We begin. The focus of this blog is my homeschooling and art life.
By way of introduction my wonderful husband and I have 3 kids - 1st grade boy, preschool girl, and infant girl.
When I met Mark in Ireland he told me that he would always live in Texas. I thought nothing of it, except that it was cool to meet an American student. But here I am 13 years later…. with him in Texas.
I have since become an American and a Christian and am humbled by the Grace of it all. Little old me from Cabinteely, Co. Dublin got plucked out of a life half lived and given a real pot of gold. Like our dog Benni who we got at the government pound 6 years ago. She came home with the heart worm disease, but $500 & a confident vet later she is still alive and today enjoys dominion over her 5 acres! Shona – Benni – both blessed.
Pretty typical day in the Cole world:
The morning was spent getting ready for the day: Matthew up late, 3 different child’s breakfasts in 3 different rooms, children in various stages of dress and undress, ‘Mom, I need to go pee pee…. you help mom’, nursing Laura, playing upstairs, watching a learning video, making snacks, changing outfits again, checking emails, spilling juice from an open cup, teeth brushing and finally going to the ‘Food Basket’ (we needed some more vegetables for dinner and to get out of the way of the cleaning ladies who arrived a day late).
After lunch I do school with Matthew. Today we didn’t totally complete our task. Thursday’s are Geography, handwriting, art, karate & grammar. We did the continents in Geography – we located them on the globe, I read facts about each continent while Matthew colored the blank map book. We are using Shurley grammar. We learned about adverbs and the difference between synonyms & antonyms – these are words I never learned in 18+ years of private school and college. We did do the handwriting practice and even threw in some journaling, but we never made it to art as a friend arrived over to deliver some chairs for a church Valentine’s Day dinner we are hosting Saturday. Her 4 homeschool kids jumped out to help and then they and my 2 older ones ran off to throw pine cones in the pond and shoot the crossbow. We made it to Karate, stayed a little later to watch the older class and give dad more time to finish up work and have adult time before he has to wrestle.
(now I am thinking, last night Matthew was with me in my ‘garage converted into’ art studio as I worked until midnight drawing suns and gluing pre-painted wood things to paper – so art was covered after all!)
At dinner Mark asked Matthew to name a synonym. While my mind was reaching to recall the examples in the book, Matthew said ‘rock and stone’, a new one for the day. Mark and Matthew continued to spar verbally for a while. I think my son really gets it. Yeah!
Evening reading - books from 'Five in a Row', baths for the girls, exercises for the boys (the Royal Court ala Matt Furey) in the living room.
Art. I have, let’s see…. at least 10 pieces of collage art and one painting in the works at the moment. All are in a different stage of creation. As my days are the kids, I do art in the evenings after 9pm, often staying up until 2am. I do collage & paint with oil and acrylic (though not on the same canvas).
I also have a mural in Lily’s room three quarters complete and am painting her a keeping box for her birthday.
There is no time to be idle.
