Maintaining Flexibility

It's a snowsy sort of day and we are having a slowsy sort of afternoon at home.  The kids are watching the Olympics, and reading or finishing this morning's school work during commercial breaks. The three littles are having a nap. This wasn't the plan for the afternoon.  Originally we were all going out - the middle five to our homeschool group's activity where they are learning volleyball and singing in a choir, the oldest two to their group's Canadian history class. But in the night Gavin was up several times, sick.  Plan B was that Leah would stay home with the littles while I took the rest of them in.  But shortly before we had to leave we were told that the activities were cancelled due to the weather.  The kids were disappointed.  To make up for not being able to go out, I told Gavin that we would have a party when his nap was done.  A party, to him, means juice boxes and a snack that isn't an apple. :)

One lesson I have learned on our homeschooling journey is to allow room for changes and unexpected events.  That's one reason why I have always resisted setting out specific lesson plans for the year.  There's just no way that I can know how things will play out day by day, and not going according to plans would make me frustrated.  Instead, we just keep moving forward when we can and when those inevitable situations pop up, we adjust our activities to them.  In this way we have been able to take advantage of real-life learning opportunities instead of seeing them as interruptions. That approach has worked well for us.  But lately I've felt that the older ones, especially the highschool-age girls, needed more specific goals.  I spent time in the last week or so to lay out exact expectations for them week by week and it will be up to them to organize their schedules, manage their time, and meet deadlines.  It suddenly occured to me that we may have only a few years left with them here, learning at home.  Academically they are doing very well, but I wanted them to make time for some more of the 'extras' before their schooling years are over. I won't feel that they are really ready for life out of the nest until they have learned to sew, to cook, and to enjoy and express themselves through art and music.  I've set an ambitious schedule for them, yet through that I hope that we can somehow maintain some flexibility.  I suppose that will be one more important thing they will be learning through this.

I've been meaning to post some pictures of the finished bedroom.  I was holding off, hoping to have some curtains up but we're my mom is having some difficulty getting coordinated fabric. (Thanks, Mom! Shopping in fabric stores is pretty low on my list of favourite things to do, but she loves it.)  Here are a few shots so you can see how it turned out.

Applying the second coat of paint...

The end result...

The girls are very happy with their choices.  They separated their bunk beds, which leaves them less floor space but gives them both more of a sense of their own space as well as a place to sit.

A few shots from Saturday...

Sometimes play is work (no worries, this saw died long ago and the chain is very dull - but I'm told it performs better with sound effects :)...

And sometimes work is play (especially with a new 'toy')...

And other times work is just plain, hard work...

We have a number of dead trees on our property, and those, along with the treetops that were left when the bush was logged before we moved here, are making for a lot of work.  Our goal is to clean things up and make some walking/skiing trails. If you have some free time and enjoy physical activity in the great outdoors, we'd be glad to have you come over and give us a hand!