I am pretty much at the halfway point piecing the top of Abby's quilt. I promise, I'll post pictures, but I want to wait until it's done, or at least, until the top is done. Friday, I went to the Stitchin' Post. That was so awesome! Really nice material. I got two pieces, 1 1/2 yards each, to make a vanne, a Provencal-style whole cloth quilt. I need to find a solid color for the border, but I have the center panels, for when I'm ready to start. I also scoped out the Dr. Seuss fabric for the next baby quilt I'm going to make. This is for Neale's friend Dave and his wife Claire and their baby. Normally, I don't make quilts for people who aren't related to me, but Dave and Neale go WAY back, and he asked. I think I'm going to make it a little narrower than crib size, so I can use one piece of the Dr. Seuss fabric for the backing. That will still make it 40 inches by 60.

I don't know why I'm on such a quilting kick lately, but I keep seeing things I want to make. I'll probably start a knitting project, too, just to have something more portable to do. Probably either a bunny or a ball.

I think I've found a long-term career goal, too. I think I want to start my own school. Really, what I want to do is come up with the philosophy, and then be allowed to teach, but we'll see. I think a hybrid Montessori school is the way to go. There are some great things about Montessori, and really, mainstream education is starting to integrate the big ones: multi-age classrooms, and organizing classrooms into centers, so students have some time to move around the room and work independently. I'd even use some of the Montessori materials, particularly for math and the Time Line of Life, because I think that's just an amazing work. However, there are a lot of things about Montessori that are stuck. The reading curriculum, in particular, could use some re-working. Putting such a huge emphasis on phonics doesn't really work with English, anyway, especially since I knew so many children who learned words from environmental print before they mastered enough letters to build words phonetically, and they didn't have the patience to labor over phonics. Not that phonics isn't important, it is, but one thing I learned from the literacy classes I took is that English can't be taught exclusively with phonics or whole-language.

What I have in mind is a school where students would be in multi-age classrooms, set up in centers, with one teacher per grade level, and possibly and aid. Teachers would give lessons to groups of students, and in between times, students would have assignments to complete at centers. A lot of the morning would be reading/writing workshop, and students would do math, science, language arts, and social studies every day, but there would be more independent work, and more opportunities for students to learn to manage their time. It would follow the American Pediatric Association's guidelines for activity by having half an hour of P.E. every day and two 15-minute recesses. I have no idea how, or if I could make this happen, but I feel like I have a direction now.