Back to School 2012

It is time to start school again and I have been earnestly praying, pondering and searching for how I should be doing education for my children in a way I can handle and they will love. I feel fairly confidant that the methods I am putting to the test this year will hold strong and true.

It all started with TJEd and Charlotte Mason. I found so many wonderful things in their philosophies that I had a hard time figuring out how to implement it all. I gave trial runs all through the summer with different parts of the philosophies and found out how most work and how some just don't for our family. After a summer full of trial and error, this is what I came up with as our curriculum for the year.

Our subjects for my two whom I am actively teaching this year are Scripture Study, Reading, Writing, Math, Science, History, Spanish, Health, Music, Art, and Physical Training. At first glance this seems like a ton of work for a 1st and a 3rd grader. However let me explain what we are doing with each subject.

I have decided to start with the self as much as possible in each subject. For Scripture Study we will be focusing on personal conduct, which is of course most of what God teaches us about, and so we will also explore why God focuses on personal growth so much. In Reading I will read to the kids The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain as it is written in first-person perspective. (I will go into detail about how I am teaching my boy to read further down.) Writing will be copywork. For my 1st grader he will only be copying letters and single words until his aptitude with fluently writing letters and numbers increases. My 3rd grader will be copying the Articles of Faith from our religion and when she is done with those (as we are already 1/2 way through) she will be doing scripture verses from our morning Scripture Study. Math will focus on fluency with addition, subtraction, multiplication and beginning division. We will also be doing classification via size, shape, color, weight, etc. and time. For Science we will be learning about the Human Body, inside and out. History is going to start with Personal History, then move into Parental History and the Histories of their grandparents etc until we get into Family History. By doing this I hope to give them a greater appreciation for how history affects them, thus making them more interested in it, (Inspire not Require!). For Spanish we will learn one phrase, one color and one number per week. Health will be about how what we eat and what we do physically affects our bodies. Music and Art will be tied in with one or more of the other subjects and Physical Training will be Kenpo, which my husband will teach them.  



I am using Charlotte Mason's idea that lessons should be ten minutes to a quarter-hour. So, if we spent the max of fifteen minutes on each lesson we would have lessons for three and three-quarters hours. That in and of its self is a reasonable goal in light of the amount of time spent in the public schools. However, I will also be combining subjects when appropriate.

For example: Science this season is going to be about the human dody and Health is about our lifestyle's affect on the human body, so these can be easily combined. There are also many songs about the human body and healthy habits, so music fits in there as well. Kenpo is an activity which is good for the body, so that fits also. Our religious scripture has what is known as the Word of Wisdom which talks about what things we should and should not eat, that slips in their too! So as you can see, I can quickly condense a lot of these subjects into a shorter amount of time. And that saved time can be spent on pursuing the children's interests and promoting our upstart home based business and teaching the kids work ethic, cleanliness, discipline, love of God, and charity through service. All of which are at least equally important as scholastic learning, if not more so.

As for teaching my 6-year-old boy to read, I am using Charlotte Mason's philosophy. I am not teaching him to read words by sounding them out as I did with my older daughter, because too often that doesn't work. This way of teaching was developed by Friedrich Frobel who is the inventor of Kindergarten. If you couldn't guess by his name or the name of his invention, he is German. Deutsch (German) is a phonetic language. English is not. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of words in English, that if spelled phonetically would look suspiciously like Deutsch. So instead I am teaching the words as a symbol for the sound of the word we say. I look at it as more akin to the Chinese writing or hieroglyphs. This collection of letters in this pattern means this word. It is a fairly simple concept as children have such wonderful visual memories. I take a phrase, either from a nursery rhyme, or children's song, or the scriptures and have the words individually separated and teach them one by one, making sure they simply aren't memorizing some unintentional pattern of how I am showing them. Then as they know each word individually, I put them together in the phrase or sentence and they can read it through without pause. This is an average of 10 words each day. This is so much easier on the children than trying to remember the "I before E except after C or when followed by a G" type of exceptions to phonetic rules that our language is crawling with.

What kind of Monkey are You?

I know it has been a while since I have posted on here and I apologize for the absence. I have been struggling to get my feet underneath me firmly in the homeschooling department. There are some days when I feel like I am on top of the world and we are doing so great and my kids will be so much better for my efforts, and then there are other days when I feel like I am so deep in the ocean that I can't find my way to the surface and I know that surely my children would be learning more in public school. But see, even typing that makes my skin crawl because no matter how poorly the starting of this goes, in the long run there will be no comparison for the benefit of teaching my kids at home.

Well, while in the car today I found myself listening to talk radio. When I listen to talk radio it is usually the "conservative station", but when my husband is in the car he listens to the "liberal station". I enjoy listening to both, though there are times with both when I will turn them off with disgust. However, that is off topic.

