The last week has brought us some very beautiful weather. With that when the weather is nice we are rarely indoors. We either play in the back in the grass, which is what we did both Saturday and Sunday with all the neighboor girls. Everyone played with balls and climbed trees, it was just nice to be out and about again. We have had several walks around the block and playtime at the nearest playground.
I have built up my walking to 2.5 miles and the days I don't walk are filled with indoor toning.
We managed to get out on Tuesday as a family and have our first hike of 2008. AMAZING was all I could say. Yes of course everything was dead and the creeks were ice cold. That did not stop us from wandering in and having lunch by the water. We did get lost and took the wrong path back which meant even more walking, and gripes from sore little feet. Other than that it was so much fun.
Wednesday we found out my husband is going to be jobless for 3 months, which really hit on hard times. Robbing Peter to pay Paul as it is. But on the bright side our tax return came, talk about good timing. So we will use that for the next 2 months and hope he finds some side work until he gets to go back fulltime. I know I should be really stressed, but knowing the back up came I am fine now. We have already been living frugal so that when a time came like this it would not hurt to bad. That is one major upside of homeschooling, some expenses can be postponed as we are going with the flow.
Today we went on a lovely walk around the river and back to the playground. We went as a whole family again. It really felt good to have hubby go to the park, I know it meant a lot to the little ones. Saw tons of turtles, fish, geese and ducks. His quote of the day... "well since I am on a 'vacation' for a bit, we can do this all the time." The kids will hold him to it!!!
As for school, we have definately been unschooling and enjoying the changes of the season. We are starting to plan our gardening in pots and that has led to some recycling ideas.
I buy yogurt in the large containers and can never figure out what to do with them when we are done, other than recycle them. So we are saving them up and are going to poke holes in the bottoms and reuse them as pots to plant strawberries and tomatoes in to get our garden started. We will try beans and herbs as well. Everyone is getting excited in the neighborhood for spring to come so we can get these going. I told all the little girls will have a planting day and they can plant seedlings and decorate their containers for a mini garden. This will be our first so wish us luck.
We are going to cut milk cartons in half and use them, as well as old pots for some cactus plants. Those old rusty cookie sheets will work great to put under our pots. Once it gets up and going I will post pics.
Other than that we are researching indoor plants like sweet potatoes and herbs. This is our schooling for the moment.
Bought another ELLO set, and the girls have spent hours building a little town with that. FUN FUN FUN!
For the amount of fighting that my little ones do, when the loving moments happen they really shine. My little one was very sick yesterday and threw up all over in the car. The wind was whipping and I did not want her to sit in a wet mess so we had to take off her close. The girls had recently been fighting and at a moments notice my oldest pulled herself together and helped keep sister warm with body heat. When we got home I had to clean the car, the child, unload the groceries and put them away... so I of course was frazzled beyone belief, add to that getting the yucky clothes washed and in the machine before they made the whole house sour. In my moment of chaos I was looking for the kids so that I could bathe my sicky and I found her already in the tub with bubbles and smiles. My oldest took it upon herself to give sister a bath. I was brought to tears at how much she helped out. This gave me the chance to get all messes cleaned up and stuff put up. She even dried her off, put on her pullup and warm jammies and had her lay on the couch. She basically doctored and mothered her all together. So so sweet.
This love did not stop there, we had more messes of the other sorts come later and had to bathe her again. Once the night was through she had 4 baths total... it was a very yucky night. My oldest even gave her an extra bath out of the whim because baby was feeling cold. The night went farely smooth and there was lots of snuggling and hugging go on.
Little bit is still feeling a tad yucky today, but nothing like what happened yesterday. I am very blessed that my girls understand what it means to help when someone is ill. I could not have been happier.
Now on another note a new game that has been entertaining all: a friend of ours was playing with the girls and decided to hang a tennis ball that was on an elastic string from the doorway. He then showed the girls how to practice hitting it with a racket. The next day they discovered how to shoot it from all different angles. All the kids have been entertained with the bouncing ball. Hanging it from different heights has had different games created. So much fun. And to top it off daddy got in on the action. Lining the kids up and tossing the ball back and forth somehow led to lining up bottles of various stuff across the room and aiming to knock them down. I could not help but try myself and it was not as easy as I thought. The ball comes back real fast and you have to learn to duck and cover and catch all at once. So this has gone on most of the morning. Hand eye coordination 101!!!!
