Kortney Garrison

Homeschooling With Ease

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Ursula’s Landscape

24 January 2018 by Kortney

Ursula K. Le Guin 1929-2018

Ursula K Le Guin lived just over the West Hills.  Hills obscured with rain this morning.  From the sunporch you could look across the river to the hills and think of her in the house on the hill.  Maybe she was curled up too–with a book and a cat.

From the Bridge, you could see the flattened top and lumpy sides of St Helen’s deep in snow.  The mountain is hers as well.

We live and move in her world.

Because she was my teacher’s teacher, I have been her student.

I hold close her vision of a school that meets in the morning outside under an apple tree, her inquiry into the relationships between women and men, her questions about citizenship and the individual, the way to catch fish with your bare hands.

On her recommendation I’ll be reading Mansfield Park in the coming months.  You too?

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A-Z Storybooks

7 January 2018 by Kortney

Like so many good things, this idea came from Elizabeth Foss! Her Storybook Year post was a revelation–that an entire curriculum could be built around picture books caught my imagination. But the idea quickly morphed into something that fit our family and our homeschool. I used Elizabeth’s post as a pattern, instead of a prescription. She wasn’t offering a guarantee that everything will be alright if we just read these books. She was offering a few guidelines and signposts to mark the way.

So I created A-Z Storybooks for my kindergartner! Each week we read a selection of picture books by a single author or illustrator whose name begins with the next letter of the alphabet–A is for Aliki, B is for Marion Dane Bauer, C is for Barbara Cooney and on through the alphabet.

The first time through, when Nicolas was our kindergartner, I really just went to the library and found the A section of storybooks and picked an author who had 3 or 4 books on the shelf–very little planning! Just whatever happened to be on the shelf that day. This time I’ve made a list, but I’ve still got holes! I need an authors or illustrators for Q and U and X and Z.  Any suggestions?

  • A is for Aliki
  • B is for Marion Dane Bauer
  • C is for Barbara Cooney
  • D is for Tomie DePaola
  • E is for P.D. Eastman
  • F is for Marla Frazee
  • G is for Paul Galdone
  • H is for Wendy Anderson Halperin
  • I is for Kazuo Iwamura
  • J is for Oliver Jeffers
  • K is for Steven Kellogg
  • L is for Sylvia Long and Arnold Lobel
  • M is for Robert McClosky
  • N is for Clare Turlay Newberry
  • O is for Iona Opie
  • P is for Patricia Polocco
  • Q is for…
  • R is for Cynthia Rylant
  • S is for Trina Schart Hyman
  • T is for Simms Taback
  • U is for…
  • V is for Charlotte Voake
  • W is for Laura Ingalls Wilder
  • X is for…
  • Y is for Jane Yolen
  • Z is for…

When you read a selection of one author’s work, you can get a sense of the breadth of their work. What’s similar and what’s different? How does Tomie DePaola’s style change over time? How does each book speak to the others? We also found hidden gems. C is for Barbara Cooney. Everyone knows Oxcart Man and Miss Rumphius, but did you know that she had illustrated a book called Chanticleer and the Fox? It’s from the Canterbury Tales. That book led to a fun morning talking about Chaucer and the development of English and pilgrimage and the murder of Thomas Becket and the orange cat that I met at Canterbury Cathedral.

This time reading together isn’t about skill building or assessment. This is time devoted to creating an atmosphere of cozy enjoyment around books. That’s what storybooks give us–a place to be ourselves, belong to each other, and share a lovely experience reading together.

What are you reading together?

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Homeschooling the MFA

21 November 2017 by Kortney

I was searching for something else entirely when I hit upon 1,000 Day MFA at Ninja Writers.  I loved the rhyming title and the count of days–as if a ticker might keep track of my progress.  It also had echos for me of the line from Wendell Berry’s sabbath poem “X” of the 10,000 days of work.  And of course that ripples out to Gladwell’s 10,000 hours to mastery.

The Ninja Writers program is inspired by the Ray Bradbury quote, “Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens.”  This wasn’t an esoteric plan.  This was something I could actually do!  But they recommend reading

  • a short story, essay, and poem each day
  • a novel each month
  • a book on craft each month
  • and watching three movies each week

Then there’s the writing–a short story each week and a novel each year.  Phew–that got overwhelming really quick!

