The Evolving Homemaker

A few weeks ago, OK months, I saw these history timeline cards that coincide with The Well-Trained Mind classical education book The Story Of The World Ancient Times on the blog Satori Smiles, which you can find here.  She had found them at Lizards and Ladybugs.  I knew as soon as I saw them that I would be doing them too! What a great resource for us as we delve into the Story Of The World home school history!

I started the project about the time we started the Story Of The World, sometime in September.  But, as any homeschooling Mama will attest, things don’t always go as planned and time is a force to be reckoned with.  I finally sat down and finished up this little project on Sunday.  I had been cleaning out our master bedroom and this unfinished ditty was atop my bookshelf.  It was time to get er’ done.

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I don’t have a laminating machine, so it was the old fashion laminate roll that my husband had laying around to finagle.  I would cut a piece to cover my cutting board, take the paper off, then lay it flat sticky side up.  I then laid out as many squares as would fit leaving room at the top to hang them on the string.  I then cut another piece, took that paper off, and laid the sticky side down on top of the cards.

Then it was on to cutting them out by hand.  This became a less tedious process as time went on.  I was able to eyeball them to mostly the same size.

This is actually quite a heft stack of timeline cards!  I am hoping that seeing everything out in timeline fashion, beginning to present, will make it easier for the kids to place things in history.  I think it is hard to recall such when much of history is taught to coincide with holidays at this age, instead of being sequential.

I am going to hang them on the school room wall with string and these darling mini clothes pins.  I can’t wait to show the kids their new little visual aids.  Of course, often I get more excited about the stuff I make than they do, but hopefully these will come in handy as our studies progress through history.

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A few weeks ago I got contacted by Emily Matchar for a book she is working on based on what she calls “The New Domesticity”.  You can read all of her blog posts on the subject and chime in with your views on her blog here.  At first I thought she would eat me alive, for the lifestyle I have chosen for the moment, but the more I read her blog the more genuinely interested she sounded in what is causing women to sort of reclaim lost domestic skills over the past few years.  A trend that doesn’t look like it is fading, but actually may be growing.

Why do we want to homestead, grow our own food, learn to knit, can, stay home with the kids, and even home school?

Since she first approached me, I really started to think about WHY.  Why had I chosen this life over one outside the home rocketing to the top of a career in the non-profit world?  Why had I chosen differently than my own Mom?  Why DO I want to learn to knit?  Why DO I want to grow my own food?  What has led me to these choices.

It has been fascinating to think about.  From the fact that I was a latch key kid, to not having any financial independence of my own if I ever needed it.  From how I didn’t really want to get married and have kids, to having kids and homeschooling to boot!  From being an outspoken activist, to returning home with my activism instead.

How did I get here?

Emily asked about my Mom and her feelings of my choices and whether they reflected on her.  I asked her, her response was, “Of course, and we were the generation who discovered that we actually can’t have it all.”  After all, the home was still her realm when she was in it. I often think about that too, some of my friends seem to balance it fine, I think I would be a nut case.  But then again, many of us who stay home and are reclaiming domesticity also have careers we are creating from that.  There are bloggers, published writers, crafters who make side money on Etsy, women who work part time at nights, women who are trying to create a ‘job’ that works more with their chosen lifestyles and not having their lifestyles be dictated by their jobs.

As I said to Emily, whenever we make one choice, another choice is not being made.  That is all.  I chose to stay home with my kids, so  I am not rising up the corporate ladder.  I am trying to create a job of my own as the kids grow with writing, but if I have knit something…a load of laundry hasn’t gotten done.  If I have planted seeds, the kids have played on their own for a few hours.  If I have gotten a blog post up successfully in the morning, the kids have made a mess out of my living room and the dishes from breakfast are still in the sink. I have chosen to home school, so I don’t get a plethora of ‘mommy time’.  These are just choices.  If I decide to go to work, it just means I will lose some time with my children.  We all make choices based on our own experiences, and our own values as to what we deem most important at the moment.

We all choose.  We all choose differently.

I love this new wave of domesticity.  Whether it is for environmental reasons, political statement reasons, reclaiming our finances away form a purely corporate sustained society, just for fun, hobbies to remain sane, to creating jobs that fit more into the life we want to live, I find it fascinating and will be looking forward to reading Emily’s book to see what she finds.

The reason I post this is I am curious, as I am in a circle of people that have mostly made similar choices, what are your reasoning’s? Why do you knit, can, plant a garden with some semblance of success each year, are interested in beekeeping, sustainable living, homeschooling, blogging, etc. etc. etc.?  What on your path led you to this sort of living?  Or, what on your path led you to abhor this sort of homemaking?  What on your path said, “No way I can have it all” and led you to keeping your position in the workforce while raising your children? And does your husband do equal housework while you both work?

Let’s open this dialogue cause one thing that drives me absolutely nutty in the mothering community is why one choice is better than another.  They aren’t.  Organic vs. non/Vaccinate vs. non/Homeschool vs. public/Stay at hom vs. go to work/Co-bed vs. cry it out…blah, blah, blah.  They are just different choices, and I wish we could just support each other more and think we have the answers a little less.

What are your two cents here?

And afterthought: And what is with that, “having it all” we need to drop that like a ton of bricks as mothers.  I think I have it all by staying home, others think they are having it all by doing both, I think this term needs to be put to rest.

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For the last two weeks I have said I wasn’t really sure about The Well-Trained Mind.  I promised that I would finish it, but was sure we were not going to use it in our family.

Well I changed my mind.

Once I got passed the prologue/introduction stage, and read the actual schedules and sections on Reading, Math, History, etc., I actually fell in love with it.  For someone who is completely unorganized and wants to be more organized, this book laid out the way to teach each day, books to use/check out from the library, and how to organize the kids work once it is completed. And I loved how much emphasis it has on reading, checking out lots, and lots, and lots of books from the library, and incorporating interesting reading into almost every subject.

So up my alley. My brain doesn’t work so well organically.  It needs some structure.  This is why I think I get so overwhelmed so easily with things, my brain works best A, B, C.  This book lays my homeschooling out A, B, C.  And that makes me happy. And a whole bunch less stressed out.

I decided to start at the first grade level with all of the classical education books except with math.  My daughter who is in kindergarten and my son who is second grade can do things like history together.  The kindergarten curriculum is pretty easy, read a lot, write some, ask questions, and teach as you go through your day.  For my son, it is a little more complicated.  He is way fine in math, so we are just continuing the Singapore Math we use already and he is at the second grade level.  For reading, it has been an uphill battle.  I am going back and starting 100 Easy Lessons for both kids just to begin again for him and new for her, while also keeping up our work with sight words for him.  For everything else we are starting at the first level of grammar, spelling, working from there.

I am excited.  It feels organized, and it feels like a much higher quality of instruction than the books we get from the enrichment program the kids are in.  From them, we get mostly the books used by public schools and wow, the social studies stuff vs. The Story of the World books in the classical education method is like night and day.

So yes, I am sold.  Where once I was annoyed with what seemed like a method to raise brilliant children who would all be doctors or something, I am now totally excited to be homeschooling this year.

What a difference a week makes!

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Wow.  That week flew by.  Without any feeling as if I accomplished a quarter of the things I set out to do.  After yesterday’s post of expanse, and hope, and a cup that felt full, the day went on in a continual downward spiral.  So as I was feeling great and refreshed in the morning…by the end of the day something had to give.   That something was me.  I crawled into bed feeling completely defeated.  Incapable.  Completely unprepared.

So today?

A long day of television.  JUST so Mama can get the house cleaned and organized so we actually can start ‘official’ school on Monday.  Next year I will look at our summer plans a bit more closely to see when it is appropriate to begin school.  My idea of starting yesterday was a pipe dream.  My goodness, we had just walked in the door from three days of camping the night before LATE.  The house was already a disaster from the week before.  There was way too much on the to-do list in a short amount of time to even hope to start school in a lovely way instead of a way which would feel more like rushing through and another check in the ‘done’ column.

That isn’t how I want school to be.

Some randomness that has to happen:  1- a bow that got left at the music store a half hour away needs to be picked up before tomorrow…my son wants to try cello, so great we rented it, brought it home, opened it to try out, only to find the bow was left at the store and we had no time to get it before leaving for camping.  2- I was planning on getting a booster seat for my daughter, she needed one I was sure, my husband questioned…I got out the measuring tape to check…she is 3 INCHES above the cut-off in her old seat.  Of course our local Target is out, so there is one on hold in the half hour away town so I can get it today.  3- Dentist appointment that I somehow made during my daughters gymnastics class must be changed.  It is today. 4- The house officially looks like a tornado went through it.  And if you don’t believe me you can come see for yourself.  Last week the kids couldn’t watch any t.v. because a room they made messy they were not cleaning up.  So instead of cleaning, they made all the other rooms messy too. On a positive note, they finally cleaned that messy room last night so they could watch some t.v.

That is just the beginning of the list of things to get to today.  There is more.  I don’t want to bore you, instead I am meaning to show you my knitting from the week for the weekly Yarn Along!  The pink shawl is cast off, but I still need to add the fringe.  The blue shawl is cast on and on it’s way, getting ready to be given as a birthday gift for a little friend.  The only reason I had time to work on it was because of the expanse of car time had this past weekend. The book?  The same.  Cause who has any time to read AND blog, AND home school, AND sleep, AND clean, AND camp, AND do laundry, AND knit, AND, AND, AND….

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We had a long weekend away camping with the kids and family friends this Labor Day.  It was magnificent and everything I needed to get back on track I think.  I am one who needs these reprieves, and often, so as not to feel like daily life and demands are sucking the marrow out of my dreams and passions.

Of course I say how ready I am to jump into the thick of it today, yet it is supposed to be our first day of the homeschooling year, it is 9:05, I am still in pajamas, and the kids still need showers, the amount of sand in our hair and ears can attest to three days without bodily cleansing opportunities.  The house is a mess due to the whirlwind of planning our school year and packing last week.  The car is REALLY a mess and I am supposed to drive another child in it today.  I think there might be towels in the washer from like last Thursday, the school table is still covered in crafts the kids were doing with their grandma two weeks ago, and I still have to change an appointment.

