My Baby is Five

My sweet baby girl turned 5 yesterday!  It so hard to believe that she is that old already!  She was very excited about her birthday and had literally been counting down the days for months. 

She asked on the eve of her birthday could she wake up in the middle of the night and open her presents.  Needless to say that was the first thing on her agenda when she woke up. 

Since it was her birthday, she was able to choose what we did.  She wanted a McGriddle from McDonalds.  She wanted to go inside to eat and so we did. She enjoyed playing on the indoor play structure.  We left McDonalds and went to Jumping Beans.  She had so much fun jumping and climbing.  We had cheese pizza for lunch at Jumping Beans.  Next she wanted to come home and help make her cake while the two younger ones napped.  While the cake was baking, we went outside to put together her new climbing wall. 

For dinner, she chose to go to Andy’s and then we came home and sung Happy Birthday and she blew out her candles which in her book signifies turning 5.  Before she blew out her candles, she was still 4.  After cake we played her new game Zingo.

     

I love my little (big) girl!  I am grateful to get to be her Mommy!

She is now counting down the days until her birthday party which is this upcoming Saturday.

Co-op Day

We are talking about Community Helpers for the next two weeks in school. Today was our homeschooling co-op day.  We discussed dentists.  We read Oh, The Things You Can Do that are Good for You by Tish Rabe.  We then did an experiment with what drinks are good for our teeth.  We used clean egg shells and soaked them overnight in different drinks (OJ, water, milk, coke, No sugar added Cranberry juice, Green Tea).  Everyone predicted what they thought was good for their teeth.  We then looked at the results of our experiment to determine if our predictions were correct.  It was amazing what sugar does to the eggshells and in turn how it affects our tooth enamel.  Next, Arianna and Alana cut out pictures of different foods to make a chart of what foods are good for us. We had lunch together and then went outside to play.  Alana and Aaron went home for nap and then came back for dinner.  After dinner we played and then watched Lady and the Tramp.

Here is our chart of our predictions and the actual results at the end.

 

Arianna and Alana cutting out pics of food

Enjoying lunch together

Arianna, Ryan and Layla squeezed on the gator

 

Watching a movie in their PJs

Music Class

I can't seem to get the photo album to attach to this blog entry despite doing it in the past. I have been trying to get this post up for about a week.

One of our dear friends had a music class for homeschoolers last week. The kids had so much fun learning to play the piano, the violin, the drums and dancing. Here is a link to the photo album. Hopefully you will be able to see pics there.

Cousins

We are excited to have my 3 year old niece with us for the next 2 weeks.  The kids are having a blast together!  I tried to get a picture of the 3 of them together and this is my feeble unsuccessful attempt…

 

They are having too much fun falling to stand still for a picture!  Notice King Apollo in most of the pictures!

Last night they were playing dress up. Layla went upstairs and came down with the Buzz Light Year costume.  She put it the leg part on her head and thought it was so funny!  You can see the outline of her face.  Silly Cousins!

Making of a King

Apollo (our dog) has had an eventful weekend.  Chris and I were supposed to go to a marriage retreat.  We dropped the kids off on Wednesday.  Thursday night we have a relaxing no kids night and were excited to get a full uninterrupted nights sleep.  We are wakened at 3am with our oldest dog having a seizure in his crate.  He came out of that seizure and then went into another seizure within minutes.  He had cluster seizures for about 2 hours.  We went to the emergency around 4:30am vet and they had to give him valium to stop the seizures.  He has had seizures in the past but they usually only last about 3-5 minutes.  We went to our regular vet and he was put on phenobarbital which is an anti-seizure medication for epilepsy. 

We had to miss the marriage retreat because Apollo had to be closely monitored for the next few days.  Through the weekend he became such a spoiled dog!  He slept in our bed with us.  He went with us to pick up the kids.  He even got to go geocaching with us.  He thinks he is a king now! When we leave the house he thinks he is supposed to go with us. 

He is doing well thus far on the new meds.  He hasn’t had any break through seizures and seems to back to his normal self.  I am thankful he survived those cluster of seizures as the vet said that it was life threatening. 

 

Apollo was good luck geocaching.  We found a Geocoin and a Travel Bug.  In this picture, Chris and I are holding King Apollo and the 2 finds.

Misc Pics to Share

I am posting a photo album of some pics from early February.  You can look at the comment under each photo to see my comments.

