Journals

I have stacks and stacks of journals. 

Starting from age 8. 

And journaling is still a big part of my life. 

I journal some of our family memories here and I also keep track of events and thoughts and doings in a number of other places.  I have a private online blog for myself (I write better while typing) and a notebook that is constantly with me where I jot down things (because I love handwriting...especially in this age of digital-everything)---things that the kids say, grocery lists, to-do ideas, school plans, garden plans, things that happen in our life that I don't want to forget.

Homeschooling our kids for these past 6 years has been such an adventure.

We have had huge successes. 

 And there have been a lot of things that we've tried that just didn't quite work. 

We are constantly taking the temperature of everything---from attitudes to skills to curriculum to schedules to their interests to outside activities to social considerations to how much or how little we'll actually plan out for our kids. 

Tweaking always.  Adding and dropping.  That's how it works for us.

But one of the things that we've done since the very beginning is journaling. 

 Even before that day in August 2006 when Kindergarten started at home---way back before they could write, before they could really draw anything recognizable, their scribbles were kept and dated and they would tell me what they were and I would write it down.

To me, these books---all of them--- are a most important part of our lives. 

Our interests, our joys, our sadness, our silliness, our drawings, our preferences, our personalities, our handwriting, our outings, our hopes.

 A record of our days. 

A book of our memories.

Recently, Ella has been keeping a dragon-classification guide in her journal.