Thursday, April 30, 2009
New Schedule
As you can read about here, I am considering staying home more often. As soon as I typed it out, I realized it was something I really needed to give more attention too. For many reasons. I hate driving around all the time. It is easy to lose touch with J and K when we are on the run all day. We're not really interacting much because we're busy doing whatever it is we're doing.
So last night I took a good look at our schedule and decided on a few changes. I am shortening our school week to just three days a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday will be school days. On those days we'll just stay home... no car usage (unless dh is home and has plans). There is a park in our neighborhood we can walk to, we can find time for the nature study I have been trying to incorporate, and we can have time at home to just do nothing.
Tuesday and Thursday are our park days anyway, so they will be days off from schooling. J has capoiera on Tuesdays, and once K is done with her ballet recital, she wants to switch to capoeira. So I will only have one "class" to drag kids around to. Any errands can be accomplished on Tuesday or Thursday, or else saved for the weekend.
It all sounds good in theory. We'll see how it goes.
So last night I took a good look at our schedule and decided on a few changes. I am shortening our school week to just three days a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday will be school days. On those days we'll just stay home... no car usage (unless dh is home and has plans). There is a park in our neighborhood we can walk to, we can find time for the nature study I have been trying to incorporate, and we can have time at home to just do nothing.
Tuesday and Thursday are our park days anyway, so they will be days off from schooling. J has capoiera on Tuesdays, and once K is done with her ballet recital, she wants to switch to capoeira. So I will only have one "class" to drag kids around to. Any errands can be accomplished on Tuesday or Thursday, or else saved for the weekend.
It all sounds good in theory. We'll see how it goes.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
What's Working Wednesdays
It feels like it's been a while since I have been able to get around to the what's working focus. This week I want to give a shout out to the library (yes I just gave a shout out... to the library... go ahead and laugh... I did)
The library rocks! The limit of books you can take out from our library system is 50, and we are almost always at the limit. We have been reading all kinds of neat stuff, some school related, some not so much. We finished reading Little House in the Big Woods. We are reading Little House on the Prairie. We are smack in the middle of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Augustus Gloop just got sucked up the pipes, giggle). I am reading a few parenting books, the kids have books they are looking over, and all of this glorious bounty of books came completely FREE! YAY!!!!!! I love love love love love the library!
And one of our most favoritest things from the library are books on CD. Audio books are just terrific... and a great blessing for a momma who has been spending so much time in the car. Most of the books we get on CD we have read outloud first. It's neat to hear the kids' opinions on how good of a job the narrator has done. We have a few abridged books on CD that I got at the Dollar Tree... nicely done versions of Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Robin Hood, Tales from the Jungle Book, Riki Tiki Tavi, and Brown Wolf. In makes my heart happy that the kids would rather listen to these than to the radio.
But the library opens up whole new worlds of audio book enjoyment. Unabridged versions of so many wonderful children's books, all on CD! We are in the middle of The Wind In the Willows (read by Jim Weiss, he is just brilliant). Previous favorites have included Charlotte's Web (read by EB White himself), Stuart Little, A Little Princess. Shorter read along books are a big hit too (thought he kids prefer to listen without the page-turning signals). And we just borrowed the first two Little House books, and a few other Jim Weiss titles that are literature tie-ins to our history book. I can hardly wait (well, I CAN wait to get in the car AGAIN, but I am excited about listening to new stuff).
I know this whole post is long and rambly... but I really just love the library that much... I get so excited about the thought of new books to read and stories to listen to that I can barely contain myself!
The library rocks! The limit of books you can take out from our library system is 50, and we are almost always at the limit. We have been reading all kinds of neat stuff, some school related, some not so much. We finished reading Little House in the Big Woods. We are reading Little House on the Prairie. We are smack in the middle of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Augustus Gloop just got sucked up the pipes, giggle). I am reading a few parenting books, the kids have books they are looking over, and all of this glorious bounty of books came completely FREE! YAY!!!!!! I love love love love love the library!