I didn’t get up at 6:30 like my home school schedule I typed up last week suggested I would, to find quiet time to meditate and do some yoga.  I didn’t make a lovely breakfast, the kids instead are picking stuff out of the camping cooler and the cabinets and making something themselves.  I didn’t do this blog post last night at 11:40 when we got home and got the kids into bed as the plan had been…

But I feel great.  Ready to dig my feet into my life and get dirty again.  Dirty, not like I am at the moment with dust covered feet, or that my kids are with sand in places sand should never be, but dirty like deep into the quagmire of the chaos that life as a homeschooling mother is.  With the knowing that we need to do this type of weekend more often.  We don’t do it nearly enough.  In fact I can’t remember the last time we did, except for two years ago when we did this exact trip last time. Oh wait, I  just remembered one weekend away in January…eight months ago.  I for one get burned out on life as it chugs along without a bit of newness and the expanse that time in nature for days can create.

We each need the reminder that there is more to life than our to-do lists, the PTA, the activities, the chores, work, errands, and Starbucks. There is a richness that we are missing when we don’t take time to breathe it in.  Life is passing us by in the myriad of ways modern society has of distracting us.  It is up to each of us to make feeling spacious the top priority, taking time, leading our children to understanding the importance of NOT being busy, especially busy in a way that so doesn’t matter in the grand scheme.

Philosophy finished for awhile…now…showers.

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I am joining Small Things again, for this weeks yarn along…

Sigh.

So I am still working on the same bubblegum shawl, reading the same book, except now I have added a new book, The Well-Trained Mind, to the pile as our school year is fast approaching and I was hoping to glean a bit from this one for our upcoming learning adventures.  I found one idea in the book already a little disconcerting, “In the classical curriculum reading, writing, grammar, and math are the center of the curriculum.  History and science become more and more important as the child matures.  Foreign languages are immensely valuable, but shouldn’t crowd out these basic skill areas.  And music and art are wonderful when you can manage them.”

Why is art and music the last we care about?  I find that a bit crushing to my spirit, and the spirit of children, who love to create!  Where is the bit of education that nurtures the spirit?  The soul?  Allowing us to explore the world around us with colors, and glue, movement, sound, and a keen eye?  A friend once sent me this TedTalk, which I may have posted before,  and I have never forgotten it, especially as a homeschooling family:

The fantastic part about homeschooling?  I can pick and choose what works for me and what is completely lame.  Leaving art, music, drama, dance, and the like at the bottom of our education piles is doing a great disservice to the ones we are claiming to educate.

So that is what I am reading at the moment!  And here is the shawl, I will be casting off today and finishing it up, it is probably a bit too big for her, but I wanted her to be able to use it for awhile.  I have my next two colors lined up, the blue for a present for a little gals birthday and the purple for a little niece for Christmas.  Those should go WAY faster seeing as how I won’t have to do them in secret!

Meet my dog.

She looks sweet doesn’t she.

Meet my addiction.

Books.

And the worst thing for the book addicted?  A bookstore going out of business practically right down the street.  I have gone twice now. I am hoping yesterday was my last visit, I can’t be 100% sure.  But I was happy to score these cookbooks, Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is one of my favorite cookbooks, so having one geared toward what is growing in my ‘farm’, in Local Flavors, will much appreciated.

The Earthbound Cook, the second of the Earthbound Farms cookbooks, I bought awhile back at our local natural grocers.  I really like it and figured the first one, Food to Live By, probably had even better recipes!  So many look delicious I cannot tell you.

And then I got a couple homeschooling books.  I have wanted The Well-Trained Mind because I love The Story of The World history and activity books for homeschooling by the same ladies.  It isn’t a cheap book, so I waited as long as I could before I thought all the other homeschooling Mama’s in the area would beat me to it.

And who doesn’t need a children’s dictionary, homeschooling or not?

And then I got ONE book for fun.  One that both the kids and I would love.  One that is full of fantastic art and a fantabulous mystery and oh so creative writing prompts, for kids and grown-ups alike.  You might recognize this book yourself, or if you are a fan of The Polar Express, this is the same amazing magician.  The title?  The Mystery Of Harris Burdick.

If you have never heard of this book, I urge you to take a look at it.  It has a mysterious introduction about an artist who went into a publishers office with 14 drawings with captions.  He never returned to the office and the publisher had these pictures forever and no information on the artist/author who left them.  The premise of the book is that your children can create the stories based on the drawings, the title, and the caption that were left in the office years ago.

Just an example, here is one of the pages with the caption “He had warned her about the book.  Now it was too late.” What could possibly happen?  Why did he warn her?  What is the story about?

See?  A book to ignite the imagination.

Are you still wondering why I introduced you to my dog?  If so, look at the picture of the cover of The Mystery of Harris Burdick again.  Yes.  Yes.  My goober of a dog chewed the corner of the book the moment we got home.  She is a lucky girl she is incredibly loving, even if not that bright.

Forgiveness is hers.  Again.

Last night, as I was up late online trying to figure out why my pesky Facebook widget isn’t working, yes, that one over there in the sidebar, you see it?  That big pink box? Anyway, a friend posted that they may be changing their mind on their decision to home school, and sending their daughter to school.

I was incredibly disappointed.  My kids totally love this little gal, and other kids my friends have loved stopped hanging out with us when we decided to home school.  My daughter cried on a few occasions about it.  I panicked with this news as I feared my children would loose yet another friend they enjoyed.

Then I began to question my own decision making regarding homeschooling.  Was I doing the right thing?  Am I crazy?  Would they be better somewhere else?  All of my past self doubts came creeping back, gnawing at my mind, creating a headache over night in my body.

This morning, as I was reading a book on Buddhist practices at swim lessons, I was gently reminded that dang, life is so much bigger than where my people get educated.  I am a believer that our work on this earth is more than a physical one, that there are deeper lessons to learn, different practices required of us than our busy western culture dictates.  When I stop.  And I breathe.  In an instant I can become aware of the myriad of ways in which I let self doubt and other peoples choices cloud my own internal leanings.

I love homeschooling.  Not everyday.  I am not going to lie.  That would be unfair to you.  But I really do enjoy giving my little people hugs and kisses all day, watching them grow,  watching them succeed at something.  I enjoy finding other ways for them to learn, ways outside of our schoolroom, ways that include others teaching them.  I have greatly enjoyed watching my little boy come out of his shell, begin talking to those he trusts, and trying so many new things this year, as we worked with him at his own pace.

Do I wish I was better at it?  Hell yes.  Everyday.  But I wish I was a better Mom in general too.  I wish I was better at organization, and exercising, and patience, and wife-dom, and writing, and friendships, and website design…what irks me is how quickly I waffled, even if just for a moment.

As mothers, we must learn how to make decisions for our own families, and stand firmly in them without wavering, until it is time to make a new decision.  I feel sometimes the pressure is enormous to raise perfect children, from the home birth to organic food, to vaccinate or not to, to stay at home or to go to work, to alternative schools, to not too many activities, but just enough activities, to whether they get outside enough, or whether they free play enough, to college selection.  Oy vey.  Stop already.

Trust myself.  Trust myself.  Trust myself.  If I can teach that one lesson to my children because they learn it from me by observing my actions, they will be much better for it.  Trust ourselves.  Trust ourselves.  There is no perfect way.  There are just ideas.   And no judgement.  No judgement.  No judgement.  We are each doing the best we can.

Last weekend I got a few fleeting hours at the coffee shop.  One of the things that had been plaguing my to-do list was searching the web and brainstorming my heart out to create a list of fun things to do with the kids this summer.  We still have to do some school, but since my son will be getting a tonsillectomy at the end of the summer, I am highly motivated to make the beginning as fun as I can!

I thought I would share my list for those who may just be looking for something to do on any given random day!

THINGS TO DO WITH KIDS IN THE SUMMER (Or at least things I will be doing with my kiddos this summer!)

1- Turn the sprinklers on (Add some shaving cream for extra fun!)

2- Bike ride together

3- Each of them will make a scrapbook at the end of the summer of all the fun stuff we did! (Gives me a reason to take lots of photos too!)

4- Picnics

5- Art/Crafts (I went to the craft store and loaded up on a bag full of stuff we can pull out randomly, including REAL canvases for the kids to paint on!)

6- Photography outings (The kids taking their own pictures and making a collage out of them and/or framing for their walls)

7- Field trips (to local sites of interest and of businesses like the post office, ice cream shop, farms etc.)

8- Baking (cookie surprises at random especially cranky days, cakes for no reason, AND we are having our own ‘cupcake war’ day on Tuesdays, trying out yummy recipes cause we ALL love that show! Look for yesterdays cupcake recipe tomorrow)

9- Reading classic chapter books (starting with Wizard of Oz inspired by The Reading Promise)

10- Visits to the Pick-Ur-Own berry patch

11- Start a hiking club (once a week we have scheduled a bunch of hikes/walks for our friends to join when they can)

12- Camp (Outside in the wild AND in the backyard when we need an adventure!)

13- Build a teepee  (From Soulemama’s book Handmade Home)

14- Make our own documentary

15- Museum days with Imax thrown in

16- Zoo (duh)

17- Build a time capsule (I remember doing this in elementary school, but never remember opening them…)

18- Have our own real art show (this idea came from a friend of mine who is ready to hostess with appetizers and all!)

19- Community dinner nights (Inspired by The Family Dinner)

20- Tie-dye some clothes (cheap t’s at the craft store)

21- Water balloon party

22- Movie afternoons with friends (and popcorn)

23- Homemade ice cream (duh)

24- Ice cream social with our friends

25- Swim

26- Practice astronomy late at night by our fire pit in the backyard

27- Make up our own holiday, invite our friends to celebrate

28- Yoga (I have had enough classes to lead the kids through a salutation)

29- Decorate our dinner table for different days (inspired by The Family Dinner)

30- At home ‘spa’ day

31- Add 1 hour of reading/quiet time into our day

32- Make popsicles (we did this one yesterday with just juice, so easy!)

33- Dollar movies

34- Activities at the local library

35- Make a BUNCH of homemade play-doh and let em’ at it

36- Bowling

37- Board games, card games, etc.

38- Pajama day (we stay in p.j’s all day and eat pancakes and watch movies, great for winter too!)

