Songs for Saturday

Just for fun, here are two videos that have been passed around the social media world. Both are pretty cute and funny. Just for the record, I love my role as a wife and mom, and wouldn't trade it for the world. But to keep it real, I definitely have days like these!

Mommy Rhapsody from Church on the Move on Vimeo.

Just for Fun Friday - Like Father, Like Son

I hear so often how much Nathan resembles Michael, to which I've always agreed. However, it wasn't until I was going through some old pictures and came across these two that I realized just how much Nathan looks like him!

(This picture was taken on Michael's 24th birthday - which was, ummm... a little while back!)



There are definitely some similarities, you think?!

Sometimes it's Good to be Opinionated

I'm thrilled to announce that I've been selected to be part of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew! Starting sometime in July and continuing through the 2010-2011 school year, I will be privileged to be trying out various homeschool products and reviewing them for you here on my blog. Be on the lookout... I can't wait! (And that is just one of the many fun things happening here starting in July - including a giveaway and other excitement! So stay tuned!)

We Interrupt this Regularly Scheduled Homeschooling Day...

What, you may ask, has these boys so captivated?

Perhaps this will explain better than words:


A pipe broke in our neighborhood, so a crew was sent out to fix it.





We took the morning off of our regular school schedule and had a "mini field trip" to watch the progress!

Needless to say, they loved it! For some reason, they especially liked when the muddy water overflowed:

That's boys for you, I guess!

A Song for Saturday

In celebration of our study of Australia - we all loved this and listened to it several times over the past two weeks! Have a fun and blessed Saturday!

WFMW - The Artwork Clutter Solution

My boys love to draw. And when you have 4 boys over 9 years making lots of drawings, that adds up to ALOT of paper. Some drawings are delightful and unique, and worth holding on to, while others are just silly doodles or failed attempts at... no one really remembers what anymore. I have read so many ideas on how to organize, cull, preserve and otherwise keep up with the large amount of children's artwork we've amassed. And no matter what, it still gets overwhelming. I won't even go into the amount of print/copy paper I've had to buy to keep them supplied.

My first method of organizing was a tall dresser, a normal 5-drawer type that was handed down to us. The drawers were organized - one for art supplies, one for blank paper, one for coloring books, and the last two for completed artwork. When the bottom drawers got full, I'd do the dreaded toss - going through all of the artwork and trying to determine what was keepsake and what was, well, not. I could only do this once the kids were sleeping because it invariably ended up in tears and hurt feelings... no fun for anyone. Not to mention it was really hard for me, as I am a natural packrat and have trouble throwing away old receipts much less my child's precious time and effort displayed as a big brownish-black mass of fingerpainting without determinable shape.

So, then I tried to put the resonsibility more on them - I bought Sterilite drawers specifically for paper, like such:
one labeled for each boy. They were to put their artwork into their drawer, and when it got full, it was THEIR jobs to determine which creations were their favorites and which could be tossed.

Ummm... yeah. THAT never happened. Failure #2.

Then Joel got this for his birthday:
Did you hear the same angelic chorus that I did when I looked at it and got my super duper idea? Self-contained paper?! What genius came up with this?! Obviously, its not the first time I've seen a sketch pad, but all of the sudden that proverbial light bulb came on when I realized I was looking at the perfect solution to my artwork woes.

So off I went to the store to get 3 more for the other boys. At about $4 a piece, $16 total for replacements won't hurt us too badly. At first I thought they'd fill one up fast (each one has 70 pages, or 140 front and back) - my one concern was that I'd be buying new ones each month - that's 48 sketch books a year filling our house! But its been 3 months since we first got them and only Joel has needed a replacement (he's our resident artist).

Some awesome benefits to using sketchpads to keep artwork contained:

1. The artwork is contained, no more skattered loose sheets everywhere.
2. No more running out of printer paper because little artists steal it
3. An easy and fun way to see how each child's artwork has progressed - Nathan's scribbles which have now turned into his first impressions of people are all captured for posterity
4. The paper is thick, so they can use pencil, crayon, marker and even paint, without worry about it ruining the pages below. Unless they go too crazy with their rinsing water while painting, which has happened.
   
