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.

Jar of Good Works

12 February 2012

Today Ra went to church by herself. The boys and I are sick with a cold and I feel it very inconsiderate to go public gatherings when sick. Our church building is literally our back door neighbor which made it possible for Ra to go without me. She had a part to recite during Primary and she had memorized another of the Articles of Faith and was eager to pass it off with her Sunday school teacher. (She was also excited to try out her new church shoes we bought Monday, I couldn't have kept her home if I wanted to!)

When Ra got back we had lunch and then I explained to the kids that we were going to start a Jar of Good Works. I told them that each time they did something good they would get a bean in the jar. This could be helping each other, making their beds, cleaning their rooms, doing well with spelling or math, etc. etc. I had four different kinds of beans I had already used for some craft projects so I gave each child their own kind of beans. Ra got black beans, El got kidney beans, Ca got pinto beans, and Em got white beans. (Em will get a bean for each milestone she accomplishes as she is only nine months, i.e. her first tooth, her first word, her first step, sleeping through the night, etc. This is so the kids can see that 'good' can mean a lot of things.) All of the beans will go into the same jar and when the jar is full we will take the kids to Chuck E. Cheeses to celebrate how good they were!

I started the jar off by listing some of the things the kids had done today and last night and we managed to get fourteen beans in the jar. I hope the positive reinforcement will work well and I pray that I will be able to keep up with it and not forget about it. I think this is good not only for the kids, but for myself when I get frustrated with the kids it will be a visual reminder of all the good that they do.

Doing this reminded me of the List of Gratitude my family/extended family made during the hard months of November and December 2008 when my Great Grandma Helm and my Grandpa Stephens passed away within a month of each other. It was difficult, but to help us not be so lost in grief we posted a paper on the wall and had people write on it things they were grateful for during the hard time. The final list ended up being many pages long and it was a comfort to know that so much love was there and that God was watching over us.

We read a few more chapters of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett tonight and I am getting ready to pull up my covers and settle in for a chapter or two of Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton Porter.

Valentine Mathematical Symmetry

11 February 2012

Today we made our Valentine's card. It was a fun and super messy but easy to clean up. I started out with having Ra help me figure out if we had enough paper doilies for how many cards we wanted to make. We wrote a list of all the cousins and friends and grandparents we would be making cards for. We agreed that each cousin would only get one card from all four of the kids, the friends would get one card as well. The grandparents however would get one card from each of the kids that could make them on their own, (leaving Em out of the count). The initial count left us with 32 cousins, 6 friends, and 8 grandparents. So our equation looks something like this (32 + 6) + (8 x 3) = 62 . SIXTY TWO! Boy I sure am glad we aren't adding another 60 cards to that with school classes for Ra and El!

I showed Ra the packages of doilies. I had one package of red, one of white and one of pink. There were 16 doilies per package. I asked her to figure out how many doilies we had to make cards with. She added 16 + 16 + 16 and I explained that this was the same thing as 16 x 3. I then asked her if we had enough doilies to use one for every card. She said no, that 48 < 62. I then had her figure out how many more doilies we would need to be able to have one for each card. With an answer of 14 I asked her how many more packages we would need. She answered with one package. We went to the store to get the last needed package.

Finally beginning, we used construction paper, scissors, glue and the doilies to make the cards. I showed the kids how to make a heart by folding the paper in half and cutting half a heart shape around the fold. I used this as an opportunity to explain symmetry. We had fun coming up with other shapes and patterns to cut out using symmetry.  We made hearts, diamonds, rectangles, accordion people, and flowers just to name a few.

We continued the observation of symmetrical objects into dinner time and I plan on continuing to point it out whenever we see it throughout the year.    

Tonight we read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett again. And hey, I even got some reading in of Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton Porter.

German Bibles and Cinnamon

10 February 2012

Payday. Best day of the week. HA! We cleaned the house this morning and went to the bank and to a couple stores to pick up some resources I have wanted to have around the house. I picked up an illustrated Old Testament Stories, a Bible in German, some posterboard to make sewing cards, accounting ledger notebook, graph paper, and some posters and pamphlets which our faith releases.

After our errands we went out to eat since we weren't close to home. Elisa invited us to her house because her daughters wanted to do the Cinnamon Challenge and wanted us to watch and they were going to post it on YouTube. We stayed there and played for a couple hours before coming home to make dinner and do some studying and research.

We read some more of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett before bedtime. I did a bunch of reading about TJEd and more homeschooling ideas. I was so engrossed with it I didn't get in my reading of Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton Porter. Hopefully I will get in at least a chapter tomorrow!