January

Goals for 2021:

Read 50 books

This month I read six books. 

Are you a fanatic about belfries and the bells that hang within them?  Well, have I got the book for you!  (To be read in a Reading Rainbow kid’s voice.). Unfortunately for this book, I am not. I listened to this as an audio book, because that’s what was available, and that’s not usually my favorite format. I didn’t actually love this story, but I’m glad I pushed through the pain and read the other books by this author as they became available on my library app, because I did enjoy them!  

I read this to the boys this month. Caleb and I enjoyed it. Josiah got some good slumber in.  Did you know that there’s a new James Herriot series on PBS?  I’m not convinced so far, but the kids and I have watched each one as they become available, and I’m trying to keep an open mind.

Best book of the month alert!  Possibly the year, which is slightly sad in January, to know it’s probably all down hill from here. I read the entire thing in about three days. Busy school days. It’s set in France in WWII and my granddaddy was there for a bit of that, so I was reminded to go look at his pictures from over there that are online. I’ll have to do a whole separate post about that. Be warned that this book is incredibly sad and horrible, even though it’s wonderful. 

I read this on my library app. It’s set at a ladies’ college at Oxford?  Some of the academic traditions were pretty unfamiliar to me, but there was a nice little romance in there. 

I listened to this one with Eleonora during lunch breaks at school on Wednesdays (Covid schedule!) and we both enjoyed it. I read it lots as a kid. I think mine had this cover. 

Mysteries are not my fav, so three in one month was a bit much, but this was a good one, and finally, one didn’t need to be an expert on English church bells or English acadaemia to follow along!

I also tried listening to The Dutch House with Tom Hanks as the narrator, but I just couldn’t get into it. I’m still plugging away at my Marco Polo book. I’ve started reading an LM Montgomery book to the boys at night, and Chris is still plugging away at Narnia with Eleonora. Now I just need a fun book for me!  Recommendations welcomed!  

Get rid of 1,000 items

Got rid of approximately 112 items this month. Slow and steady wins the race, and I certainly organized and put away Christmas slowly this month!

Do Duolingo and my Bible app daily

Check and check. Sorta. Duolingo has a handy little feature where you can ‘buy’ a “Streak Freeze” and I’m pretty sure I utilized that a few times this month, but if you try not to dwell on that, you’d be proud to hear that my 321-day streak is intact. (Unfortunately, my Spanish is still no bueno!)  On the Bible app, some friends and I are reading through the New Testament in 90 days, and there are 5 of us that are up-to-date (give or take a day)!  We’ve gotten through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You can get it to read it out loud to you if you’d like, and my narrator is a good time. He does different voices and sometimes there is background music, and sometimes other people jump in as the other characters for the most exciting parts.  Now I won’t say that I’ve done this every single day, but I have always caught up. So far!  Ooh, I forgot another fun feature of the app, when you’re reading through a certain plan with a group of friends, each person can post something at the end of the day’s readings that the other participants can see. We usually pick our favorite verse or passage, and it’s always neat to see what everyone chooses. 

Walk 10,000 steps a day

I am loving my handy-dandy Fitbit!  My favorite feature has to be checking my ‘sleep score’ each morning, even though Chris beats me every single time!  But back to the resolution, I only walked 10,000 steps THREE days this month!  It’s been as cold as a frog’s nose!  (That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!). Hey, at least there’s not much place to go but up from here!

No Facebook

I made it about 20 days, cold turkey. Then I fell off the wagon, but I’ll be back up there tomorrow, February 1!

Less sweets, more veggies. 

Thankfully this isn’t very trackable, at least not according to my record-keeping, but I can just tell you that nothing impressive happened in this category this month. I tried to eat some bell peppers and hummus yesterday, and my mouth was not impressed! Now if we wanted to count corn as a vegetable, I did great at eating popcorn and tunafish for supper the last 3 Friday nights of this month for Family Movie Night!  I also have 2 and a half of my cosmic brownies that I got for Christmas left, so I’ll also count that as a minor victory. Ha!

Well that was fun, for me anyways. Now we will see if I can keep it up for February!!

Fall Creek

August-December Books

Well, one of my goals for the year was to read 50 books, and I had accomplished that by the end of May, so these are all bonus books!  (Although I could take out all the children’s literature, and then it might be a closer call.)  I might come back and add pictures later, but we are talking 20 books here, so we will just have to see about that. 