39- Publish our own books

40- Playground

41- Create clay creatures

42- Make gak (you know, the stuff like play-doh except made with glue)

43- Learn to juggle

44- Giving day (we pick a group/organization/or individual to do something nice for)

45- Take the dogs to the dog park

46- Make our own chalk and chalk on the sidewalk.

47- Paint some rocks (they have kits for this at the craft store, but if you have paint already, go find some rocks!)

48- Host a tea party

49- Puzzle hour (pull out all the puzzles and let the kids try them OR get one to do as a family)

50- Make cards and send them to people

51- Work in our sketch pads/nature books

52- A day at a local lake

53- Their own activities to pursue their own interests! (swim class, tennis, t-ball)

So there you have it, 53 things to keep your summer days busy, and hopefully the kids not fighting!  I am sure we will not get to them all and will do some of these in the winter too, but we are having fun so far since I made the list, it makes it way easy when things start to go downhill to just head to the list and pick one.

Enjoy and share your summer activities for inspiration!

Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,
For strip-mined mountain’s majesty above the asphalt plain.
America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,
And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.

~George Carlin

I needed a chuckle today…and this served it up!  Happy Earth Day!  Let us so work together on changing the above reality into something much more lovely.  The earth shares with us her many gifts, and what do we do???  We go to Target.

Another week has passed.  And today is such a fabulous day to be posting about what I have or haven’t spent over the last week.  If anyone is out to benefit from a less spend stance, it is the earth.  I am so happy over the synchronicity of this post.

So here we go.  If you have missed the previous posts on this, you can see them here, here, and here to catch up!

I did not get coffee to go ONCE this whole week, and as it is the second week I am feeling pretty good about letting that seriously bad habit go.  Starbucks here I don’t come. There are still time when a quiet moment at a coffee shop sounds like heaven, but my husband and I have decided to give me some time hiking on Sunday’s instead, which fills my need for nature, is good for me, and doesn’t add cellulite to my butt.  I think this new plan is going to work out just fine.

We ate out not one single time this week. Seriously.  No quick jaunts to local restaurants to save me from cooking at the last minute, or because we were too much in a hurry.  Don’t think it didn’t cross my mind on a few occasions, but on those I instead went to our local natural grocers and got quicker meals to cook.  You know, organic chicken nuggets and some fruit.  A basket full of fresh veggies with some hummus.  I might not always have time to make a healthy, scrumptious meal for all from scratch, but I can forgive myself for such and get healthy ‘take out-ish’ food from the store instead.

The only place I have really spent money is on the yard, not even just the garden though, so I suppose that wasn’t exactly a need.  I purchased a load of pansies at our LOCAL nursery to fill in all of my front flower pots this past weekend.  We are having an Easter Egg Hunt at the house on Sunday and I wanted the front to have that-spring is here, welcome to our overcrowded abode (34 people will be here…all at once) for Easter-feel to it.  I also knew that with the vegetable garden going full swing in about two weeks, I wasn’t going to have time dilly dallying with annuals in the front yard.  I think I will be swamped with weeds instead. They are already coming up.

One spend confession.  Today I will be signing up for an annual membership to our local rec center.  This decision came after much pondering and questioning to if we would use it at all.  I have come to the conclusion that we NEED it.  Or Mama needs it.  It will include free swimming to all the indoor all year and outdoor pools in the summer.  Also it includes a handful of exercise classes and CHILDCARE for 2 hours a day.  I say CHILDCARE so loudly, because as a homeschooling family, Mama is realizing that she needs to work a little harder at filling her cup in meaningful ways, not in ways that involve Facebook.  A little time out of the house a few days a week,  with some time at the pool after for all of us sounds down right lovely.  And I think the kids will be happier too.

We seem to be lacking something at the moment, Mom a way to deal with stress and the kiddos ways to get out their energy.  Plus I didn’t want to pay for swim lessons for both of them all summer, they are much more expensive in the summertime due to the increase in lessons per week.  Hopefully, if they swim a lot over the summer, they will be able to resume lessons in the fall twice a week and not have lost what they gained so far this year. Or hey, maybe they will surpass where they are now!

I also am feeling the need to begin a journey to health.  As you know if you read my blog, a lot of people in my world have gotten cancer in the last year.  Exercise is no guarantee, I know, but motherhood seems to take us (Mom’s) and put our needs straight to the bottom of the totem pole, and my husband thinks that is him…but this week of overwhelm and stress and a broken nose that I gave to myself, is really reminding me to take a step back, move slower, and to realize I have some needs that aren’t being met.

To nobody’s fault except my own.

So yes, I will spend today in ways that might not be a survival need, but then again, it just might be.  Depends on how you look at it! Happy Earth Day!

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For the last month or so, we have been studying Alaska.  We just finished up, with our grand finale of an art project.  I can’t tell you how tired I am of doing ‘crafts’ with the kids.  Since we began doing more ‘unit’ studies in our homeschooling around geographical regions, I have been trying to step up the art that goes with each area, and avoid the ‘craft’.

I have faith that kids can do more than popsicle stick activities.  Give them real art sensations and tools, real pastels, real fabrics, real photographs to explore.  Why does it so often have to be paper bags and crayons?

I digress.

I got the idea for this hunting Inuit quiver project from a book in the library called Hands On Alaska.  Again, the craft idea was to use a paper bag to make the quiver.  Instead, I went to the sewing store and got some 40% off suede, on sale due to the end of season.

They were pretty easy to make, if a bit time consuming to make three of them.

1- I started by cutting the shape I wanted on the fold of the fabric to get two sides.  I then turned it inside out and sewed around the outside edge, leaving a two inch hole at the bottom next to the fabric fold to put the strap in later.

2- I folded a half inch over the top of the bag and sewed around that. Then turned the bag right side out.

3- I then cut a long three inch piece of fabric, measured to my kiddos backs, turned it inside out and sewed the edge together, then turned it right side out again.  I then sewed both edges at the 1/4 inch, to make the edges flat, but also to give it that ‘hand sewed’ look.

4- I inserted one end of the strap into the opening at the bottom of the bag, and sewed around the bag on the outside edge, again, for the hand made look.

5- To sew the top of the strap in, I sewed it to the opposite side edge of the top of the bag, taking care to actually SHOW the stitches!

This was the last one completed, so it turned out the best of course!

Here are all three bags finished.

To decorate my bag, I made slits with the scissors around the edge and threaded another piece of suede through the hole.  Then I put a bead on over both ends and hot glued a real bird feather to the inside of each one! The kids did all their decorating with the glue gun, beads, and feathers directly on the bags wherever it suited them.  Which is totally the plan!

Here are our finished Inuit quiver bags!  A fine ending to a fun unit studying igloos, the Iditarod, lots of famous dogs, lots of cool animals, and the wildness of Alaska.

Remember not so long ago, I dyed playsilks for the first time with a friend of mine? You can read that post here. Well, this weekend I took to task playing catch up with so many of the projects that had been cluttering up our living space.  First on the list?  Finishing up those playsilks I had yet to finish.

This time? Some tie-dye!

We got a pretty groovy system going that was very efficient.  First, two big pots on the back of the stove.  One for the hottest of tap water, and one for simmering water.  After I had soaked the plain silks, I would dump that water into the simmering pot in which I had just taken hot water from.  It worked great to keep the train moving.

1-Fill one about half way with the tap water and pour a bit of vinegar in, I did about 1/4 C.

2-Get the next one simmering on the stove full.  I started with super hot tap water to speed things along. No vinegar.

3-Soak the playsilks you are getting ready to dye for about 15 minutes in the tap hot water.

4-Place the simmering water into a bowl for one color projects, or ball jars, or Bhakti Chai jars as we did, for each color desired.

5-Add a 1/4 C vinegar to a bowl project, a dash to a ball jar tie-dye project.

6-Dump in your Kool-Aid packets.  Three for a bowl, one or two for a jar.  Lemonade isn’t that dark, so you will need more.

7-Drop in your project to a main color and continue to move it around.  OR, for tie-dye, rubber band clusters of fabric together, I did two or three bands per cluster and dip them into the ball jars one at a time, using different colors.

8-Wring them out, and dry them out on a clothesline or in your bathroom and you are done!

I have to admit, I LOVED the tie-dye ones WAY better.  They turned out beautifully and the kids went crazy over them.  Not to mention they looked lovely blowing in the wind on Saturday!

Our reflection in the grape Kool-Aid!

Putting the playsilk in the grape dye.  I wanted to show you how the water looks from beginning to end.

This is the water after just a couple minutes!  The silk absorbed all of the grape Kool-Aid!

A ready to go silk with seven jars of colors behind! Here we go…

I was so nervous, but there was really no reason to be!  It was super easy and they turned out so cool. It is an amazing thing when intention and reality actually meet.

My sons tie day silk!

This color turned out to be our favorite!  Black Cherry.  I suggest you get some because the color was so stupendously vibrant and beautiful!

Isn’t it striking?  Who new this about Kool-Aid?

Ahh…our efforts blowing in the wind as if calling us to slow down and take it all in.  An invitation back to the moment.

My favorite photo of the day.

Try some of these at home!  It was really fun, and they tuck away nicely in the living room in a basket with a lid found at the thrift store with a pile of clothespins added for creativity sake!

Rhythm.

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm, and harmony.” ~Thomas Merton

It is so elusive to me.

During the equinox, rhythm was on my mind a lot.  One is supposed to set their intention in the spring around balance.  I was needing balance alright, balance in my mothering.  So much of my days were spent reacting.  Reacting to what needed to be done, who needed to be where, who expected what, who needed what.  It was a constant state of ‘automatic pilot’ yearning for more intentioned living.

It came to a head on Wednesday night when my six year old announced gleefully that, “You can’t make me.”

My less mindful self would have announced back with a sassy attitude and nasty look that, “Oh yes I can little buddy” with a glare that could have burned a hole right through him.  But instead I went into silence.  For like an hour.  And instead of loosing my shit, I mulled the whole thing over. I realized that my intention for spring, to bring more rhythm to my mothering, was now in need of implementation.

I have a plan.  And that is, to…make a plan.

First, we switched all of the kids activities to the afternoon.  Second, we began to do school in the morning.

