Cranberry Play

I found this great idea for cranberry play here. I decided to give it a go. I've had the cranberries for around a week. I'm not feeling great today (first cold of the season) and I was worried about the cranberries going bad. I figured it would keep them busy for a while. I was right about that. They spent almost an hour playing with the cranberries.

I started out by asking Kaydence if she thought the cranberries would sink or float. She said, "I think they will float." I asked her why she thought that. She said, "because they are sort of little, but sort of big too." That made no sense to me, but whatever. So we got out some grapes, apples, and oranges out to test first. Then we talked about what makes the apples and oranges float.

I set the table up with a pyrex dishes, a muffin tin, measuring spoons, cups, a pie dish, and a bowl. I put some cranberries in each of their dishes. Then they filled their dishes up with water. (If you try this, put LOTS of towels down, or go outside) saw that they floated, and then went about playing. Nolan filled the muffin tins up and then scooped them all out. Kaydence was baking cranberry pies. We listened to music while they played.

Kaydence squished one of them and said, "Oh no! It's bleeding!" I told her it wasn't blood, just red cranberry juice.

Nolan wanted to cut them up. I got out some knives (not sharp...obviously) and cutting boards. The cranberries were too hard for him, so he went to the sink and brought back the grapes we were playing with earlier.

Kaydence did cut her cranberries open. We looked at the different sections and talked about how it helped the cranberry to float. Then she went back to playing.

Once they were both done I found a recipe for cranberry cake here. So we mixed it up and baked it. I had to use bread pans because my other pans were full of soapy water. I'm really not very good at baking. There are only a couple of things that I can bake with generally good results. Hopefully this turns out delicious. I can smell it and it's making me sooo hungry.  We also all learned that we do not like fresh cranberries. I don't like cranberry sauce either, but I do love dried cranberries. 

*I tried the cranberry cake and it's delicious. Neither of the kids will try it because they didn't like the fresh cranberries.

My poor Kaydence just had a heck of a rough day today.

Yesterday a friend called and asked if I could help her friend out babysitting today. So we had a little boy around Nolans age over today. Kaydence started out very excited, but I was noticing her moods going up and down today. She was happy and playful and then very quiet and withdrawn. That is unusual for her. I kept trying to ask her what was bothering her, but I don't think she knew. A few times she asked me if I would come play with her, but I was needing to keep a close eye on the boys. Being boys they play rougher than girls. Reid was actually so sweet and polite. He was sharing and playing well, Nolan was the one who didn't want to share. Plus, since it was my first time watching him I just wanted to make sure things went smoothly. During nap time I promised her that when they boys were asleep I would come down and we could do her reading lesson and spend some time alone together. Nolan woke up pretty much as soon as I left the room though. Around the time Reid left I was reminding Kaydence that I was going to a Mommy's night in for the homeschool group. I asked her if she wanted to do her reading lesson and she said no. Usually I will talk her into it by reminding her of our reading reward, but I've been aware that she hasn't been quite herself lately so I haven't been pushing it. I've promised her a trip to the disney store when she is finished with her reading lessons. She will not get a reward like this for regular schooling, but I want her to be excited about learning and I think that reading is a huge accomplishment for someone so young. Anyways when it was time for me to go she just broke down sobbing. "I love you so much and we didn't get to cuddle at all today!" Then she wanted to know if Uncle Parker would come see her because she was sad. She asked several times if she could come with me and for me to please not leave her. So I left her snuggling with Daddy and on the way I started thinking maybe she wasn't just tired the past couple of weeks. Maybe she was picking up on all the stress from Sam and I. So I'm feeling kinda guilty. I mean, I think I handled the situation as well as I could have. If she has been picking up on all that though I just wish I had addressed it better with her. Does that make sense?

When I was driving home Sam called to ask if I was almost there and I could hear Kaydence sobbing in the back round. My brother had been over and they had a tea party together, but I think she just really felt like she needed me close to her tonight. I came inside and scooped her up and she held me tight and cried. She was saying "I love you so much and I missed you." and a few other things along those lines. By this point it was already much later than they usually stay up, but she wanted to read a story and she wanted me to hold her while we read. She usually prefers to sit next to me and hold my hand these days. I tucked her in bed with my blanket and held her hand while she fell asleep. Nolan was a happy camper and fell asleep pretty much as soon as his head hit the pillow.