5. Easy for me to keep and store - each child has a storage file box for each school year - the sketch pads are labeled with the year and put into the file box with their other school work memorabilia
6. If they want to give someone a picture, the pages have the serrated edge to make them easy to tear out, not to mention they'll be giving a picture on higher quality paper
   
7. No more organizing needed - trying to guess who drew what, what it might be, if its a preschool version of a Picasso and unknowingly incredibly valuable...
   
8. I no longer have to do the dreaded "sort and toss". A big hurray! from everyone!

Sketchpads. They Work For Me! Check out some other great ideas over at We Are THAT Family!

Movin' and Shakin'

After taking the occasional couple of steps for the past month, last week, Judah decided he'd jump into full-fledged walking! So of course I had to capture the moment:


(Please excuse the background noise, ordinary things such as Science must go on even during milestones in progress)

Since he has gained confidence in this new upright position, he has also adapted his most favorite activity, dancing:



Or perhaps he is making an exercise video?

A Song and Scriptures for Saturday

Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.
Hebrews 12:28-29

Praise the LORD because he is good. Make music to praise His name because His name is Beautiful.
Psalm 135:3

I've heard this song get some flack because it's not specifically "Christian" (although it is meant to be a Christian song), but I love it. Enjoy your Saturday!

A Review - Download N' Go: Expedition Australia

If you are a homeschooler that frequents other homeschooling blogs, you may have have heard of the "TOS Homeschool Crew". The Old Schoolhouse Magazine recruits bloggers who desire to test and review homeschool products on their blogs - what a fun idea! I filled out the application to join the Crew for this upcoming year, and as part of the process of selection, they sent me a product to review: "Expedition Australia", one of TOS' "Download N' Go" e-books.

This was perfect for us, because we were supposed to start studying Australia in about 2 weeks or so in our geography, so with a little modification, I went ahead and made this week the week we'd study Australia. Sorry, Russia, we'll get to you soon! (I love the flexibility of homeschooling!)

We've used the e-book all week in place of our normally scheduled activities, and I've been very impressed at how many interesting things we've all learned that we wouldn't have learned otherwise. From neat Australian terms (the boys especially like "lollies") to fascinating facts about Australian creatures (did you know how beautiful Nudibranches could be?!), we have found Expedition Australia to be very enriching to our otherwise sometimes rather dry geography studies.

Here are some things I appreciated about the Download N' Go e-book:

• It provided a thorough and in-depth study without being too weighty or dry.


• Many interesting websites and videos linked within the e-book.


• Easily customizable - can do as-is, and learn a ton! You can add to it, and draw it out into a longer unit study. Or, you can use it as a suppliment to another curriculum, to which it will add depth and interest.
  


• Download N' Go e-books would definitely save on time and work, as there is no need to try to search out and pull together resources on your own. This is wonderful for moms like me who wish they could supplement but get discouraged just thinking of all the prep work that would be needed - these e-books eliminate the need for prep work! The title of the series is appropriate - just download and go!
  


• It can be used with a wide age-span. My older boys (9 and 7.5) did all of the notebooking pages, while my younger ones joined in on the drawing and coloring pages. One afternoon, after talking about Koalas in the morning, my 3 year old, who had been in and out of the room during that time, came to me with a book of Koalas and said "Look mama! Just what we learned about today!"
  


• Perfect for making cool mini-notebooks about specific areas of interest or study - great for those who like notebooking, lapbooking, Unit Studies, or the delight-directed approach.


• Also included is a book list to help select library books to add informational reading - as I've mentioned before, we love reading aloud, so I appreciated this very much!
  

Areas which I felt could be improved:

• I'll admit, this was my first experience with an e-book and I wasn't exactly sure how I was supposed to use it - should I print out all the pages? Ask questions orally? Do all the pages and the lapbook books, as well? (I ended up printing out the notebooking pages, but not doing the lapbooks at all). They do provide helpful hints on how to lapbook in general, but that didn't encompass the overall e-book. After going through all of these quandaries in my mind and finally making my decision, I did run across this helpful page: http://downloadngo.com/faq.php. I would suggest that the section on "How Do I Use These Units" actually be included within the e-book itself for those who might not be so quick to figure things out sometimes! Like, ummm... me!
  


• Since I did decide to print out all of the notebook pages, there was alot of printing to do for two children, plus a few extra pages for the little ones. However, some pages were mostly links with just one or two questions on them, so it seemed sort of strange to print out one whole page for it. I did, but I think in the future, I would just leave those pages of questions to be done orally instead to save on ink and paper.