The story we were listening to was about the findings in a recent study on monkeys and their problem solving and goal oriented thinking. One striking thing they found was that even though both monkeys achieved their goals, they did it in entirely different ways. One monkey was obviously patient and the other impatient. When given a goal, the patient monkey would wait until all of the "obstacles" were known before coming up with a plan to reach the goal. The impatient monkey would go for the goal as soon as it was visible and would have to deal with the "obstacles" as they arose.

So I posed the question to myself, "Which kind of monkey am I?" I have never been good at goal setting and very rarely achieve goals that I set and it has been a constant frustration for me. I don't know what I am doing wrong and it despairs me quite often. After hearing of this study, I finally realized what (hopefully?) my problem is. I am impatient monkey.

I see the goal and scramble to get there, bruising myself here, and scraping myself there, until I finally trip over something that I had seen as small and inconsequential in my mad dash, (if, of course, I had even seen it at all) and I knock myself out cold. Down for the count. When I finally come to and begin dusting myself off all I see is the beginning again and the goal way off in the distance, not understanding what it was, exactly, that prevented me from reaching that goal. So I start off again, renewed vigor, albeit a bit more wary of the obstacle that tripped me last time. But alas, my folly is not in the last piece of straw that has settled onto my back that collapsed me, it is the multitude of others hindrances that have piled up without my even being aware of them.

I have always been aware that I have a problem with follow-through. I just haven't ever figured out why. I pray to my Father in Heaven that this may be the key to solving my puzzle. I have been looking at the picture on the box and wondering why all these little pieces don't look like that yet. I hadn't been able to find a method for sorting it all out in a way that makes sense. Actually, I don't think I had even tried sorting.

There is another good saying here that fits. "You can't see the forest for the trees" Which generally means you are so focused on the small things that you can't see the big picture. I am backwards. For me the statement is more accurate when it reads "You can't see the trees for the forest". I have been so overwhelmed by the daunting forest that I haven't been looking at the trees. There is so much to be missed when you ignore the details. (Come to think of it, I had discovered this problem in my drawings nearly 15 years ago, so sad it took me this long to correlate that with my everyday life.)

To resolve this problem I am going to take a good hard look at the trees. I am in the process of doing this so I can't tell you yet what the outcome will be or what all the steps are. I will tell you that I started with a question. "Why do I always fail to stick to a schedule?" Instead of answering this question directly, I answered it with another question. "What is it that I am trying to schedule?" I wrote a list of everything that goes on in my life in a daily or weekly capacity that I need to fit into the schedule. Then I took each of these and wrote the specific details of what, in those items, fails, that makes it hard to stick with the schedule. For example, under the topic "Being awake at a certain time in the morning" was the fatal "going to bed late" and for me, the worse "Not feeling any pressing reason to get out of bed". After weeks of discussion with my sister on that particular topic I have come to the fact that this is a lack of willpower, but I had not yet found a way to make it less of a willpower struggle than it is. (I am currently testing a theory on a fix to this though.) 

So now I am addressing the trees. I want to be the patient monkey and see the whole picture before I start cramming the puzzle pieces together and collapsing from the weight of one tiny length of straw. I can over come this. It will all be better in the end. I just need to strategically map my course before I go diving into my personal no-mans-land.

Today is a New Day

27 March 2012

Today was a new day! I got myself out of bed by 8:00 am, which is average for me, but I got dressed, had breakfast, helped the kids clean their rooms and started on schoolwork! We were done with school at about 11:00am! The rest of the day I kept looking at the clock and saying to myself, "Is it really only 12:30?", "Is it really only 1:45?", etc., etc.

With Ra and El we worked on math and handwriting mostly. With Ca I tried showing him how to write his name again and how to properly hold a writing utensil (which he absolutely does not care to do). We are using Glenn Kimber's book Principles of Numeration, which is quite a good, simple guideline and definitely not a grab-and-go curriculum. I am thinking about buying the Math Masters book to accompany it as well.

For the rest of the day I worked on the audio book I am recording. I fiddled with the sound, the timing, the white noise and whatnot trying to figure out how the controls work in Adobe Soundbooth. Rather interesting. I also got myself an account on Lynda.com which has excellent tutorials on just about every software out there that needs explaining.

At the end of the day we went for a drive as a family and the hubby and I discussed many points about homeschooling as well as a few other topics, but mostly we talked about homeschooling. To my delight it would seem that the hubby is actually on the bandwagon with me about homeschool, finally! Though our reasons may differ slightly, we both definitely agree that our children need to be taught in the home.

Creative Scholastic Scalding

21-26 March 2012

Sorry it has been a crazy week (as it usually is when the hubby is in town) and I haven't made the time to blog! Ah well, when you fall off the horse you get right back up on it! In the last week we have done several things. The ones of note that I can remember off the top of my head are:

Place an order with Scholastic Books via Grandma Jane and adopted Grandma B. They gave me their teacher points to spend so it is not costing a thing! How cool is that!

And I burnt my hand in a sink full of water I had *just* strained from the noodles I had boiled. Don't ask, just don't ask. It was one of those stupid embarrassing I-cant-believe-I-just-did-that moments. After twenty minutes in ice water and a trip to Urgent Care everything turned out fine the next day.

