raising rileys

mothering is a joy

We are getting ready to head out of town, but I wanted to briefly share about the United Nations CSW (Commission on the Status of Women) conference, documents are being produced that refer to children as “burdens;” with the expressed desire to have the efforts (unpaid care and domestic work) usually performed by mothers “reduced and redistributed” to “national care systems” (the government). Please see the link here. This cannot be! I wish I were able to hug mothers everywhere who struggle, because the truth is, it's hard work! But I cannot think of a greater work that I could be doing. It makes me cringe to hear children referred to as "burdens," and I want to stand up and shout in support of home and family!

a homeschool life conversation with maren jones

Hello! My name is Maren & I am the lucky wife of Dan Jones. We met on a blind date in high school & have been married for almost 18 years. We have 6 children: Averee 13.5, Adelyn 11.5, Owen 10, Reese 7, Gavin 4 & Fisher 3. We live in beautiful Southern Utah. We enjoy the outdoors; boating, camping, fishing, hiking, traveling, playing games, & watching movies. But nothing beats a date night, or even better-a vacation with just us two.

school lately

Homeschool is such a full experience. I attempted to express my feelings about it the other day to my husband as we drove. It's as though my love for my children has deepened and expanded through this experience. That's interesting because I didn't think that love could increase because it was so great--but it has.

grumpiness and a gorgeous autumn day

Ever have those mornings where there's a general aura of grumpiness going around? Maybe not in your home, but it occasionally happens in our home. I think it usually relates to one sort of stress or another when it comes from me or my husband, and when it comes from one of the kids, I can oftentimes correlate it to not enough sleep or some sort of little sickness (a cold or something) making it's way through our home. Either way, the reality is that sometimes grumpiness takes a bit of a hold on us.

beginnings

We just finished our first week of school! This year is different from last year because I've added purchased curriculum to our day. Last year Matthew was 4, and we did a lot of child-led learning, reading, and exploring which was a wonderful, beautiful experience. It was a year I will treasure always. This year I felt it was time to increase some structured learning while still maintaining the outdoor time and reading, creative time and child-led approach. I think figuring out curriculum and planning is a balancing act that looks a little different for each family, and maybe even different from year-to-year and from child-to-child. So far I'm very happy with what we're doing. Still working out the kinks, still trying to figure out how to do things better (I'm sure we'll always be trying to do that).

HomeschoolElizabeth RileySeptember 20, 2016homeschool, homeschooling, homeschoollife Comments