So, those are my opinions. But wait! What about the ones who actually have to DO the work? Well, as I mentioned, we primarily did it with my oldest two boys, ages 9 and 7.5. The first two days, they were a little skeptical - mostly, I think, because it was a change from what they were used to. However, by the third day, when I said "Let's do our geography!" both boys yelled "Yesss!" and ran into the computer room to get their pages and watch the day's videos. They asked me why we hadn't done any of these before and if we can do more! So I'd give that two, ooops, I mean, four thumbs up from them. And two more from me for making school even more enjoyable and interesting - gotta love that!

Isaac (9) says "I like that we get to go deeper into the countries, instead of just learning the basic information"

Ezra (7.5) says "I like drawing the pictures, that's fun"

All in all, we really enjoyed using the e-book! Being able to give it a try and see what it was all about made me wish I had used the ones they have available for some of countries we've already studied. I will definitely be keeping Download N' Go books in mind for future topics, since they offer a good variety on various themes, and are reasonably priced at $7.95 each (less if you buy a bundle), and can be reused for more children. I want to thank The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew for giving me the opportunity to try it out and offer my opinion!

Homeschooling Preschoolers

In today's world of "Head Start" programs, "Kindermusic" classes, and "Teach You Baby to Read" programs, there is alot of pressure on parents to start "teaching" our children as much as possible as soon as possible. Surely this is required for ultimate success, right? And its important not to waste those "formative" years! I think the pressure can be even more for homeschooling parents, where the there's a subliminal challenge to "prove your child is smarter than the average population" or "prove that homeschooling is actually beneficial".

On that note, I thought I'd share what we did with Isaac and Ezra to ensure that they'd have that desired academic edge and preparedness:

nothing.

Well, ok, not really nothing. I'll try to elaborate a little more:

We taught them to read, and we read them good books.

That was it. Isaac did not start any "formal" type schooling until he was 6.5. No flash cards, no workbooks, no counting drills, no extracurricular preschool classes.

Surely, we did more than that, you're thinking? Well, ok, here's more of what we did:

He was with me, all the time. We talked about life's day to day happenings. We talked about how to pick out good apples and peaches at the grocery store. We talked to the elderly man next door about his garden. He sat on the counter next to me as I did dishes. We sang songs. We read, alot. We didn't watch TV, or play computer games. We played on the playground, and he played with his brothers. We went to church, and spoke about God in everything. He was surrounded by those who love him best, secure in his world of family.

We did what babies and children are wired to do naturally - we interacted. We explored. We imagined.

And when it came time to start a more formal education, it happened without struggle. His mind was ready, primed from the years of being allowed to grow at its own pace, rather than already exhausted from force-feeding it facts and figures before it was ready.

Now, I know that I've mentioned that I am doing "preschool" with Nathan (age 3) and Joel (age 5.5). Has my philosophy changed? Have I suddenly seen the light and regretted that I wasted all of those opportune years with my olders, so I am making sure to do it differently this time? Nope, not one bit.

You see, things are a bit different with older children in the house. The littles want to "do school" like the older brothers they look up to. They also want and need some of that one-on-one mama attention that the olders got so much of at their age, but that isn't as readily available as it once was. So, to make that happen, I carve out "preschool" time into our schedule.

However, our choice of curriculum for these preschool years aligns exactly with our main goals for this age of discovery:

Teach them to read, and read them good books.

Sonlight's preschool curriculum is not one of worksheets, flash cards, drills, or forced lessons. It is simply a compilation of good books. The new Instructor's Guide for P 4/5 includes light, basic activities which are easy (and help me to remember to do the little fun things I used to love to do with the children but now sometimes forget as my littles get bigger and my time is spread more thinly). The rest of the day, they listen in on some of the discussions we have with the olders, but mainly their job is to just "be" - exploring, playing, imagining, working and loving.

And they learn so much. They really do.

So, mamas of littles, if you are feeling the pressure of getting a good "head start" on your preschoolers' learning, or feeling discouraged or overwhelmed thinking that perhaps you're not doing enough - let it go. Your child learns so much, every day, just by living and interacting with you. Take time to be with them. Read good books, play fun games. Your home, and the real world with you by their side, is the best schoolhouse there is.