#in both history and english (we read the lightning thief)

[speakhappyheart]

wound down to heat up

School’s out and it’s summertime! 

The school year has since gave way to summer, and here in the south, we are heating up nice! 

I have already begun my curriculum search and planning for next year. Homeschool curriculum is ever-changing -- new ideas, alternative styles, etc -- and I am so thankful for it! I love that I have the opportunity to tweak and change things as I need to, based on my little learners. And as with every year, we have done just that. At the end of every school year, we sit down and go over everything we did over the course of the year, and discuss what we liked and what we didn’t.

One thing we really liked was Classical Conversations - Foundations. My Big loved the memory work and the review games I came up with for practice and retention. He is a facts kid, so this was right up his alley! And like it’s name states, it is a great FOUNDATION-al curriculum. Yes, it can be used as a complete curriculum...but the beauty is, you can add as much as you want or need depending on your learner. And I love this about it! 

*The curriculum does state that you will need a supplement of Math and Language.* For our Math supplemental curriculum, we went with Abeka this year, and we liked it. For English/Language, we went with Shurley English, and we liked it. But with that said...we’re still on the fence if we’re going back with either of them, not for any particular reason other than just preference and wanting to explore options a little further. 

I’m a Literature buff and an avid reader. I love the classics as well as some of the new stuff that’s out there, and I love that we can explore them all if we choose. This year, we read Tuck Everlasting, Wonder, The Lightning Thief, and poetry by various authors. We had plans to read a few classics such as Tom Sawyer, Robin Hood and Treasure Island, but I decided to push those to the next year or so. And they’ll fit nicely with our every growing booklist!

For Science, we explored whatever the CC science topic for the week was. This gave us lots of flexibility and room for creativity. My Big is also a creative arts kid, so he was game for this! For History, we went with Story of the World, liked it, and will probably stick with it - the stories were fun and interesting, and we could listen to them on audio on-the-go.

We were part of our communities homeschool co-op again this year. It has continued to grow, which is exciting. They did a lot of fun activities this year, and we’re looking forward to being a part of this special group again next year.

Fine Arts: Foundations covers both Music and Art. My Big explored in-depth character and creature drawing, and he took music lessons (concentrating in piano) and is really loving it! He is working on works by composer Bach right now. He’s a natural and has, not only a love, but also an ear for music and an eye for art. 

This year was a success! We’re having a fun, adventurous, and relaxing summer...and we’re looking forward to another exciting year!

[daisymondays]

Five Books

I was tagged by the wonderful @writcraft and marvellous @magpiefngrl (one day imma stop using bad alliteration) to talk about five books that have left a deep impression on me over my life and ngl most of them are my teen ones. I often find myself overly caught up in books as I get utterly emersed in the worlds and they plague my thoughts for days after I’ve finished reading them, but these are the ones that truly stayed with me

1. The Harry Potter series by J.K Rowling

Look we all knew this was going to be here, look at my blog name, look at my life choices, i couldnt have made this list without having Harry Potter at the top -- though admittedly while i’ve always loved HP it’s been later years the obsession has grown. It’s a movie quote but Sirius saying “the ones that love us never really leave us.” sums up my feelings on the HP series because no matter what point in my life i’ve been in, it’s always been here for me. It was there for me as a child when i was desperate to see magic in the world. It was there for me when I was 15 and experiencing a rather intense bout of depression and needed reminding that good friendship was real. It was there for me at 17 when I was getting ready to leave school for good. And it was here for me at 19/20 when i came out of a 4 year relationship and had to learn who I was again. These books always have been and always will be sooo important to me and i cant imagine a point in my life where they wont matter.

2. The Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan

Now these were the literal books of my childhood!!! I grew up alongside Percy Jackson and i adored him, i would blame 90& of my sarcastic tendancies on thinking Percy was hilarious and wanting to be like him. I adored the character of Percy Jackson and have the biggest soft spot for this series because I can really trace both from Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief to Blood of Olympus and it goes a fair way through my schooling. This series inspired my love of Greek myths which influenced my studies and thus my life really. Also i just really adore sooo many of these characters and their stories <3 What Would Percy Jackson Do got me through a lot of life issues

3. The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

i am literally the least pretentious English student ever so here we go, now this series was one that i utterly fell in love with, the first two books are two of my favourite ever written and i cannot tell you how many times i’ve read The Raven Boys my copy is worn through and high-lighted to shit. I think a lot of my life I have put far too much emphasis on the aesthetic and a need for something more, and books like this filled that hole. The friendship dynamics were what I longed for so desperately the idea of being truly known and I found it in these books with these characters and the beauty of the writing has really stayed with me.

