It's an Alien Invasion!

Help, we've been abducted by aliens! Alien squash, that is!



Joshua has been begging for several days to paint one of our scalloped squashes, which the boys call "alien saucer squashes," to look like a flying saucer. I normally hate to waste food like that, but we've eaten and frozen pounds and pounds of this stuff, and it's still coming in faster than we can use it. So yesterday, I relented and pulled out the paints:



Everyone ran out to the garden to choose an appropriate canvas...



And painted away happily!





Joshua got pretty detailed with his:










Joseph getting started...



The younger boys mostly had fun mixing up all the paint colors into one big blob on their plates. Amazingly, they didn't make a huge mess!






These are summer squash so they don't last very long before they get squishy, so we'll have to throw away their creations in a couple of days. Hopefully no one will be too disappointed!



I never would have thought that our garden would also be providing objects for art class! But, I'm a big proponent of making do with what we've got on hand, so it works for me! We've even used veggies as a still life for drawing practice in the past week:



I wonder what we'll do with them next! :)

I'm a List-making Fool!!

Now that we've started back to school, it's time to get (re)organized! There's something about a new school year that makes me want to revamp absolutely everything possible about our day-to-day routine. This year, that goes double. After moving last fall, immediately finding out I was pregnant again (before getting organized in our new space) and now starting this school year with a new kindergartener AND a new infant, I'm drowning in the chaos!

So I'm making lists like crazy: home school checklists for myself and the boys, menu lists to simplify shopping and meal times, chore lists for me, chores to train the boys in, lists of craft projects I want to do this year, even lists of things I want to blog about! *grin*

Now, I'm not claiming that many of these lists are actually being implemented all at once here, but it's a start!

My primary list-making obsession focus this week is making a set weekly menu for breakfasts, lunches, and snacks, then using that to create a master shopping list that will cover those meals for the whole month. In other words we will eat the same breakfast every single Monday, etc. I'm hoping that this will significantly simplify shopping and meal prep, and also help me cut down the grocery budget by knowing exactly what to stock up on.

I've got a basic list going, which I'm sure will need tweaking as I actually put it into action. It'll be a process to make sure my meals are nutritionally balanced throughout the day and to see how much of each ingredient we actually use in a month. I have a feeling that's going to be eye-opening for sure. My bunch can EAT!!

Here's my (very general) plan so far:

Monday--breakfast-scrambled eggs, fruit, bread*--lunch-baked pasta (pasta, sauce, mozz. cheese), veggie
Tuesday--breakfast-oatmeal, fruit--lunch-ham or turkey sandwiches
Wednesday--breakfast-cereal w/milk, fruit--lunch-hummus with whole wheat pitas and veggie dippers
Thursday--breakfast-scrambled eggs, fruit, bread*--lunch-grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup
Friday--breakfast-oatmeal, fruit--lunch something with eggs? maybe a quiche or egg salad sandwiches?

*the bread item can be toast, pancakes (I cook extras when I make them on Saturdays), muffins, bagels, etc.

It's still pretty general. I think I want to make it really specific, so I can have an exact shopping list that repeats every week. The other challenge I have right now is trying to incorporate what we are growing ourselves, so there is no waste. We have large quantities of a few different kinds of veggies, and we're also getting about 7 dozen eggs a week. I'm obviously in dire need of some creative ideas for using up eggs, lol!

Once I get my menu plan and shopping lists finalized, I'll be sure to share them--and my other lists-in-the-works, too! :) I'd love any feedback on easy (and cheap!) breakfast, lunch, and snack ideas as well...or any ideas on what to do with all these eggs!

Adventures with Monarchs

One of the consequences of having a house full of boys is that you can pretty much count on various critters being caught and brought into the house in nets, boxes, or jars. Sometimes this is annoying, as when they brought in a frog from the creek and let it loose in the house. Sometimes it is quite handy, as it is now while we are studying insects for science.

We happen to have an abundance of milkweed in the yard, so the boys have been collecting monarch caterpillars and watching their amazing metamorphosis into beautiful butterflies. It's fascinating to watch, even if it means I have to put up with jars of larvae and chrysalises in various stages lined up in my kitchen windowsill!


A monarch larva in the wild...on a milkweed plant next to the chicken coop


Another tiny larva...can you see it?