Enter DIY MFA!  Another serendipitous find in the same vein.  Read, write, build community with other writers.  Gabriela is smart and down to earth.  Go sign up for her newsletter right now.  So much goodness comes in those 5 intro emails.  What really made a difference for me was a collection of older episodes that included Ep 47 Honor Your Reality.  I’m lucky if I can watch 1 movie a week.  That’s the fun assignment, and I’m already behind.  So I had to look at the hard lines of my day and craft a plan that would push me closer to my goals, but still honor my reality as a homeschooling mama with a paying gig on the side.  Here’s what I’ve been doing for the last 7 weeks:

  • read a poem each day from Singing School–a personal anthology collected by Robert Pinsky
  • read a single poem every day for a week–thus creating my own personal anthology
  • watch a movie–not hard with a screenwriter husband…problem is the 3 littles in the house
  • listen to writing podcasts–loved Gabriela on The Secret Library and Caroline Donahue on Type A Creative
  • write every day–took a class from Holly Wren Spaulding and Wisteria Writing Workshops.  Highly recommended.  I’ve been tracking my days with this Austin Kleon calendar, but I also love these trackers from Handcrafted Story.
  • read craft books–found the Poetry–Authorship subject heading at the library and I’m set for the next 5 years!

Write/Watch/Read–those are the headings that I’m tracking in my pretty Modern Mrs Darcy notebook.  Each week gets it’s own two page spread.  It’s not fancy, but it gives me a place to keep lists of books I want to read or poems that I want to be in my Read It for a Week project.  It’s been wonderful to have this loose plan already mapped out.  I don’t have to reinvent the wheel or start from scratch each week.  I’ve already done that part!

Now I can step fully into the daily work.  Checking in each week keeps me moving in the direction of my goals.  My plan for December is to spend most of my time revising what I’ve written this year.  We’ll see how close I come to my 12 poems in a year goal.

By the way, the snappy title comes from an essay by Patricia Zaballos–homeschooling mentor and excellent writer.

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How Do You Want Advent to Feel?

8 November 2017 by Kortney

Could we let this be the guiding question this year?

Could we imagine the way we want to feel and then try to add in practices that will help make that feeling come to life?  For me, I’d like this season to feel spacious, light-filled, and nourishing.

Spacious

The first thing this will me for me is cleaning and clearing our physical spaces.  There are clothes that have been out grown, the last of the cold season clothes that need to be washed and freshened, a growing collection of books and toys that are ready to be passed on.  I’m fairly good at gathering the piles, but not so good at actually moving them out.  I’m always surprised at how fresh and open things feel when I do.

I’ll also be turning again to the Apartment Therapy cleaning list.  For the most part, doing a little every day (while keeping meals simple and laundry under control) is a way for me to see progress over time.   It usually takes me 6 weeks to move through the 4 week list.  But I just keep moving forward–there’s no behind and no catch up.

Finally, it’s so helpful to create a staging area if you have space.  A place for wrapping presents, storing books that you’ll be reading, stashing presents.  We’ve got a cold but enclosed sun porch where I can keep the big Christmas box near to hand but out of our living space.  Maybe under your bed or in an unused closet?

Light-filled

With the time change, dark comes early this far North.  We’ve got twinkle lights strung up in the dark dining room and in my tiny office.   I might add a string in my bedroom to turn on just before bed.  I haven’t had lights in there since my youngest was born in that room 5 years ago.  Maybe it’s time.

They’ll be the lights on the tree and a house full of candles.  We’ll also be lighting a new candle each week on the Advent Wreath and counting the days with the Way of Light wreath.  (Would you believe that as I was looking up the wreath for you, the letter carrier knocked on the door with Ann Voskamp’s new pop up Advent book?  It’s so lovely!)  Watching the light actually grow stronger as we approach Christmas tunes our hearts and hones our attention.

Nourishing

The nourishment will start with simple meals–soup and bread, beans and rice, bones and broth.  These meals don’t take a lot of hands-on prep work and usually there are plenty of leftovers.

Each day we’ll unwrapped a new story book for the season.  All of of Christmas books are kept with the decorations and tree stand.  Then they are brought out one by one, wrapped in a reusable cloth bag.  The unwrapping, greeting old friends, sharing stories year after year–this helps tame our acquisitive tendencies. Christmas is simple, but never a let down because we’ve been enjoying the entire season of Advent.

One way that we keep Advent each year is by coloring Jesse Tree ornaments.  We listen to the old stories, talk about the connections.  We linger over the stories because we’re all coloring together.  The coloring slows down time and creates space for contemplation.

How do you want Advent to feel?

And from the archives…

5 Days to a More Peaceful Advent  ::  Margin + Rest  ::  Advent is coming! Advent is coming!

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