Tag Archives: pictures

Thursday – Day Four

Posted in children, Family, Homeschooling, Kids, parenting, School-at-home, Uncategorized, Unschooling by

Well first thing this morning neither child had forgotten I promised a BEN 10 episode, so they started their day off with a cartoon. When the one was over, they were hooked and wanted more, more, more…so I figured if they worked together to clean my daughter’s room (which looked like a tornado blew thru a hoarder room) Then I would agree to another Ben 10.

 A few minutes later they came out and said they were finished. I’m pretty sure this is not the case. I ask, did you really clean up her room in that short of time? And they said, OH I THOUGHT YOU JUST WANTED A NICEPATH THRU HER ROOM…ha ha! So I look, they had neatly shoved everything to the sides so one might have a lovely path threw the disaster zone.

 With a little guidance they did a beautiful job on her room and they also worked on compromise, working together to tackle a fairly large job (giant really for a kid!) I could hear them deciding who would do what. It was pretty cute!

 A few jobs needed to be accomplished before our play dates arrived today.

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 We had two separate play dates today and to be honest I got way side tracked chatting with my mama friends to document much of today. I do have photos to share, but not a lot of “homeschooling” stuff other then SOCIALIZING…today was SOCIALIZING DAY! Ha ha! 🙂

 A little dress up time:

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Breakfast time:

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 My son is researching Ben 10 alien costumes and preparing himself for HALLOWEEN already! He will most likely change his mind a billion times, so we have a rule, I will purchase ONE costume, but if you decide you want to be something else, then you have to make the costume yourself using stuff from our dress up bin….or literally MAKE IT yourself with card board or whatever you have to use.

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 Contemplating life I suppose? I wonder if school kids get much quiet time to just think their thoughts. I know when I have a busy day it takes a lot of quiet practice to come down and feel grounded and able to just think my thoughts, so I love seeing my kids pondering life or maybe Ben 10 costumes ha ha!, but just having quiet moments to think their own personal private thoughts.

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image Son: Did you know your body is complex? You can eat upside down! (as he puts a handful of popcorn in his mouth upside down…apparently one can defy gravity in some ways)

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Play time: (trying to sort out weapons, game rules, costumes…all really important stuff!)

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Lunch Time:

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 Playing after Lunch…(mama is starting to loose steam and forgetting to document…sorry!)

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 Kids came in the room where the mama chat was going on, so I have a few photos of the games they pulled out and played…

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Then back to base camp to plot some more weapons, war tactics, game rules and strategies for conquering the other team!

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 Little break to jump on the trampoline (and it is hard to see but one kiddo is up in the tree)

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These magnets are still fascinating to him. He has had three days of processing these magnets. I know more is going on up in his brain regarding the magnets then just positive negative charges…he had that mastered when he was two! I’m guessing Thomas Edison type stuff, so I’m glad there isn’t fire involved and it’s just magnets! ha ha!

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A bit later one set of friends left and another arrived…The girls were playing with the doll house and it wasn’t really my son’s gig, so he played this game by himself in more of a puzzly way.

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 This is where I failed on documentation miserably today…I was having a nice time visiting with friends and the kids happily playing. The day got away from me… 

Dinner time… 

Bath… 

I took the kids out for an ice cream. As much as I dislike them having ice cream right before bed, I had promised it to them two days ago. I figured we should just get that promise over with and hopefully the sugar crash happens in their sleep. Ha ha!

 I’m going to snuggle up with hubby and watch whatever show he’s watching then head for bed…I hope to do a better job tomorrow. 

I’ve been thinking about it, I think I will try this again in the fall/winter when we are doing more schooly things then we do during the summer. We do school year round, but we are relaxed schoolers and the month of July we are SUPER relaxed schoolers…lol…might not be the best week, oh well, hind sight is alwasy 20/20 we’ll do it again some time down the road… 

Good night!

Our Homeschooling Week In Photos

Posted in children, Deschooling, Family, Homeschooling, Kids, parenting, School-at-home, Uncategorized, Unschooling by

I was thinking back to the beginning and how I really wished someone would document their week in photos. I needed to see what people did. I read about a typical day. I found schedules and charts. But I needed to see pictures, I needed a visual aid!

