Industry

29 February 2012

First thing this morning Ra and El had eye doctors appointments. Ra has an astigmatism forming and needs a stronger prescription but El's eyes are fine, he might even be slightly far-sighted. The doc told me to just keep an eye on him (no pun intended) and keep that in mind when he is reading if he starts struggling with the smaller print. We went home and had a snack and the kids watched some videos on how eyes work and how light makes colors.

We had to run some errands down around the south side of the Salt Lake Valley so when we were done we went to visit my sister and her kids at their new house. I helped her unpack and clean up a bit and the kids had a fun time playing and exploring the new house with their cousins.

It was cold and overcast but I thought nothing of it until I was on the freeway heading home for my usually hour drive. As soon as I got onto the freeway the snow storm hit and we crawled along at 35 mph all the way home. It took us two hours. We listened to Little Women by Louisa May Alcott during the drive, though the kids were asleep for a good part of it. 

After we arrived home safely and had dinner Ra and El asked if we could buy Ca his birthday presents. We asked them how much money they had in their piggy banks and how much they would want to spend on their little brother. Ra said she would spend all of it because she could always earn more. That was not the kind of answer my hubby and I liked and we had a long discussion with Ra about saving and being industrious and (looking to the girls in Little Women for examples) setting moral goals to be a better person. We encouraged Ra to write an entry in her notebook every day and not just write one thing she learned that day, but write about everything she learned that day. And to have fun with it and draw and create on the pages as well.

For story time Ra decided she wanted to read Pixie Hollow Tales: Beck's Bunny Secret  by Tennant Redbank and The Fairy Berry Bake-Off by Daisy Alberto on her own. She read aloud to us. That is the most I have heard her read on her own in one sitting. While we listened to her read my hubby decided to start making a family website. A place for us to keep a digital record of what we do and our goals etc. We still have a lot of work to do on it but it will be fun and I hope my hubby now feels an little bit more involved in our homeschool efforts.

Gardening

28 February 2012

Today we practiced skip counting by 3's again. Raven knows it very well from 3-30. Our goal is to get to 99. While I was going over skip counting 3's I found several patterns that help me remember it. The first pattern repeats itself every ten numbers. So it repeats after 30, 60, and 90 etc. The second pattern I found was that in the ten number pattern the ones place is never a repeated number.

For example 3,6,9,12,15,18,21,24,27,30. In this set of numbers the ones place never has the same number. The ones place goes like this 3,6,9,2,5,8,1,4,7,0. If we order those numbers from 0-9 we have 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Pretty neat huh?

The third pattern I found is that the numbers only stay in a given tens digit for three numbers, until we get to the end of the first pattern I mentioned.  

3,6,9 - 12,15,18 - 21,24,27 - 30 - 33,36,39 - 42,45,48 - 51,54,57 - 60 - 63, 66, 69 - 72,75,78 - 81,84,87 - 90

 

When I explained this to my hubby he said I was making it more complicated than I needed to. Perhaps he is right, but it all makes more sense to me this way, thus it is easier for me to remember because I am a very visual learner. I haven't figured out what "kind" of a learner Ra and El are yet (visual, auditory, kinesthetic), so I figure if I start giving them ideas each way I can come up with, I will eventually find that out.

We ran some errands and stopped by the local Nursery and Garden Center on our way home. We asked what it would take to start a garden in our area and if they had any recommendations for us. The "worker" as my kids called him told us all about the clay-like soil in our neck of the woods (to speak figuratively) and how much mulching and fertilizer we would need to use. I thanked him for all his advice and we went on our way home after letting the kids look at all the plants and read their name tags.

At home we decided to start working on the yard. I had showed Ra the weather forecast for the week and today was the "warm before the storm." I explained to her that usually the day before a winter storm, we had a relatively warm day or two.

While raking up leaves from autumn, (I know we are a little slow) the neighbors came over to chat. They were good friends with the two previous families that had lived in our home and so knew quite a lot about it. I asked them about a tree that was still a sapling in our backyard. It is covered in thorns from the base to its highest tip. They said it had been planted as a memorial for the husband who had committed suicide and that the family was going to take it with them when they moved, but they never did.

