My Focus Shifted

Hey, wow, look at that...no updates in a while.

Well, I've decided to focus my efforts on getting my body healthy.  My reading time has been supplanted by exercising and calorie-counting.  It was a hard choice to make, but health is a higher priority to me.  When I reach my healthy goal weight I will be able to focus on my reading again.  Maintaining weight is so much easier and far less time-intensive than losing weight.

If I find some time to squeeze in some reading, I'll still post...but I'm pretty busy with working my butt off.  :)

The Best Laid Plans

My husband went out of town this week, so my study plans got shot to snot.  Nothing went awry, but being the sole parent of four young children is just so draining that the idea of reading was usually met with a silent "Ha.  No."

I did finish Eleanor Roosevelt's You Learn by Living, Beverly Cleary's My Own Two Feet: A Memoir and the ISI Student's Guide to the Core Curriculum.  The Student's Guide to Liberal Learning showed up in the mail, but I've only managed to skim through it.  (I think there's a read-worthy section on self-discipline in it, which I'm excited to read.)

I've done nothing out of the Vocabulary Builder; in fact, I totally forgot it was even something I was going to do until yesterday.  I am that worn out.

I know I should do a write-up for each book, but the idea of thinking and putting words down on paper is just a tad more than I can handle at the moment.  Ha ha.  Eleanor Roosevelt's book is a must-read--there really isn't anything "new" mentioned within its pages, but it's full of wisdom that's good to hear as much as possible.  Beverly Cleary's memoir was a very engaging read that I'm thinking about putting on the high school reading list for my children, as it shows the work needed to get through college and also shows what life was like during the end of the Depression and during World War II.

I'm thinking about sending a copy of Core Curriculum to every graduating high school senior I know...it would have been so great to have read that before I selected my college courses!

We'll pick up DH from the airport this afternoon, so things should settle down in the next few days.

Plans for the Rest of May

Week Two:  Finish reading Eleanor Roosevelt's You Learn by Living, and read Beverly Cleary's My Own Two Feet.  I received these two books for my birthday yesterday and I want to read them so I can inform the sender of what I thought of them.  (In addition, my other books won't arrive until next week.)

Week Three:  Intercollegiate Studies Institute's A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning and A Student's Guide to the Core Curriculum.  I will also read the first chapter/unit in Merriam-Webster's Vocabulary Builder.

Week Four:  Unit Two in Vocabulary Builder and start reading Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition:  Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being.

Week Five:  Unit Three in Vocabulary Builder and continue reading The Great Tradition.

I Need to Just Make a Decision!

It amazes me how indecisive I can be over small things.  I'm having a very hard time deciding what to study right now!  There are just so many, incredibly interesting, choices and having to pick only one or two is akin to torture.  Oh, if I could impress upon teenagers the luxury of having time to study...it is incredibly hard to come by once you become an adult with responsibilities besides just looking after yourself.

Alright, brainstorm--what do I want to study right now?

• Astronomy--I've wanted to be "at home" with the night sky since I was little.  Bluebird wants to earn her "Space Explorer" Brownie badge, so I'm thinking of doing some astronomy with her over the summer.  I'm thinking that this will satisfy the desire enough for the time being.
• Latin--I just finished reading A Latin-Centered Curriculum and I'm further motivated to start Bluebird on Prima Latina in the next school year, instead of waiting until the third grade.  I'd like to get my bearings a little bit before jumping into that with her.
• Logic--I've been feeling pushed in this direction for a few months now.  It's a skill I am sadly lacking, just ask anyone.
• Literature--always on my list.  It's embarassing how much I have not read.
• History--also always on my list.  I have a degree in history, it's an area of interest for me.  It's also embarassing that I'm learning so much through Bluebird's first grade history textbook.  How in the world does a person with a college degree in history learn something completely new and surprising from a first grade history book?!?!
• Music--my new calling as Ward Choir Director is kindling a desire in me to compose and arrange music in order to stay within my budget.  I tried my hand at it and it didn't take long for me to realize that I need to spend some time with the ol' music theory books before I'll be able to do that well.

Alright, let's start eliminating:

• Astronomy--I'll study this with the girls, so no need to stick it into my personal study time.
• History--Despite how embarassing it is to learn from the grammar texts, I'm still technically learning something.  I won't pursue this right now.
• Latin
• Literature
• Logic
• Music--I can make do for the time being without furthering my studies in music theory.  If it gets really bad, I can always just use a bit of my own pocket money and "donate" new pieces to the stake music library.

So that leaves Latin, Literature and Logic.  Literature gets to stay for sure because I think it's massively important for me, just as a human being.  Latin would help with teaching Latin to my children, which will soon be an immediate need.  Logic is something I'm just interested in because I think it would help me become a better writer.

