Going through "last years" papers: new plans and poetry

Ok, so we are back from our travels (hopefully more on that later), and I am frantically trying to clean up our work from last year and put together a schedule and plan for the new school year, while also doing mounds of laundry and keeping food on the table. Just getting the schedules from all of our activities organized is a huge job. As I do many times during the year, I am thinking we do too much, and yet every activity on our list is something I feel is a must or is there because the kids insist that they can't give it up. 

On the docket are many things I have outsourced for years: Spanish lessons, piano lessons, art lessons... My daughter will be continuing her literature studies with some other middle and highschoolers this year because it was so incredibly productive for her last year (Heroic University), and I have signed my son up for some outside writing instruction because that is his weak spot. This year, my daughter will also be studying to be Bat Mitzvahed and that means Hebrew school and extra lessons along those lines. In the science department, we have museum classes and one kid doing Odyssey of the Mind while the other will again do the Science Olympiad. P.E. is soccer, karate (working toward black belts by December), and horseback riding. We are also going to do some theatre and voice lessons. That is just the weekly stuff, and I will be cramming in Social Studies, Math and extra science in in our "free time". 

Two co-ops mean that I need to prepare a few classes this Fall. I'll be keeping it simple with a book club and a round of debate (much easier than the science), but I still need to put some thought into those. The procrastinator in my mind keeps thinking that first I need to brush the dog, make some more kombucha, clean off my desk...

So, in cleaning off my desk, I found some lovely poems from last year and I thought I would post them before stashing them away in the mighty tome that is "last years" work.

Here is Noah's.

Flying Friendship

There was once a giant caterpillar
Walking along
Walking along
It came upon a giant mushroom
Sitting in the shade
In the shade
Was a tiny dragon
Red and eyes aflame

To the caterpillar it said Hey!
and hey it flew away
but that giant caterpillar
just would not go away
so it turned into a butterfly
flew after the dragon

but the dragon did not recognize
the giant butterfly
so the butterfly just
yelled at him and asked why he had flown away
I thought you were a creature
that would kill me if I stayed
and so they landed
and when they landed
oh no! it started to rain
and it was matza balls!...
so together they flew away.

Fibonacci Teacup by Jessi

1,1,2,3, Fibonacci
Petals
Spiral
Around, around
Entranced by flowers
Most natural and fantastical beauty

Mist
Circles
Around mountain
Magically like a bird
In flight, spiral, spiral around
The mountain turns the world, mystical, magical white

Weeping
Willow
Bends over
The water, breeze
Blows its sweeping leaves, it
Brushes, ripples tickles still, still water drinking from
The teacup.