And that is as far as I have gotten yet.

My dream?  A schedule that allowed for more time with community, less t.v., more time in nature, meditation circles in the mornings to smudge, chant, sing, call in God, learn how our bodies feel in silence, create an awareness in the house of deep listening to each other, time for ritual, daily quiet time, less fighting, more mindfulness, more efficiency.

What we actually have is, reaction to this fire.  Reaction to that chaos. Trying to manage by dealing with what has just taken place or what we have to be doing in the next moment.  Not a lot of living in THIS moment.

Today, tonight, and this weekend, I will be mulling over that which I want to bring more of into our daily experiences, and that which is not nurturing to those dreams of mindful moments with my children.  And I intend to work it all out on an Excel spreadsheet.  So romantic.  From waking up, to brushing teeth, to nature walks, it will all be on there.

Why the detailed spreadsheet? I do this for the actualization goal of creating rhythm.  I tend to be a pretty scattered gal, wanting to launch into whatever bee pops into my bonnet on any given day.  If I just attempt to ‘wing it’ through this rhythmic adventure, I will get sidetracked and loose steam.  I know myself at least that well.

Happiness=balance, order, rhythm, and harmony.  I can second that Mr. Merton.  I second that.

Stay tuned, I will update how this dance with rhythm pans out in our home.  What worked and what was not so good.  What the kids loved, and what they could do without.  Those parts that I loved, and those that just didn’t end up as intended.  And what we will hopefully have in a few weeks, a few months, and over the years, is a home that listens to what is going on and is aware and responsive when change is needed.

And rhythm.

NA97WSUAUCZV

Here they are, our new little nature table friends.  I used the flower fairy pattern and instructions from Wee Folk Art again which you can find here.  The gnomes were so dang cute I couldn’t help but use their adorable pattern for the fairies too.

This is the daffodil fairy.  She was the first one I tried and WOW, it did take awhile to figure out.  The two I made after became much easier with each attempt!  I had to You Tube search the running stitch and the daisy stitch and learn them as I went, but it was worth it, and not very hard once I saw the videos.

The blue one was the next, and my son picked out all the colors.  It was quite adorable how cute he thought they were.  He was equally excited as his sister to get one that he designed made especially for him.

The pink and purple fairy was the last to make, and it was WAY faster than the first one.  Once I got the hang of the new stitches I needed to learn it was a breeze.

The flowers came from our local gardening center.  When we got our seeds and raspberries the other day, they were trimming a bunch of plants and let the kids gather however many they wanted from the floor!  Perfect for the spring nature table.

The wood blocks are the Branch Block Building Set from Imagine Childhood. You can see them here.  I actually got them for the kids for Christmas, and thought they were bigger.  When they came I thought they were a bit too old for the blocks  so I didn’t give the blocks to them, but put them on a shelf in my closet for maybe a birthday for another little child.  But then when we finished the nature table, I thought they were perfect!

And the kids have been playing with them everyday since, arranging their fairies, rocks, blocks, flowers, and gnomes!

We used the yellow play silk from our dying activity here a few weeks ago to cover our log, and this little space is ready for little hands to explore and add their own natural touches too.

Oh my goodness.

How cute are these little people?

I stayed up a bit past my bed time last night making them.  I was getting very tired of checking everyone’s blogs I follow to see the loveliest of projects splattered all over their pages, while I struggle to find time to shower everyday.  FYI, so far I have not had time yet today.

I saw similar gnomes at a friends house a few weeks ago, and thought they were adorable.  I have been wanting to set up a Waldorf inspired nature table for the kids, but really wanted a large log instead of a table.  And of course more available time to do such.  But last night I made these two darlings, and today, we got ourselves a log.

The log is still sitting in the back of my car, I can’t move it.  I will be waiting till the hubby gets home from work for this excavation.  But the two little fellers look so at home on their new table.  Now we can collect our joys of Spring to add to it from our daily adventures!

The felt gnome tutorial came from Wee Folk Art, and you can see it here.

I did not know how to blanket stitch, such a novice, so I got that tutorial from this video, all here for your convenience so you can make your own happy felt gnomes! They were fast and fun.

I am trying to stick to a Spring theme and make some for each season. I didn’t want them too bright, I mean, Spring starts this week, and there isn’t a lot of green or flowers around these parts yet. They will come.

The wind has really been on my mind lately too, hence the blue felt gnome with the brown trim. I did the brown trim to represent the trees as they are at the beginning of the season. The purple and yellow gnome represents the joys of the early crocuses.

Stay tuned for felt fairies, forthcoming for my little gal! Maybe one of my fairies will need to be daffodil inspired, my favorite of all the Spring blooms!

*Crafters tip: I got two of the wood pegs at Micheal’s for $1.99. I got a bag of 8 at Hobby Lobby for $2.99. Just FYI!

I tried another activity from the site we used last week, you can check it out here. I was a bit less impressed with it once I got it together and she started doing it.  She did great, and enjoyed it, but this little one is ready for addition at this point, so this was a little more what we were doing a few months ago.

It was still fun, and a good distraction as I worked closer with her brother.  And would be great for a preschooler a wee bit younger than my almost 5.

The idea is to write the numbers on the back of the card and have the right number of stickers on the front, coinciding with the number on the back.  I thought the number should be on the front so she could see the visual number and how many that equals.

She takes the math cubes and covers each of the stickers on the card, getting a real sense of how many 5 actually is and associating the written number with the physical amount.

She liked it, so try it at home.  It was such a cheap activity to make, you can’t go wrong!  Now on to finding creative ways to get this gal to beginning reading!

I tried a new pattern preschool math activity with my littlest one this week and it went over extremely well!  I got the initial idea for this preschool activity from this site here, from her Math section number 2.

I had to change it up a little bit, to make it work with the supplies we had, I am tired of running out to get ‘stuff’ to do some of these projects and just wanted to skip that step.

Luckily we had LOTS of pipe cleaners and beads already!

I cut each pipe cleaner in half, and created a pattern with different color beads on one half.  I twisted the end so they wouldn’t fall off.  Then the other half went empty into the bag.  I then counted out the exact number of beads she would need for each pattern I created and put those in the bag too. The whole bit went into a basket, a la Montessori style.

This is an example of one pattern.

This is a very self correcting activity.  In fact my daughter caught herself a few times with left overs of one color or not enough of another.  Then she knows there is a mistake somewhere that she can fix.

In process with her Grandma’s knitted sweater on.  The woman at the sewing store last night asked if I knitted it, hahahaha, ah we have seen how spectacular I am at knitting so far.  I divulged the truth on who made it while laughing at myself for knowing I wouldn’t even know where to begin…or what all the codes even stand for in a knitting pattern. Yet.

The first day we tried this, she wasn’t that into it, it may have been a cranky day.  Yesterday when we did it she squealed, “Mom you are right!  This is fun!”

This was the perfect home school math activity to give her while I worked with her brother.  I am going to need to get a bit more creative with this one!  She wants more, and more, and MORE school to do everyday!  We have already gone through the entire Core Knowledge Preschool Activities Book!

Enjoy!

We went to a friends house on Tuesday to dye playsilks.

I must admit she did ALL of the research in how to take part in this little activity.  She did all the diligent reading and then pieced together from all the differing opinions what directions we would do.  You can read her blog post about our day here.

First she ordered all the silks per specifications on what we wanted, from the Dharma Trading Company.

Then we purchased lots and lots and lots of Kool-Aid.

First we soaked the silks in hot tap water with a bit of distilled vinegar, maybe 1/4 C for like 15-30 mins.  I don’t know for sure, of course we had children there who required managing and feeding and it became much more of a wing it exercise, at least for me.   We then took 5 C of simmering water and put it in a separate pot with more vinegar, amount of vinegar depending on the size of the silk, most of ours were 30×30, but I got a few that were longer for the kids to have. I would say it was 1/4 C to 1/2 C.

It was nice, smart, to have one pot simmering water and other pots available for actual dying.

Once the water and vinegar was in the pot, it was time to add the Kool-Aid color.

We stirred the mixture till it was dissolved and then added two silks at a time.

It was pretty important to keep moving the silks around at first, our first two yellow ones turned out really light and white in a few bigger areas because I didn’t mix them while they were absorbing the color.  You can see the color leave the water and color the silks.  When there is no more color in the pot of water, they are done!

These were the colors we did at my friends house.  Yellow, pink, blue, and red.  I did not have pink lemonade at my local store, so she was kind enough to share for my little ‘princess’ who loves pink.  And for the blue, we used 20 drops of food coloring.

I still have a pot full of like 30 Kool-Aid packets!  We did not get all of ours done, I still have 6 left, but I am looking forward to trying some tie-dye versions and get a bit more creative now that I understand what to do, and don’t mind making a bigger mess in my kitchen than I would have wanted to make in a friends!  With Kool-Aid.  On counters and floors.  And kids.

I will update this project next week when the kids and I have gotten crazy with some dye!  I am dreaming of hanging them on a line and just watching them blow in the spring-ish breeze!

I have been wanting to try tie-dying shirts with the kids, but have been too afraid, I think this got me in the mood to try sometime soon though!  Maybe in the summer when we can dye outside…not on the white 1973 linoleum in our kitchen!

(Sorry for the lack of great photos, my camera is still MIA and I used my kids camera’s!)

Spill it: Have you ever done a dye project with your kids?  What things beside playsilks have you attempted?

“Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”  ~Pablo Picasso

In homeschooling, there were two commitments I wanted to make to myself and my kiddos.  One, that we did science a lot.  Two, that we did art equally as often.

Only one problem with these ideals, I often run the risk of worrying about reading and math, and less about the creative forces that inspire children to really find out who they are at their depths.  Last years school experience and the fact that they wanted to hold my son in kindergarten again, has set a tone of catch up in my mind.  I worry more about whether he is on par than whether he is passionate.

Big miskate.  Same mistake I fear happens so often in school, regardless of the location in which it is taking place. The creative juices in humanity will be as important in solving the issues facing my children’s generation as knowledge of math will be.

With that rant in place, this is the art project we worked on this week!  We were doing a unit on the Arctic and Antarctica, when I stumbled upon this little gem from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge site, stained glass art. (click green link for full instructions)

We had to buy an array of permanent markers for this project, and they aren’t cheap, over $18 with a large selection of colors, but they were worth the purchase in the long run!  I am sure we will use them over and over.

