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.

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.

Valentine's Day Driving

14 February 2012

Happy Valentine's Day! It was computer day today so I let the kids play for a couple hours after breakfast while I prepared to be driving around all day. I made lunches and snacks, collected all of the cards we would be delivering and phoning relatives for address to mail some of the Valentine's cards to.

From 11:00 am until 4:00 pm we were out delivering cards and spending some time with the cousins. After 4 I took the kids to Denny's as their Valentine's treat. Unfortunately that meant we drove the normally one hour drive home in peak traffic time so it took us nearly twice as long to get there. While in the car we have been listening to the audio recording of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Ra absolutely loves it and has insisted on listening to it instead of music.

Once at home we read from Genesis in the KJV Bible and a few chapters of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I read more of The Original Homeschooling Series Volume 1 - Home Education by Charlotte Mason. It is one of those books that hits you over the head with the "Ah ha!" bat just about every other paragraph. It is going to take me quite some time to get through this book and the other five in the series, but it will definitely be worth it.

Crazies All Around

1 February 2012

Today we started out with a general pick up and cleaning/straightening of the house. Then, being Tuesday I let the kids play on the computer. I lounged around a little bit, playing with my baby and then began reading Little Britches by Ralph Moody. This book is 1/2 the length of the previous one so I hope to finish it in 1/2 the time.

It was a my friends daughter's birthday today so we went and bought some fun presents and dropped them by her house. It is Elisa's birthday is tomorrow and I hope they both have an excellent week. Here is the link to her blog.





We decided to take a break from Antelope Island today and instead the kids spent the day running around like wild injuns and drove me crazy most of the day. I managed to keep the house clean through it all though and by 7:00 pm the kids were all in their pajamas and I read to them for an hour before herding them off to bed.

I have been talking to my mom a lot about homeschooling and all that I have been learning and she has offered to help me where she can. I even inspired her to start reading some classics, or rather listening to them. She bought Little Women by Louisa May Alcott on Audible and said that she now wants to go get a physical copy of it so she can highlight it and take notes and such. It is nice to have someone to share the joy with. I can't wait till I finish the initial recommended reading so I can read Little Women too and be able to discuss it with my mom. I would like to be able to do this with my husband too, but for now, he is so busy providing for us; allowing me to be a stay at home mother and teach my kids and rear them to walk uprightly with God and wisely with Man.