This little caterpillar has been happily munching on milkweed leaves (provided daily by Jordan and Joseph) for several days now and is ready to make his chrysalis.


Here he goes...


The next morning he looked like this!


Almost done...you can see the orange and black wings showing through the clear chrysalis.


Beautiful butterfly!





Joseph releasing our first adult monarch outside...don't worry, we carefully let the butterfly climb onto his fingers from inside the jar--we didn't grab it by the wings!


And away it goes!

So far we have watched 2 butterflies go from caterpillar to adult. We have a third one still in a jar in the windowsill, which should be done soon. It is so fun to watch! Now if only I could get as excited about the crickets, beetles, and other assorted bugs we have been studying for science!

Home School Report -- One Month Down!

Well, so much for my weekly updates! We've been so busy lately preparing for our anticipated move that I've totally neglected my blog.

We've finished our first full month of school, and things are going well so far! We went camping for a week this month which threw us off a little bit, but we did take our books along and got most of our school work done that week. We've made up the rest in the past week and a half. This is VERY encouraging to me, since we usually struggle to get school work done when we travel. One of the reasons we bought the trailer was to help keep our routines going, even when we're on the road. So far, success!

I don't have many specifics to report, except that I'm so proud of the hard work my boys are doing so far! I think the most exciting thing for me so far is watching Joey learn to read. To me learning to read is one of the biggest hurdles of beginning school, and it's SO rewarding to watch his little face light up when he successfully sounds out a new word. Priceless! I'm so blessed to be the one who gets to teach him! :)

Home School Report -- Week 1

Well our first week is over and it went fabulously well! We finished everything we set out to do, and the boys worked diligently--most of the time! :) I was thrilled to be able to work in some non-basic subjects this week...of course my plan is to do them every week, but in the past extras like art and music (except piano lessons) have always fizzled out--mostly because in the past it has become such a battle just to get the basics done. I really believe, though, that the fun of those extras and looking forward to them will be a big motivator and contributor to the boys' good attitudes towards school. After all, it is easier to get excited about an art project than a math test, right?

Joey has been doing phenomenally well on his reading lessons. Not just the material, which I was already confident would be easy enough for him (he's a bright little guy) but in his excitement and effort to actually DO the lessons. I was halfway expecting a battle each day at reading time. Jordan really had to be coaxed to do his reading lessons often last year, and he is far more compliant than Joey. Joey really wants to learn to read, though! He's ready.

This year I'm adding something new for Joshua and Jonathan--homework. Yes, that doesn't sound terribly earth-shattering, but I've never assigned work specifically to be done outside of our regularly-scheduled school time. While they are good about taking initiative to get their basic subjects done each day, I think they can learn some useful study skills by having assignments that they receive at the beginning of the week and have to turn in by the end of the day on Friday. They have to learn to manage their time and be responsible to get it done, or they'll have to do it over the weekend--which, of course, is no fun!

I still have 2 more subjects to work in, probably next month. We're going to start studying a foreign language--Spanish--this year, but we want to use Rosetta Stone and can't fit it into the budget until next month. I also want to add a writing program-- probably Institute for Excellence in Writing, but again, not in the budget just yet! I make the boys write quite a bit already, as they produce written summaries of each lesson in history and science, and also do written narratives of the literature they read. But I want to start doing something more structured for writing. I was a good writer in school, but for some reason I just don't feel confident teaching my boys to write without a program of some sort!

I'm going to try to post an update each week about what we're doing in school. If nothing else, I can come back here later in the year and read them myself, just to see how far we've come. ;) I know we'll have our ups and downs, just like we always do, but I'm looking forward to a really good year!

First Day of School!

Yes, for us today was the first day of the 2010-2011 school year. Again I have 3 "official" students this year in 6th grade, 4th grade, and 2nd grade, and then Joseph in K4. All of my little scholars sat down to work enthusiastically and we had a productive first day. I hope we can keep up both the productivity AND the happy attitudes! Here they are, at the table ready to begin:




Yes, I removed the math blocks from Josiah's grip after snapping this picture. Please excuse the ketchup on his face--I asked Joshua to help him wash his hands and face after breakfast while I helped Jon with the dishes--obviously the face part was missed!




