Back to School

We have actually been back to school for about 3 1/2 weeks now. I am just now feeling clear headed about it!

I was feeling kind of lost about how to set up our day.  I started out with a very loose schedule that I immediately realized would not work for long.  And just as I was starting to despair, someone left a book on scheduling in the PEP book box.  It just so happened to be a book I've be interested in for a long time - Managers of their Homes by Steve and Teri Maxwell.  Even more providentially, the book still had its complete scheduling kit.

We have long worked well with a fluid routine and checklists, a schedule is not quite the same.  Our family's needs have started to be too much for being spontaneous and fluid.  (Or maybe I should say that our family's needs have caused me to need a lot of structure.)  I like spontaneity, well I did, until it started making me crazy!

Managers of their Homes covers so much that is relevant to homeschooling  - most notably: finding time to give each kid individual attention spiritually, emotionally, and educationally.  AND it has lots of tips for balancing a baby at the same time.   The book also reads with a very friendly tone, not a superior one.  It is specifically designed for homeschooling families, although there would be some benefit to any family - especially if Mom feels like she is getting nothing done.

So with the system, you make lists of priorities and then transfer them to little slips of paper and arrange them on a big "worksheet".  They suggest using sticky tac, but I'm using painters tape for now.  I do not have the whole day planned yet, but I'm starting to have a good idea of how the day will go through about 1:30.  

Irene's day is the easiest to plan!

Even though we haven't fully implemented the schedule, I am very pleased with how much we've been getting done.  I scheduled in time for playing with the little girls too.  Today when I got the big kids settled in their school work, Natalie looked up and said, "What time is it for me?"  I looked to the schedule and said, "It's time for me to play with you!"  And she was delighted :)

One thing that I planned before school started was making our home kind of like a mini-convention center.   The rooms have to be used for multiple purposes and the furniture arrangement is not ideal for all of them.  After breakfast and chores, we push the table to the wall, which opens up a larger area of floor space.  Part of the morning I set up our art easel (it has a wipe board) in that area to do lessons and part of the morning we set up the "blue mat" for Irene. 

Hall Monitor Mako

After school is done and after our afternoon playtime (usually outside with neighbors), the kids rearrange the room for dinner.

Currently we are only having 3 school days a week - Monday to Wednesday.  On Thursday we have a playgroup meeting that seems to totally disrupt our day.  Friday is PEP, but this is the last week. When summer comes (Ha! it's already summer here!) we will have fewer outside commitments.  (Our playgroup usually takes the summer off and so will Kids Choir.)  However, I'm not sure we will really need a full 5 day week of school.  We may set aside Friday to be a little spontaneous :)

8 Months

Irene celebrated 8 months this weekend:

I'm 8 Months Already!?!

It's mine!

Well so much for my paper plate sign!

Annalise thought hers would work better - paper towel - and it did until...

...Irene noticed!

She's not quite crawling yet, but she likes to get on her hands and knees and rock.  She's got the pincher grasp down.  AND she says "Mama"!  I am not sure it means me, but it means something - I told the kids it means, "Come pick me up you who meets my needs!"

Pretty in Pink

Pinterest Nail or Pinterest Fail?

Four is such a fantastic age. Natalie loves holidays. (She says her favorite is her birthday!) I suggested she and I make special cookies for St. Patrick's Day. Here is the Pinterest inspiration:

And here is one of the better of ours:

I think they turned out well!

Natalie agrees!

Making shamrocks with melted green baking chips - on clearance b/c they were "Christmas" chips.

P.S. - I am totally using this trick for letter writing on cakes in the future.  You can dust them with colored sugar and it looks exactly like glitter!

P.S. 2 - Easiest way to melt chocolate or other baking chips in a baggie - put the chips in a baggie, set aside.  Put a wet dish cloth in the microwave and heat on high for 30 seconds.  Wrap the baggie in the hot cloth and wait a few minutes.  Presto.

Cross section - and my shamrock green nails!

