Kids Bowl for Free

http://www.kidsbowlfree.com/

Is this legit? Yep. Sign the kids up and take them bowling. I paid $20 for the family pass. We have to pay for our shoes and that's it. So far it has cost me $38 for the bowling. I have only gone once. My one friend bought her kids' shoes and she bowls every week. I don't plan to bowl enough to make it cost effective.

Nature Study--Entomology

I have to fight the urge to turn everything the kids do into a lesson. My kids like to explore and just learn, especially when playing outdoors. As an adult, I want to capture this enthusiasm and turn it into a life lesson on nature. I imagine a structured environment with lots of workbooks, labs and lectures on nature. However, Charlotte Mason instructs us not to do that. She tells parents that the children are to be "'let alone, left to themselves a great deal to take in what they can of the beauty of earth and heavens.'Give them time and space to wonder, grow, watch, see, hear, and touch. During the nature walk, they may sketch and record their observations. In addition they may want to collect small natural treasures in a bag to take home for further study. (Out of Doors for the Children Volume I, Part II). She's right in warning a parent not to speak too much during a nature study. But she also encourages a parent to be in presence to help a child learn.

While I believe in many of Charlotte Mason's concepts with an emphasis in teaching about the natural world, using classics and living books, there's the urge to structure the learning. Mason encourages a mother to be present but I would argue. My children E, G, K & M all were outside teaching one another. I have yet to introduce a nature journal to them the way Mason suggests, but I plan to.

Mason is very much right when she says, "Watch a child standing at gaze at some sight new to him––a plough at work, for instance––and you will see he is as naturally occupied as is a babe at the breast; he is, in fact, taking in the intellectual food which the working faculty of his brain at this period requires. In his early years the child is all eyes; he observes, or, more truly, he perceives, calling sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing to his aid, that he may learn all that is discoverable by him about every new thing that comes under his notice. Everybody knows how a baby fumbles over with soft little fingers, and carries to his mouth, and bangs that it may produce what sound there is in it, the spoon or doll which supercilious grown-up people give him to 'keep him quiet.' The child is at his lessons, and is learning all about it at a rate utterly surprising to the physiologist, who considers how much is implied in the act of 'seeing,' for instance: that to the infant, as to the blind adult restored to sight, there is at first no difference between a flat picture and a solid body,––that the ideas of form and solidity are not obtained by sight at all, but are the judgments of experience."

So instead of squatting next to the children and taking over their own living lessons, I grabbed my camera and took pictures of their learning at work. I am so blessed to be able to home school these wonderful children and am truly thankful for the opportunity every day to be witness to their incredible intellect.

The Attack of the Hot glue Gun!

The actual burn is far smaller but it's nasty. I ran out of band-aids and since I am extremely allergic to latex we created this out of old gauze and tape. So how did this happen? Well, it's simple: I am not good with hot glue guns. Here are a few lessons I have learned while operating the hot glue gun:


1. Hot glue is extremely hot. Do not touch! (I knew this one before I started but figure that the above picture may demonstrate otherwise?)


2. Make your children glue their own crafts together (okay, maybe that's a bad idea. If they are spawn of mine, they may have inherited my lack of hot glue gun expertise).

Now, take a look above. What do you think happened ? No, I am not trying to demonstrate a new way of doing finger shadow puppets. No, I burnt my fingers on the hot glue gun. AFTER, the hot glue dropped on my legs, burning it, I screamed and tried to wipe the HOT glue off my skin. And, yes, I burned myself.

The Boxed Art of Imagination

I am not spontaneous; therefore, we have a schedule for homeschooling. Although I am not rigid with my schedules, I am pretty strict on the girls doing and completing school. Sometimes, though, my children remind me parenting is about living up those spontaneous moments.

Today, E was working with blocks. I sat down next to him and asked him what he was doing. He said, "Building shapes. I'm going to make a triangle for you." He proceeded to make a square.

"That's a square," I said.

He smiled, "Yes, I said I was going to make a square," he proclaimed. And then we made several shapes together.

Later, he was sitting in an empty box and I said, "Are you sailing in a ship."

He said, "No, in a choo-choo train. But it's missing cars, Mommy." So I found several other boxes for him. He grabbed the dog's water container and made it a smoke stack. He managed to convince his sisters to help him decorate them. They sat in the foyer "riding' their choo-choo train for at least an hour.

As parents, we often hear children would rather play with the boxes than what is inside a box. For my children, that is definitely true.

Disappointments

K tried out for soccer. Our rule of thumb is that no matter what you have to try your best and you have to follow through. She chose to give up FRYO (orchestra) for a year so she could commit herself to soccer and learn the sport better. Today, she found out she broke her foot while playing soccer. She also found out she is not on the same team as she was in the spring. Her first reaction was to quit. My first reaction was to let her quit. But, quitting breaks the rules. I asked her when I wrote the check if it was what she wanted.--playing soccer vs orchestra. She wanted to. But not being on the team means not having her friends. I want her to learn not to do things just for friends. Do what you want to do, especially a sport, because you love and want to learn the sport and not because you like certain people.

After clearing my mind, we decided that when the cast comes off, we will practice soccer. We haven't really expected commitment--i.e. passion--from the Alphabet kids. Now, though, we need to start. She doesn't practice anything--soccer, violin, etc. So, now we can learn a hard lesson in the wake of disappointments: we don't quit despite disappointments. The next lesson I'd like her to learn (and I hope it manifests) is just because we don't get what we think we initially want, there may be a chance that what we get it far better and greater. And hard work may get us back to where we want as well.

The way it is decided: The girls try out and based on number scores make the various teams. In the end, she needs to up her game to be on the same team with her friends. If she quits, she won't see these friends (they are only on soccer with her). Plus, she doesn't even have a chance at making their team in the next try-outs (no practice means no skill building). She made a team and will be building skills. As she practices, she's bound to improve and may end up on the same team again.

It's a hard lesson, but a good one.

Latin

So we are trying out a new foreign language program with K. If we like it, I'll introduce it to the other girls. K wants to take Latin but she really wants to do conversational Spanish. She is allowed to take one foreign language class (and bonus--she'll get high school credit) so she had to think about this pretty hard. I hated the fact it was even a decision. She's pretty efficient in her ability to take on more than one language as she has been doing Spanish since 1st grade. So, we discussed it and decided that as a homeschooled child she should be able to do Latin and Spanish. Latin I had to pay for. Spanish will be provided for by the cyberschool.


After reading several reviews and looking at The Well-Trained Mind, we chose Lively Latin. I liked the fact that it is in .pdf form, with online elements, and it's a lifetime membership. So for one price all four children can take Latin.


For me, it is highly important all of my children have a strong language foundation. Latin is where the root of most American-English was formulated from so it is important for K to learn this language. I am actually a little irritated that more schools do not provide this Language class to their students. It probably is one of those classes you should learn as an English major, really.  Ah, but that's another thought process...the things I would have done differently if I could go back to college.


We purchased this program yesterday, so i don't have much to review. I am hoping to review it within the next few months.

Hoarding Revisited

In the course of the last few years I have been posting about my hoarding issues. I have not posted as well as I should, but, I should say, we still have a long way to go because we still hoard--to a lesser extent. We have one whole bedroom and an attic, garage and basement that are screaming for our attention. The biggest villain is Time. We don't have it.