Busily coloring their transparencies, I was pleasantly surprised that it cost me less than $5 to copy six pictures onto transparencies for this.

Mama’s first finished attempt, to see that this was all about.  I was a little worried as we colored the transparencies that this was going to be lame, but they are really quite cool when the aluminum foil went on the back!  They are so sparkly when the light is on in the school room!

My sons first finished caribou!

My daughters finished Kestrel…don’t tell her, but I totally wanted to do this one!

When all was said and done, they turned out beautifully!  And the kids loved this art project, they couldn’t stop saying how much they loved it as we were doing them!

Last week I saw this post by The Artful Parent and was reminded that chalkboards can be used for lots of things, including learning how to read.  I am not sure who told me this little trick or where I saw it, it may have been the Montessori teachers at my sons school last year, nevertheless, we used it!

First, write the letters on the board:

Then have your little learner trace them with a wet paintbrush:

My preschooler loved this activity and actually enjoyed cleaning the board off so Mommy could write the next letters on it!  It was a nice break from the worksheets she actually really likes doing too.

Enjoy this little activity with your preschooler, or make it harder for your more advanced learner by writing whole spelling words or sight words work as well!  The options are truly endless!

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Not to disappoint, I am passing on a few of the activities my son has been partaking in to get those reading juices flowing without him having to follow an arbitrary workbook or force himself to read a book he has no interest in reading.  It seems to be working quite well, while I didn’t have him read a book for a month, last week I pushed one of the ones that came in our curriculum at him and he read the first story with no problem at all!

Today I will take him to the bookstore and let him pick out level 1 readers that HE wants, not that MOM wants him to read, but that HE wants to read.  After talking to his enrichment teacher, she said he is reading great in class!  Now just to find his inner motivation to do it!

Anyway, yes I am excited over his progress, here is one game we have been doing:

He finds two words that rhyme and put them together.  He is reading without really knowing he is reading, and he thinks it is a fun activity, I will change the words out next week to new and a few longer rhyming words.

Yes, that is coffee spilled all over the cards.  They still work.  They just taste better now!

This is a site word activity in which I make two card of each site word and lay one stack out on the table, and keep one in a pile.  My son reads the one in the pile and finds the match on the table.  As they get too easy, we take them out of the pile and move them to our window as a friend suggested!

My son is very proud of his 23, which he counted, words that he considers “too easy”.

Mix up your day and try some of these!  They seem to be working for him!  I am finding that I can’t keep doing the same ‘games’ everyday.  He becomes less motivated with them on the third day, so I am mixing them up now.  A little site word bingo today, a little rhyming matching tomorrow, a little site word matching the next day.

Be flexible!  That is becoming my motto, happily.

Spill it: What ideas do you find useful in keeping your kids engaged in the learning you are presenting?  If you are not homeschooling, what are some tips you have found helpful in working with your kids on reading/phonics at home?

Last month we were studying Africa and reading tons of books from the library.  To round out our introductory study, my kids are in preschool and first grade, we did an awesome papier-mache craft!

The initial idea came from here.

Ours did not turn out nearly as cool as the one in the how-to video I eventually found above, but we had fun none the less!  Truth be told, the kids did not LOVE the papier-mache part, surprisingly they didn’t like getting their hands dirty.

What?

Who’s children spend all summer playing with the mud in the back yard?

I did most of the mache part after the first day. They did their whole first layer, but when we started again on the second day, they each got to put on a strip or two before they decided it wasn’t much for them. Of course, the things need four layers, which we only did three of since our newspaper was already white we didn’t need the computer paper layer.

There is also a mistake in the video directions about the water vs. flour mixture. For me, I had to adjust their initial recipe. It was way too thick and way too much considering we had to wait a day to start again after drying.

It was still heaps of fun whether they did the actual mache part after the first day or not!  I am not going to lie though, making the shapes on the kids cheetah head, they had to pick African animals to make, was not as easy as it looked in the video.  Of course they don’t actually show it in the video…that is probably why.

But the kids loved, loved, LOVED painting them!  In fact they woke up the next morning and got more paint out and painted them again!

They would have painted them again, but I think the cheetahs made it out of revision number two looking fabulous!

Here is our final display place on the wall in the school room.  They look so awesome.  While they did take the whole week to make and ample amounts of flour it was well worth the works of art gracing our wall!  The kids are certainly proud every time they take a peek at their creations!

Spill it: What is the most hefty craft you have undertaken with your kiddos?  Was it worth it in the end?  Or would you have rather quit while you were ahead?

Since I have been asked to share some ideas about how I am converting curriculum into more jazzy ways of learning, I am passing on the first of my ideas to help my reluctant reader begin to read…without really knowing that he is doing it!

First, we play lots of site word bingo.

First, I checked out the Dolce site word list and then I made the boards from there.  We started from scratch with the Pre-Primer list, Primer, then we will move on to the 1st grade list.  You can see a tiny #2 in the top left hand corner of the page and the deck of cards, so I don’t confuse decks with boards!  It is really easy to keep together.

The great thing?  My 4 1/2 year old daughter is playing right along.  Instead of hearing me say the word, which she does, I show her the card and she matches the word on the board from the card.  I just try to say the word over and over slowly.

We have also been doing this site word activity too, which I sorta stole from a game in the Montessori catalog, Small Hands.  There they have cards with a picture of an animal, how it is spelled, and then the letters to match.  So I could save a buck or two, and really stay focused on the site words, I made this version:

I just put five site words on one index card, and make coinciding letters to match. Then my son can sit down, and pull all the stuff out of the bag and work at formulating the words then reading them out to me.  It seems much more interesting to him than the worksheets we were doing…

I have five words in each bag and six bags.  It makes it really easy to take a few bags to an activity that his sister is doing and getting some school done for the day while there!

We will add more baggies as we begin to have some mastery on these.

So far, these small changes have made school move a lot more smoothly.  I didn’t want to home school if it meant I was constantly going to be nagging and fighting with my kids to do their work.  I want our time together to be as enjoyable as it can be, not pulling teeth.

Will it work forever?  I imagine I will have to keep on my toes and keep my imagination quite active as we move through our hurdles, but homeschooling has been fun, and I couldn’t be loving it more at the moment!

I will share more ideas as we discover them on the web and in books!

Spill it: What has been your way of teaching to your kids?  How do you keep them engaged in what they are learning?

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been reading a TON about kids and learning recently.  Funny thing, whenever I want to know about something, I go find all the information I can about it and teach myself. Why do we assume with kids it would be any different?

I am not an advocate of unschooling.  I feel the need for a bit of structure in my home and the knowledge that my kids are learning that which will propel them forward should they decide to go into science or engineering, they need a foundation.  I am just becoming WAY more open to HOW they get that knowledge.

This little example is FASCINATING to me.  My son, who is 6 1/2 has been watching Out of the Wild:  The Alaska Experiment on Netflix for the last week.  He has been obsessed with Alaska ever since some random documentary my husband was watching years ago about a guy who built a house in the Alaska wilderness.  He was like two, the movie was like ancient, but Alaska has never been far from his mind since.

He finished the season of episodes yesterday, and here is what showed up in my living room:

The box around the fire, is for keeping the wind away from the fire he would start if he was not in our living room, but in the woods somewhere.

Ingenious.  My 6 1/2 year old then proceeds to take the whole thing apart, to explain to me, a 37 year old who has no friggin’ idea how to start a fire from scratch outside.  And guess what?

Now I do.

First you pile small sticks on the bottom, then a few more rows of small sticks, space in between each, and rows going opposite the row below.  Then, you start to make the tepee angles on your fire.  Then you can light it from the inside obviously, and you will hopefully have a fire, if the wood is dry enough, the kindling dry etc.

They learn.  Our kids will spend hours learning what seems fascinating to them and take off with it! I did not encourage this at all.  He said, we (he and his sister) were going camping and he needed to go get wood.  He went out to the back yard, cut what I assume was my old sunflowers, came in, trimmed them all, made a fire ring with rocks and pine cones, set up the box to block wind and proceeded to find their sleeping bags and lay them out.

I am not worried.  They learn.

Spill it: What have your kids done that shocked the hell out of you?  Were you surprised by their ingenuity lately?  Amazed that they were listening during the last IMAX film you shared with them cause they spouted some random information to you later?  When have they blown you away with their imagination?

I have some.

Breathing room.

Thank you all for being SO understanding.

I had a few weeks with the in-laws in town, then a few days to relax and let the hair down, then started school with the kids for this past week after the holidays.  THAT went a bit different than I had imagined.

I watched my son be distracted, try NOT to do his reading work, color the opposite page in which he was supposed to be working on, watch intently what his sister was doing all while I tried to pull teeth to get him to do his ‘work’, in every method I could think of.  It wasn’t going well.

Finally I let the distraction of his father take him away as I thought to myself, “This was his problem in school.  He just wasn’t interested.”

With a wave of panic I had to begin to think what else it was we were going to do instead.

What I finally decided was, that if school didn’t work for him, school at home wasn’t going to be any better.  It was hard to breathe.  Literally. For the next 24 hours.  Luckily I had just read Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto the week prior.  That gave me some hope that not every kid thrives in fluorescent lit rooms with their peers raising them, but that some people have done great things by learning what worked for them in the moment.

While I had WICKED nightmares that night, a fellow homeschooling Mama said it was fine to take a step back, and a long conversation with the librarian also helped blanket my nerves.  I found momentary breathing room and began to focus.  I also checked out every single book I could find that was interesting about education, unschooling, homeschooling, teaching your kids through hands on games, writing, nature etc. I started to take a step back and realize my job here isn’t to make them the smartest kids on the planet, but to teach them in a way that will allow them to continue to love to learn.

After all, if they didn’t like to learn already, why would the be asking an incessant barrage of questions every moment of every single day? So many that sometimes I think I may go crazy.