The neighbors also told us that the fenced in area I had assumed was a garden area had been a horse corral. That absolutely thrilled me because it meant that area was plenty well fertilized for a garden.  No wonder the weeds are so tall in there!

We came inside a had hot chocolate and warmed up a bit and spent some time with the hubby before I sent everyone to get ready for bed. For story time we finished reading the children's abridged version of Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.The kids enjoyed it and I hope they followed it. The abridged stories seem to rush through events, not allowing you to get attached to what is going on before something else is happening.

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.

Relaxing Sunday

26 February 2012

Today was an uneventful, relaxing Sunday. We went to church, cooked, cleaned and ate. We also watched a fair few NOVA movies. I worked a little on that cover art I was asked for, practiced some German and just hung out with the kids today. We didn't go anywhere or do anything. It was nice. I hope your Sunday was a good one too!

P.S. After consulting with the hubby we decided to stick with German as our first language and go back and do Latin after we have German down pat!

Electrical Gardens

25 February 2012

This morning we had breakfast then went (with the keys this time!) to get my husbands paycheck and we ran a few other errands on the way home. Ra listened to and read along with the read-along books we checked out from the library. I went over some of the facts of George Washington's life while we were in the car as well. I read them a few poems about George Washington that I had found online as well. I also started introducing the kids the the colors in German. Rot, orange, gelb, grun, blau, lila, schwarz, weiss, braun, silbern, and golden. (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, white, brown, silver, and gold.) Time in the car has been greatly under-utilized by me and I hope to remedy that with exciting discussions and topics and books to listen to and memorization drills.

We had lunch and cleaned house a bit when we arrived home and after lunch the hubby pulled out an electricity science project kit we had bought for our kids a while ago but had not opened yet. I thoroughly enjoyed myself as I sat back and listened to the hubby explain what a "circuit" was to the kids and how electricity works. I put in my two cents now and again when I felt I had an insight I could share or another way of explaining something that the kids might be able to understand easier. We all had a good time with it.

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon planning my garden and doing research on how much to grow and where to grow certain plants in relation to other plants. I decided which plants I want to start with this year, instead of jumping headlong into a large variety garden my first year doing one on my own. While graphing out my garden on graph paper I explained to Ra what a Ratio was. I told her that for every two squares on my graph paper that showed one foot in actual garden. I told her we do this most often to scale down things into workable sizes. I couldn't very well draw out the garden on a piece of paper as big as the garden because then I may as well just do it in the garden itself. I still have a lot of planning to do, but this is a good start.

After a very good dinner the kids played around and Ra helped tend Em while the hubby and I set up my computer with Call of Duty 4 so that I could play it with him for a bit. It was fun to just chill and take a bit of time to relax from the studies I have been involving myself in during my spare time. Unfortunately the play time ran over and we didn't have time to read our kids a story before bedtime. But I was able to get in some valuable leisure time which I have been needing, but having been allowing myself. 

The kids and I also finished the Log Cabin out of twigs we started yesterday. I will post pictures of it soon. I absolutely love how it turned out.

Log Twig Cabin

24 February 2012

This morning we played around the house and cleaned up a bit until about 10:30 a.m. when I piled the kids in the car to drive the half hour to pick up my husband's paycheck from The Yard. When I got to The Yard the paychecks hadn't arrived yet so I drove down the street to a local park and let the kids play for about 45 minutes then drove back to The Yard. When I pulled up I found that it had been locked up and everyone was gone. This usually isn't a problem because I have a key to the office door, but I had left it at home. So, I took the kids to lunch since they were hungry, we weren't close to home and it was lunch time.

After lunch we went home and did our President's Day/George Washington's Birthday crafts. The first ones we did were George Washington and Abraham Lincoln finger puppets. They were so easy to make and they are so cute. It cost me one $1.04 to make four of them since I had construction paper, glue and scissors already and we needed a quarter for each George Washington and a penny for each Abe Lincoln.

The next craft was far more involved. I had cut out the shapes for the 4 walls, roof and floor of Lincoln's cabin and I had the kids go outside and collect me some sticks. We have an enormous willow tree in our back yard so the lawn was covered in easy pickings. I showed them how to do a rough measuring of the length the sticks needed to be and how to break them where they wanted. They glued the "logs" onto the construction paper and we let it dry all day. We will actually assemble the building (Gebäude in German) tomorrow.