I acquired the Adobe CS5 Creative Suite and have been having a ton of fun fiddling with the new programs. I also bought a Podcast setup to start recording some audio books. Voice acting, oh ya this will be fun if I can get the house quiet enough to do it!

I will get back on track with this tomorrow! Sorry for the absence!

The Sword of Senack and the Co-op

20 March 2012

Today EC Stilson my good friend released her first YA Fantasy book today. It is called The Sword of Senack. I read her first draft of the book and am anxious to read the final! It is about pirates and mermaids and witches and all sorts of fun underwater magic. Ra absolutely loved the first draft and I am going to read the kids the published final as soon as it arrives. When we have read it I will post my annotations of it in a link at the top of the page.

Wayman Publishing, the publisher of EC's books is holding a Writing and Art Contest to celebrate the book. They are also doing a raffle give-away of a Kindle Fire! I am going to go over there right now and enter. How neat would that be! For information on all these awesome goings on visit her blog at the link below. 




I had the kids help me pick up the house before computer's were allowed to come on today. While they piddled around on the computer I cleaned and got ready for our day out of the house. I had to run some errands down in the south end of Salt Lake County today and so I also planned to visit some family while we were there.

My nephew, Sk broke his leg while jumping on the trampoline over the weekend and so we decided to stop by there and visit him. He is Ra's age and both Ra and El enjoy playing with him. They all played Wii for a bit and the kids rotated playing outside and playing on the Wii with Sk. I told my sister about a LEARN group that was to be meeting tonight in Farmington that I wanted to go to but I didn't have anyone to watch the kids for me. She offered to watch them for me which was extremely nice of her.(u c wut i did thar?)

At the LEARN (Learning Enrichment And Resource Network) meeting I met some new people. We talked generally about some of the things each of us has been struggling with and we brainstormed ideas for each other. It was a really good way to get to know each other because you could tell what their passions and interests were based on their ideas and response. I met several mom's with children the same age as mine and I hope to get to know them better.

The biggest thing I took away from the meeting was that I am going to start a co-op. I have been looking for one to join but they are all full, or not the things I am interested in or the segregate, only allowing certain ages of children.

So my project for the next couple of weeks is to come up with a structure for the co-op and a basic premises-model to build each meeting off of. I would like to have it a twice-a-week affair. I would also like to try and get about other families involved. I feel I would be comfortable hosting about twenty kids, so long as I had other mothers/fathers willing to participate in the teaching efforts!

I will probably separate the kids into a few different groups depending on skills, abilities and interests. There is a ton of brainstorming I need to do on this idea so it will probably be a few weeks in the making before I even try and approach others with the idea and an invitation.

Multiply by Love

19 March 2012

I was up most of the night with stomach cramps. Maybe that dinner wasn't as healthy as I thought! I still don't have any idea what it was that caused the cramping but it is miserable. I still can't move around much without the cramps coming on again. Unfortunately I did need to get out of the house and run a few errands today. Talk about miserable!

The kids were good to me today and cleaned up the house a bit and attempted to load the dishwasher. Ra sat with me on the couch for a while and we did some oral quizzing on multiplication facts. Now mind you I have not done any formal teaching on multiplication, at least not in the same way I did with K12 and adding and subtracting.

We have gone over the basics of multiplication however. The fact that one number is how many are in a group and the other number is how many of those groups there are. I have previously explained to her that any number multiplied by zero is zero. After all if you have no groups of ten you have nothing and if you have ten groups of nothing you still have nothing.

I have also explained to her that knowing her skip counting will help her in all other areas of math. She requested that I begin asking her multiplication questions based in what she already knows of skip counting. She can skip count by 2's, 3's, 5's, 10's and 11's to 100.  I asked her multiplication questions that involve these increments. She did very well! I am so proud of her.

At bed time Ra read Fancy Nancy Pajama Day and I read Stinkers and Stingers.

Cribbage

18 March 2012

Today we attended church, (a little late I admit but we made it!) and spent some time relaxing at home. We had such a busy week last week that we decided to take it easy today. Around 1:00p.m. my mother called and asked her and my father could stop by for a visit. They were up in the area for a missionary farewell for one of my cousins.

The kids were extremely excited as usual when we have company. We live about an hour away from most of our family so we don't get visitors often. The kids had so much fun showing off all they have been doing and learning in our homeschool efforts and Grandma Debbie and Grandpa Mike enjoyed hearing all about it. Ra showed off her skip counting prowess, beautiful cursive and all of the fun crafts we did for the various holidays.

When we were in Hurricane Papa Glen and Nana Lori showed the hubby and I how to play cribbage. It is so chalk full of math that I decided to use it at home. I have heard that card games, dice games and board games are some of the best ways to learn math, so why not give it a try.