Enjoy

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Homeschooling Ramblings

I met a lady last night who is a public school teacher and thought it was really cool that we were homeschooling. She was full of questions and encouragement. It is not often that I meet someone so positive about homeschooling and yet does not homeschool and especially one that works in the public schools. My biggest critics are usually the current or previous public school teachers. Especially since we do not follow the public school curriculum nor do we have any intention of doing so. I even once had a lady checking us out ask me if I was a teacher and I told her I homeschool and she asked me shocked “They still let you do that”.

My latest joke is that my kids have an IEP (Individualized Education Program). If they were in fact special needs then people would be less likely to question that I teach towards their interests and current level and don’t follow the traditional public education curriculum. I love that we can spend days on their current interest and allow them to learn subjects intermingled (similar to real life) instead of teaching them separately at individual sittings. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for my children’s great health and that they are not truly special needs.

It is amazing now that we call what we do “Kindergarten” how much more my critics are concerned about my children’s school progress. Truthfully it isn’t very different than what we did in December, Arianna was just at the Kindergarten level or higher in most things so we begin calling it Kindergarten in January. I still teach based on her interests and at her current level.

I recently googled some Kindergarten schedules to see what they looked like and how far off we are. It is amazing how we can cover everything and more than the the kindergarten calendars in a fraction of the time. I have read (can’t remember where) that all you need is 30 minutes structured instruction per day and you will be teaching the same if not more than they do in a public school Kindergarten. So much time is spent on other things such as classroom management, potty breaks, waiting in lines, etc. An equation I once read was 6 hours/day divided by 20 students=18 minutes per student subtract: Recess, Lunch, Fire drills, Art, PE, Music, unplanned interruptions, etc. Using that equation, my kids are getting tons more individualized instruction per day than the average public school kid.

I recently read a fellow bloggers post that encouraged me. Check it out at Life In Grace . I have added the book she discussed (Dumbing Us Down) to my reading list. Now if I could only find enough time to read the many books on my reading list…that would be a great accomplishment. Homeschooling does take away a lot of my free time:) Even if I only did 30 minutes/day with the kids, I also have the lesson planning, preparing for the activities, researching, etc that goes into each day. I am not complaining at all, I LOVE homeschooling and seeing the difference made in my kids is priceless!

Just remember that if you stop by my home, you are likely to see a mess! Cleaning tends to take a backseat to homeschooling!

New Band, Video Games and Sweet Dreams

Ari and Ryan were so cute. The music center rarely got used but when I changed the playroom around, it is a well used center.  They turn on a song and then they play and sing to it. 

This is Ari inside of Chris’ sweatshirt and playing her leapster video game.  She had her legs out the arm holes. Silly girl!

Ryan has been asking to sleep with Ari at night.  Here they finally fell asleep together. 

Spoiled

The kids and I changed around our school room the other day.  Before you see the pictures, I want to share my thoughts/disclaimer. 

First, we have way to many toys.  I know that.  Despite going through toys at Christmas and giving away 2 bins and having 4-5 more bins that we put up in the attic for a yard sale, we still have lots of toys.    We got enough toys for Christmas for 2 children’s entire stock of toys. 

With that said, I love our school room.  It is very conducive to self-directed play.  It also is set up in a manner that is organized and usable.  I don’t feel like out kids miss out on preschool because truly they have their own preschool in the playroom.  However I often feel guilty when I show people are school room.  We have way too much. 

Chris and I have discussed limiting the number of gifts that are given during Christmas and birthdays.  We have talked about ways to combat all that our children have.  We try really hard to teach our children to be giving and to share all that God has given them.  We try to teach them to be grateful for all that they have.  We try to teach them to love God and family more than any toy they own.  We try to teach to enjoy the little things such as cereal boxes and coffee cans.  Yet they have more than probably a third world country’s entire population of children combined. 

We do tend to have more educational toys than “commercial” toys.  I call those toys that look pretty in the box and are only played with a time or two commercial toys.  Those are the toys that are marketed on the commercials.  Those toys usually don’t last long at our house and end up in the attic ready to be sold on Craig’s list or the next yard sale.  We much more prefer the toys that encourage creativity and critical thinking skills than the commercial toys.

With all of that said, enjoy the pictures of our changed around school room…

This is the Art/Writing center. 

 

This is the Music center.

This is Library.  The puppet theatre is in the bay window. 

This is Block center/Circle Time Area.

This is Science Center.

 

This is Home Living Center.

This is Math/Manipulative Center.  

Ari worked on labeling things in the school room. 