And one of our most favoritest things from the library are books on CD. Audio books are just terrific... and a great blessing for a momma who has been spending so much time in the car. Most of the books we get on CD we have read outloud first. It's neat to hear the kids' opinions on how good of a job the narrator has done. We have a few abridged books on CD that I got at the Dollar Tree... nicely done versions of Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Robin Hood, Tales from the Jungle Book, Riki Tiki Tavi, and Brown Wolf. In makes my heart happy that the kids would rather listen to these than to the radio.
But the library opens up whole new worlds of audio book enjoyment. Unabridged versions of so many wonderful children's books, all on CD! We are in the middle of The Wind In the Willows (read by Jim Weiss, he is just brilliant). Previous favorites have included Charlotte's Web (read by EB White himself), Stuart Little, A Little Princess. Shorter read along books are a big hit too (thought he kids prefer to listen without the page-turning signals). And we just borrowed the first two Little House books, and a few other Jim Weiss titles that are literature tie-ins to our history book. I can hardly wait (well, I CAN wait to get in the car AGAIN, but I am excited about listening to new stuff).
I know this whole post is long and rambly... but I really just love the library that much... I get so excited about the thought of new books to read and stories to listen to that I can barely contain myself!
Is there such a thing as nothing to do?
Man, we finally finished the last of the dental appointments... I am refusing to go back til we are due for checkups... five and a half months of dental office freedom! But I still feel like we are so BUSY! J has capoeira once a week. K has ballet once a week and is practicing for her first recital. We have homeschool park day once a week... twice if we catch up with our other homeschool group. And there is still all the other stuff to be done out of the house... groceries, visiting, spontaneous park trips, field trips, etc. And none of this includes the stuff we need to do inside the house... like laundry, school work, dishes, laundry, cooking, laundry... :)
I am seriously thinking of overhauling our whole schedule to try to keep all appointments, playgroups, out of the house commitments etc. to just one or two days a week. I think I will make it a personal challenge to just not use my car a few days a week. Hmmmm.... still mulling this one over. Anyone have words of advice, wisdom, reality check?
I am seriously thinking of overhauling our whole schedule to try to keep all appointments, playgroups, out of the house commitments etc. to just one or two days a week. I think I will make it a personal challenge to just not use my car a few days a week. Hmmmm.... still mulling this one over. Anyone have words of advice, wisdom, reality check?
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
A New Era
Well... it feels like a big milestone here at the Owl Nest...
We finally had to move J to a booster seat.
Here is the backstory. I am a self-described car seat safety freak. I am fairly laid back about lots of things, but car seat safety is MY issue... the one thing known to drive me crazy when others are lax, the one issue I will stay up at night agonizing over. How hard can it be, you ask? Try fitting three kids in the back seat of a Saturn VUE. Not an easy task, my friends! Especially because two of those kids were already riding in Britax Wizards... which are huge. Add to that the fact that you want to keep all kids in 5 point harnesses as long as possible (the Wizards go to 65 lbs) and that you want to keep the baby rear facing (RF) as long as possible (J and K stayed RF til almost 2 years old). Suddenly, the situation looks a bit more complicated!
So after hours of agonizing, measuring seats, researching car seat boards, etc, when W came along we had to forgo the baby bucket (otherwise known as the infant car seat) and go straight to a Radian 80 because it has such a narrow footprint. The beauty of this is that the Radian will keep a child in a 5 point harness up to *80* pounds!!!!!! So off we roll with three car seats, forward facing (FF) Britax for K, RF Radian for W, and FF Britax for J.
Fast forward a year and a half... J is now six and a half, and tall. Just about too tall for the Britax. And too big of a boy for the narrow bodied Radian (which would hold him to 80 lbs but his shoulders don't fit). W is by far the heaviest of all my babies, and is now almost too heavy for the RF limits on the Radian. So now we have to move to plan B.