After we were done gluing on sticks the kids wanted to go for another walk/bike ride. I called Grandma Jane because she said she might stop by our house and I wanted to make sure we weren't going to miss her if we left. She said she was still at the school (she teaches 4th grade at the public school my kids would be going to) setting up her classroom and getting ready to go back On-Track (the elementary schools here do a "track" system with A, B, C, and D tracks, all taking breaks at different times to be able to accommodate the large number of students). The school isn't much farther than where we were planning on going for our walk so I told her we would walk up there instead and help her finish setting up her room.

The walk/bike ride was quite stressful as we walked on a major road. My kids aren't yet familiar with all of the rules and whatnot of riding a bike near such traffic. They did good though. At the school we helped Grandma Jane put text books out on her kids desks and sharpen pencils and organize and decorate a board. While we were there my husband arrived back from work and drove the car over to the school to meet us. He conned his mother into watching the kids for us and we went on a much needed date. Grandma Jane put the kids to bed for us and she read some of the abbreviated children's version of Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson to the kids.

Boo-Hoo's and Ahh-Haa's

23 February 2012

I slept in this morning. I have totally ignored my "schedule" for the week. I realized yesterday that I am not inspiring my kids. I also realized that I don't know how to inspire them. A very daunting thought when I am trying to live up to the mantra "Inspire not Require". Last night I sat bolt upright in bed after dozing for a little while and began sobbing I was so overwhelmed by my task and I felt prompted to pray. I prayed earnestly that God might help guide me in my search for knowledge and help me understand and apply what I have already learned.

This morning when I woke up I realized that the kids had not yet come down to bother me about typing the the passwords for the computers (being computer day and all) which made me very curious. I went upstairs and found the kids enthusiastically playing with some ball hoop and target sets we received from Grandma B(She is an adopter grandma! She has no kids of her own and is good friends with Grandma Jane). I hadn't pulled them out until last night for the first time after the kids were in bed. I left them out and apparently the kids loved them so much they forgot it was computer day for a little while.

 I spent some time talking to my sister (which if you haven't noticed by now is what I do when I'm stressed out because she helps bring me back down to reality) and I got to thinking about the interest the kids had this morning. I decided that the computers need to take a further back seat than they have been. I cut down from everyday to two days, now I'm considering ONLY using their computer time for typing exercises and educational studies. I will probably find a way to make free computer time a reward of some sort, but I am still thinking it all out.

I want to make our basement family room into more of an educational playland. Right now it has a bookshelf, a small chest of craft activities, a children's desk and the computer desk. If we took the computer desk out of there and just put one computer in my room and put the other one away for now or in my small craft room, there would be more space for the kids to set up and play. We could get more open-ended toys and manipulatives to have down there and hopefully encourage them to do more than complain about wanting to be playing computer games.

I also know that when the weather warms up the computers aren't as bad of a problem because it is easier for the kids to be able to play outside. I decided though, that cold weather is no excuse to be cooped up inside all day. I love being outside and Charlotte Mason is a big proponent of spending time out of doors as much as possible. So we bundled up while Em was taking her nap and I raked up leaves and twigs while the kids rode bikes, and dug in the dirt and tried to help me with the raking as well.

When Em woke up I put her in her stroller and Ra, El, and Ca rode their bikes and we walked to the park where there was another little boy El's age playing with his dad and their two schnauzers. I let the kids play until Em started getting red cheeked from cold then we went home, had dinner and the kids had a bit more time on the computers before storytime.

We finished reading The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and read a chapter in Genesis of the KJV Bible. Tomorrow I will ask Ra if she wants to listen to a book about George Washington next or the book she picked from the library (as I offered to read it to her because she wanted it so bad but it is not an easy read for her yet).

I looked up some fun activities to do with the kids in honor of President's Day and George Washington's birthday ( I know we are late) and I am sure they will have fun tomorrow helping me in the yard again and doing these crafts. I will take pictures of them when they are completed and post them tomorrow!