Reezle's Farm

My sweet little Reezle turns 9 in a few days. It's hard for me to wrap my head around it.

Lately, she's been talking endlessly about the farm she wants to have when she's grown.  "I have a dream for when I'm older, and I plan to follow it," she told me earlier tonight.  "I'll have some cows. I'll only take my share of milk, not what the babies need. There will be plenty." She went on to say that she might like to have a couple of pigs, too, but that she doesn't want to raise anything for meat.

 "I want a really big farm and piece of land. I'm going to grow fruit trees, vegetables, and raise animals. I'll feed my cows non-Monsanto feed. Everything will be natural.  We already get so many delicious things just from our small garden, can you imagine a farm!?"

"I want to make my own honey, but I don't want to hurt the bees. If I want to all these things, I'm going to have to figure out a way I can work, too.  I'm going to get a Master's Degree in something.  Maybe a Doctorate, so I could be a doctor farmer.  If my animals get sick, I can figure out what it is and help them."

"I really want 3 or 4 kids, but I worry that I'll end up not being able to care for my farm. Hmm. I'm going to need a house.  How much is all of this going to cost?  The house, the farm, the animals, and all of those seeds.  Workers to build things.  All of these questions are coming into my mind!  What will I need to wear?  I think I'm worrying too much about my farm."

Indeed, my sweet girl.  But I'm so glad she has big plans for herself, and the confidence to make them.  Whatever she does, I'm sure she'll be amazing at it.
 

The Happy Third Grade Blanket

A couple of years ago, my daughter asked me if I would make her a blanket. "Not just a little one, I mean like a big blanket," she said. I agreed, finding it sweet that she wanted something I'd made. We went to the craft store and she chose some pink and white yarns; I bought two huge bags full of them, and I got busy working on her blanket that very night.

Then, life happened. I started her blanket before she even started Kindergarten, things came up, I got distracted, and my crochet projects sat lonely for a long time. My now third-grader has been asking quite a bit over the summer about her blanket, and I'd really been wanting to work on a project anyhow. I decided to buckle down and just get it done. After all, I have another two bags full of yarn for my son's blanket, and I haven't even begun working on that one!

Well, I'm really happy to say that I've finally finished Reezle's blanket. She's absolutely delighted. I'm pretty stoked, too, since this is the biggest project I've ever completed. I'm more of a scarves kind of gal, which has nothing to do with preference and everything to with patience!

A wonderful and unintended benefit of this blanket it is that it is quite heavy, and actually an adequate therapeutic weight to work like a weighted blanket - without the fillers and hefty price tag. I'm loving this, because both of my children really benefit from the calming effect of light pressure. For that matter, it is quite beneficial even for me. Typically, they bury themselves in a pile of beloved stuffed animals when seeking out that sort of sensory input. I think this is a better alternative - stuffed animals still welcome, of course.

Star Trek and The Best Snack Ever

One of the really cool memories I have from childhood involves Stark Trek (the original series - the only real one, in my humble opinion) and this snack my dad made of Saltine crackers, Muenster cheese, and a pool of Frank's Red Hot sauce on top.

Even cooler? It turns out that Reezle loves this little snack, too, and she's a total original series Trekkie. I couldn't be more proud. Ha!

Sure, it's neither healthy nor organic, but sometimes you have to make exceptions for nostalgia and awesomeness.

Things That Make Me Happy by Little G

Little G spent some time writing a lengthy list of things that make him happy. When he finished, he asked if I would please share it on our blog. How could I say no?