Just a glimpse into what happens around here when we get bored hehehehe.
Check out this website that someone posted on one of my disscusion boards.
www.earthocean.tv this has so many cool videos and photos and lesson ideas.
In my last blog I mentioned our starting a new healthy regime. This last grocery shopping adventure was a blast. Tons of fruits and veggies and new approaches to food. My daughters have been playing a game on Disney that lets you choose between healthy and unhealthy snacks. They took the ideas from this game and helped mom pick out good snacking treats. They chose juice and water over soda and fruits like aprocots and mangoes over chips and cookies. This may not always be their choices but they are getting the idea. We have been going walking together and they help me with my stretches. All in all it was a very good and healthy week.
Our favorite recipe was a chicken and veggie stirfry served witha salad of green leaf lettuce and tomatoe. Normally I would have put the stirfry with rice but we were going light on the lunch. For seasoning I used tons of garlic, a touch of soy sauce and some ground ginger paste. Everyone loved it. I used all sorts of fresh and frozen veggies and a bunch of sliced up onions to give it some heartyness.
For school we have been using Superwhy and Wordworld online to vamp up our phonics skills. I recently purchased some puzzles of different parts of the world and they are using them to learn about countries. I love Geography and they seem to get a kick out of it as well.
We took an old computer apart this week to see how they tick and what all the parts inside were. After that my daughter took all the pieces and layed them out in her room and formed a city. Using small dolls and odd toys as people they have been playing with the city all week. We also had a broken light up sword that we decided to take apart and see how that worked.... well inside was a bunch of colored straws taped together and in them was a string of LED blue lights. So simple it was unbelievable. We took the lights out and learned a bit about circuits and batteries by attaching them to different battery combos. Results were that AAA were not enough power. 2 AA worked great at lighting them up, the battery from our phone was really good, and the batteries in the remote for the tv worked great also. (Note: when hunting for the tv remote first look in the room where the blue lights are...) My daughter also discovered that if you take just a single bulb and attach it to a 9volt battery that it will smoke and will probably catch on fire if you don't freak out first. She also came to the conclusion that the 9volt must have had way more power than the smaller batteries because the bulbs on the string got really hot when attached. She took this idea and went back to the remote and attached it and discovered that the bulbs were not hot.
Yes this might all seem a bit advanced for a 5 and 3 yr old.. but I did not choose it they did. They found something that they were able to discover with daddy. I never really was interested in physics stuff growing up but am learning a bunch more now. So cool.
After all that she told me of her next plan to buy a bunch of bulbs and put them on a hat with a battery and make it light up. If this works we will make some light up stuff and take them outside in the dark and play with them. I will keep you guys posted when this happens.
So we have had a very wired week and have been enjoying a new form of discovery!!!!!
I now want to make an alarm clock with potatoes and dive more into the electricity topic. Any other experiments out there that might be fun please chime in now.
I have been feeling a bit frustrated with our "schooling." Today I received an email on perspective and it really made me sit back and say.. hey it is ok to take things slow and to go at our own pace. For the amount of unschooling we do, I tend to compare myself to others and think that we need to be doing more. With this thought in mind I have looked at all we are learning without directly learning and realized that we are doing just fine. As much as I want to make my daughter read, she has not wanted to work on reading lessons and this week proved to me that she is on target more than I realized.
Situation 1: My oldest was showing her friend how to navigate on the Disney playhouse website and read to her all the options. Games, Activities, Music, and Stories. Her friend who is a year older asked her how she new what the words where and she just said she just knew them. I asked her if she read them or remembered them.. and she got really giggly and shy. She said she could read them and did not know how she knew them. Now as the mom I was so excited with this lightbulb that I almost cried. I checked out the website and saw that if you sit on the words long enough they will say their names. I did not tell her this though. I let her feel proud that she could read them. Then again part of reading is everyday sights and recognition. Yeah we are on the right track.
Situation 2: I had my daughter working on a few simple worksheets praticing drawing straight lines to get ready to write properly. I left her alone to do this and went to get some laundry finished. When I came back, she proudly showed me her work and to my surprise there was a grade at the top of each page. A nice big fat A circled. I thought wow daddy must have graded them. When I went to ask him about it he was asleep. Now I was really puzzled as to who graded them. When I ask my daughter who did it she said she did. That the page was done correctly so she gave herself an A. Wow that was really cool to see. I had to take a step back though because one I don't give her grades I usually just give her a sticker and a check mark. I did not want her to get in the ABC grade game quite yet. She told me she saw it on tv once and remember that is what they do in school.