So, to make a super long story short(er), after literally two hours of wrangling car seats, installing, uninstalling, trying various configurations, we are now ready to roll out again... in a FF Britax for W, a FF Radian for K, and a Graco highback booster for J.
My little owls seem to be getting bigger all the time, and it feels like the end of an era and the beginning of the new one, now that I no longer have any little RF babies riding around in my car and one of my little ones is officially in a booster seat (yes people... I KNOW he is six).
We finally had to move J to a booster seat.
Here is the backstory. I am a self-described car seat safety freak. I am fairly laid back about lots of things, but car seat safety is MY issue... the one thing known to drive me crazy when others are lax, the one issue I will stay up at night agonizing over. How hard can it be, you ask? Try fitting three kids in the back seat of a Saturn VUE. Not an easy task, my friends! Especially because two of those kids were already riding in Britax Wizards... which are huge. Add to that the fact that you want to keep all kids in 5 point harnesses as long as possible (the Wizards go to 65 lbs) and that you want to keep the baby rear facing (RF) as long as possible (J and K stayed RF til almost 2 years old). Suddenly, the situation looks a bit more complicated!
So after hours of agonizing, measuring seats, researching car seat boards, etc, when W came along we had to forgo the baby bucket (otherwise known as the infant car seat) and go straight to a Radian 80 because it has such a narrow footprint. The beauty of this is that the Radian will keep a child in a 5 point harness up to *80* pounds!!!!!! So off we roll with three car seats, forward facing (FF) Britax for K, RF Radian for W, and FF Britax for J.
Fast forward a year and a half... J is now six and a half, and tall. Just about too tall for the Britax. And too big of a boy for the narrow bodied Radian (which would hold him to 80 lbs but his shoulders don't fit). W is by far the heaviest of all my babies, and is now almost too heavy for the RF limits on the Radian. So now we have to move to plan B.
So, to make a super long story short(er), after literally two hours of wrangling car seats, installing, uninstalling, trying various configurations, we are now ready to roll out again... in a FF Britax for W, a FF Radian for K, and a Graco highback booster for J.
My little owls seem to be getting bigger all the time, and it feels like the end of an era and the beginning of the new one, now that I no longer have any little RF babies riding around in my car and one of my little ones is officially in a booster seat (yes people... I KNOW he is six).
Monday, April 20, 2009
Master Yoda I Am
(In my best Frank Oz voice)
An eventful time for us it is. His first light sabre W received. Now, Trainer of young padawan learners I am.
An eventful time for us it is. His first light sabre W received. Now, Trainer of young padawan learners I am.
Man, if you think it is hard to try to type a blog post like this, I challenge you to teach a reading lesson while talking like Yoda!!!! That's what I had to do the other day! Try Not. Do or do not; there is no try! :) And did you know there is a wiki for Star Wars.... Wookieepedia! How cool is that!
And if you are bored, or (like me) you are stuck with a child on your lap who will only sleep if you remain within .0001 mm of him, here is something to entertain you: Rubber Yoda Face
Meanwhile, back on the ranch
I have been neglecting my blog... I know, shame on me :) I just throw all my deep thoughts out there and then disappear for awhile :) I've just been so busy with LIFE lately. We are still in the midst of a billion appointments (well, maybe not QUITE that many) and our schooling is all over the place. J and K are still making progress, but I am feeling kinda slacker-ish about it. I do believe that it is just too much to ask one momma to get three kids to a 9:30 AM appointment (at the dentist, yikes) and still fit schooling in.