I asked my parents if they have ever played cribbage and they said no. So I decided to use that moment to not only show my parents how to play, but Ra as well. Ra loved it and though Grandpa Mike was a little distracted by Puss in Boots on the TV, I think my parents enjoyed it too. Grandpa Mike told me that he is really good at math, something I have probably always taken for granted in my father until now. He said that the only thing that messes him up in math is a calculator! Ha! See! That is how proficient I want my kids to be, and myself of course, because I am no where near that.

After a healthy dinner we read some of the Old Testament Stories before I shooed the kids off to bed.

Happy St Patrick's Day

17 March 2012

Happy St Patrick's Day! The kids woke up this morning to their traps all tripped and little gold nuggets (butterscotch chip candies) spread all about their traps. Also there were little green footprints everywhere and the leprechaun left us a note that read: "A valiant effort! Thee did well! But no box can keep me under its spell! -Mr. Shamrock" The kids were thrilled.

I made eggs for breakfast and while I wasn't looking the sneaky leprechaun magically turned the eggs green! When I poured the milk from the gallon it was white as can be but when I set the cups down on the table the milk had all turned green too!

After breakfast I began making the rainbow jello oranges. I cut the cuties I bought yesterday in half and scooped out the middles with a spoon. I had twenty-three cuties and so I ended up with forty-six halves. I placed them in muffin tins with a little sand at the bottom to keep the rinds from rolling over. I made the jello one color at a time and filled up 7 cutie halves with each color. For the remainder of the jello I found various containers to place it in to set up in the fridge.

While the jello was setting up we cleaned up the house and played for a bit. At three o'clock the jello was set and we took it over to our friends house to play. I cut the cutie halves into quarters and they were so convenient for the kids. They didn't need any utensils or plates to eat them, just quite a few napkins afterwards for the littler kids. We had a capital time.

We stayed pretty late as I helped my friend redesign her company website and we just had a blast visiting like always. Again it was too late to read any stories when we were done.

The Tempest

16 March 2012

We went to Walmart to get some supplies for St Patrick's Day. We purchased some tacky glue (for our traps), cutie tangerines, six jellos (one for each color of the rainbow), and a few other miscellaneous things. Tomorrow we are going to make some fun jello using the cutie peels. I will tell you about it in more detail then.

Those sneaky little leprechauns wont be able to escape our sturdy traps! We used popsicle sticks to make boxes to trap the leprechauns under. We painted the top (or bottom depending on which way you look at it) of the box in the colors of the rainbow and decorated them with clovers from our yard to entice the leprechauns in.

While waiting for the traps to dry we went to Bountiful to see the play The Tempest. I found out about it through one of the Yahoo! homeschool groups. It was performed by kids ages 4 to 14 and was really well done. Ra absolutely loved it. El and Ca sat through most of it but when I got up to take care of Em, Ca followed me out. It was a really fun experience.

When we got home the kids set up their leprechaun traps in hopes of catching those ever elusive little Irish men. Good luck to them!

It was too late in the evening to expect the kids to stay awake for a book so it was straight to bed with them. I can't wait for tomorrow! The kids have their green clothes all picked out so they don't get pinched. 

Getting Caught Up Again

15 March 2012

When we got home this morning my kids begged I turn on the computers first thing since they didn't get computer day on Tuesday because we were at a friend's house all day. I let the kids play for most of the day. They did help me around the house a bit still and went outside and played as well. It was a really warm day today. Even after the sun had gone down it was still 78 degrees inside my house. 

I managed to get most of the laundry washed and dried and hope to have it all washed and dried by the time I go to bed tonight. I read some of Valley Forge by Newt Gingrich and William R Forstchen. Unfortunately exhaustion overcame me and I decided it would be a good time to take a nap since Em was asleep as well. Of course when Em woke up I wasn't ready to! Oh well, such is life.

I wrote some outlines for the next post on Inspiration In Learning ( my ah-ha blog). I probably wont get around to writing it tonight, but hopefully tomorrow night. At bedtime I read two chapters of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Ra decided to read from our Old Testament Stories picture book. She read the story of Joseph in Egypt.

Pi - In the Face

14 March 2012

I watched Elisa's two younger kids for her briefly this morning while she dropped off her two older ones at school and ran to the store real fast. When she got back I went straight from her house to my brother's house because my sister-in-law was called in for jury duty and they couldn't find anyone else to watch their kids. Now mind you they live an hour away, which is fine. And they have seven kids, which is also fine because most of them were at school. So I didn't get much accomplished in the way of myself today. I was babysitting from about 10:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. when my brother and his wife both got home.

Because it was Pi Day today I made Shepherd's Pie for dinner, but that is all I was able to do. Oh well, there is a Pi Day every year, so plenty of time to do all of those fun Pi Day activities I would like to.

My brother has been my idol in the realms of art for as long as I can remember. My friends tell me I am a great artist, but that is because they have never seen my brother at work! He can do anything her puts his mind to. Drawing, painting, sculpting, graphic design, advertising, logos, anything! A few years ago he even helped my other brother add light sabers to a film he had made with his boy scouts. Pretty neat.

