Home schooling for homebodies

It's hard to home school when you're not home much. I wrote last week that "I'm hoping to get back into a homebody routine again, with plenty of time for schooling at home (instead of out and about schooling, as we've been doing)". With various lessons, rehearsals, and meetings (usually mine) occupying our Wednesdays and Thursdays, the rest of the week has become more precious.

We've fallen into a comfortable routine on the days we are at home, well, not including the hour or more it takes us to do winter livestock chores. Davy has been interested in learning more about Natives; what he would really like is to wake up one morning in an Iroquois longhouse c1600, but there's only so much I can manage. Instead I pulled out Evan-Moor's History Pockets: Native Americans. The kids work on their pockets while I read aloud, the latest installment of Paddle-to-the-Sea or some of our Lewis and Clark books. History Pockets has sections on eight nations: Inuit, Tlingit, Nez Perce, Maidu, Sioux, Navajo, Iroquois, and Seminole. Because I always need to fine tune and fiddle, I'm adding extra pockets -- as well as increasing the challenge for Laura -- by incorporating material from Donna Ward's Canada's Natives Long Ago and focusing on the nearby Cree and Blackfoot nations. The kids thought it would be fun to bind their pockets, and also their pocket dictionaries, with strips of leather from the deer and moose hides we've had tanned over the years. And Davy hauled back a deer skull found in the woods near our corrals so that he can make something (I hope not a candelabra for his mother for Christmas) out of it. And arrowheads out of the rest of the skull. As long as it all stays out of my house, I told him.

The kids have been going hunting with Tom early every morning just after sunrise, and again before sunset in the evenings. One morning the boys were trailing Tom when they came upon a doe and a fawn. To their great surprise, and the boys' initial concern, the doe started approaching them, stopping when she was about 20 feet away. So far, no doubt to the great disappointment of my venison-loving mother, these have been more extended nature walks than food gathering expeditions.

Davy found a pair of homemade traditional mukluks, complete with fur and decorative beading, at the Goodwill shop, and I was happy with the price of $5. But he wants to be able to wear them outdoors and they have the same leather on the bottom as on the top, so we found a cobbler who is able to add rubber soles to the bottom and also warm liners. We visited him at his workshop yesterday, and he reports that they should be ready by next week, in time for Davy's birthday.

There were a couple of warm days, but it went right back to being cold enough to skate on the slough, and when the kids finally make it back in the house we drink hot chocolate and eat Anna's Swedish spiced biscuits with almond (thank you, Ikea). We've found that the slough is enormous, covering the better part of our neighbor's pasture, meandering around for over a mile, past muskrat lodges, dried cattails and reeds, the occasional startled deer and snowy owl.

I'm rearranging the linen closet, still moving books around on the new shelves, helping the kids boil and shape their new mouthguards (I learn something new every day), and planning Davy's festivities and figuring out when to cook the turkey, next Thursday not being anything approaching a holiday around here.

To make the most out of all of our time in the truck, we've been listening to audio CDs, including

Story of the World: Early Modern Times, volume 3 (I see a new edition is coming out in January)

Naxos Audiobooks' Famous People in History, volume 1 (Alexander the Great, Queen Elizabeth I, Abraham Lincoln, Columbus, Horatio Nelson, Shakespeare, and Mozart) and volume 2 (with Alexander the Great, Joan of Arc, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, George Washington, Beethoven, Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, and Ghandi); and if you're as nutty as I am and can burn CDs with your computer, you can remix the two volumes so that all the stories are in chronological order.

And, because you're never too young for Stan Freberg, Stan Freberg Presents The United States Of America. I finally broke down the other week and moved it from my wish list to my shopping cart and hit "send". And am I ever glad I did.