stayed in our RV and then moved into a house for a few months. Living in a suburban house was not all that fun for us. The kids were used to running around outside and had to get used to being inside. Our backyard was dirt. No landscaping, trees, grass. Kind of boring. Now we are back at the RV park but the kids are much more active outside. Our oldest is 10 and has taken on most of the responsibility of mowing the grass. Most days he spends about an hour mowing. Even our 4 year old daughter has a chore outside. Every morning she goes out and picks up all the old grapefruit and oranges that have fallen from the trees. She throws them into a bucket and one of the boys takes it to the garbage. The boys rake and pick...

Life has been so busy lately. We have moved and my husband and I are now managing an RV park. I handle the office work. We will see how this works with homeschooling thrown in the mix! We set up a desk in the corner of the office to give the kids a spot to work. The office is connected to the house so I can keep an eye on the kids not doing schoolwork. Summer is the slow season here in the Sonoran Desert. (Today it is supposed to be 113. No wonder people head out of here in droves when summer hits!) Slow means I'm having time to learn the job and get the kids into a routine before it gets busy around here.

This is what happens when your lip is numb after a visit to the dentist and you don't heed your mother's constant refrain of "Stop chewing on your lip!!"

In the last couple of weeks we have had more opportunities to do more nature study. We took a trip to the Hassayampa River Preserve . (Yes, there are rivers in Arizona!) It actually rained on us most of the morning. The only animals we got to see were some ducks. The Hassayampa River is a year-round river. It doesn't just flow after a heavy rainfall. We went with a group of other homeschool families following the Ambleside curriculum. A few days later we took a trip to the zoo. A zoo isn't the best place for a nature study since the animals aren't in their natural habitats. But it gives the kids a chance to get up close to animals they might not have a chance of seeing otherwise. Like stingrays and sharks: and some kind of vulture (I don't remember):

My favorite thing is when my kids connect with what they are learning. Our folksong last term was Cockles and Mussels. This afternoon we listened to it again, just to refresh our memories. My 6 year old son said, "This song breaks my heart." Then a moment later, "Play it again. I like sad songs. Is this song real? Did she really die from a fever?" Our folksong this term is The Minstrel Boy, another sad song. Our hymn for this month has been It Is Well With My Soul. The song is not sad but the story behind it is. If you have never heard this story, you can read it here .

You know there is going to be trouble when your 4-year-old runs into the kitchen and says, "Mommy, can you go upstairs please?" (Am I really that easy to manipulate?) "What do you need, sweetie?" "Umm....okay, there are no more dirty spoons outside so I need to get a clean one to take outside so I can dig."