The 3 big boys started out with math. Here Jordan works on his subtraction skills.



Joseph was so excited to receive a box of brand-new crayons all to himself! He worked on some numbers coloring sheets I printed off Enchanted Learning, and then made patterns with plastic beetles before finally adjourning to the living room with Josiah to watch Thomas the Tank Engine.




I love the look of concentration on Joshua's face as he converts fractions to decimals. I can't believe we now have a middle-schooler! Where does the time go?


Everyone did very well today--I'm so proud of my boys! I still have some schedule-tweaking to do as far as the timing of everything, in order to make sure we're as efficient as we can be. I'm excited to see where this year takes us on our learning adventures!

Yes, The Packaging Is STILL the Best Part!

When you were a small child, do you remember opening a gift, only to set it aside and play with the box? There is one Christmas that stands out in my memory because my mom got a large appliance of some sort, and my sister and I turned that box into a play house and spent hours in the front yard playing in it. I don’t even remember what the present was!

My children are the same way…they love a good box! Over the years we’ve turned boxes into houses, rocket ships, trains, and the like. Their cardboard sides have been used for crafts of all sorts. I’ve started doing more of our shopping on line, and whenever a package is delivered, I have several boys begging for rights to the box! But now, we’re finding that the packing box has another treasure to offer…cornstarch packing peanuts!




Yesterday when Joshua’s new grammar books arrived, I handed a few of the packing peanuts to the boys. They weren’t impressed, until I told them how to dampen the ends and stick them together. Then all hands flew to that box…they had so much fun building with them! It wasn’t a very big box, so the peanut supply was small and they were used up quickly. But oh, they were fun!




Another package was delivered this morning. It was so funny--as soon as I opened the box, the boys grabbed a few peanuts and licked them to see if they would stick! They were more excited about those peanuts (yes, they are the sticky kind, not boring ol’ styrofoam!) than they were about the can of yummy freeze-dried strawberries the peanuts were protecting. I put them away, telling the boys that we would build something with them once they finished their schoolwork. Nothing like a good incentive to keep them on task, right? I can’t wait to see what they will create this time!



Jordan's expression after licking a peanut...he decided he'd rather lick his finger and touch it to the peanut instead! The other boys didn't seem to mind the taste and licked away!




I’m thinking about ordering a big bag of these for the boys. I did a little bit of research, and you can buy colored ones, called Nuudles, specifically for kid’s crafts. Or you can order plain white ones from a packing company. They’re hard to compare price-wise, since the former are labeled with a piece count and the latter by cubic feet. I suspect that the plain ones from a shipping supply store will be less expensive, though. I’ll let you know what I find.




What would you do? Would you spend extra for the fun colors? Or would you stick with cheap basic white, knowing that your children would still have fun with them?

A Little of This, a Little of That...

Proof That They’re Learning SOMETHING…
Thursday afternoon Joshua was trying repeatedly to get Jordan in trouble for eating some candy without permission. I was preoccupied with birthday party preparations and obviously wasn’t responding the way he expected. When I finally “got it” I told him to go to his room—you tattle in this family just to get someone else in trouble and YOU get the punishment. He stormed off in a huff and shouted “I wasn’t tattling! On WHOM did I tattle?!” Looks like we still have quite a bit of work to do on the attitude. But it is encouraging to see that the grammar lessons are finally sticking!




Another Work in Progress…
I finally started cutting a new quilt. I’ve had the fabric for a few months now, but couldn’t decide exactly how I wanted to proceed. While my first quilt followed an online tutorial step-by-step, this one I’m making up myself. The reason? I’m trying to work in pictorial squares that are an odd size. Time will tell if I regret this decision or not. It’s certainly a lot more complicated than I had hoped, and I’m thinking I’ll go back to following a pattern for my next quilt. Oh, I was originally planning to use this fabric for Josiah’s quilt, but Jordan has claimed it for his own! Josiah could care less, so I’ll find him something else.




A Few of My Favorite Things…
This is admittedly late since the weather will hopefully be warming soon, but during the cold winter months I love to sit and relax (okay, I’ll settle for just sitting) with a nice hot drink. I keep three easy mixes on hand—hot cocoa, chai tea, and swiss mocha coffee. Yes, it would be even easier to just buy them at the store, but they’re so much cheaper to make at home, and when I run out, I don’t have to go anywhere to get more. (I'm lazy that way.) I whirl them around in the blender to make them a nice, uniform powder, although that isn’t necessary. Placed in a pretty jar they’d make lovely gifts, too.


