December Chalkboard

Ho, Ho, Ho! Happy December!

I really love this particular chalkboard drawing. I am noticing that I do alright with focusing on one or two objects. Where I would like to improve is in creating an entire scene. 

Take the following as an example:

Here's the inspiration piece I used:

(I found this while doing a yahoo search for "winter drawing" I believe.)

What I would give to have some lessons from Rick Tan. I feel like I'm "getting somewhere" in my chalkboard drawings, but the ones with larger scenes in them sometimes feel a bit "messy", and I have trouble figuring out how to fill in the empty spaces. 

I'm very pleased with the first one, as it has nice rounded (yet somewhat undefined) edges and focuses on an object that I was able to get some detail into without being too complex.  The kids don't seem to mind my dabblings, so I'll keep on doing what I'm doing until I improve!

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Business and Homeschool

Today was a fun day with one of our new clients. I tell my families up front that we are a very active, busy family, which means we are on the go quite a bit in our car. Thankfully, I've never had a family that had a problem with this. We grabbed our newest little guy ( "C") and the four of us jetted off to run errands, speech therapy, and then a few pit stops before heading back home. We included our new little guy in our circle time and stories as well as some coloring and holiday matching worksheets.  

I find that sometimes my son has a harder time focusing on his more advanced work when C is here, which seems mainly due to the fact C is very active and my son hates to pass up a chance to be silly with another child. This doesn't really throw us off very much, because we've been used to doing some of our lessonwork in the early evenings, and so we continue to do that a few days a week.  I can still get in circle time when we have other kids here, and maybe one short lesson and activity after that. I don't stress about it too much, because to me the circle time and stories trump everything else, especially in this grade (grade 1).

Next year, I will want to start adding more complexity (slowly) to our curriculum, so it will be interesting to see if this particular rhythm still works for us, or if I'll need to get a bit more creative about how we separate my childcare business from homeschooling. I suspect that we'll probably be fine to just keep doing what we're doing and work in the early evenings a few days a week when it gets too crazy to finish all our lessonwork during the day.

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Travel

In other news, I think we've finally picked out a "target date" for departing on our world travel. We've narrowed down our departure to a date before the holidays in 2015 so that we can enjoy a few weeks in Europe before finally landing in Australia.

I'm getting pretty excited about our travel plans (if that hasn't become very obvious in recent postings!)  We have several sites on our Bucket List, and then the rest of our traveling will be pretty much free and flexible to go where the winds take us at each stop. The more we plan our time in Australia, the more it feels "right". I never thought I'd be considering moving to the hottest continent on the planet. It's funny how our perspectives can change when we open our hearts.

I have opened my heart, and when I looked within I discovered that being in Australia and living closer to our extended family will bring us adventures and opportunities for a family-centered community that we've desired for so long. We yearn for a schooling community that is more in-tune with our ideals, where childhood is considered sacred and worth protecting.

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Now "all" we have to do is save the money for the trip. We'll need to pay for a shipping container, misc. boxes in the post, flights (for four people!) around the world (with several stops along the way for exploring Europe), spending money, as well as money to help us get settled in when we reach Australia. Since we're going to put the flights on a card and pay for that later, our estimates on what we'll need for the rest on the list will come to approximately $10,000. That's no small change, and we have only a year-and-a-half to come up with it. Simple, right? Ha!

I have a personal savings plan where I should have around $1,500 or so saved by then. That leaves "only" $8,500 from my husband's income and selling off some of our things. 

I'm considering trying to see if I can squeeze another family into my childcare mix. The problem is that I am not certified, so there's a limit on the number I can take on. If I could find another after-school kid, that would be perfect since both of my part-time families leave around 3pm. I am just offering our needs to the Universe, and not worrying about the "how".

I hope your December is going along as well as ours is. If not, please remember that someone out here does care. I honestly and truly do.