My Headmistress

She's a little thick in the middle, prefers blue, doesn't take any nonsense, and holds me to a high standard. She's my Head Mistress.

Short and sweet, this is how I record-keep our school year from the administrative end.
Headmistress keeps me in line. Within her D-ring files are color-coded tabs for basic sections.

 These are  plastic dividers with custom cottage-made tab labels (a.k.a. packaging tape and used index cards) here is the breakdown:

YELLOW:
Schedules- individual student schedule templates
Calendars-the year divided into 36 weeks of school & planned breaks
Habits-
Goals- non-school programs and general home school goals
Exams- my "ExamLand" version. Each year gets a progressively finer home.
AO Masters- Booklists & 36-week schedules from the AO website for the current year only.

Then the subject Tabs in mainly blue.

The trick comes in organizing multiple students in different years.
Each subject has a student tab on the top of the page divider. Each child has their own color, as you can see in the very first picture from the top of the folder. For instance, the Literature section pages look like-

• LITERATURE (blue tab on right)
• Bowery Bird (pink tab on top)
• 36 week AO Y4  Literature schedule (2 page spread)
• Mockingbird (green tab on top)
• 36 week AO Y2 Literature schedule (2 page spread)

BLUE:
YO- World Book Preschool Curriculum Guide & stuff.
Language Arts-Charlotte Mason is a bit all over the board with it's Language Arts. It's wonderful, yet can be confusing to track.

Continuing with BLUE subject tabs:

Foreign Language-
Math-schedules
Science- AO reading schedules and Building Foundations of Scientific Study flow-chart
Literature- weekly schedules as for other subjects that I made. I just highlight the assignment after we've finished it.

History-schedule, original maps, and original timeline figures for Our Island Study
Geography-schedule

Then comes

PINK:
Term Studies-really, I have a separate binder for this, here I just keep a simple schedule
Nature
Handicraft
Art
Music
Shakespeare-the 3 plays AY4 will do.
Plutarch- Anne White's Guides here for the year with smaller tabs.
PE-Information for their PE class through UVU
Affidavit-formal declaration of public school exemption
Supply List-where I list books & supplies to get as we can and a pocket for receipts to turn in.
Inventory-

Kindle- a how-to reminder and list of the Yesterday's Classics huge booklist to refer to.
Field Trips- a record & reminder if tickets are needed
Free Reads- record for our family of what year they were read (so I know who is old enough to not remember it later...)
Contests-
Resources-local PERC hours, etc.
Incentive Programs- Pizza Hut, etc.

So there it is! I open it every morning to the subject we're on it and she stays there till school is over. If not, I feel I am sailing without a course.

Capable Cook Recovers Food Slump

Toast after Canary is finished with it-I'm not kidding

I have a friend, Bantam Hen, who doesn't plan a menu and NEVER makes the same meal twice.

Really. She subscribes to several food magazines and visiting one of her dinner parties is a trip for the tasetbuds (in more ways than one). I don't know which is more amazing, the fact that she does this or that her family of 7 goes along with it. She has said that this freedom to create keeps her cooking. That otherwise she would probably get bored and loose interest in the kitchen pretty quickly.

Back at my place, I am, yet again, I having a food slump. I'm not talking about Louisa May Alcott's cozy comfort food, the apple slump. Whose recipe can be found at the cleverly titled Paper & Salt. I am referring to the medical condition  where an able-bodied mother is no longer mentally capable of creating lovely meals for her family due to an increase in complaining and apparent decrease in appreciation.

It can be seriously detrimental to a family's well being--but I somehow develop it routinely. Since no prescription (or subscription) can pull me out of it I have a go-to plan, and it's not beans and rice for a week (I tried that once and it went over like a chicken with clipped wings). Insetead, I do this:

I get dressed up. I go to Zuppas cafe, and I read:

The Capable Cook's Credentials which are:

1. The Capable Cook plans meals ahead of time. Make sure I am planning out shopping list, menu, etc. just so I don't think about it more than I have to.
2. The Capable Cook serve meals on time. For us that's 7am, 11am, 6pm and no random snacking in between. More about that here.
3. The Capable Cook offers a variety of healthy options. One mother told me she always offered for dinner a main protein, salad, vegetable or fruit, and starch if not in the main dish. She encouraged her children to try everything and left it at that. That has worked better for me that requiring each bite of one dish. I was taught a parent's responsiblity is to provide the food; a child's is to eat it.
4. The Capable Cook remembers to include family members in the process. "Mmmm, this are good rolls--wonder who made these." (That's Mockingbird either fishing for compliments or experiencing amnesia)
5. After all that, the Capable Cook creates a mealtime atmosphere where food is not the focus. "Father Franklin thought that good talk around the supper table, sharing ideas and discussion, held the family together. The talk was usually so interesting they hardly ever noticed what the food was like."-- Poor Richard. (And candles so dim they can't see what they are eating helps too.) More about that here.

The Cooks Credentials are those things which entitle a Family Cook to confidence, competence, and authority. One of the best things I've learned about motherhood is that whining is inevitable. It is simply the result of vocal individuals expressing their right to an opinion with a very limited vocabulary, the poor dears. But, if I'm doing these 5 steps, then it's not something I need to feel responsible for. I just patiently move on to the next course, "Brussel sprouts, anyone?"

But to motivate myself further, I might also go watch Martha Stewart, visit the library for cookbooks, or go shopping for new candles with smaller wicks.

Bravo! Brava! Opera

We were reading Carmen when my 6y/o turns to me and says "Wait a minute. Wait a minute!--The girl didn't like the boy?"
"...No. She didn't like him anymore. She's one of those girls that is just never happy with something or someone for long"
"Why..?" and I could actually see the whole Disney Princess-story-arch-as template-for-real -life being brought into serious question right before my eyes. It looked almost painful. But as we listened to the lyrics, and talked about Carmen's character and when Don Jose made his first mistake--I realized that this was pretty heavy relationship stuff for a 6 and 9 year old, but a whole lot closer to reality than the bedazzled princesses that often end up being a girl's first introduction to "true love".
Ambleside Online has a rotation for studying classical music. We are doing opera this term. All I have done is read aloud parts of these books:

Random House Book of Opera Stories
Bravo!Brava! A Night at the Opera by Anne Siberell

                            


 then listened to the corresponding music from these cds;
The World's Very Best Opera for Kids
My Favorite Opera for Children

It has allowed us to understand cultural references which before just went over our heads and has been a lot of fun. I hear " we haven't learned about opera in awhile..." , many costume designs have spontaneously appeared, and even our 4y/o is humming bits as he plays.