My knee-jerk impulse is to try to do all three; but then that "wise-sounding" voice in my mind says that three subjects may stretch me too thin.  Better to make good, solid progress in a few areas than mediocre progress in many areas.  Or maybe I could just put off pushing ahead in Literature and study Logic for a little while instead?  Or just order all three and study whatever one I'm interested in studying each day?  Or set up a schedule for all three?

Seasons of Life

I laugh that the last post was in 2009.  Pregnancy and post-partum are not kind to me.  I haven't felt the desire to pursue my self-education until today.  I received the Memoria Press Classical Educator newsletter in the mail and now my interest is re-kindled.

And you know, nothing has been lost by taking a break.  I have a beautiful son and I have spent the first year of his life nurturing him as much as he needed me to...which was a lot.

My day has shifted a bit and an entire hour has opened up during the afternoon when all the kiddos are having "quiet time."

This hour is dependent upon me using the children's recess hour to get in some exercise.  If I don't do it then, I'm requiring myself to complete it during quiet time.  I'm hoping my kids can ride their bikes as fast as I can walk/jog/run.  Of course, this is contingent upon getting my oldest a bike that's big enough so she doesn't hit her knees on the handlebars when she pedals.

I don't know exactly where I'm going to begin.  I could go with the suggestion in The Well-Education Mind and start with Don Quixote, but I hesitate to go with that because I've tried reading it before and it kicked my butt.  I can't believe I have a college degree.

Or should I go with the foreign language route?  I've felt led to study a language that I've never considered studying before...Swedish.  How in the world does one learn Swedish?!?!

Decisions, decisions.

Wuthering Heights

I did it; I actually read Wuthering Heights.

This is huge, considering that I turn up my nose at anything written by one of the Bronte sisters. (I had a teeny altercation with my freshman honors english teacher over the book Jane Eyre that has since soured me towards anything Bronte.) Moreover, I feel triumphant anytime I finish anything "British." You'd think spending my childhood in Canada would make the whole British Literature thing a tad easier for me, but it does not. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte...these authors require you to pay attention and expand your vocabulary immensely.

I ran into that "I kind of don't want to read this book anymore" mentality about a week ago, but somehow found that spark of perseverance to continue reading. If I want to be educated, I'm just going to have to push through some books that don't strike my particular tastes. A week later, after a few more one hour reading sessions, and I can now feel satisfied and enormously pleased with myself on a job thoroughly completed.

The thing that I kept saying over was, "How does a nice little Victorian England girl write a novel so filled with passion and ferocity and hate?" I could not believe the intensity of this novel--the characters are wild, the emotions run fiercely deep and the plot was just heartwrenching and horrifying. It creeped me out many times.

This was an interesting look at the double nature of love. I personally believe that love itself is a wholly positive emotion that can only encourage positive actions and feelings. The counterfeit of love, being lust, is the emotion that drives people to do insane and jealous things that seek to only gratify the offended "lover." This work is brimming with examples of what lust and greed and the desire for revenge can do to a person and all that surround him. How would the world of Wuthering Heights have been different had Heathcliff had his lust fulfilled? Would he truly have been capable of love or would his lustful nature have continued on despite capturing the one thing he wanted most in the world? Would he have remained the inflexible person he was from the start or would love have molded him into something better? Were Catherine and Heathcliff ever truly capable of a loving relationship?

I did appreciate the redemptive turn of events at the end of the novel. It went to show that time can truly turn the worst into something admirable. However, there is much to lament over the course of the novel, and the end doesn't change any of the bad into good, but there is hope that things can get better, despite not being able to change the past. There are a lot of good lessons in this book.

Something I really didn't like--the recycling of the characters' names was incredibly annoying and served to confuse me at so many points. Ugh. I understand the symbolism behind this decision; but really, how many different combinations of Earnshaw, Heathcliff, Linton and Hareton can you use before thinking it might be too much?

I feel that I can't sum this book up in one sentence because it seems like such a big work. It covers a huge scope of emotion, imagery, symbolism...it's just intense and it's weird and somewhat diabolical at times. The world that exists within its pages is constantly warring with itself and as a reader, I felt myself getting worked up and agitated while I read. Reading this book was a new experience in reading for me.

A Space of my Own

I'm pretty busy with keeping up our family's homeschooling blog, and I've lately been posting about my attempts to enrich my own education. However, it feels a little weird to include with my girls' homeschool stuff; so I'm going to keep a separate blog of my own education pursuits.

I love to learn and feel like I am literally suffocating when I'm not actively learning something new. I earned a degree in history, emphasis in Ancient China and the equivalent of a minor in vocal performance. I currently homeschool my oldest daughter, who would be entering Kindergarten this coming school year; and I plan to homeschool all my children as they approach their respective school ages. Learning is a way of life in our home, and I think it's incredibly important for parents to model "learning behavior."

I love to read and I would love to go back to school for advanced degrees, but think it's wiser to focus my attention on my family at this point in my life. I am chartreuse with envy when my husband talks about going to graduate school, and eagerly await the time when graduate studies become a wise option for myself. Until then, I will happily amble along the road of self-education...