Boys Will Be Boys…
…And Joey is a real stinker, in more ways than one! I’m in desperate need of potty training help with my most stubborn (and super smart!) child…we’ve got #1 down pat, but he absolutely refuses to make any progress on #2, despite both lavish bribery and dire threats. I know, I know, no one ever goes off to college in pull-ups, but I’d like to stop buying them well before we start paying tuition! If anyone has any brilliant ideas to motivate this kid, I’d love to hear them. I’m getting desperate!

Preschool Activities

We are 8 school days into our new schedule and for the most part things are going well! The biggest change I've instituted is having everybody together at the table for an hour and 15 minutes in the mornings. Previously I had just Joshua and Jonathan at the table, and the other 3 boys would just play wherever they wanted. More often than not, that arrangement would lead to chaos and messes, and I would have to squeeze in Jordan's schooling during nap time.

Having everyone together is doing wonders as far as reducing the mess and chaos in our home, but it comes with it's own challenge: How do I keep 2 preschoolers, 4 years old and almost 2, sufficiently occupied (and preferably learning something!) during that time?

Last week I dug through the toys we have on hand and came up with several activities they could do at the table. We colored with crayons on blank paper, did lacing cards, strung wooden beads, and played with plastic counting bears. But since each activity holds their attention for only 15-20 minutes or so, I knew I needed to come up with more! I know there are many wonderful activities I can buy for them, and I probably will end up buying some, but for now I wanted to see what I could come up with using stuff I already have on hand.

Over the weekend I made 3 different simple activities: home made play dough, colored pasta, and just some simple cut-up squares of construction paper to glue mosaic-style onto plain paper. I've posted my play dough recipe before here. I colored the noodles using food coloring and rubbing alcohol. I played around with the proportions some so it's not exact, but basically ended up doing this:

1/8 c. alcohol
5-8 drops food coloring
1 c. dry noodles

Mix alcohol and food coloring in a ziplock bag. Add noodles, then squish them around in the liquid mixture for a few minutes. Then I lined a cookie sheet (with sides) with paper towels, scooped the noodles out of the baggie with a slotted spoon, and allowed them to dry overnight.

I made purple, red, yellow, and blue. I found that because of the pasta color, I actually ended up with an orangey-pink color, a brown-ish purple, a greenish color, and the yellow isn't much different from the original noodle color. Here is the finished product, ready for stringing, sorting, or whatever...


And here they are in action--Joseph and Josiah strung them first, then when that got old I gave them egg cartons to sort them in...





Joseph did a good job sorting them by color...


Here are the construction paper squares. I wrote their names really big on 11x17 paper and gave them each a glue stick. I showed them how to glue the squares on their name, but they ended up just gluing them everywhere...





These were some pom poms I had on hand. I've printed up some coloring sheets on the numbers 1-10 and we're learning a different number each day.





Josiah enjoyed the home made play dough...


As did Joseph...


I've been looking through a couple of catalogs for other activities. Before I jump in and start buying things, I want to see what else I can make with what I already have on hand. I'm thinking about trying to make a flannel board with felt items to "stick" on it, and maybe making up some matching/sorting/categorizing-type activities as well.

If any of you have any great ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Here's one last shot of my adorable Joseph having a great time with his play dough!

Getting Our Days in Order...Finally!

We're finally getting back on a schedule for our school week. Yay! I had been putting it off in the interest of getting more sleep in the morning, since that was when Joanna slept best, but the daily chaos was definitely getting to me! We were getting everything done each day, but I felt like I was constantly running in circles because we weren't very organized, and any time the boys aren't working on a specific task, order tends to disappear quickly!