Things That Make me Happy

by Little G

1. Family dinner from [local pizza place]
2. Playing chess
3. Hopping on one foot
4. Singing
5. Adele singing Set Fire to the Rain
6. Orange juice
7. My nutrition drink
8. Bananas
9. Cats
10. Watching Regular Show
11. Cheese mustard sauce (daddy's homemade chip dip)
12. Pizza with just sauce
13. Dad and Mom
14. Stickers, my big fur ball (our cat, Sticky
15. Gray Kitty (his beloved toy kitty)
16. Lillina (another toy kitty)
17. Love from my mom
18. My mom
19. Twizzlers, the twist you can't resist!
20. My notebooks
21. Weekend mornings
22. My human body encyclopedia book
23. Chicken Soup for The Cat Lover's Soul
24. My iPod
25. Mom's iPad
26. Mom playing Glow Hockey
27. Grandma
28. Chocolate covered grapes
29. Chocolate covered strawberries
30. Chocolate covered raisins
31. X and Os, a.k.a hugs and kisses!
32. Panera
33. Making cookies
34. Stuffed animals
35. My LG smartphone (an old, non-smartphone w/battery removed)
36. December 25th and 26th
37. Playing with my computer
38. Playing with my red phone (same phone referenced in 38)
39. Playing with my Sudoku game
40. Veggies!
41. Fruit salad
42. Salad

Homeschool Humor

Imaginative Fun

My children are so excited for Easter this year that they've been talking about it daily. I figure I had better be on the ball and make it count. So, I got them the coolest little gift; it's a felt cookie set, and all of the toppings are interchangeable so they can redecorate as they choose. It even comes with a cookie sheet and spatula! They're always pretending to cook and bake, so I know they'll love it.

I also picked up some books for their baskets. Reezle has been really into history and biographies, so I found a few books which encompass both interests and I know she's going to love them. Little G loves cats and biology/anatomy, so I bought him a cat anatomy book and some fun cartoon cat books. He'll be over the moon, I just know it.

Yes, my children get jelly beans and chocolate bunnies, too. I'm not a no-candy mom. That would make me a huge hypocrite, ha!

Second Round of Assessments

When I decided to take on the responsibility of teaching my children and removed them from public school, I was both excited and nervous. I looked forward to being a part of their learning experience, to taking field trips together, and to feeling like a whole family again. During the two years that Reezle was in public school, I felt as if I lived for weekends and strangers were spending more time with my sweet girl than I was. But I was also really nervous. Education is not something I take lightly, and I was (if I'm to be honest here) a bit unsure of myself. There is an overwhelming message in our society that parents are incapable as teachers and barely equipped to assist with homework, and there was a part of me that believed it.

Today, Reezle did her second assessment of the school year. The first was done when she started homeschool to get a baseline. At the time, she scored off the charts, 'well above average', as did Little G. Today, she did it again. According to the teacher who assessed her fluency, Reezle is reading at 158 words per minute (2nd grade average is 89 wpm, 5th grade average is 139 wpm, 6th grade average is 160 wpm, according to this. Wowza.). She started the year already reading 142 words per minute, so I didn't really expect much in the way of gains between September and February. I guess I should have known better, considering how much she loves to read and how many books she's devoured in the past five months. I am so proud of her! I always had exceptional comprehension and vocabulary, but I was and still am a very slow reader.

She also scored perfect on the math assessment, quickly answering all 50 points worth of questions correctly. I wish her confidence in her math skills matched her ability, but it doesn't. I suppose having a 6 year-old human calculator for a brother probably doesn't help. She doesn't seem to realize she's still way ahead for her grade level. She has a very competitive spirit when it comes to academics.

Thus far, I've been keeping her at grade level work because of her extremely low frustration tolerance and the fact that I wanted to transition her into homeschooling comfortably. However, she is working below her ability and I've decided it is time to start challenging her a bit more. While I stand by my decision to keep her in grade 2 math and language arts, we are working through it at a faster pace now. I echo the teacher's sentiments; we don't want her getting bored...it's difficult to get them back after that. Indeed. I was bored at her age, so I stopped paying attention. I didn't need to pay attention. But by the time I realized I did need to listen, I was out of practice and overwhelmed with frustration. It can be a delicate balance for kids.