So I am attempting to be more creative with our learning.  I peruse the curriculum books we got at the beginning of the year, then devise a few games to help with learning the task for math.  I decided to start unit studies with the letter ‘A’, to introduce reading to my daughter, while also exploring the continents of the globe that start with A, Australia, Asia, Arctic, Antarctica, Africa, we will do art from those regions, and read lots, and lots, and lots of books on them.  We are doing ‘A’ word bingo and matching games, and soon my kids will decide there are things they want to learn too and I will make adjustments to their curiosities.

The one shining moment in my worried days, was when I realized if my son had been in school, held back already last year, and still not showing interest, they would label him something, tutor him, or some other thing instead of acknowledging that kids learn different things at different times and our expectations of them are so arbitrary.  A school can’t stop what they are doing to adjust to his needs while still educating, they have to carry on with the 29 other kids in the class.  I CAN change what we are doing, sometimes leading, sometimes following their lead.

Ah, the adventure of homeschooling continues.  A constant ebb and flow, learning about my children’s temperaments and styles, learning about my own temperament and style, learning to shake off the curriculum rules and lead them to the final destination in a way that best suits each of them.  Mostly I am learning to trust myself as a mother.  A mother who knows her children and reacts to their needs instead of trying to make them fit all the time into my needs, my plans, my expectations.

It isn’t like I am going to raise a moron, even if I do, plenty of schools have churned out a few of those.

Spill it: Have you recently changed something major because it just wasn’t working for your kid? School, sports, parenting style, expectations etc.?  How do you normally deal with your panicky moments of feeling totally inept at parenting?  I know we all have moments.

Everyone seems to want an update on how homeschooling is going for us so far. So I will give a bit of an synopsis today.

First, I love it.  Absolutely, love it.

Second, I still need to be more present in it.

Third, it is a work in progress.

When we first got all the curriculum I was so excited.  Just like on the first day of school when I went, back in the olden days.  The books represented fantastic possibilities….and then we began to read them.  And all my learning was rote.  And boring.  And made no impact on me on how any of it fit into the greater context we call life.

And so it was with some of the books we got.  The science and social studies texts were dry and seemed vaguely familiar…like what happens to brine shrimp eggs after five days?  And the worksheets endless for BOTH topics.

We are definitely doing unit studies for social studies now.  History can be fascinating in so many ways!  Why bore the children to death with questions about how Maria and Chris’ families are different or cartoon-ish geography maps?   Let them touch it!  Experience it!  Live it!

We are in the midst of Japan thanks to the Magic Tree House, and have painted Japanese characters called Kanji, read Japanese children’s picture books, practiced origami, done science on bamboo, geography on the globe, and made the flag out of felt.  I have learned about the poet Basho and that Tokyo was once called Edo. We have listened to Japanese music CD’s from the library in the car, and the kids LOVE the sounds of Japanese drumming!  My son drums on his knees as we carry on from destination to destination.

I am still using the math and reading curriculum to the tee.  I need to make sure I catch up my little boy to his grade level at least.  I have gone back to the science text only because he is begging for more science experiments and I am not sure yet how to incorporate such projects alone without text yet.

We have taken the kids to see Narnia and read the book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and soon to be The Nutcracker.  We go to art some days, we do lego pre-engineering classes, we have gymnastics and swimming lessons.  We are busy in a nice, peaceful, and little did I expect way.

I understand now that homeschooling will be a river that ebbs and flows, that our interests and energy will change, that things that fascinate us now might bore us to tears later, or things that bore us to tears…Mommy can change.  I am extraordinarily forgiving of myself, which is new.  And the possibilities excite me to no end.

I have had less energy to spend on preparing food and cooking, which I miss.  Especially after reading Growing Roots.  I have less time to devote to things outside of the home.  More time to spend with friends.  My son is still exasperated by this thing we call ‘school’ so I will be making a zillion more adjustments as we go to how he can learn in a way that is interesting to him.  My daughter on the other hand, would do it all day every day.  She is leap frogging him a bit and I worry about his self esteem and how to keep her engaged.  The house is always a mess because we are in it so often.  We are making small changes, one at a time, until it feels right.

But I am learning.  He is learning.  She is learning.  All of us in different ways and in our own time.

Flexibility is the key to happiness and homeschooling I think! And the desire to light their fires…in the words of William Butler Yeats, “Education is not the filling of a bucket but the starting of a fire.”

Spill it: If you homeschool, what are the most surprising aspects to you?  Are you able to remain flexible and forgiving of both yourself and your expectations?  How do you keep your kids engaged?

For us, there has been an unexpected plus to homeschooling.  Our children are getting along.

For the months leading up to this big decision we made in July regarding homeschooling, my biggest fear and potential drawback from the whole shebang was the fact that my kiddos were constantly fighting.  I can’t tell you how many times I thought to myself, “You people are going to drive me to drink!”  Seeing as I haven’t had a drink in well over three years, it must have been pretty dang bad.

I was certainly unsure if I had the patience for it all day, every day, throughout however long our homeschooling career would last.  Would I be able to muster enough patience to keep them from ruining their relationship and me from going friggin’ crazy?

But alas, the longer we have homeschooled…the MORE they have gotten along.

And I am serious.  It is a miracle! I am NOT going to go crazy for now!

Last year, when my son was in school, he would come home and want alone time.  He would start a fight with my daughter any chance he got.  She would to.  My little ‘angel’ would purposely mess with something he was working on just to get him riled up.  It worked.  Often.

Now, they play for hours together.  No joke. They invent games that completely trash my house, but use their imagination and their sense of teamwork.  They build forts and are superhero’s, they play in the snow and with the dogs, they look after each other and actually help each other.

It is so weird.

Except, I bet a lot of other homeschooling Mama’s would say the same.  It was just weird to me.

It seems that being together all the time, they understand they need each other to rely on.  They need each other to be entertained when Mama won’t turn the T.V. on.  They use each others help on schoolwork and on generating ideas for their play.  Even my husband commented last week, “They have been getting along so well together lately.”

Maybe it is their age.  Maybe it is that they finally saw the light…right.  Or maybe it is the camaraderie with the family that is beginning to build a firm foundation with them.

All I can say is that my life has gotten SO much easier since beginning to homeschool.  I know that sounds completely and utterly counter-intuitive.  But that is the way it is.

And I love it.

Spill it: How do you help your kids work through disagreements?  Are you surprised that my kids who are spending more time together are actually getting along better or no?  What does sibling rivalry look like in your home?

The first thing anyone ever says to me when I say that we are a homeschooling family, is “Well, do they get enough socialization?”

I find it incredibly ironic and quite insulting at the same time.

One, why is everyone so worried about whether my kids are getting socialized at all, and not MORE worried about the way their kids ARE getting socialized?  No one seems to stop and think about what things their kids are learning from their social opportunities from peers, and the atrocious behavior exhibited by some school kids.  As report after report comes forth about school bullies and suicides over them, I am surprised we have enough time to worry about the million kids that are homeschooled and their social experience, and not the MILLIONS of kids that go to school who may get really crappy social experiences from the thousands of schools that exist out there?

A kid will get picked on because he’s too fat, or too thin, or not cool, or doesn’t have the right clothes, or doesn’t watch certain shows, or wears glasses, or isn’t fast, or is too smart, or isn’t smart, or has two Dad’s, or likes Star Wars, or doesn’t like ballet, or she is a girl.

I was once at a local park and overheard the conversations between some 11 year old kids.  One boy said to one of the girls as she was sliding down a pole, “Just pretend it is a pubic hair, so and so, you slide down those everyday.”

Hmm.  I am only mad at the time I didn’t call the police and report him for sexual harassment.  Next time I will. I should have been more proactive, but I was alone with my own two babies.  But is this the social opportunity my kids are missing everyone is so worried about?

All I am saying, is that society needs to worry a little less about my kids socialization and a little more about kids and their behavior across the board, all kids, all the time, and why we seem to be allowing crappy behavior to continue.

If you wonder why I might find the idea that my kids are going to be weird and socially inept because they aren’t getting ‘socialized’ by societal standards irritating, listen up.  I love my kids.  If I didn’t think homeschooling  was the best choice for us all around, we wouldn’t have done it.  I would not intentionally do anything to harm my kids, and I sure as hell hope that I don’t create a pair of uni-bombers.

So let me be the worrier about what is going on for my kids.  I promise I worry a lot.  I promise I will be harder on myself than you ever will.  I promise I will do my best to not create any outcasts as so many of you seem to be fearful of.  I promise they will learn.  I promise I will try and teach them to be kind, compassionate people about the world around them.

I can promise you I will try.  I can’t promise you about the results.

Lucky for me, neither can the regular old fashion school. After all, I went to a really good public school that is usually on the lists for top 100 schools in the country…and guess what?  I ain’t perfect by a long shot.

Spill it: Why is socialization such a strong concern for people?  Seriously?  Is it really a worry about me and my kids?  Or is it really a worry because they think it is a commentary on their own choices?

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I read Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire by Rafe Esquith in less than a week.  Which for a stay at home, homeschooling, trying to clear out the house Mom, that is saying it was AWESOME.

If you are a teacher or a parent,homeschooling or not, this is a fantastic book about how much kids can do given the chance, and how much we owe them to be creative and engaging.  This guy is amazingly dedicated to giving his kids an extraordinary chance to try their hands at all sorts of things from music to baseball to Shakespeare.

“Parents and teachers have to come through. If I tell the kids we are beginning a special art project on Friday, I have to deliver, even if it means running out to a twenty-four-hour Home Depot at 4:00 AM to get extra wood and brushes.  Being constantly dependable is the best way to buildup trust.  We do not need to lecture the children about how we came through on a promise, let them figure out that they can trust us.  It’s a cliche, but our actions truly do speak louder than our words.”

How many times have I said to my kids that we were going to do something and then we ran out of time and I said we would do it ‘tomorrow’ instead?  How many times have those tomorrows turned into weeks?

“Never forget that kids watch you constantly.  They model themselves after you, and you have to be the person you want them to be.”

Wow.  That is heavy and true.  And I wouldn’t want my kids to be like me in oh so many realms.

“This I believe:  If young people develop a love of reading, they will have better lives.  That objective is not listed in our state curriculum standards.  Our assesment of reading may begin with standardized test scores, but in the end we must measure a child’s reading ability by the amount of laughter exhaled and tears shed as the written word is devoured.”