Well a package had arrived for him while he was out and when he got home and opened it he was as giddy as a schoolboy. He showed me that it was software for Adobe Aftereffects. Then he showed me all the cool things you could do and they more he showed me and the more he explained, the more I felt like crying.

You see, all day yesterday I had worked on designing those bookmarks for Elisa. I was using Microsoft Paint, because my Adobe CS5 doesn't work on my old, slow computer. All the cool stuff he was doing was so out of my league right now I felt like everything I had spent so much time on and was so proud of yesterday was like preschool scribbling in comparison to what he was working with.

I know he is the oldest of the six kids in our family and I am the youngest, but I was so envious, and have been for a while, of all the tools he has at his disposal. I don't even want to try art right now because I feel so inadequately equipped for it. I doodle and sketch, but in this digital world, if you can't get your art onto the computer to be sent by email then it may as well not exist. Rather depressing considering I feel this way about so many subjects. Math and science and language. But at the same time it burns a fire of hunger. I want to know more, to do more and be more for myself and my kids. I can do it, I just need to stop wasting time being idle during the day and get to work!

We ended up spending the night here too because it was really late by the time my brother had finished showing me all the cool things he has been doing that I was not in spirits for the long drive home. It has been a very long week away from home. I plan on going home tomorrow and not leaving for a couple days at least!

I've Got My Eye's On You

13 March 2012

Having barely recovered from the weekend trip to Hurricane I slept in till 9:00. Though this may sound late to some of you and early to others, it is both for me. I used to sleep or doze in bed until 10:00 sometimes as late as 11:00. Since starting homeschool I have had to try and change this habit. It is hard and has taken me quite some time to get used to waking up and getting out of bed by 7:30-8:00 on a regular basis. I am very much a night owl. I am very much NOT a morning person. I would rather stay up until 4:30 working on something than have to wake up at 4:30 to do the same thing. I believe full heartedly that this is a learned trait as everyone in my family has the same tendancy. I used to say it is genetic, but that gives you the impression that there is nothing that you can do about it and I have come to see those types of responses as cop-out answers. If you say there is nothing you can do about it, then the responsibility is taken from you and you no longer have to try to be a better person because it is out of your control. I call B S.

Anyways, when I got up I had the kids help me clean the house. While cleaning I got a phone call from my friend Elisa asking if I would come help her make some bookmarks. She is releasing her second book on St. Patrick's Day and has been invited to talk in two weeks at an elementary school about writing and being an author. Since she only has so many books to give away she decided to have bookmarks for the kids.

I of course, decided to make it complicated because I found some really cute bookmarks on Pinterest. I designed a witch bookmark for the girls and a pirate one for the boys. The witch is basically eyes with a big green nose with a wart and the pirate has an eye-patch and a mustache. It took me until about 3:00 pm to get the proportions and measurements just right. We fit eight to a page and emailed the file to AlphaGraphics to be printed. When we picked them up they offered to cut them as well for a small fee and I am so glad we did. Even with the individual bookmarks cut apart we still needed to hand-cut around the nose of the witch and the mustache of the pirate and then fold them and add a sticker. The bookmarks are this idea, though much different.

They turned out super cute and I hope the kids will like them, unfortunately we didn't even finish getting them all done and by 11:00pm we called it quits and spent the night at her place.Pinterest, I love you for making my life more creative and I hate you for making it complicated by making it creative.



If you want to know what Elisa's book is about or buy it go to her site! She also has an Art and Writing Contest going on right now in celebration of her book release. Winners prizes range from a Kindle to publication in an anthology published by Wayman Publishing to cash and more. So worth stopping by.

Gale Force Winds. . . or lack thereof

10, 11, 12 March 2012

We spent the weekend in Hurricane, Utah with the hubby's father and step-mother, Papa Glen and Nana Lori. It was so much fun. We left Friday evening after the hubby came home from work. During the drive, after the kids fell asleep the hubby and I had a great discussion about physics. We talked about the Age of Newton and the Age of Einstein and how each came to be and how we came to grow in our understanding. I say discussion, to be more truthful, it was a lecture. Though I enjoyed it thoroughly and took many notes. Did you know that the speed of light is 187 miles per second, which gives it an hourly rate of roughly 673,200 miles per hour. I knew it was fast, but knowing how fast is kinda neat. In my Ah-Ha blog I will write a more detailed post about our discussion, a.k.a. the notes I took on my husband's lecture. I am so blessed to have such a brilliant man for a husband. He knows so much and is so passionate about what he knows. His great loves are Science and History. Neither of which I cared much for in my conveyor-belt education, but he makes it all come alive. He is my mentor in these areas of academia.

Saturday morning we had some fun hanging out around Papa and Nana's house before we went for an adventure to the Dinosaur Discovery at Johnson Farm. It was so neat to see just how many tracks and fossils there were and to learn so much about the age of the area. Almost everyone (in Utah at least) knows about Lake Bonneville, but these dinosaur tracks are from a time long before that even! They are fossils from the lake bed of Dixie Lake which was in the Early Jurassic Age (approx. 195 to 198 million years ago). Lake Bonneville was only 32 thousand years ago.