I've promised Kaydence that I would take her on a date tomorrow night. We are going to go out for ice cream. I may take her into Target and let her look at the "grown up" clothes with me. I think my little love is just in need of some good quality Mommy Kaydence time. I promised her that we would play games and have a wonderful day tomorrow (although, I think today was pretty fun before all the crying) and she said, "Can we just snuggle for a while?"

I don't know how I didn't pick up on all of her cues that she was feeling like she needed a little extra love until the melt down. I hope that now that I'm aware I can give her the extra attention she's feeling like she needs right now. We spend a lot of time together playing, learning, and snuggling already... sometimes you just need a little extra though.

Breaking the TV habit

The past couple of weeks we've really gotten bad about our amount of TV time. During normal circumstances we spend most of our time playing together, reading books, or exploring some fun sensory thing. Or we do unit studies. Recently I've been stressed. Really really stressed, with a whole bunch of anxiety mixed in there. The government shutdown isn't the worst thing that's happened to us, and it's not the hardest thing we've done so far either, but it still sucks. Worrying about if Sam's paycheck will come on time, and if it doesn't come how will we pay our bill? Or how will we feed our family? Luckily we've actually been managing well with lots of prayers, and hopefully it's almost over. But when the shut down first started I was just so overwhelmed with un-answered questions and worry. The kids were tired from our week in McAllen, and then our week with my mom here and my grandma visiting. So I let them watch a lot of TV. That's basically we did last week. Kaydence didn't want to read, she didn't want to play, she didn't want to color ect. And I didn't feel like doing anything besides sitting in a pool of worry. All things considered that was the worst thing I could have done. I was SO bored. Bored and worried are just a terrible combination all around.

I keep telling myself that the kids really seemed like they needed that break. And that letting them watch TV is not the end of the world. This week I've pulled it together (not that I was ever terribly un-together) and decided to get back to normal. It's turned out harder than I anticipated. We've had bursts of really good play time. We've read books together and Kaydence has been excited for her reading lessons again. But there is still lots of times when I need to get something done and they ask to watch a show, but then they don't want to stop watching. We spent most of yesterday afternoon outside, but today it's raining. I think I need to re-organize my play room. There is no real rhyme or reason to where the toys are. I'd like to really organize it so their toys are easy to find and easy to put away. And I really need some help thinking of good ways to limit TV time. I don't want it to feel like a punishment. It's not their fault that I let them watch so much TV last week. But now I need to find a better way to fix it. Any suggestions? I've been looking for ideas on pinterest. But if anyone reading this has tried something that really worked for them I want to hear about it!

The other thing that I have been busy with.. I am really excited about this one. I've been thinking about it for a while, and to keep my mind busy decided to go for it. I am starting my own handmade perfume business. I will be making oil perfumes and selling them on Etsy.com. Depending on how things go I'd like to maybe get a booth at a farmers market or something next year. Oil perfume contains no alcohol or chemicals. It is mixture of a carrier oil and essential oils. The result is a perfume that will last longer than your typical spray on perfume. Plus, it's all natural. I've been doing a lot of research. How much I should sell each bottle for, finding bottles and boxes. I've got all my ducks in a row (well, mostly. I still need to come up with a company name). Now I'm just waiting for the government to re-open and pay us so I can start buying the things I will need to make my perfumes. I'm going to be looking for perfume testers and giving out tons and tons of samples soon. I think it's going to be great. I'll have a facebook page for my company and other such things, so probably this will be the only perfume related blurb on this blog. I'm hoping to start mixing perfumes ASAP and to have samples available sometime next month.

Human body

Last night while we were reading our bedtime story Kaydence interrupted asking what the bump in her knee was. It was her knee bone. She then had several more questions about bones. So we stopped reading and I googled skeletons. We looked and the pictures and talked for about 30 minutes. I asked her if she wanted to learn more about bodies in the morning. After that there was a crazy loud storm. We ended up staying up pretty late watching care bears in my bedroom.

