Homeschool Funk Solutions

December 30, 2015

So I decided part of our homeschool funk since the move was that we were never getting out of the house to do anything hands on and fun. Well that is all about to change. I am stepping out of my comfort zone once again and planning field trips and outings for the rest of the school year.  Since I am brand new to the area and don't know where to begin when it comes to finding places to go for field trips I bought a book to help me.  And for those living in the Utah area is has been the best book for finding kid friendly places to go and things to do that I would not have come up with or thought of on my own.

It is broken up into sections like Historic sites, gardens and outdoors, playgrounds and parks, hikes and nature walks etc.  Purchased on a whim off a book store shelf because I needed guidance to get us out of the house this has been a wonderful little find and we now have field trips to get us out and exploring the area we live in from now until the end of the school year planned and on the calendar.  And let's be honest as a homeschooling mom if it isn't on the schedule it most likely gets forgotten and missed out on.  It is amazing how a little fun planned into things can make everything else just a little more energizing and fun. I am now actually looking forward to starting school again with the kids when our winter break is over.

Yoga With a Sumo Wrestling 2 Year Old

December 2015

Well, I tried Yoga this morning. I lasted a whole five minutes before the kids joined me. Nice because we can count it for PE today. Not nice because I only made it about seven minutes into the forty-five minute workout before it was too hard and I couldn't do it anymore.

Plus who can exercise with a two year old jumping all over you like a sumo wrestler? It's seven minutes more then yesterday. And that means I can last at least seven minutes tomorrow right?  Well maybe I expect that will all depend on whether sumo baby is in attendance as well.

Snow and the Kids Want to Know

December 14, 2015

My kids have grown up in the southern desert of Arizona up until now and this is our first year experiencing snow in the winter time.  So you can bet your boots I cancelled our morning school work when it started to snow and all the kids wanted to go outside and play.  Especially when they cancelled public school for Jeremiah too.

It started snowing last night and has continued on and still is snowing lightly presently. The kids are all outside having a snowball fight for their lunch break from school work.

One of the first things my kids did was only last about ten minutes before they had to come inside to get a second pair of socks on their feet and a second set of gloves for their hands so they could go back outside and keep playing.

Winter clothes such as snow shoes, scarves, mittens, gloves, coats and ear muffs what are those?  Things I have never before needed to purchase in my life and now I find myself in need to quickly go and outfit a family of seven properly for a snow and cold filled winter.

It's so funny because all morning I keep getting asked if we are going to have a "white christmas" like in the movies. We've got at least 4 inches maybe more.  It was so fun to sip hot chocolate this morning and watch from the windows as my kids discovered the joys of the winter season.

Joy's I remember getting a fleeting taste of when we visited my grandparents around December for the family Christmas party and there never quite being enough snow for more then a 12 inch tall snowman scrapped together with the sprinkling of snow on the hoods of the cars in the driveway.  Or one year when Showlow really got a lot the weekend we visited and we got to go sledding with my Aunt and have a proper snowball fight.

I am grateful for this moment for my children and for the memories it gives.  And I count my blessings today.

Sleepover's and Geography

October 30, 2015

I am totally loving listening to my 7 year old teach his cousin who is also 7 all about US geography while they do a puzzle during a sleep over. From telling Iowa and Ohio apart to figuring out where Virginia is because we have family there or the exact spot of the 4 corners. I am so humbled by how much he has absorbed just by the family discussions we have had.

We absolutely love this puzzle.  It has been the best way to teach my kids their US states and capitals.  Even Jeremiah likes to try and help put it together and I can just predict that Kyrilene will too in a few years.

School Break and Now They Play School

October 30, 2015

I tell the kids we are taking a school break starting today until after we move and what do I find them doing this afternoon? Playing School of course. Maybe I should give them a break everyday. We might get more done. LOL!

My Daughter Has Bangs

October 23, 2015

After working at home with my ten year old daughter for the last two months of school this spring and starting homeschool again in August after summer break I realized something I found super interesting.  My sweet girl has bangs again.  Just a few weeks after withdrawing her from public school and beginning our journey learning together in April I noticed that she had super short spikes of hair all over the top of her head and especially right along the front where bangs would normally be.  Since she doesn’t like bangs and didn’t have any before I asked if she had cut her hair on her own.

Mortified she insisted that she had definitely not cut her hair and so we tried to figure out what was going on.  Eventually after quite a conversation we discovered this.  She had been so stressed out and frustrated at school that she had started pulling her own hair out one hair at time whenever she felt over-whelmed and stressed out.  This feeling had apparently been just about all the time from the damage I could see growing back.

Now after six and a half months doing school at home I can finally see that we have succeeded with this issue at least.  She is no longer stressed out and pulling her hair.  It’s growing back.  The top is long enough it blends in with the rest and you can’t tell it was ever super short and spikey.  And her bangs while they still annoy her, they also no longer embarrass her whenever we go anywhere because they are proper bang length.

This is just one more thing that confirms to me that we really were guided to this homeschool path in order to figure out what is best for my kids.  Because as much as I might have days where I am stressed and could say, you guys make me want to pull my hair out sometimes;  A child, especially a ten year old child should never have to be that stressed out.  Hopefully now she will learn better ways to handle stress than this and we can move forward from here.

Botanical Gardens and Butterflies

October 2015

Our field trip this month was to our local botanical gardens. It was a lovely day that was not too hot which is a blessing in the desert. 

They had an amazing nature Lego exhibit going on with giant Lego sculptures of birds, butterflies and other wildlife. Unfortunately for my children their mother was in charge of taking the photos and the Lego's were not what I took pictures of.

I took pictures of nature. My favorite part of the entire trip were the butterflies. They have a special section at the garden which is a tropical butterfly habitat. In one portion you get the chance to see different butterflies emerge from their chrysalis and in an portion you can walk through and admire the lovely tropical plants and actually see the butterflies they have up close. We spent quite a bit of time in this portion of the garden and poor Jeremiah freaked out when he even thought a butterfly might be getting remotely close to him. However, the one that landed on his brother was just fine to laugh about and look at.

The rest of our walking through the gardens was at least as eventful, because of the girls decided that one of the small cactus looked soft and fuzzy so she was going to pet it. I bet that you can guess how well that went. Her father and I spent at least 15 minutes if not longer careful picking out all the teeny tiny stickers. It was at that moment I decided that every mom needs to carry a roll of packing tape or duct tape in her purse at all times, because if I had had a roll we could have taped her hand and pulled out all the offending spines quite easily. Trust as a someone who grew up in the desert, this works on tiny cactus stickers, I know from personal experience.

The kids also got a kick out of the chickens we found in a pen in the back corner of the garden. Apparently they are kept to help keep mosquito's down and to help fertilize all the plants.

We ended the day with some very tired kids and a botched family photo. Poor Clarissa wanted nothing whatsoever to do with smiling for the camera. The expression on her face shows sheer torture and you would think we had been punishing her greatly by asking her to sit for five minutes and smile for the camera. Oh well I am sure that at some future time we will all get a kick out of the fact that she refused to smile right?

Our final stop was the gift shop where we bought each of the kids a t-shirt to remember to day. My personal favorite when it comes to things to buy because: hey it's clothes, they will wear them out, the shirt won't break in two seconds, and the designs are usually unique. We also bought a wooden art project for them. Each of the older three kids got a 3D wooden puzzle butterfly for paint or color and put together for art the next day and they didn't cost me any more then if I ordered them from Amazon so I was very pleased.

Over all a lovely trip and some beautiful pictures. I think I might just have to start a nature book of some kind to keep a record of all the fun animals and plants I find on our field trips.