I am only one fish in a giant sea of homeschoolers, so I am not saying OUR WAY is the only way or the right way. Each family has to find their own groove. Figure out your families goals and priorities. What works for the different personalities in your family, the different learning styles, teaching styles, etc…

This is OUR family. This is what works for us. I hope it is helpful to see how we go about our days.

For the record: I will not be documenting everything, but I will do my best to give you a good idea of our days.

Hopefully I can convey the sense of peace homeschooling brings our family…but of course because that is my hope, it will probably turn into a Murphy’s Law week haha! Which in itself might give my readers a sense of normalcy and relief they aren’t the only ones having a wacky day here and there…haha! 🙂

Here we go…wish us luck…

I didn’t plan on starting until tomorrow, but why not start now?

Sunday evening

Earlier this evening my son was finishing up an audio story, Sara and Solomon

While he was doing that, my daughter was creating something with play dough.

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After a lot of rolling, pinching, smashing, pushing, poking and exercising just about every fine motor skill one could work on, she had created a duck, on a lake near an island with a palm tree. (Must admit she is more talented with play dough creations then her dear mama. I had pretty much only mastered the snake, worm, a ball, and the ever famous ash tray, but not much more haha!)

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All that play dough work is enhancing her future writing skills. Great for all ages IMHO.

We sat down to a delicious dinner, ate and then went for a family walk.

My daughter caught bugs (or attempted to) my son mastered his stick throwing skills. My husband and I just enjoyed the walk while the kids ran ahead, hopping, skipping and laughing while the dog begged for another stick to be tossed.

After our walk, everyone snuggled up on the sofa to watch a bedtime cartoon and eat ice cream. (I quietly excused myself after eating ice cream, to the back room and sipped a cup of tea in solitude)

We brushed teeth and did all that bedtime routine stuff, jammies, teeth, etc…and the kids crawled into bed. Because they were in bed fairly early, they asked for an audio story, so I put on Nate The Great audio download (library overdrive option…big fan of free!)

That was our evening tonight, not overly exciting, but it was nice…

…goodnight

Hopefully I will have more photos and fewer words tomorrow. 🙂

Reality Check for New Moms – Scrapbooking

Posted in children, Family, Kids, parenting by

I keep getting “Creative Memories” sale notifications. This has brought to my attention the massive amounts of scrapbooking materials I purchased right before I had my first child. I was ready to make amazing perfect creative memories. Or open a scrapbooking store, lol.

I took my first child to have his photos taken professionally every month on the day of his birth, so my scrap-book would be perfect, he’s 1 month old, 2 months old, 3 months old, and so on…I did this for at least the first two years of his life…when baby number two arrive I continue each month, but quickly dropped the professional aspect and only really had time to pluck out cute shots from my obsessive ‘camera in baby’s face constantly’ collection.

This obsessive photo documentation must give you some insight to my determination towards making these creative memories. I am the youngest of five and the only documentation I have of myself as a baby is the card from the hospital nursery identifying me.

Truth be known alllll of those amazing scrapbooking tools went untouched.

All I had time for was sticking each months photos into an old fashion paper scrapbook and jotting some notes down on the sides of each photo stating what he or she was doing developmentally or some comical tid bit that happened. Spelling wasnt perfect, handwriting was messy, even have some scratched out words, etc but the intention was to pluck from this book and make a beautiful perfect creative memory out of it when I had time. Ahhh good intentions….haha!

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I was flipping thru this book the other day and realizing this is THE BEST CREATIVE MEMORY EVER!!! I love this book. I love to flip thru the pages, read the notes, see the photos, look back on those fun, crazy, TIRED days and know from the scratched out and quickly jotted notes just how it really was, perfect in our own special way. I love having this hard copy because I recently lost digital photos that were not backed up in time.

I highly recommend new moms to toss aside the notion of perfect.

Your definition of perfect will quickly be changing. You will endure spit up, poop explosions, inconvenient lactation issues, exhaustion, bad hair days, bad mood days, messy house, the biggest laundry piles you’ve ever seen, etc… Simply try to enjoy your child(ren) during that chaotic time, document it the best you can without causing yourself additional insanity. When things get less crazy and you look back, you will be so glad you have this silly scratched out not perfect memory book of the kids.