The book obsessed can appreciate that, but not to mention, it was one of the reasons we wanted to homeschool.  I am sure many other parents are just as frustrated, when did learning become about standardized tests and not about passion and leading kids into the openings of discovery on their own, about things they love?

“The testing obsession that has swept our nation’s schools is detrimental to helping children reach their potential as students and human beings.”

Rafe Esquith shares with the reader many wonderful things he does in his classroom, famously called Room 56, that parents and teachers can take into their own worlds too.  Things such as the importance of art projects, the writing of books, traveling with the kids, the movie club, Shakespeare plays, and so much more.  The depth and quality of what he covers is phenomenal, and maybe a little miraculous!

He does think it is equally important to raise kids with values and standards to adhere to as well, and asks that of his kids.  They learn how to show respect, to work as a team, and to respect places outside of school that they visit.

One quote I appreciate is:

“I love being a teacher.  You have the chance to get better at what you do.”

Isn’t that they way with parenting too? We have the chance to get better at what we do?

Uh…I just hope I get better before I run out of time!

I leave you with, “And no television on a school night-ever-for you or them.  There are better things to do.”

Damn.  There are better things to do than watch Desperate Housewives or Biggest Loser.  I just can’t stop!

Spill it: Do you teach, parent, love, volunteer, guide, anything, like your hair is on fire?  Did you ever have a teacher that did?  (I can say I never did, not once, have a teacher that was so incredibly excited about what they were doing that I couldn’t help but to be excited too)

A couple of weeks ago, I got a tip from a friend on Facebook that there were owl pellets to be found at a local park.  As a homeschool Mom, I got all excited about the cool everyday opportunities to educate our children.  I then proceeded to the park to collect the specimens.

We found them exactly where she said we would, and then spent some time reading a book about fairy houses and collecting a bunch of stuff to make a fairy house of our own in the backyard.  We headed home to dissect our gross, yet fascinating, treasure.

All fun and good right?

Except, did you notice the kids didn’t have any gloves on or anything?  They began to use their hands directly due to the fact that it was easier than the tweezers.  I did too.

When we were finished and the photo op complete, I came inside to check email and Facebook, otherwise known as ‘waste precious life moments with a ridiculously bad habit’.

I started to wonder about us using our bare hands to feel our way through owl vomit.  And so began the 24 hours of utter fear and panic.  Of course I Googled.  That is what I do when I have any sort of question.  I Google.  And of course what did I find?

Endless articles about how owl pellets carry Salmonella and Campylobacter an more lovely things like that.  You know, all kinds of things that could make me and my babies very sick. Articles about school kids getting sick after the same experiment we had just completed.

Oh God.  Oh God. Oh God.  What did I do?

(I’ll have you know I am getting many of the same feelings in this moment as I write about it, that is what anxiety can do for you)

So, I did what any crazy, high anxiety, worry wort about her children’s safety, of a Mom would do.  I bathed the children, washing their entire bodies with soap and even finished the bath with a nice hand dousing in All-Terrain anti-bacterial hand gel.  I went out to the back porch and threw EVERYTHING in the trash, including all of the fairy house things we had gotten at the park after we had collected our vomit, and the bag they were in.

I showered too and doused multiple times in the anti-bacterial hand goo.  Then told my husband to go get dinner out, so I wasn’t making food with said hands, and added that while he was out he should stop at the store and pick up some Clorox anti-bacterial wipes, cause lord knows we don’t have that kind of stuff in our house.

He returned with dinner and as everyone else ate, I backtracked through the house with wipes in hand.  I wiped down door handles, faucet handles, doors and door knobs, tables and chairs, light switches, and the table we did the grand experiment with our lives on.  I got crazy.  And then I wiped the kids hands with more hand slime.  And mine too.  I even painstakingly wiped every page of the fairy house book we had read.

I couldn’t sleep that night.  I kept thinking to myself over and over how I wanted to be the cool homeschooling Mom who took her kids and did awesome things with them but didn’t take the time to research first.  My ego was too big.  I would never forgive myself if anything happened to my babies due to my insatiable need for approval.

At 3 AM I climbed out of bed to go watch TV.  I knew that if I didn’t distract myself I it was going to be a very long day.  A dear friend popped up on Facebook, when I attempted to waste more life energy there, and reminded me about perspective.  After all, she was up at 3 AM for her own reasons too.

We never got sick.  But I may just pass over the next owl pellet I have the opportunity to see, unless we are protected with gloves, masks, and/or bubble suits.

So that is my ode to science.  And ego.  And the need for dear friends.

Spill it: Have you ever done anything to or with your kids, or let your kids do, that you were just sick over later?

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Yes, I am well aware that it is Tuesday 9-28, not Monday any longer.  My Mom Swiss cheese brain is pretty bad sometimes, but not THAT bad!  I missed yesterday, due to extenuating circumstances, but thought it was pretty important to explain and pass on how a few mindful moments really changed my attitude about it.

My son has been attending a one day a week homeschool enrichment program.  Needless to say, it hasn’t been an easy transition for him.  The first week, he was in tears and hugging my legs every time I tried to leave.  Unfortunately I had my daughter with me and two dogs at home who hadn’t eaten breakfast or peed yet that morning.  By lunchtime, I had to just leave and take him with me.

Last week, I went with him, with the full intention of staying the whole day; my daughter stayed home with Daddy.  Unfortunately I didn’t pack any food for me so I was exhausted and cranky toward the end.  Yesterday, I went with the hopes of him getting to the point in which he didn’t need me there and letting me go run some errands that I was feeling great anxiety about getting done.

When am I going to ever learn that it is fine for me to have expectations, as long as I keep the knowledge close at hand that at any moment, there is a good chance my expectations will need to be let go of?

I experienced a constant ebb and flow of emotions yesterday.  First frustration.  Then sheer sadness for him, I know all too well how he feels and what his fears might keep him from doing in life.  Then frustration again.  Then anger.  Then confusion as to how to help him.  Of course, helplessness wrapped herself around me like a fog as well.

Finally, after I came to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going anywhere evidently and somehow I had to come up with a way to let go of the myriad of things on my to-do list for the moment.  As a last ditch effort, I grabbed a book at the bottom of my bag I had thrown in at the last minute by Louise Hay called You Can Heal Your Life.

From the book, “What is important in this moment is what you are choosing to think and believe and say right now.”  Later, “We often add to that, “And I don’t do enough,” or “I don’t deserve.” Does this sound like you? Often saying or implying or feeling that you “are not good enough?” But for whom?  And according to whose standards?”

I began to find my breath again.

What did I believe and think right in that moment of anxiety and frustration with my son who needed me?

“I need to get things done.  A dress for the upcoming wedding…to clean our house cause it is annoyingly messy and has been the last couple weeks…to plant the raspberry bushes that are dying on my porch…to get and be with my daughter who was having to entertain herself at home while Daddy was working…to store or plan usage for the food that is coming out of our garden…to exercise…”

And for who?

Who’s expectations am I filling with all of those to-do’s that must all get done RIGHT NOW?

My husbands?

Mine?

Anyone who might actually find out that I am not perfect and can’t keep up with it all, all the time?

The bride and groom who might think I didn’t dress the way they wanted for their wedding?

My daughter who would most certainly be holding a grudge against me when I didn’t come home until 3:30?

In those few moments between reading those pages and trying not to fall asleep in the hallway, I changed my thoughts.  I let go of that to-do list.  I really wondered whose expectations I was trying to live up to.  I began to relax and actually entered into deep conversation with another Mom who is also in the same boat.  Then we were joined by two more Mom’s and we conversed about homeschooling, ideas, cool discoveries we were making, how to help each individual child, how each child produced their own unique hurdles.

I was there for my son when he needed me.

Not perfectly, on the way home I was upset and wondering whether my husband was going to be mad and how I could hurry up this adjustment process per what I assumed where going to be HIS expectations.

Except, when I got home, he wasn’t mad that I was gone all day again.  He was fine with it.  I had made up expectations I thought would be his.  Actually, after we chatted for a few moments, he said, “You have to read Janine’s email, it might help you.”

She quoted Viktor Frankl, a Nazi camp survivor, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms- to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”.

She thought maybe I needed to hear that…

I’ll say.

Spill it: How do you keep your patience with your kids when they are going through a difficult adjustment you think should be easier for them?  Hmmm….or how do you keep your expectations in check so as to remain flexible in the moments of motherhood that test those expectations?

Whether you homeschool or not, we are all teachers to our own children in countless ways everyday, this video made me want to do better.  Raising our children shouldn’t be with the aim of getting them a good job when they leave us, but giving them the opportunity for an amazingly rewarding life that is deeply lived.

Take a look.

Spill it: What stood out most to you in this video?  Do you often think about the values your kids are learning from you in so many subtle ways?  I can promise, that type of learning slips under my radar often!

And not that kind of late either people.  No more early babies in this house!

But, I got a few chuckles at Dancenastics this morning…without even actually fishing for them.  Just tellin’ it like it is.

We were five minutes late to my four year old’s class again this morning.  I set my purse down on the chair and said to my daughter, “Hurry up inside, we are late a.g.a.i.n.”

The other Mom’s gave a little reassuring nod, like they got it and so have been there.  But then I grabbed my hair and said, “At least I showered.”  The grandma sitting in the chair laughed, while another Mom chimed that, “Isn’t it a shame we have to decide between being late and showering?”

But isn’t that often the choice?

I let them know that the shower so was not optional seeing as how I am not sure I would be allowed to stay at gymnastics without having taken the shower.  After all, yesterday I noticed I really needed one, but threw a headband in my hair to try and cover up that need from the rest of the world.

I am a Mom, only the perfect Mom’s who have time to shower and exercise and clean house and educate their babies and go through all the clutter in the house, had even noticed my dreadful state.  Oh wait, there are no such things as those Moms!  I am in luck.  No one noticed.  And my husband was home late, fairly certain he didn’t notice either, I was already in pj’s reading a magazine bedspread pulled up as high as it would go.

I then let everyone know I was headed out to look for the dance ‘skirt’ that the little girl insisted I try to find in the car.  Yes, my car was that bad, that if a little girls pink dance skirt was in it, I actually needed to look under other items to even find it.

More giggles of amusement sounded throughout the building.

