Posted in Day to Day
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A little mommy aggravation here. Yes, I'm going to vent. My camera had been missing for days. I looked high and low for it and even asked the kids if they had used it for anything. Of course the little angels knew nothing of the whereabouts of my camera. My 2nd daughter's birthday was Tuesday and that morning, I was looking feverishly for it all up until the moment we walked out the door for her party.
That evening, I started looking for it again. Dh got irritated that I couldn't find it ( I guess I complained a little about the camera being gone.) Well, he found it. Guess where. It was in the chicken coupe out back buried in straw. Here are the last pictures taken on it.
   When I was looking for the camera, I specifically asked the children if they took pictures of the chickens and they insisted that they hadn't. Hmmmmmm.
So my conclusion is that while we were gone, those chicken broke into the house, took the camera and just had the time of their lives taking pictures of each other out there. When they heard us come home, they quickly buried the camera in the straw and said they'd blame the kids. Pretty amazing considering they don't have opposable thumbs. Grrrrrrr. Crazy chickens. |
Posted in Day to Day
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Okay, spawned by a discussion I had this afternoon with some ladies, I am asking this question to a wider group to get more feedback. Up until now, I have followed Kevin Leman's idea on giving kids an allowance. Each week they get an allowance in which the dollar amount is the same as their age. (e.g. an 8 year old gets $8). Out of that comes savings and tithing. The rest is for them to spend. My sis in law says that giving a set allowance is "Mommy Welfare" because no matter how much they work, they still get the same amount. She has been telling me about this program by David Ramsey called Financial Peace, Jr (they have a homeschool curriculum). It is where the kids get paid by the chore. The more work they do, the more money they earn. She sent it to me last week and we are trying to implement it in our home. My problem with this method is that the kids won't do anything around the house if they aren't paid. (I can assure you that issue is addressed with the kids with this program. According to this program, the children still have to do chores that they are not paid for because they must contribute to the household. The whole point of the program is to teach children how to manage their money and not go into debt.) When I mentioned it to a group of moms this afternoon, I felt that this method is looked down upon and it's making me question what to do. Also in the last week, I received my copy of Managers of their Homes and Managers of their Chores by Teri Maxwell. (Excellent reading!) What I want to know is what others are doing so far as teaching their children financial responsibility in this time in our country of debtful living. Furthermore, I would like to know what systems others are using to be sure that all the children in the house are contributing as far as keeping the house running. Is there a way to get the kids to do their chores without the monetary gain, and yet have them earn money so they can learn to manage it? |
Posted in Day to Day
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Chicken update - The chickens now reside outside instead of in our basement. We had them in a huge rubbermaid container and one morning I walked into the basement and one was perched on the edge of the container. That night, they were outside.
Tadpoles - A good friend called one afternoon to tell me that she found tadpoles at our local park. I was thrilled. The first chance we had, we went over and scooped some up for a nature study. I was thrilled that even my 3 year old wanted to make a page for his nature journal.
Homeschool Evaluations - Evaluation season is starting here in Pennsylvania. I look forward to and enjoy this time of year when I get the opportuntiy to do evaluations. It's fun to see all the creative projects and field trips that families have participated in. Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival - Today, we went on a field trip to Maryland's Sheep & Wool Festival. It was a blast. We watched a demonstration of sheep dogs herding sheep. We also saw some unique art, listened to music that was fun and music that was beautiful and I was able to get a funnel cake (one of my favorite parts of any summertime festival).
The weeks ahead - May is a very busy month. Tomorrow evening I will be hosting a Portfolio Share at my house. This will be an opportunity for those new to homeschooling in Pennsylvania to see what goes into a portfolio. On May 12, I will be giving a seminar on what a Charlotte Mason education is and how to do it and still comply with Pa homeschool law. I am really looking forward to that evening. At the end of the month, we will be taking 4 days to go camping in a cabin at a state park that is about an hour away. I am really looking forward to that annual family event as well. Somewhere in there, we will be continuing to work on Ancient Greece and all that goes with it. Over the summer, I plan to have the kids do a math page out of their Math-U-See books each day except weekends. I am also planning lots of trips and other fun activities, but dont' tell the kids they might learn from it, because then they might resist. |
Posted in Day to Day
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It's been a very slow week around here academically speaking. At the beginning of the week, we started reading Fairy-Land Science, The Princess and the Goblin, and Anne of Green Gables. The girls also worked on their math in the beginning of the week. On Tuesday, I went to Wal Mart to make prints of Rembrandt and Van Gogh for our artist studies and got into a confrontation with the Wal Mart photo center manager about copyright. It seems her only understanding of copyritght law was what Wal Mart told her. She had never read or studied the law herself. She refused to sell the pictures to me and was rude to me by yelling at me, being sarcastic asking if I got permission from Van Gogh to print the pictures and telling me that she didn't care if I was a customer there. It was a very ugly scene and I left extremely upset. There are many more details that I won't go into here, but her ignorance of the law is a shame. If it were me in that position, I would research the law before spouting it off to customers. So that threw my entire Tuesday off. Later that day, dd(9) had a fever. She was still feverish Wednesday morning, but seemed better in the afternoon. Thursday morning she woke up with a fever again. Then little brother age 3 developed a fever of over 103. So Thursday was spent tending to him. Today I am supposed to go out of town for a scrapbooking weekend with my mom. We are under a winter storm warning all day today. So I am a little nervous about driving an hour away. I hope the roads clear up. This is something my mom and I do every year and we look so forward to it. It's time we get to spend together by ourselves. So this week, life happened. We didn't get much done academically. Yet, I'm okay with that. According to Pa Homeschool Law, we have to get 180 academic days in each year. So we sometimes get cretive. On Tuesday, we discussed human psychology, public speaking skills and copyright law (civics). On Wednesday, we covered health - what is a normal body temperature and what it means to take care of yourself when you are ill. We also covered math with taking temperatures. DD(9) is very math minded and she kept figuring out the difference of her current temperature with a normal temperature. It snowed on Wednesday, too. So we got to do some nature study. We didn't record anything in our nature notebooks, but we observed and discussed nontheless. On Thursday, we continued our health studies to include proper nutrition and "fun food" (our mild word for junk). We also took out the Legos and built towers and houses and such. I think that may be art. Who knows what today will hold. "This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." -Psalm 118:24 |
Posted in Day to Day
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Okay, this is spooky! On Monday we started reading Shakespeare's Twelfth Night by Charles and Mary Lamb. I was worried that it would be too much for dd(10) and dd(9). On the interenet I found (I believe at the recommendation of somebody on Ambleside Online), pictures of costumes for a play of Twelfth Night. I printed out a set for each child and they cut them out and laid them in front of them. I started to read. They rearranged the characters according to the story and we discussed the story as we went. I planned to read just small portions each day and take two weeks to read it. Here's the spooky part - Each day when it was time for me to stop reading, my children begged me to keep reading. They startled me the first day with their screams of "No, no. Read more!!!!" What's that? Read MORE???? We finished the story in 3 days and they said they can't wait for the next story. In her blog, Happy Heart talked about building relationships in the New Year. It inspired me and here we are. Building relationships with Shakespeare of all people. Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU!
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