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.

Gamification

27 February 2012

Clean, clean, clean. I feel like all we did today was clean. That's not entirely true though. After we had most of the cleaning out of the way we practiced skip counting by 3's. Ra has 3-30 down pretty well but seems reluctant to want to learn the rest up to 99. Eldon is hardly interested at all. I need to figure out funner ways to teach them. I have been using a video from Have Fun Teaching for the skip counting but it counts too fast and the kids loose interest because they can't keep up. We will keep working on it. I broke out in bouts of counting by threes throughout the day to try and spark the interest in it again, but each time the kids asked me to stop ofter counting to 30 for the third time.

After our initial skip counting session we watched some science videos on YouTube. They were interesting enough to keep the kids attention but because they were kind of random subjects I'm not sure it really did any good. They much prefer the hands-on science activities like we did with electricity the other day.

After the science videos we bundled up and went for a walk around the neighborhood. I reviewed with Ra that house numbers on one side of the street are even and on the other side they are odd. We looked at several house numbers along our way to see if the right side was even or odd and so on. We also had fun naming the colors of things we saw on our way in German. They are getting pretty good with their colors!

After our walk we had some hot chocolate to warm up and within the hour the hubby was home and we left to take care of some errands. While we were out our fan belt on our vehicle shredded and we had it towed in to the shop and obtained a rental car for a day or so until it is fixed. The kids where practically beside themselves with excitement at watching the tow truck load the vehicle and then being able to ride in the tow truck to get our rental. They thought nothing better could have happened to them today.

By the time we got home the kids had all fallen asleep in the car so no story time again tonight, though they did spend quite a bit of time listening to the audio version of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

After the kids were in bed I found this fun, new background for my blog for St Patrick's Day coming up then browsed around on Pinterest. I found a video about "gamification" and it's affects on kids and adults alike. It was very intriguing and though I understand what he is saying, I don't think I agree with it completely.

I don't doubt that we can learn immense amounts through video games, however, having been a gamer for nearly ten years I have experienced the effects that the studies can't possibly test. I lost myself in the games. I wanted to be there more than in my real life. The dopamine affects can be just as hazardous to our well being as any other dopamine based addiction. Games can not possibly replace the one-on-one time with your kids.

They may learn skills and information from games, but they can not learn about tact, right and wrong, love, honor, etc. Those things are taught in the home, by the parents. And the acquisition of these character traits is most important to me. I do believe my kids need to be taught as much as they can learn, but not at the expense of their moral character.

The Best Laid Scheme o' Mice an' Men . . .

13 February 2012

Often go awry. I had my whole schedule for the day planned out. It was going to be epic! There would be cheering in the streets and many fawning and gasps of wonder. The children would be inspired and love their mother more than one could imagine. However, Ra woke up last night several times with bouts of the flu. Then El for the rest of the day spent his time running to the bathroom.

So instead of joyous celebration of what a wonderful mentor I had become over night, I spent my day scrubbing carpets, washing sheets and trying my best to keep the level of mayhem down to a minimum. By evening all the kids were well enough to keep dinner down and we spent some time watching some educational song-videos I found on Pinterest.

Source: havefunteaching.com via Candiss on Pinterest

We ended our night with three chapters of Genesis in the KJV Bible and two chapters of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I am so tired tonight I do not think I will get much, if any reading in of my own book, Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton Porter. A shame because it is a most delightful book.