As I left the gym, there was another Mom with one little gal in tow heading out too.  I said, “And here I go, trying to find a tiny skirt in what is my car.”

She laughed replying, “I only have one and I so get it.”

Maybe we should all be more honest at such events? Maybe if we shared the actual realities of our days we would feel so much less like a failure!  After all, my disorganized morning self gave a bunch of ladies and a grandma a really good early morning laugh.  We all were nodding in a secret understanding, an understanding only mother’s could share.  Truly.

Husbands get showers.

I am so not afraid of people seeing me anymore.  This is my life.  I like my life, even if sometimes I don’t get a shower and we are five minutes late when I am aware that it can’t be put off any longer, and sometimes seem completely crazed and anxious and in a hurry.  I may look like a tornado, but  I get to sit and watch my daughter as she explores who she is and how strong of a girl she is; her confidence growing with every leap.  I wouldn’t change a thing.

And tomorrow I will be rushing off to Pre-engineering Lego Building to watch the little boy do the same…

I can promise I won’t have showered before that either.

Spill it: What moments of all knowing have you shared with other Mom’s?  Was it a day you pulled one of your kids out of their car seat only to have a avalanche of Starbucks cups follow them out?  Or was it the day you spent in the library with peanut butter filling from a Lindor Ball on your shirt, trying to cover the spot with a book the whole time as you talked to all of your kids friends parents?  PLEASE do share…I am almost peeing my pants typing these stories from my own life, so I want to pee over yours!

If you are wondering why today’s post is so late in getting up, here is your answer:

We were a little preoccupied this morning, filling our bellies with berries, our hair with the breeze, and our hearts with the joy of abundance.

It is the first day we have been able to visit our favorite Pick-Ur-Own organic farm in ages.  I imagine you will find us their every chance we get from now until the end of September!

Can’t wait to make my bag of Salsa Verde fresh from the farm!  They bag it for you with a recipe attached, all you have to do is pick a bunch of cilantro and a few Serrano chili’s and you are off to the races!  I think I will get the kit for the red bag of salsa next week!  Delicious!

We could smell this gentleman’s work all the way out in the strawberry fields, wafting on the breeze, making us hungry!

This pig is HUGE.  I thought her name was Miss Piggy, but then I heard someone call her Bacon Bits.  I am not sure any name with ‘bit’ in it is very fitting!

As you can see, we will be busy eating fresh berries for the rest of the day, and yes, I often get a tummy ache the first few hours after we return…but it is SO worth it!

What a way to start our official home school year!  I feel really, really blessed and peaceful.  The smell of dill and roasted chili’s is still in my nose, and the memory of the incredible teamwork the kids and I had going will hopefully last until next week when we do it all over again for just raspberries!

Spill it: What do you make with fresh strawberries that is a MUST with this kind of overflow?  Share your ideas so I can make some!

Before I left for this vacation, I felt the incessant need to get our homeschool room as ready as it could be before I got back.  We are returning six days before the official start of school after all.  The last little project I got done the day before we left was our ‘bulletin board’.

Not a board for updates or anything…but a board that highlighted the seasons with lots of fun photos of the kids.  I totally stole this idea from a friend of mine who doesn’t homeschool, but does have one of these in her house that she changes every season!

First I went to the thrift store, as always, and found a large cork board for $3.  I took it home and covered it with some blue fabric I had purchased for another $3 at another thrift shop a few months earlier.  It is a huge amount of fabric that I am sure will be used for many different projects!

I stapled the fabric to the frame of the cork board so there was a little bit of give.  I wanted to be able to stable the photos and words onto the front, and if I did it too tight, it wouldn’t have been successful.

There are a few baskets I bought from the thrift store that are still waiting patiently to be filled with fun activities for the school aged people to partake in, but we are almost there!

Spill it: If you homeschool, do you prepare a room for your kids to work in?  What are your must haves?

I will post my usual Friday quote at the bottom of this, cause it is dang funny and spoken by my twelve year old niece.

But this morning I got an email from my mother in law about the amazing owls that my kids were fascinated with during her last visit to Colorado.  Turns out they are about to hatch a second set of eggs, which is supposed to start this weekend!  Probably Sunday, but this is nature people, there aren’t any schedules!

I wanted to share it with anyone who might be interested so that you can catch any action that might happen this weekend, the Mamma’s name is Molly, she is patiently warming her eggs now.  Daddy’s name is McGee, he brings all the flesh in over night for everyone to eat.

Evidently NBC Nightly News is doing a segment on the owls on Saturday evening at 6:30 PM Eastern Time to get you started. From my mother in law:

“Most of the adult owl activity takes place at night (San Marcos, CA time) and is shown with the infrared camera (black and white)  but during the day the inside the owl box camera shows in color and it will get rather active once the owlets start moving around.”

You can watch online here and follow her blog here.

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Spill it: How do you teach your kids about nature?  Any ideas you want to share?

It’s the end of the week, and every Friday I leave you  with words of wisdom, anecdotes, interesting and inspiring, even some thought provoking things I might have read or come across, to ponder.  If only to shine a light on simple, natural living, mothering, mamavism, crafting, gardening, sisterhood, children and any other area which might fall into the world of an evolving homemaker.  Which we all are doing.  All of the time.  Evolving, that is…

“Family is not embarasing…unless you are with them.”

~Rachel O’Toole

Obviously, I have a love of books.  Obsession…love…so interchangeable…

I would like to be able to pass on my love of words to my children.  If they latch on to it great, if not, that is alright too I suppose.  But I would be sad that they will miss out on so many adventures and tales that are sure to expand what they think of the world and what they think about themselves.

But we can’t have everything as parents can we?  Might as well learn that little factoid now.

But last week, a dear home schooling friend passed on this fabulous blog to me that I found fascinating and I will be doing a multitude of these projects when I get home!  One I have finished already!

The blog is The Snail’s Trail and this little work box activity was so brilliant I was disappointed I hadn’t thought of it myself!  I hit up Home Depot and Lowe’s the very day I discovered it and got to work. Visit her site for the full list of consonants, word families, and diagraphs that I used.

I couldn’t find the long paint chips of seven at any of the stores I scoped, so I used the ones with four paint chips and did my best!  But it was fun, and I can’t wait to get back from vacation and start school with these gems to help us out!

FUN!

So smart and so easy! Enjoy!

Spill it: Any brilliance of ideas/websites you have come across that you wish you had thought of first?  Any fun ideas for passing on the love of reading, if we get so lucky, to your kids?

Just sharing a few photos today of some felt board projects we have come up with and actually finished.  I may have a gazillion ideas in my head, and just checked out a book from the library for even more, but these are the ones that have come to fruition!

Why is it that the number of things we want to create and the amount of time in a day don’t coincide?  God must have organized time on the same day as creating the mosquito and the tick, it was just one of those days…

Here we have an oceanic scene, complete with orca, dolphin, crab, starfish, clown fish, coral and seaweed.   Who cares if there are some discrepancies in size issues…I am sure there are some breeds of octopus that are the same size as starfish…I just don’t know about them…yet.

I am most proud of these little 3-D fishies!  Their fins jut out into space!

A number activity for the little ones!

And weather for the day that the kids can observe every morning and pick out the corresponding felt! Of course by three o’clock every afternoon it will need to be changed…this is Colorado after all.  My son insisted on the tornado, so a tornado he got.  I am sure it will be used more often with our farm scene than on our whether chart, but hey, you never know.

After I go through the library book and create more madness, I will update again, and then I will be on a felt hiatus for a few weeks at least! The uses for the boards in education are really endless!

Spill it: Name one thing that you have a gazillion ideas for, yet you have not the time to complete!  I know everyone has at least one area…what is yours? Recipes?  Scrapbooking?  Trails you want to run?

Since the cat is out of the bag that we are homeschooling, I thought I would pass on a little idea that I got from our sons short sojourn into the world of Montessori, that you can use at home.

It is an addition finger chart, and once they know how to write numbers, and have an idea of addition, they can use this on their own to work through addition problems!

First I create the charts as an Excel spreadsheet:

Then I trimmed around the edge and glued them with rubber cement onto foam core:

Using an exact-o knife, I trimmed around the edge of the chart.  I have two munchkins, so I of course had to make two.   Then I went back to Excel to create the addition worksheets:

Basically the addition charts are taking each of the numbers 0-9 and adding them to each of the numbers.  For example, my 1 addition sheet looks like this:

1

1 + 0 =

1 + 1 =

1 + 2 =

1 + 3 =

1 + 4 =

1 + 5 =

1 + 6 =

1 + 7 =

1 + 8 =

1 + 9 =

Then, they take their chart and their worksheet, and can run one finger across to the 1 in the blue row, and then one finger down the red row to the 9, where their fingers meet is the answer! Here is a good link to describe how to use it from Montessori Primary Guide.

My son already, in just a few days, has gone over to his ‘school’ area, picked the basket up with these in it and done a worksheet on his own, multiple times.  No prodding from me!

*By popular demand, you can download the finger chart and download the addition worksheets too!

Spill it: What are some methods you created by hand to help your teach your kids?  Any fun links to pass on?

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It is official.

We are a homeschooling family as of today.

We have mostly been keeping our thoughts this summer to ourselves, trying to figure out what was best for our family and our little boy.  We haven’t spread it much or discussed it with friends, not wanting to lose our spot in the school he was in because they ‘heard’ it from someone.  We really didn’t need to complicate our own feelings with those of even the best intentioned folks.

That is how I knew.  I knew it was what we would do when I didn’t need a lot of discussion about it.  When I stopped asking other peoples opinions.  When I got quiet and listened to my intuition instead of my brain, which loves to loop the same questions over and over like a broken record, as if that is going to help come to a conclusion.

We just now got back from filling out his paperwork for a one day a week ‘school’ day that he will go  to for enrichment.  We then emailed his old school passing on the information to them, that our school choice has changed.

It wasn’t easy.  All of us want what is best for our kids.  But my husband and I think this is best for our family.

Period.

(But I can tell you I am really excited and we have lots of fabulous inspiring families and friends to draw from!)

Spill it: When you are rolling around big decisions, how do you know when you have your answer?  Do you brain it out like I used to?  Or do you go straight to the heart of the matter, yours, and trust what it is telling you?