Later, she brought labels for our bed that she taped onto to each of our corresponding sides:)

Boys will be Boys

While the saying above usually irks me because it is typically used as an excuse for poor behavior, there is some amount of truth to it.  Refer back to my post from earlier this month entitled Boys vs Girls.  Enter into evidence the following pictures…how can one be so opposed to girls and yet so excited to be in ballet class with his sister…not just excited but dressed head to toe in pink.   This only happened once and no Arianna didn’t talk him into it.  He found her tights from the day and was interested in trying to put them on all by himself.  That evolved into Arianna getting dressed up in her ballet clothes which led Ryan to end up in a leotard.  Granted he cried soon after because it was his turn to wear the black outfit.  As I said in my previous post, I am quite open minded to dolls and such but it was a bit challenging seeing my sweet baby BOY dressed in pink from head to toe.  I am glad that in general he has his VERY STRONG opinions against girl things.

9 Happy Years

I meant to post this on our actual anniversary (1/29) but that was a busy co-op day and then we went out to eat that night and then we enjoyed our evening together!:) 

In honor of our anniversary, I thought I would share our engagement story.

We got engaged on July 24, 1999.  We were going up to the mountains of NC to a friends wedding. I thought her wedding started at 4:00 so we had planned to go to the Blue Ridge Parkway and sight see.  On our way Saturday morning, I found out that the wedding was actually at 2:00 and I had to be there early because I was handing out programs.  I told Chris that we wouldn’t get to go up into the mountains.  He was extremely disappointed (at the time I didn’t understand why.) We went to my friends wedding and then went back to my parent’s house for dinner(they were out of town).  Chris cooked dinner while I went downstairs to play with my dog (yes, I was even spoiled then by my soon to be husband!)  All of a sudden Chris asked me to come upstairs quickly.  I thought he might have broken something.  He tells me to look out the kitchen window.  I did and didn’t know what he was so worked up about.  He said “Do you see the red bird (cardinal)?”  I did but I figured a family member of mine had left the stuffed beanie baby cardinal on the back deck so I didn’t think it was significant.  Chris said let’s go outside and see it.  He picked up the cardinal and said “Make a Wish!” (Side note:  it had been our tradition to make a wish when a cardinal flew across our path).  He asked what I wished for and I told him that I couldn’t tell him or it wouldn’t come true.  He said I’ll tell you what I wish “I wish for you to be my wife!”  He got down on one knee and turned the bird around—it had a ring tied to it’s neck.  He proceeded to ask me to marry him.  I said “YES!”

I have an amazing husband who spoils me!  He is by far my best friend in the whole world!  I am very grateful to have someone like him to share a life with!

  We got married before the digital age and I don’t have any pics on my computer from our wedding.  This is the first picture that I could find of us that was digital. I don’t have a scanner so I can’t scan anything in.  The picture is from 2006.

WWF at our home

Ari and Ryan had friends over last weekend.  My kids love to wrestle with Chris.   I join in sometimes but the kids don’t like it as much for me to be involved because they get upset that Chris is hurting me.  He is rough.  The kids love it though and keep coming back for more.  Well last weekend all 4 kids wanted to wrestle with Chris.  These are the pictures from the event.  They wore Chris out!    

Ryan usually gets hurt at least once but then he climbs back into the ring.

Our fun and busy day with other Homeschoolers

On Monday we joined one of the local homeschooling groups in the morning at Langley’s Gymnastics.  Ryan’s friend Aaron joined us for the day.  The kids had so much fun!  Unfortunately you have to miss the photo op of me stuck in the foam pit. I got in to “play” with the kids and got stuck.  It is really, really hard to get out of those things.  I tried to play it cool but finally had to cross over to the otherside to climb on a “boat(mat)” and climb out from that.  The kids made it look so easy!

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That afternoon, we went to the museum with our Homeschooling Group from church.  We went to the Meet the Animals Class where we got to see and pet a live alligator.  The kids had a great time together.

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Whoever said that a disadvantage of homeschooling was socialization, obviously never homeschooled!

Homeschooling Co-op

I have been blessed to meet a dear friend last summer at our pool.  (I joined the pool solely to meet others in our new neighborhood.)  She lives nearby, has kids my kids age and homeschools.  Not to mention, we have similar philosophies of homeschooling. What more could I ask for? On top of that, our kids adore each other. 

We decided to begin a co-op together in January and it is going great!  She teaches my kids one week and then I teach her kids the next week.  The kids look forward to the times together, have the privilege of learning from another adult, and one Mom gets a break. 

I am so grateful for Beth’s friendship and her positive influence on my kids life. 

 

Alana and Arianna made up a story together about a Snow House. 

Playing outdoors together at co-op…Ryan and Aaron nailing nails into a board