Saturday evening we had a birthday party for Ca with Papa and Nana and had a treasure hunt for his present then some ice cream cake. The weather was so gorgeous down there. Sometimes I wish we would have bought a house a little closer to the equator than we did! Ah well. Papa Glen taught the hubby and I how to play cribbage. It was a very fun game and I can't wait to teach it to Ra. The math facts you hone while playing it are incredible. I think Ra will have a lot of fun. I might simplify the rules for her a little bit and first, but in time all the rules make for some intriguing math fun!

Sunday we spent some time at the Hurricane Valley Heritage Park and Museum, though the museum was closed, the park was fun. I learned about how Hurricane got it's name, though I could have guessed! It is always windy there, though it was not windy this weekend. Probably the first time I have ever been to Hurricane where it was not extremely windy the entire time. After the park we went back to the house for some lunch then Papa Glen offered to show us a neat dirt road trail that goes up through the neat red rock mountains that not many people know about. It was fun, and terrifying as I am afraid of heights. We stopped at one point and I let the Hubby take the kids, one at a time, out to look. I was so terrified it took some time for me to get out of the car let alone come withing twenty feet of anything that looked remotely like a drop off. The trail lead all the way to St. George where we turned around and went back to the house.

At the house we played with the kids, bubbles and catch and whatnot. By 5 o'clock in the evening we left Papa and Nana's and went and had dinner at Red Lobster. We had never been there before and thought it might be fun for the kids to try some new foods. It was expensive but worth it. Next time we probably wont bring the kids, at least not all of them. They went in telling me that they didn't like shrimp and crab and lobster but I told them that since they had never tried them before they could not say they didn't like them. We ordered a little bit of each and the kids just loved it; they kept asking for more!

The hubby's next job was located in Mesquite, Nevada and the whole crew stopped in St. George for the night so we stayed with the hubby in his hotel room for the evening. He had to leave with the rest of the company at 5:30am but the kids and I were up at 7:00am and had some continental breakfast and then left for home at 8:30am.

On our way home we stopped by my sister's house for a few hours to let the kids play before finishing the last hour leg of the five hour car ride. What a fun and exhausting trip. I think I need a few days of straight sleep to recover!

Hurricane Weekend

9 March 2012

Got to love Fridays. It was grocery day today. I found a new grocery store that carries a larger variety of produce at a good price. My typical grocery store didn't have half the things I needed on the grocery list from Rill's Menu.

After grocery shopping we met the hubby for lunch and made plans to go south to Hurricane to visit Papa Glen and Nana Lori, the hubby's father and step-mother. When we got home the kids and I cleaned up the house, did some laundry and packed to be gone for the weekend.  We will be ready to leave as soon as hubby gets off work! I am excited. We will be back Monday, so no posts until then!

Where To Go With Nothing To Do

8 March 2012

Today we didn't get much done. It was computer day till noon. While the kids were on the computer I decided to start compiling a list of places to go and things to do. I went to the city websites of all cities in the Davis County and found information on museums, parks and events hosted in the city. When I get the list typed up I will include it in a tab at the top of the page. It will be complete with names, address, phone numbers, prices hours.

The kids spent a little time playing outside today but it really was too cold.

Fortune Telling Fun

7 March 2012

I couldn't sleep and so I got up at 2:30 this morning and worked on the blog. I reformatted it and added a new blog. You can get to it from the Ah-Ha tab. It is for my personal Ah-Ha moments in my self education and researching home school and parenting. 

My mother, Grandma Debbie came over to do Singing Time today. We reviewed the songs we already learned, The Wise Man and the Foolish Man and Nephi's Courage. We talked about the different kinds of boats and the difference between rowing and paddling. Then we learned the song, Row Your Boat. We even practiced singing it in rounds. It wasn't terribly successful, but we were getting better! Next time I think will go very well.

We were supposed to work in the yard today, but since it snowed all evening it was far too cold, and snow covered to be outside. So we spent our day inside. We cleaned a little bit and played mostly. I made some oragami fortune tellers and wrote some fun activities on the insides. The activities I used were fun and simple. Make a play using a picture book for the script, complete with costumes; Count to 99 by 3's; Draw a picture of the scariest thing you can think of; Pretend you are a pirate searching for a hidden treasure; Make up a dance to a song; Play in a secret hideout; Recite the colors of the rainbow in English and German, and one more I can't remember right now.

The kids made some of their own fortune tellers as well and spent the rest of the day walking around asking people to "pick-a-number" and telling them their fortunes. After several hours of dancing and playing pirates and whatnot I had to take a nap.

At dinner we had some more deliciously nutritious food I made from Rill's Menu (which I now have a tab for at the top of the page). The hubby put on some YouTube clips of Proximity Flying because Ra has been telling me that she wishes she could fly. It looks amazing, though extremely dangerous. Something I may have to put on my bucket list. Just watching it gives me a rush!