My youngest daughter has been doing really well with puzzles and with finding new games on the websites all on her own. Sometimes she is teaching my older daughter how to get around on certain sites.
This week the weather has been really yucky so we have done tons of puzzles, games and imaginary play. As well as computer time, art time and playdough central. One day was really nasty and we were getting stir crazy so we went shopping at Walmart and started off with the fish and then went candle sniffing and yarn hunting and music listening. We basically played our way around the store. We ran into our neighbors and we let the kids run up and down the aisles playing chase and hide and seek. I am sure passerbys thought we were out of our minds. But as to gone nuts mothers we were having a blast. Great times on yucky days.
This week we are working on fitness and eating right as a family. Indoor workouts and healthy meals. I will post some of our findings this week.
PS.. Mom cannot really jump on the bed, for some reason my feet would not leave the mattress...hmm maybe all that leftover babyfat? I could bounce really well though and the kids loved watching me scream with fear of falling off the bed heheheh.
Yes.. to all who are wonder and to those who are not... I have been able to keep up a bit of a workout routine. Monday it was yucky out so I did indoor exercises, and Tuesday I walked 10 laps and jumped for joy on the end that I was able to push myself to do it. Today I went shopping with my little one to 5 stores and parked very far so I would have to walk a good distance.
Enough about me though my ponders this week have been about Homesteading and Curriculum. Not really in that order or even together. Here goes. I am itching to get a house on a chunk of land to start my own garden and raise a few goats and chickens. Now this is something that I have never thought in a million years would be for me. As I sit here thinking about all the people I know who have good jobs with good money... all they do is complain about unhappy they are. They work so hard to pay for the fancy houses, and cars and put their kids in "good" schools and daycares that they don't ever get to really spend time together. Both parents work so hard to barely break even if that, and not even to mention how unhealthy they are because they lost time to cook a decent meal. Now this is not meant to offend anyone, it is just an observation. Everyone seems to be talking about making more money and working more or getting a better paying job so they can move up in the superficial world that they have lost track of what is really important. Yes, this is a family discussion. My husband and I have come to the same conclusion about different people we meet or know. Hmm never thought he would be on board with the farm idea but both him and my kids are all for it. So that is in the future plans now. It is just a matter of time to get a home and get it started. I want it now though. I am tired of all the complaining, and want to be part of a more intune community.
Now for the curriculum thoughts: We have spent a tremendous amount of time on the computer this week, not too much bookwork or actual physical work to show for our time. What has come out of this... well a special bond between my girls. They have been spending their time more together than ever before. They play imaginary games and pretty much stopped watching the videos in their room. They have developed a bit of a routine. During the active part of the day they play, we read, do house stuff, and little activities here and there. I have been challenging them with cooking and counting and painting and puzzles. TONS of puzzles. They both love them. Then they play a bit, and somehow when husband and I are ready to watch a movie the each get on a computer and start playing games. They have been playing on www.sillybooks.net and listening to different stories and playing the games. One will find a cool one and go to the other girl and find it on her computer for her. The both have the speakers on but it is still cool to hear it on their own computer I guess. Then they switch over to
www.magorium.com/toycreator/
and build new toys and creatures. They have both figured out the ins and out of the site in their own terms and just love it. So all in all they have had a very productive unschooled week. And to think it is only Wednesday!!!
Today I went shopping for odd household needs. Upon my discoveries I found the book "What Your 1st Grader Need to Know," and the 2nd Grader one as well. I only paid $0.69 for each one and they are in paperback edition and brand spanking new. I already had the Kindergarten one and really like the stories and ideas in it. I am not using just that for my thoughts but it helps to get another opinion. Does any have these or have any input on them???
I also found some really good beginning phonics books and math books at the Dollar Store. I purchased several them CareBear themed.
Coming home I have decided to revamp or dry erase binders of info. I am making one for early math skills and one for more advance skills. I am throwing out the idea of grades and going on skills advancement and that seems to feel much better.
For now that is the start of my thought. I will blog more of what is in the binders later once I put them together.