4. Looking For Alaska by John Green 

Now this is the official book I have read more times than I can count, I think i read it about twice a year from whenever I first got it till when i was about 17. It was a fair bit of me living vicariously through novel characters and longing for more than I was experiencing, and I guess I stopped having to read it because I finally started living. I think the girl who read this book from cover to cover every time would be pretty happy with the way I’ve ended up

5. We Were Liars by E. Lockheart

I can remember finishing this book and just sitting on my bed with tears streaming down my face at the absolute roller coaster of emotions I had just stepped off. The ending of this book fucking destroyed me in the best way possible and I think I had book hangover for a good couple of weeks afterward just rolling the events I had read over and over in my head. I’ve reread it a couple of times since and while it’s never been as hard hitting as it was that first time I’ve always enjoyed it.

Honourable Mentions: Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer The Secret History by Donna Tartt  Both Sarah J Maas series Between by Jessica Warman

I’m unsure who has done this but I’ll just tag @aibidil @gingertodgers @frnklymrshnkly  @untilourapathy @violetclarity @thealmostrhetoricalquestion @henrymercury

[leonbloder]

Surrender and Take Responsibility

Despite the differences that so many of us seem to have right now during this contentious and uncertain season of our shared history, we all can agree on at least one thing...

Every single one of us... without a doubt... has entertained a solitary desire at least once in our lives, and that desire, when formed into a thought, might sound something like this:

"I wonder what it would be like if I won the lottery."

See how easy that was?  Unity achieved.  We are all one in the spirit of a universally shared (albeit fleeting) thought about what it would be like to suddenly be filthy rich.  

I have to confess that I've had that thought on more than one occasion in my life.  I've daydreamed and wondered about all the things I would do if I won one of those really big Powerball lottos.  But there's an inherent problem with my reverie...

I never play the lottery.  In fact, I've often reviled lotteries as a tax on people who can't "do math."  

No matter how much I might daydream, the fact that I don't play the lottery all but eliminates any chance I might ever have to rake in millions of dollars.  I will never hold the winning ticket because I never bought it in the first place.  

The reason I've been thinking about this today is because of this amazing quote I read from the photographer and artist, Ansel Adams.  He wrote:

Chance favors the prepared mind.

I think that far too many of us spend so much of our time wishing and hoping that we'll have spiritual breakthroughs, that we'll finally have a sign from God, that we'll miraculously just finally "get it" when it comes to life, faith, Jesus and everything.  

But we've done very little to be ready for the moments when they strike like lightning or as Jesus put it, "like a thief in the night."  

In fact, because most of us spend so little time honing our Divine listening skills when God speaks, we either don't hear or hear something completely different.  

It also takes time to develop the kind of vision that can see God at work in the world.  We don't have hearts ready for transformation overnight either.  Sometimes that takes longest of all to prepare.  

Fr. Richard Rohr puts it like this:  

So the waiting, the preparing of the mind for "chance," the softening of the heart, the deepening of expectation and the desire, the "readiness" to really let go, the recognition that I  really do not want to let go, the actual willingness to change is the work of weeks, months and years of "fear and trembling."

Fr. Richard is quoting the Apostle Paul here who exhorted the Early Church to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling," which sounds kind of odd translated into English from the ancient Greek.

What Paul meant was simply this: Surrender and take responsibility.

It's true that it takes openness to the movement of the Spirit, a willingness to be led by Jesus as we stumble after him on the way toward our future.  

But that openness can only come after we have taken responsibility, acted, moved, learned, prayed, experienced, struggled and suffered, triumphed, and risen...

That is when our hearts and minds are fully prepared to take in the unexplainable coincidences, the Spirit-filled moments of clarity, the signs and wonders we longed to see, or the miracle in our midst.  

May you find ways to both surrender and take responsibility today and every day.  May you be ready when Jesus appears unexpectedly in your life when the "chance" moments of new life and growth appear.  

And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. Amen.