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

I read this/listened to this with the boys, and I have the feeling that I’ve already written about it on here, so I’ll just say again that I was very surprised that different copies of this book have very different endings!

The Spirit of Covington by Joan Medlicott

I found one last book out of the stack that I borrowed from a teacher friend and had never finished. Always nice to have a hard copy of a book to read. 

The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict by T. L. Stewart

The boys begged me to read this (to myself) because it’s part of a series they enjoy. It was okay. 

The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht

This was on the verge of being a great book, but instead was just a trifle odd and unsatisfying in the end (in my very humble opinion).

Dog Friday by Hilary McKay

We found this in my classroom and the boys and I all enjoyed reading it separately. I like having a little book like this to read during my lunch breaks at school. 

Christy by Catherine Marshall

Still one of my very favorite books of all time. Read it today!  (You might just become a teacher.)

Anson’s Way by Gary Schmidt

A historical fiction book found in my classroom. Sad but good!  Another perfect lunch-time read. 

Meet Kirsten 

An American Girl book which really shouldn’t make this list, but Eleonora and I enjoyed this together. 

A Simple Gift by Nancy Ruth Patterson

Had to Google this to remember it, but this was another sweet kids’ book found in my classroom that I read during lunch. If you’re wondering how chapter books just appear in my classroom, I believe that often it’s because our librarian lets students take the books she is culling from the school’s library collection, and my boys are scavengers!  Ha!

Raisins and Almonds by Kerry Greenwood

This is part of a series of Phryne Fisher Mysteries set mostly in Australia round about 1920 or so, I would guess without googling it. I found them in my local library and read quite a few, and they were okay, but not my fav. It’s just so nice to have a book in your hand, you know?

A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter

I have a 100 year old copy of this book with my Grandmother’s name written in it, so it was super fun to read. I thought I had read this before, but maybe I had never finished it because I didn’t remember lots of parts. Old books are just so interesting.  More interesting than books written now that are trying to write about the olden days. 

Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood

Another Phryne Fisher Mystery, about the lady-detective in Australia. 

Flying Too High by Kerry Greenwood

And another. 

Murder on the Ballarat Train by Kerry Greenwood

And another. Don’t worry, I think that’s all my library has of them. 

Hitty Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field

Oh, I just loved this book as a kid, and it was a quite enjoyable lunchtime read as an adult, too. (I have to admit I’m glad I’m not part of a grade-level team at my school because they all seem to eat lunch as a group, and it’s so much more fun and relaxing to read by myself!  Are you shocked?  Very.)

Pollyanna Grows Up by Eleanor H. Porter

I had never read this sequel to Pollyanna before and it cracked me right up!  Have I mentioned I love old books!?

Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey 

Oh my goodness, my only page-turner of the season and I almost forgot it.  I took this one outside on one sunny Sunday afternoon and devoured it!  This was a while back if it was warm and sunny outside, so I can’t remember if I can recommend it with a clear conscience, but I do know I enjoyed it.  It’s partly a WW2 story, but it’s told in a different way. 

Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances wrote The Secret Garden, but I would have guessed that LLF was written by Eleanor H. Porter because this kid was just the male version of Pollyanna. I had never read this before, but I’d heard it referenced so many times, I thought I’d dig it up. Worth my while. Good times. (If you are amused by funny old kids’ books that aren’t trying to be funny.)

The boys and I tried listening to The Pickwick Society because it’s mentioned in so many other books, most notably Little Women, perhaps, but it was as dull as tombs. Couldn’t even begin to get through it. Pity. 

Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan

I read this to the boys, or maybe all three kids, and it was very sweet. We grew up watching the movie and it is incredibly similar. 

Murder in Montparnasse by Kerry Greenwood

Oops!  I was wrong. Found another Phryne Fisher after all. 

Skylark by Patricia MacLachlan

Now I definitely read this to all three kids. Very sweet. 

Do you know I haven’t finished a single book that I was reading to myself during the month of December? No wonder it wasn’t a very satisfying quarantine experience!  I am hoping to rectify the situation for January though. I’ve got lots of books checked out on my library app on my phone and even more on hold. Our library is closed down, but you can get curbside service and they’ll bring books out to your car. We are going to have to look into that. 

I’m currently reading the first James Herriot book to the boys and Chris just started The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with Eleonora. Our kids are at such fun ages!