But, since we have finished week 5 of our new schooling program, I feel like it's time to take a break from the deep parenting thoughts (there are more.... I seem to have an endless supply of them, but I'll hold off on posting them) and focus on some school-y stuff for a few minutes. I still love having a lesson plan, even if we don't follow it strictly. For the rest of this twelve week term, I would like to find ways to stick a little more closely to the schedule. I am also hoping to add in a few things. Here are the things that are working well (I will make a bulletized list, because then y'all can admire how neat and orderly I am, lol... it's all just a front people):
But, since we have finished week 5 of our new schooling program, I feel like it's time to take a break from the deep parenting thoughts (there are more.... I seem to have an endless supply of them, but I'll hold off on posting them) and focus on some school-y stuff for a few minutes. I still love having a lesson plan, even if we don't follow it strictly. For the rest of this twelve week term, I would like to find ways to stick a little more closely to the schedule. I am also hoping to add in a few things. Here are the things that are working well (I will make a bulletized list, because then y'all can admire how neat and orderly I am, lol... it's all just a front people):
- I have stopped thinking that there is any possibilty I can teach the kids Spanish. I don't speak Spanish. I was a Classics major, folks. Dead languages only, please. So, we are focusing on some cute books that are in English with a few Spanish vocab words sprinkled in. These make nice read alouds, and give the kids a few vocab words in context. We like these books by Ann Whitford Paul and Ethan Long.
- We're enjoying the really short reading lessons in Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Both kids are making a great deal of progress and aren't hating the process. YAY!
- School first thing in the morning is great! On days when I think we will save school for the afternoon, we just never get around to it. Since what we're doing is so literature based, we just snug up on the couch and get to it. Nice. We keep the basket of school books on the end table.
- For composer study, we finished with Mozart and now we are learning about Beethoven. The kids are really enjoying Beethoven Lives Upstairs from the Classical Kids series. This is a reading of the book by the same title, set to Beethoven's music. The kids ask for it over and over in the car. I love how very literary it is, weaving facts about the composer into a very interesting and engaging story. We are also listening to this. (we've been in the car so much lately, we may as well make use of it) This CD is nice (especially since I bought it for a penny plus shipping) but I do wish it had the 9th symphony on it.
- For artist study, we finshed up with DaVinci (J LOVES DaVinci) and we are learning about Monet. I have a few postcard sized prints we have looked at, but mostly I am again trying to keep it literary. We have read a few cute books about Monet, and the kids are able to recognize Impressionism. I am reminding myself that this is really only meant to be an introduction, so I am trying to keep it fun for them.
- We have really slowed our pace for History. We are reading through Story of the World, but taking more like two weeks per chapter, instead of one. This is giving us lots of time to think over the topic, and to include lots of related literature. J especially is enjoying this, and really living the material so I think we'll stick with this slower pace for awhile, even if we don't get through the whole book this year. I am happy to see him excited over learning about the first people, and about ancient Egypt (so far).
And now for the list of things I'd like to work on... more bullet points... YAY!
- I can really see the value in doing a weekly, Charlotte Mason-styled nature study, but I just can't seem to fit it in. I need to brainstorm a way to make this happen.
- I have already mentioned that I would like to stick to our lesson plan a bit better. This isn't just for me, just so I can see us making progress. I think the kids need the structure, too! I think it is important that they see that education is something we value enough to put a priority on. Now if only we could get done with all these appointments... SIGH! I think we will be finished by the end of April.
- Memory work: I would like to have each of the kids learn a poem by heart, and then recite it at the end of the term. We are reading through A Child's Garden of Verses and haven't really been inspired by anything. We may just break out the Mother Goose. J, in an effort to avoid work, made up his own poem... it never ceases to amaze me the lengths to which he will go in an effort to NOT do what is asked! :) But for those of you who are reading this and are my IRL friends, be forewarned... you will probably be invited to the end of term recital.
- PE: My kids are very active creatures (I know some of you are laughing because that mght just be the biggest understatement of the year) but I would like us to do an activity each day that is mom-directed. Something where all of us are doing the same activity at the same time. We have plenty of outside toys and games, it is just a matter of prioritizing this.
Well, that fairly well wraps up my summary of where we are after 5 weeks and where we are headed. I can't promise I'll have more time to post... I am trying to be more emotionally present to my family and those two things seem to be mutually exclusive.
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