Double Fisting the Cherrios

Animal Morphs

This was fun and easy. We made Animal Morphs and chose the animals to mix with the spinner from our animal bingo game.  You could just pick three animals.  The results:

Panpeacomingo

Dubutterfish

A princess observes a turtle and a lobster...by Natalie.

Rabowleep

Girapigpard

Chalo Nitka

Now the the radio station has spread all across South Florida, we get involved in all sorts of small town activities.  Today we attended Chalo Nitka - the Glades County Fair.  Chalo Nitka means "Day of the Big Bass" in the Miccosukee language, however, the fair was much more a celebration of Seminole heritage.

Caleb rode with Rob in the parade.

There were A LOT of horses!

They had no idea who this was.

Cobra!

This guy did a demonstration with venomous snakes.  Until he got to the cobras, he behaved very causally.  You could tell with the cobras that he knew a lot about snakes.  Nothing bad happened, but it seemed like a very risky show to me!  He had two rattle snakes, a water moccasin, and a coral snake.  Caleb was front and center in the audience! He seemed too close to these snakes for my comfort.

Alligator Wrestler

Seminole Fashion Show - this was very interesting!

We also saw a perfect rainbow.  It was amazing, but by the time I stopped and was ready to take a picture, the sun went behind a cloud and it was gone!

More Mr. Otter Art Projects

We did several projects with Mr. Otter, not all of them photographed well - mostly because I forget to take pictures of them until night time and the lighting in our house is horrible (this is a "So Miami" thing, I guess they figure we can't compete with perfect sunlight, so why bother?) and there is "something wrong" (as I mentioned before - orange light) with the camera.

This one is drawing a frontal view of a face.  Annalise has always liked to draw realistic faces and this tutorial was very gratifiying for her because it helped her draw a face and have it turn out much more like what she envisioned.

These are from the egg shell dragon project.  This is a harder project and has several steps - including removing the egg shell membranes.

Toothless by you-know-who

Annalise didn't want to do a dragon.

I made one of the dragon Kazul from Patricia C. Wrede's Dealing with Dragons.

A Basket of Ribbons

 One of our break goals was to look at art.  To accomplish this, I chose several paintings from the Art Renewal Center website and set them as the desktop background on my computer.  I kept them up until we all seemed to know everything that was in the picture - we didn't get through as many as I planned, but it still worked pretty well.

One we used was called A Basket of Ribbons by Christen Brun.  We decided to remake the painting as a photo - check out the painting here and see what you think or our recreation:

With sepia tone to match the painting a little more.

It turns out there are lots of paintings of people selling ribbons.  I guess it was either a popular career or one that was interesting to paint!

Book Recommendation: Fair Weather

The kids and I recently finished listening to Richard Peck's Fair Weather on CD.  Although I've heard of Peck, I can't remember ever reading anything by him.  Wikipedia claims that he still uses an electric typewriter and "refuses to embrace new technology".  That's kind of ironic because this book is all about embracing what is new. 

Set in 1893, Fair Weather is the story of a 13 year old country girl named Rosie who gets the chance to travel to Chicago for the World Columbian Exposition with her grandfather, older sister, and younger brother.  It is a very nice mix of fact and fiction - only branching a little into feeling unreal (Granddad turns out to really know Buffalo Bill and this brush with real famous people seems out of place in the book to me.) and no apparent anachronisms - something that annoys me excessively in historical fiction.

The kids enjoyed this book, however, it is probably even better for middle school aged kids.  The theme of emerging technology is very pleasantly presented and this would make good fodder for a book report or study of a time in history when many technological changes were on the verge of changing life for everyone - something that was scary then and is still scary even though we live in a time when that is starting to become expected.   I liked it.

You Might Be a 4th Baby...

if your mommy lets you chew on your brother's toy snake...and takes pictures of it.

 

Box Head and....

This morning, Natalie dropped 4 popsicle sticks down the front of my blouse and I didn't realize they were there until I was in church and saw a thin flat shape through the fabric!