I had the boys work on their AR quizzes today. Josiah’s to 3 million words read for the school year and Caleb is trying to get to 5 million by the end of the month. (That’s tomorrow, and it’s not looking promising!)  He was the school champion last year by getting to 6 million by when school shut down in March, but there’s at least one girl giving the boys a run for their money this year!

I’ll tell you what I did during my quarantine instead of reading, just for posterity’s sake. Well, I was looking for a series to watch on my phone in Spanish, back before I got sick. I needed something simple and amusing to fall asleep to, that might make Spanish start to be a little more understandable to by brain. So none of the shows I was trying had Spanish, so I ended up settling on Gilmore Girls, which I had never watched before. And I was going along listening to it on Spanish and falling asleep to it every night, til one day, Josiah came along and turned on my English subtitles and suddenly I could understand what was happening and I was hooked, and then another unfortunate day, the Spanish got changed to English and their English voices sounded so funny to me, that I listened a while, and the next thing I knew I was really, truly hooked, and then I was quarantined, and I just watched the whole thing. And I didn’t learn any more Spanish and it didn’t help me fall asleep at a reasonable hour. But I did enjoy it. Accidentally. The end. 

Here’s to more and better reading in 2021!!!

Oh, just remembered that round about November, the boys and I listened to Redwall by Brian Jacques. I had read it before and found it fairly enjoyable. This time around, I thought it would never end, so I sped it up to 1.25% and even still, I dozed off a few times, but if we will allow that one, I made it to approximately 72 books this year. 

Okay, while I’m sitting here with my 2020 goals sitting in front of me in my planner right beside my list of books, I might as well tell you how I did on those, too. I mean, one of my favorite bloggers reports on her goals weekly, so maybe annually isn’t too weird.  I made it on the 50 books read, as long as we don’t get too picky about not counting children’s literature.  (Went back and counted and if you take out the kids’ books I am 47!  So close, and yet so far away!  Ha!) The next goal was to get rid of 1,000 items. I recorded 580 in my planner, but that happened pretty quickly so I quit writing it down, but I’m quite sure I made it on that one. The next was to do daily Bible reading. I have this Bible app on my phone and I love picking different reading challenges with friends. In past years, Jennifer and I did a Read-through-the-Bible one, and another of just the New Testament. Anyways, this year even more friends joined us, and we did Psalms and Proverbs, Ruth, the Letters of Paul, and a good one leading up to Thanksgiving and then another for Christmas. My favorite part is that everyone in the group can choose a verse or passage or a thought to share at the end and the whole group sees it.  My app says I did that 254 days. Wouldn’t call that daily, but on the right track, perhaps. This wasn’t a goal, but speaking of apps, I am up to a 296 day streak on Duolingo where I am working on learning Spanish. The next goal was daily exercise. Ha. Good one. I did get third place in a walking contest at my school (most miles walked in a month) recently and get lunch of my choice delivered to my classroom.  That was a little thrill.  And the last goal was turning on my daily sleeping show by 9:30. Another big ha. But I didn’t have to set my alarm for 6 from March-August, and then again for 2/3 of December, so maybe that goal ended up being less important than I would have imagined.  

Now to make up some new goals for 2021!

This is the post that does not end. I also read Charlotte’s Web to my 3rd graders and Little House Christmas Stories and Felicity’s Surprise to Eleonora. 

School Day

The boys and I went to school yesterday so that I could write and turn in my lesson plan from the observation that I had on the last day I was at school before quarantine/Christmas break set in. While we were there, we delivered Altoids bags to all the staff mailboxes. Caleb tried removing the cute picture tag from his teachers’ bags, but I think I got them all reattached. 

Think six forms of assessment will do?

Eleonora left these sweet notes on my desk in the beginning of December. 

I didn’t have a Christmas tree for school, so we decorated the Christmas pencil.  School was cancelled by party day, so we will have to party in the New Year!

Snow Day!

Craft Night Christmas Party

Someone calculated that this was our 10th Craft Night Christmas party, and that sounds good to me. I made my simplest gift yet, but I thought it was fitting!

There were great tins and boxes to wrap my angel ornaments at the Dollar Tree. 

The feast. We also had games and a tribute poem to 2020, all by Ashley. We sang carols as we opened our gifts, played Nertz, talked, and did a puzzle late into the night. 

My new treasures!

A lovely time was had by all!

On Christmas Day in the Morning!