{"id":709,"date":"2018-03-05T03:30:51","date_gmt":"2018-03-05T03:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barefootmeandering.com\/site\/?p=709"},"modified":"2018-03-08T22:50:02","modified_gmt":"2018-03-08T22:50:02","slug":"living-deliberately","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/barefootmeandering.com\/site\/living-deliberately\/","title":{"rendered":"Living Deliberately"},"content":{"rendered":"

In This Issue…<\/p>\n

This month, I talk a bit about the role of preparation when it comes to living off-grid. In the bottom section, I talk a little about our grammar and composition program,\u00a0English Lessons Through Literature<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Aloha, y\u2019all!<\/p>\n

As some of you know, we moved to Hawaii in January. And I\u2019m bundled up as I write this\u2013well,\u00a0relatively<\/em>\u00a0bundled up. It\u2019s cold here this morning\u2013I\u2019m writing this in February. And again, I need to use that word\u00a0relatively<\/em>\u00a0because it\u2019s in the low 60s here. In Texas, from where we just moved, it\u2019s in the 20s.<\/p>\n

Illinois taught me about the cold. We lived there for almost a decade, and the lesson I learned was a simple one\u2013it\u2019s all about preparation and using the right tools. I chased chickens through a blizzard once, and I stayed warm in my insulated gear. I went back into my warm house because I\u2019d remembered to buy firewood and start a fire.<\/p>\n

But I currently don\u2019t have any pants that go all the way down to my ankles, and I need a better blanket. The rest of our clothes and household goods will catch up with us eventually, of course. So while my temperatures are mild, I\u2019m unprepared for them, and that lack of preparation is where we suffer.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the reality: Much of living off-grid is about being prepared and living deliberately instead of on auto-pilot. The grid takes the place of personal planning to a large degree, which is why things get difficult when part of the grid goes down for a time. With off-grid living, I\u2019m the one who has to remember to buy firewood, propane, and gas for the generator because there\u2019s no switch to flip that brings electricity and natural gas flowing into the house. In Texas, we even had to monitor our water levels so we\u2019d know to call and have water delivered if it didn\u2019t rain. These are simple things\u2013right up until that moment when need intersects with procrastination.<\/p>\n

Got questions? Send them to us!<\/p>\n

Kathy Jo<\/p>\n

\n

English Lessons Through Literature<\/h3>\n

English Lessons Through Literature<\/em>\u00a0(ELTL) came about when our second son was ready for an introduction to grammar. I\u2019d read plenty about teaching various subjects through great literature, but ironically, I couldn\u2019t find a program which actually taught language arts in that fashion\u2013at least, not as a complete program.\u00a0In the interest of brevity, I\u2019ll only discuss this one aspect of ELTL.<\/p>\n

On our website<\/a>,\u00a0you can see a book list that goes along with each level of ELTL. That\u2019s because in ELTL, students read complete books and stories, not just passages from books, so it covers literature as well as grammar, composition, and spelling. All of the books used in ELTL are in the public domain so that it\u2019s not necessary to purchase a lot of books to complete the reading assignments; you can simply download them from Gutenberg. In fact, you can usually even find free audio versions of the books on Librivox.<\/p>\n

The sample sentences in the grammar lessons and exercises are taken from the text, so the sentences students see are from actual literature rather than created in order to demonstrate a grammatical concept. This makes the sentences more interesting as well as more relevant, and they don\u2019t sound fake like the sentences in many grammar books can. And language arts becomes a more integrated subject with great literature serving as the backbone of its study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In This Issue… This month, I talk a bit about the role of preparation when it comes to living off-grid. In the bottom section, I talk a little about our grammar and composition program,\u00a0English Lessons Through Literature. Aloha, y\u2019all! As some of you know, we moved to Hawaii in January. And I\u2019m bundled up as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_expiration-date-status":"saved","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/barefootmeandering.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/barefootmeandering.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/barefootmeandering.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/barefootmeandering.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/barefootmeandering.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/barefootmeandering.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":710,"href":"http:\/\/barefootmeandering.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions\/710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/barefootmeandering.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/barefootmeandering.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/barefootmeandering.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}