Last week I finally decided enough was enough...I was going to start our day much earlier and schedule our school subjects at the very least. So this is what I started last week:

6:30 I wake up and feed Joanna
7:30 Boys get up and do morning chores
8:00 Breakfast
8:30 Table chores (Josh, Jon, and Jordan)
8:45-10:00 School at the dining table for everybody--Josh and Jon do math and grammar,
Jordan does math, grammar, and phonics, Joey and Josiah do preschool activities
10:00 Jordan and Josiah play together, Joey stays with me, Josh does piano practice, Jon does
writing
10:30 Jordan and Joseph play together, Josiah stays with me, Josh does writing, Jon does piano
practice
11:00 Josh and Jon do spelling or Latin/Greek root words (depending on the day) with me while
the 3 younger boys watch a 30-minute educational show or video
11:30 Josh and Jon do Latin while I read to the 3 younger boys
12:00 Lunch
12:30 Table chores
1:00-3:30 Naps for Joseph, Josiah, and Joanna
1:00-2:00 History or Science for older 3

That's pretty much as far as we've gotten so far. Of course this past week and this week we're replacing some of those subjects with our Olympics unit study. Next week I need to work our last few subjects into the schedule, as well as afternoon chores. And I'm still trying to figure out how best to work Joanna into the mix. Some of our activities are easier to do with a nursing baby than others, so getting her on a fairly predictable time table will be helpful.

As we've gone through this schedule, I'm noticing a few little glitches. My plan is to keep it up until the end of next week, so that I can see how it works once we're done with our unit study and back to just our regular work. At the end of that time, I will begin the tweaking process. I'm thinking I will eventually want to back everything up half an hour and start at 6:00 am--once I'm getting a little bit more sleep!

In case you're interested, I'm using a program called Managers of Their Homes to create my schedule. I had bought this book a few months before Josiah was born, and implemented a schedule shortly after he was born. However, since our lives soon became crazy with preparing to move and then moving, it was soon abandoned. I've been meaning to come back to this resource for quite some time, so I'm pleased that the time has finally come! I've been feeling so much more on top of things now that our time is neatly ordered, and the boys are so much less likely to go crazy if they don't have to wait for me to tell them what to do next! I just love a calm, smoothly running household and school, and I know we are getting closer and closer to accomplishing that goal! :)

I've also been working on time-saving techniques for meals and on activities for my preschoolers to do at the table while my older children do school. More on those later...

Olympic Winter Home School

We've been trying something new this week in our home school--a unit study of the Olympic Winter Games. I'm usually a text book kind of gal, so this is a big departure from the norm for me. But so far we are enjoying ourselves and learning a lot! Of course it doesn't hurt that this particular unit study has given us the opportunity to watch as much of the Olympics as we possibly can AND be able to count it as school! Woo hoo!


Joshua updating our medals board. The flags represent the countries the boys have studied so far, and the United States. We started with Greece since it's the birthplace of the Olympics, then Canada because they are the host country. The others seem to be added randomly.




The unit study is a pdf file I bought from currclick.com . It outlines what to study each day and covers many subject areas. I'm modifying it quite a bit for our use, since I wanted to use it in addition to our own curriculum. (Remember, I have to have my text books!) We're basically doing math, grammar, Latin, and piano as usual, then replacing our history, science, and writing time with the Olympics unit study. Each day the boys are learning about a country participating in the Olympics, learning the history, rules, and terminology of 1 or 2 of the sports being televised that day, using the dictionary to define related words, etc. It has been so much more interesting to watch the events after studying their histories and learning the rules and terminology of the sport. The official NBC Olympics web site has a decent amount of information about each sport. If there are some you enjoy watching but are curious about how they are scored, etc., I'd suggest you go check it out!


Jonathan reading about Sweden on the National Geographic Kids web site. The boys have enjoyed being able to use the computer for research! We haven't really done much of that in our school yet, but I intend to do more of this.




Our favorites so far? Well, Joshua says he has enjoyed curling the most, Jonathan has enjoyed hockey, and Jordan snowboarding halfpipe. My favorite events to watch have always been figure skating. We'll have to see what the next week's favorites end up being. With the boys, you just never know, but we intend to enjoy watching the next 9 days!

Making Math Relevant

How do you get a 9-year-old boy who LOVES his video games to attack a math problem with the same enthusiasm? Well, you rewrite it so it's all about his favorite characters, of course! Problem solved in record time! :)



On a sort of related note...one of the reasons we were sold on the Nintendo Wii for our family was the fact that it was going to require the boys to be so much more active than the previous Nintendo systems...

Um, yeah.