For Story time I read Ten Apples Up On Top by Dr Seuss and Ra read some of Mickey and Minnie Look At Paintings. It is so fun to see Ra want to read! I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

Snowy Interruptions

6 March 2012

Being computer day I worked on the budget and did some research stuff while the kids played games whatnot. I watched several videos on education and got caught up on my blog reading. I talked with my sister a little about the recipes from her blog I have been trying and how freaking awesome they are. Healthy and tasty! No better combination.

Yesterday the hubby told me it was supposed to be nice weather all week. Well, he was wrong. It was overcast, gloomy and cold today and by dinner time it was snowing and blowing. After lunch I made an attempt to work in the yard, and let the kids play outside. We were successful for all of a half an hour before my arms complained about all the raking and weed pulling I did yesterday and my face began freezing.

After surrendering to the house we called a friend to see if we could come over and play. We stayed there and played until the hubby texted me that he was home. We went home and cleaned the house, made dinner and watched another episode of Top Gear.

For story time we read some more from Mosiah in the Book of Mormon but I was so beat we called it there.

I have set up a new blog, linked from this one on the tab "My Ah-Ha's". This is the place where I will be keeping track of my Ah-Ha moments in my homeschool and parenting research so you can get to know the method behind the madness, (or lack thereof!).

Raking

5 March 2012

What a gorgeous day. It had to be at least 65 degrees outside. I took the opportunity to begin raking up all the leaves from fall. The plan is to slowly work my way from the front of the yard all the way to the back, where my garden will be.

It was the first time I have taken Em outside to play since it has been winter since she has been able to crawl. She loved it! First I had her in her play pen with some toys, but after a while she wanted out, so I let her crawl around. She loved the grass and followed me around the yard cooing and babbling. It was so precious.

I took a break from raking and we took a walk around the block. On our walk I talked to Ra about why we were growing a garden. I explained that healthy foods have what we call nutrition. Nutrition comes from nutrients found in plants. Healthy, nutritious foods are things that are grown. This will hopefully be a good basis for discussion when it comes to meal times and food complaints! Ra will be able to decide whether or not she wants to eat the food based a knowledge of its nutrients, not just its looks. We have already previously discussed that healthy foods help keep you from getting sick and she understands and appreciates that concept.

On our walk Em fell asleep in the stroller she was so tuckered out from her first day exploring the outdoors. I put her in her crib, made lunch and then headed back out to the yard for more raking. The kids played around the yard, digging in the dirt, hanging on the willow branches, and making secret hideouts in the plum grove. When the hubby arrived home we started pulling weeds in the garden area, which is no small task considering our garden is 900 square feet and all weeds. We stopped about dinner time and while the hubby had the kids help straighten the house I made dinner.

After dinner we watched an episode of BBC's Top Gear on request from Ra much to the delight of the hubby. When the episode was over Ra read a few passages from Mosiah in the Book of Mormon then I read some of the abridged children's version of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table by Howard Pyle.

Sunday Birthday Chaos

4 March 2012

After church today I frantically made my nieces woven steel necklace for her birthday then we spent the day at my sister Laura's house for the big March birthday bash.

Six birthday's to celebrate is quite chaotic with 20-some-odd kids and 12-or-so adults. Talk about loud. It was fun though. Ca got lots of nice gifts and I think overall everyone was very happy. We got home at bedtime again and so straight to bed without Story Time. A little depressing.

Happy Birthday Ca!

3 March 2012

Happy Birthday Ca!

Today is Ca's Birthday! I drove down to my parents today to let the kids play so I could get some birthday shopping done. Tomorrow we are celebrating not only Ca's birthday but also five other cousins who have their birthdays in March! Busy busy month. Glad I did my budget!

After shopping I hurried the kids back home and we got ready for Ca's birthday party with our friends. We had lots of cake, pizza, presents and games. The kids had a blast and after the party was over we watched Puss in Boots (a present Ca received from our friends <3). We went to bed late of course and so again, no books but it was a very fun day.

My friend wants me to draw a chapter header for her book that is coming out on St. Patty's Day. Ahh! Talk about a fast approaching deadline. It wont take long though so I am going to get that done tonight before I go to bed. Check out her book at her blog here and have some fun and enter her writing contest and/or art contest!

So much fun! I hope your day was as good as mine.

Nutrition and Girls Night Out

2 March 2012

My sister Rill is my dearest friend and confidant. She has had some health issues in her life which have caused her to do a lot of research on health. First because of her specific ailments and as she got further into her research she found so many interesting new facts about health and nutrition that she has practically changed her life because of it. She has shared with me along the way, bits of this vast knowledge she has acquired and I have always been interested in joining her in this new healthful endeavor, but it has always seemed that I have been too busy or too this or too that to follow along with her.