In some really fun news, the teacher introduced us to a cool educational website this afternoon called Reading Eggs (it's so much more than it sounds like!) that the kids can hardly wait to start using! There are even books they can read on all kinds of topics, and Reezle is anxious to dig into the history ones.

We're now more than halfway through the school year, and I love this more all the time. The kids love it, too, and there is no doubt whatsoever that we will continue with the K12 curriculum for the coming school year. If anyone reading is considering homeschooling, or looking at different curriculum options, I encourage you to look into K12. It is absolutely wonderful!

I Must Be Crazy

Nearly 7 years ago, we made the decision to adopt Sticky the kitty.

Little G wasn't born yet, and Reezle was just a baby. Sticky chose Reezle, we didn't exactly choose Sticky. And Sticky has remained very true to her Reezle, which Little G, the resident cat lover, has taken notice of. He is now asking, quite frequently, if we can adopt another kitty. He even has a name picked out: Quinn Lillina. Don't ask me where he comes up with this stuff, but I actually love it!

I'm thinking about it. I really am. Call me crazy, since two cats in a household can present major issues, but I am genuinely considering this idea. I love cats, too, and I'd love to give a homeless kitten a good home. And so, we may be visiting the animal shelters soon. Because I am, apparently, insane.

7 Lies About Homeschoolers

This is so great, I had to blog it.

100th Day of Homeschool

As of today, Reezle has 567 hours and 20 minutes of attendance hours logged, and 100 days of school. Little G, officially a Kindergarten student, but taking three first grade courses, has 378 hours and 45 minutes of attendance hours logged, and 100 days of school. This means we're more than half way through the school year...and we still love it, and it's still going great! Whew.

In preschool and public school, there was always a special celebration for the 100th day of school. I didn't realize it had come up so quickly, or I would have planned something. It might be a bit tricky, since ice cream sundaes are out due to the blood sugar issue, but I'm sure we can find a way to celebrate all of their hard work. They both deserve a celebration, both of them have been the best students.

Little G had a special milestone of his very own today: he completed first grade phonics! He's little more than half way through his Kindergarten year and he is all done with first grade phonics. I am so proud of him! His spelling, as well as his mastery of grammar concepts and language in general is impressive. He was an early reader, but I didn't expect him to be tutoring his older sister with spelling homework when he was in preschool (he did, for real). His progression seems steady, rather than just an early starter who settles into average. I don't expect him to keep this pace (then again, maybe he can tutor me when I take that logic and philosophy college course I need...ha!), but he has my full support to move at his own pace.

Oh, uh...and he's teaching himself cursive.

Best Knock-Knock Joke Ever

G: Mommy? Knock knock.

Me: Who's there?

G: I love you.

Me: I love you who?

G: I love you so much that you can't even THINK about it!

Pen Pals

My daughter is an excellent writer. Her creativity and imagination, coupled with her way with words, makes her writing enjoyable to read. Getting her to write, however, is like pulling teeth.

I don't remember how the idea came up, but a few weeks ago I found myself talking about pen pals on Facebook with a few people. My daughter acquired two pen pals that same night and another today, and my son managed to get himself one as well. My hope is that this activity will help to connect her more with others, be a positive social experience, and help to sharpen her writing skills in a way she really enjoys. Pen pals are cool.

One of the bonus benefits of having pen pals is that we are already having discussions about conversations with others. She is just writing her first letters, and it is already proving to be a great way for me to discuss social things in a more tangible way than just hypotheticals and possibilities. I suggested asking questions for her new pen pals to answer, instead of making the letters one-sided and talking only about herself. I explained that this is key to being a good listener and having positive outcomes in all kinds of social interactions.

Japeniesee

He's already tutoring his older sister in math and spelling. Should I be surprised he is trying to teach himself Japanese? I mean, of course he'd do this.

[Disclaimer: I have no clue what those characters mean.]

