Wednesday, April 22, 2020

High School Work Plan

Legoboy and I have had a few life experiences in the last 3 years. These experiences have ranged from absolutely amazingly wonderful to the most terrifyingly horrific.

Needless to say, schooling had to work around and through life, as it always has for us: fully integrated and meeting our family's unique needs.

Legoboy and I worked together to develop his high school work plan. Way back when, we started with a daily work plans, moved to a weekly and a monthly. Now, we can start looking at mapping out a multi-year education plan.

Legoboy was looking at college studies in architecture and started his high school plan with what those kinds of colleges were looking for in a potential's student's history. Together, we then compared those to the local high school requirements and developed a personal transcript form.

We then went through it and filled in names of courses and resources used for each. He organized which items he wanted to do in each year, if there was a preference or an order, so he could get a feel for where the non-preferences would naturally fit in.

A notebook contains our notes for each course, which flesh out the names of the resources on the transcripts, describe the required areas of study in each subject, desired areas of interest in each subject, final project for each subject and any other pertinent information.


Legoboy finished up all but one of the final 9th grade requirements in October of 2019, having already begun some of his 10th and even 11th grade plans. The plan was to take the month of November off, with the exception of finalizing his research paper which was more for fun than for academics.

He took the resources he was going to use for 10th grade and organized them out by the months of the school year. This wasn't a perfect document because some of the bolded main headings didn't make it onto the printed page from the Excel made he had created.

He really wanted to organize things into something akin to a block schedule. Fewer areas of focused study, more intensely, then swap it up. Just a few things were every month, including literature and apologetics.

Each month we were to read together at least one book of extra-cultural origin, with the goal of reaching around the world, with representative samples from each continent.

He was also continuing with his taekwondo (working towards second degree black belt) having started discussing 28 hours earlier about opening a school with his first instructor. Service projects and involvement in our church community as well as the community at large through various venues.

He had started applying for jobs and would have started driver's education in December.

The specific resources don't matter at this age as much as the planning, the organization - the personal responsibility and integrity.


But for those interested, here are some highlighted resources that suit Montessori educated students:
His plan of study, regarding faith? 
  • Theology of the Body through Ruah Woods Press - two courses each year (6 or 8 weeks each?)
    • They have resources for ages Kindergarten on up. Their work is AMAZING! 
  • Apologetics topics from Catholic Apologetics
  • recap all of Level 3 Catechesis of the Good Shepherd; take the level 1 formation course for himself
  • Our parish's youth group and other resources. Given our priest, these things are top-notch. When visiting another parish's youth program, he commented, "It's not worth going." When prompted for more details, he said, "With Fr. Meyer, you know you'll get good food, good fun and GOOD theology!"
  • Serving with the Altar Boyz, two church's mission trips, visits to the archdiocese seminary
  • Church history (course developed by me)
  • Study the Catechism of the Catholic Church - one section each year of high school. 
  • Psalm Art
  • Studies on specific books of the Bible (we had already covered Revelations in DEPTH! among others)
  • living it

One thing he was REALLY looking forward to and we were starting to case out a few options: 
Speech. Read: DEBATE. He wanted to master the fine points of debate. ;) 

I wish he had lost the final debate of his life. 






Friday, April 10, 2020

Prayer Tables and Other Faith Signs through the Years

Devotion to St. Joseph - and a prayer table

First Haircut -
prayer table and St. Joseph

St Francis for Halloween

The couch was a climber
Religious art, crucifix and St. Joseph


First Rosary
Aunt Sarah did his "do" and provided the blue lovey

St Joseph Feast Day

St Patrick Feast Day

Candles for the altar

Cutie bug! 

Taller "altar" style prayer table
with St. Francis and the Good Shepherd
and a prayer book

The kids added a few things ;) 




Thursday, March 26, 2020

My son, vestments and a Godfather

+Joshua+'s Godfather demonstrates the order of the vestments on our doll-size stand.

This wonderful priest whom we have known since long before he was ordained (we met in college while I was pregnant with Joshua), is wearing the cassock given to me at Joshua's funeral. He commented, "I forgot Joshua was taller than me in the end," because Joshua's cassock is a wee bit too large.








Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Changes

I may have done a thing - a thing not done by me in almost 2 months.

Joshua took over the dishes for November and had been doing all the cooking for the 3 days before.

Yes that is a purificator from Mass soaking. Too much work. I have to get dressed to go outside to drain the water. Maybe tomorrow.

Sunday, December 15, 2019

My love

28 days since I held you in my arms and told you help was on the way. 90 minutes you suffered pain I can't even imagine.

You are my heart. My soul. My strength. My everything.

As I type this, 28 days 10 minutes ago I ran outside, hoping I was wrong. That you were just at the gym. I saw the box at the mailbox and the car with the trailer in front of it - and I knew. I just knew.

Just two more seconds. That's all the difference it would have been.

I love you. I miss you so much. You ARE love. The truest love.


Funeral Homily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV5ZPEsQej8
(this link will be updated in the near future)

Be encouraged homily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDZgQsCuCsA
13:40 is the key section
Pronouns are not Fr. Meyer's strength. ;)





Saturday, November 30, 2019

Jesse Tree ornaments by Joshua


My son, Joshua, helped design these ornaments. He hand-burned our first set. I have not been selling them the last few years, but recently pulled them out, touched them up and prepped a set for showcasing.

The day he left this earth, Joshua had pulled out our Christmas boxes to get out the green ornament hooks - and the day before he had pulled out our small tree on which to hang them.

I finally got them together and they are available for sale. They can be in your mailbox in 2-3 business days if it's the only thing you order. Or in your hands within 3 hours if you are local.

Our Christmas season, as well as Lent and Easter sets will be available soon. Then I will work on adding the variations.