Being the wonderful sister and woman that she is, she has started a blog about nutrition and health to share with us her pearls of great price. That knowledge which she has labored in acquiring, she now gives to us freely on her blog! She also posts her meal plan for the week and the recipes! And for a small fee of $0.99 you can have it all in easy to print PDF format which also includes a shopping list! I am so stoked for this because it makes jumping on the healthy bandwagon a bit easier. I get to do this a little backwards from the way she had to do it. Rill made the changes in her diet one by one, little by little as she learned what things were and were not healthy for you as she dug past all of the preconceived notions about "dieting" and what is "healthy" for you. Now I get to enjoy the foods and the nutrition while reading her research on her blog.



In my religion, we often say that the Lord will not give us further scripture until we obey the scripture he has given us. The scriptures are the written record of a people and all the lessons they learned for generation upon generation. It is better to learn from the mistakes of others than to constantly be recreating those mistakes because we refused to learn them. There are so many things out there that this applies to. It is faster to learn from the knowledge of others than to have to seek it out on your own again. Why reinvent the wheel here? Yes, it is good to make sure those you are following know what they are talking about and have done their research. But too many of us go throughout our days without seeking to learn of the knowledge others have so painfully gained. This is also the basis of the TJEd philosophy, if not in so many words. It is best to learn about something from someone who is passionate about what they have studied or are studying. My sister is passionate about health and nutrition and so I want to know everything she has learned. This blog is the best thing she could have done with her knowledge (aside from applying it of course, which she does faithfully!) I am so proud of her and all her work I needed to share this with you all.


Now, on with the rest of my day. After printing off Rill's fabulous shopping list/meal plan/recipes We went grocery shopping! Ra read me the list and write down prices. We took our time finding everything as I was unfamiliar with a few of the items on the list. We spent nearly twice as long in the grocery store as we have in the past, but we are going to eat like royalty, healthy royalty.

At home we rushed to clean the house because the Activity Day's girls were coming over for a lesson. I wasn't the leader in charge of the lesson, I simply provided the house today. We had seven girls show up and they were pretty well behaved (for 8 and 9 year olds!). Of course, most of the time they have far more girls show. There are 14 girls in the group and a few of them regularly bring a friend with them. When they all show it is going to be a mad house. Today they played a Jeopardy game with gospel facts to see how well they knew some of the basics of the the scriptures and the prophets. They had fun, though I am not sure the teams were really a good idea. It seemed to me that the the girls split into their "cliques" and I don't like that kind of behavior. But it wasn't my lesson so I kept quiet about it and the girls said they all had fun with it, so oh well.

After the Activity Day's girls went home Ra and I got ready for a Girls Night Out we had been invited to by a mother/daughter in our church. We made Strawberry Soup (from the Tinkerbelle Books) and had a blast at the party. There were five moms and seven girls, (not including Em). We painted nails and did makeup and hair, talked, laughed, had treats and all sorts of girlishness ensued.

Again, we didn't get home until after bedtime so no story tonight. I'm getting a little anxious that I have "broken" my new habit so soon. We really need to get back on the ball with this.

Reinventing Math

1 March 2012

Today we reviewed skip counting by 3's. As I said before, Ra has 3-30 down pretty well and when I asked her today if we could try to go to 60 she went all the way to 99! I am so impressed. I really could hardly believe she needed very little help to do it either! But because the pattern repeats itself and we talked about it as much as we did she picked up on the rest of it like it was a cake walk!

When we finished our counting review I let Ra play some more on the computers with her brothers and I watched a YouTube video on Jean Peaget's theory on kids reinventing math. I had never heard of this idea before but it make complete sense after seeing it in action as it is on the video I watched. Here it is so you can see for yourself what you think. I was amazed. (This is the first part of a three part video)

Source: youtube.com via Candiss on Pinterest

When I was first teaching Ra math in K and 1st grade using the Utah Virtual Academy K12 program I wanted to explain to her all of the different ways I see the problem to make it easier to add or subtract. But this isn't how the text books taught and so I believe I was sending my poor little girl too many mixed signals about how to solve a math equation.

After watching this video I pulled out a chalkboard and chalk and sat down with Ra and went through some similar exercises. I wrote an equation and had Ra answer it, then I would have her explain how she came up with that answer. I would then explain to her what I do to get the answer. This is a much more fluid way of teaching math and it also helps improve cognitive thinking, deductive reasoning etc. Very fun exercise, it would be fun to do with a few more kids involved though.

Ra decided she wanted to make some money so she started drawing pictures to sell. She is becoming quite the little artist. Her pricing method was creative, if not a little exaggerated. She counted how many colors she used in the picture and then charged a dollar for each color. So if the picture had six colors it would cost $6.00.

The rest of the day I spent cooking, cleaning and balancing our budget for March.Not my favorite day, but it kinda is too. I like budgeting, it gives me a sense of control and stability, though I also get to see all of the frivolous mistakes we made with our money over the past week(s).

We didn't read anything tonight. I am getting behind on everything with the hubby being home. Hopefully I can get caught up on Monday. This weekend is super full and I know I will not be able to get caught up then, I will just be lucky if we don't get more behind.