Bunny Ball

We played "Bunny Ball" as a family tonight. It was lots of fun, a great PE activity (yes, at 7pm on a Saturday, we can log PE hours!), and also a wonderful sensory diet activity for Little G.


Yes, the Easter Bunny sure scored big points when he put these in the kids' baskets last year. And yes, I intentionally hide my children's faces on my blog. And I always will.

Happy Birthday, Papa!

Happy Birthday to my dad, who celebrates his birthday this weekend.

Art

Today, we worked on Art. And other stuff, but I took pictures of them doing Art.

The beautiful results of Art class were these:

And from her former Art class, a sketch that she colored in when she was done:

These kids always manage to leave me in awe of their artistic talents. I'm not nearly so artistically inclined. They're awesome.

After our day was finished, Little G still wanted to work on Math. And so he did, in the Big Second Grade Workbook we found at the Dollar Store.

Today was a good day.

Math and Science Cookies

Just before bed last night, Little G listed various examples of sentences for each type of punctuation (exclamation point, question mark, etc.). When he was done, he said, "Are you going to post that on Facebook? Or are you going to put that on the blog?" Alright, little dude. So here it is; Little G, after a bit of a struggle initially, has learned proper punctuation. And syllables. You want confusion? Try teaching a kid with a communication disorder the difference between number of syllables and number of word sounds. It's not a good time, people. Ugh. I think those two items would have been separated in lessons by weeks, but as of the second day of the fifth week of Kindergarten, my son has completed every bit of Kindergarten Phonics and is now ready for first grade material with more enthusiasm than most kids show at an amusement park.

The other day, we baked cookies for Math (counting cookies) and Science (measuring). I let the kids follow the directions and do the mixing and pouring themselves. Now, I won't say they were the most perfect cookies ever, but they were edible and actually kind of tasty.




They were quite proud of their cookies, as you can see from their little hands presenting them to you. And in case you're wondering, the third picture of them was taken while they were watching the cookies bake. Yes, yes, they did. And, if I do say so myself, this is the most fun I've ever had doing Science and Math.

The cookies we made were snickerdoodles, and the recipe was not ours. You can find the one we used here on allrecipes.com. Oh and, um, it is best viewed with Google Chrome and ad blocker plus. Enjoy!

You're A Grand Old Flag

Monday was rough. Truth be told, so was Friday. I didn't really want to blog about it, but I guess that is life; we all have bad days. I might as well be honest about it and tell it like it is. Not every day is filled with unicorns and glitter. Friday and Monday were filled with bad attitudes, temper tantrums, time-outs...and it wasn't just the kids. There was also very little work done, which made me quite thankful that we are so far ahead.

The difference between homeschooling and when my daughter was in public school is that now I take it very personally when things don't go so well, or when we all just seem to have major attitude problems all on the same day. I fear failing. This is new territory for me, and my confidence can take a hit pretty easily at this point.

Fortunately, today was better. No, today was great. It was the perfect antidote to a lousy few days, and I'm feeling confident once more as my smiling children - who worked diligently all morning and got heaps of work done - are sitting on the floor with crayons busily working on some Halloween coloring pages I found online. Since Little G finished his Math workbook last week and completed all of the remaining Kindergarten Phonics as of today, I have been finding and printing first grade Math and Language Arts worksheets for him. He devours them, especially the themed ones. I've found a surprising amount of fun Halloween Math worksheets.

Daddy recently brought home some miniature flags, which the kids had lots of fun waving as we sang some history-related songs from our curriculum. I've heard You're A Grand Old Flag about 40 times today, but it's all good. They marched around waving their flags and dancing, laughing, being silly.

It was such a contrast to the past few days, like a switch was thrown. The only thing I can figure is that maybe the bright sunshine affects their moods as much as if affects my own.

