The sun is (sort of) shining through the hazy sky, and the kids are playing outside with light jackets on. I'm ostensibly cleaning house (though here I sit with a nursing baby dozing on my lap) and enjoying the open windows.

The dive headlong into our next math block has begun and I'm very proud of our progress. I realized that we've been too busy to really get down to circle time in the mornings, so we've been reciting arithmetic facts in the car and it's actually been great fun. I feel like we'll be done with fourth grade in total by June, and our second grade lessons are already winding down for the year. Next year will be first, third and fifth if the little one comes home from public school. I am so looking forward to the fifth grade. Botany! Geometry! I can't wait. (And, um, the future-fifth-grader is plenty excited as well, I think.)

We've also been mapping the Erie Canal for local history/geography. Having grown up here, I don't think I ever got a clear picture of the canal's significance, and it's fascinating to see how our local geography shaped, and was shaped by, the canal.

Another load of laundry is calling my name, so I'll end this post here. Maybe I'll get the hang of this "blogging regularly" thing after all.

So nearly a month has passed again, but I am still determined to start blogging more often. Hopelessly optimistic, that's me.

Our home school lessons have been on hiatus for a couple of very busy weeks. March was supposed to be a math block, and we'll be starting that tomorrow, pushing everything else forward a couple of weeks. My perfectionist tendencies go into overtime every time we have a math block approaching and I keep putting it off until I feel everything is perfect (which never happens, of course). I've decided we're just going to dig right in now and then if we don't accomplish everything we'd like, we can do a long, slow math block over the summer.

The kids adore math, so this is my problem, not theirs.

We've been doing a lot of reading aloud lately. Middle Girl is reading "When We Were Very Young" by A.A. Milne. She's very into poetry right now. Middle Boy is reading "Highway Robbery" by Kate Thompson. All three kids are currently enamored with "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes (as sung by Loreena McKennitt), so this book fits in perfectly. And Eldest and I have been reading Anne of Green Gables. Oh, Anne. My first literary love.

Eldest is also reading "Beowulf" (a graphic novel version), and "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing". Next up on her list is "Ella Enchanted".

Tomorrow Middle Girl is off school for conferences and I promised her I'd help her make her own knitting needles. I made a bunting baby for the little guy this week and I'm feeling very much in a handwork groove. Speaking of the wee boy, he's telling me he's ready for bed, so I'd better oblige him.