I talked to my grandma for a little while last night, which almost always means I feel better about life. When I told her about some of the struggles of the previous days, she said, "That's why I think I couldn't have done it. Parents don't have the same authority. No, maybe that's the wrong word. Kids will test parents in ways they won't test teachers. With teachers, there is the unfamiliar, the unknown." And she's right. Well, about the testing part. I believe my grandma can and could do just about anything, and homeschooling is no exception. But yes, and I have even said to Reezle, "Would you be acting like this with Mrs. J?" The answer is invariably "no". And there you have it. But it's simply a different set of challenges than we would face in a bricks and mortar school. And frankly, I'm cool with these challenges. With the bricks and mortar school? Yeah, not so much.

Materials, Supplementing, and Skully

While I certainly cannot complain about the materials provided by K12 for our curriculum...

...it is kinda fun to substitute our own. Like fruity, rainbow-colored Cheerios for Math, or our large collection of Trio building blocks in place of the base-10 counting blocks.

Homeschool and the K12 curriculum are giving my children something that I didn't really experience much of until college - an overlap between even the most unlikely subject material. Take Language Arts and PE, for example.

Sure, it's really about following directions (I think), but Little G's assignment had both of my little students standing sideways, hopping on one foot, acting like sleeping pelicans, and generally being wild and crazy little monkeys for a good half hour. We even played Simon Says, though I can't recall if it was this day or another.

Take note of the "skully" shirt. You'll be seeing a lot of it. Though we've owned it for approximately two weeks, it's been washed about five times already. Every load of laundry I bring through the house is invariably followed with, "Mama? Did you wash my skully?" Today I replied, "No, little dude. You're wearing it."

Wednesday Randomness

Dear Study Island,

I am using you. Yes, using you. Not to test what my children know, as is your intended purpose, but to assess what I need to focus most on when I am teaching them and to determine their strengths so I can use those strengths to their benefit. Or maybe that is part of your purpose. I dunno. But I'm using you. So yeah.

-Mama Bonn

It's been a long day, so you'll have to forgive my case of mommybrain/whatever that letter above was. Our lessons began this morning and didn't really wrap up until late this evening. We didn't need to go on that long, but material-related interests kept sprouting up like flowers after a thunderstorm and we went with it.

Miss R seems to be taking quite an interest in 9/11 this year. You'll hear no complaints from me; I am addicted to political and historical documentaries and events, and there are no shortage of these on the topic of 9/11. There is a short Nick News program called What Happened?, available in full on the Nickelodeon website. We watched that together, but it did not answer all of her questions. She has many questions about everything. (I like that.) So I also let her watch some of the live news coverage from that day, explaining what it felt like and what I thought about as I watched it unfold that morning. She had many questions, and I answered them as best I could, but told her that some questions simply cannot be answered.

On other matters, I am learning what works for my children and what doesn't. Strangers were in charge of my daughter's education for two years, so I am at a bit of a disadvantage with her compared to my son in terms of knowing her learning style and academic strengths and weaknesses. I find that the way some of the material is presented makes it more complicated than it actually is. For example, R is learning place values in Math, working with base 10 blocks and doing regrouping exercises. While these exercises are quite valuable, she already knows how to add two-digit and three-digit numbers, and can't understand why she has to basically back track and break down into simpler terms what is already fairly easy for her. But, since she actually seems to struggle with it to some degree, I am going to have her do an activity where she draws hundreds, tens, and ones blocks instead of working with the actual 3-D blocks. Since she is drawn to drawing (heh, I are so funny), I figure maybe that will help. You know, especially if I encourage the use of multiple crayon colors.

For PE, we're doing a lot of hooping for now. We can practice indoors or out. The weather has either been ridiculously hot or chilly and rainy recently, but once we get a nice day with some sunshine I will be taking some blogworthy pictures of our happy hooping. For now, these photos of G and myself will have to do.


R is a pro at this, and G is catching on quickly! Only occasionally do we have a hoop go flying while trying a new trick...and it's usually mine. It's so cool to watch my children learn new things, from Math to hooping and everything in between. We are all really enjoying this experience, and I am so thankful for it.