So this morning rolled around and after breakfast Kaydence wanted to repeat an art project we did the day before. Its out of my montessori art book Let Out the Sunshine. These pictures are from the other day when we did it. **on the original day** Nolan spent a little bit trying to cut with scissors, and then asked for help. I cut his paper into strips after that. It's the first book in the activity. Again, we didn't follow the instructions exactly, but basically you have them cut long strips of paper and then glue them to a white paper. Kaydence asked me if I would do it too. So I sat down and cut strips and glued them to my own paper. Kaydence watched me very carefully and started to try to do hers like mine.

This morning Nolan was not interested in cutting or gluing. He played with his trucks and ninja turtles. While they were both busy I pulled out my montessori book to see if it had any helpful lessons. Turns out my book is great. I already knew that though. There was a suggestion to use a stethoscope to help them hear their breathing and heartbeats. We have several play stethoscopes, but no real one. So I thought I would post on the local homeschool facebook page to see if someone had one they would be willing to let us borrow. Not only did a lady respond pretty quickly that she had one, but she lives down the street from me. Crazy right? We went to pick it up and then we spent some time at the library checking out new books.

When we got home it was lunch time and Nolan was so grumpy from our late night. We had lunch and took an early rest. We watched the Magic School Bus inside our bodies while we ate. Once we got up I got the stethoscope out and I let them both listen to my heart. Nolan loved it, he wanted to listen to his heart too. For some reason it freaked Kaydence out. She listened for a few seconds and said, "I don't like that. It scares me." I have no clue why that scared her, but I didn't push it. She watched Nolan listen for a while. The book also suggests that you do a google search for heart drawings and photos so they can see what a real heart looks like. It includes (in the book, it's an e-book that I have printed out) links for cool videos you can watch. I went to youtube and looked for human heart beating. There are a few videos of chests open during surgery where it shows the heart beating. There is also a computer generated hear showing it beating, it was pretty cool. I was thinking that the surgery video would scare Kaydence since she didn't like the sound of her own heart. She asked to turn it on, so we did and she LOVED it. We watched that video about 15 times. She was asking why the person needed surgery and all sorts of questions. I'm not sure I answered all of her questions accurately, but I tried. We also turned on a clip of Bill Nye the Science guy I also found on youtube, but by that point she was tired and ready to play.

We had our dog trainer come over for our last lesson after that. One of our dogs is a crazy puppy and our other dog has this weird obsession with light. She's been helping us with both. Anyways after she left we had a snack and then Kaydence was ready to learn about skeletons.

We sat down and I googled an image of a skeleton and we looked at all of the bones. My montessori book suggests bringing out a pad of paper and having the child feel the bones in their body and make a list of the bones they could feel. I meant to do that, but I didn't. We felt our bones and we talked about what they did. She was mainly interested in her rib cage and we spent a long time talking about how the ribs protect our lungs and heart and why they are so important.

The other activity in my book that I wanted to try today was letting them feel and explore chicken bones. Lucky for me I already had some leftover drumsticks. I cleaned the chicken off the bones and gave them a really good washing. I put them on a piece of white paper and gave them magnifying glasses. We talked about how hard the bones were, and how light they are. I had them try to break the bones, they couldn't of course. One of the bones in my left overs actually was broken so I brought that one out and let them look at the bone marrow. We talked about blood cells being made there. The book suggested taking a fork to get the bone marrow out, but I decided not to do that. Kaydence asked for some crayons because she wanted to trace the bones and color them. She asked to paint the bones too, but I decided against that.

There is Bella hoping the magnifying glass with make a reflection.

There you go! Another day in our life :) we haven't done her reading lesson yet. It's been a busy day. The other day I ordered a book called Explode the Code. They are phonics lessons. I'm going to be using it along with her reading lessons. We will be starting a handwriting program once I can decide which one to use. 

Sensory Balloons

We're up and running again! For some crazy reason last week I decided it would be a good idea to potty train Nolan. So we did it. He is finished now, aside from the occasional accident. We spent most of last week downstairs in our TV room because we had to run to the potty every few minutes. It's also easier to clean off of the hard floors than the carpets. But it's done now! No more diapers!

So here is what a general idea of our days are looking like so far.

7-8am we're waking up. I give it a larger timeframe because sometimes I have the kids play together in Kaydences room while I get a few more minutes of sleep. Generally this doesn't last more than 5 minutes at a time, but can't blame me for trying. We're usually up by 7:30, but today they both slept until 8. I was happy.

8-8:30 (or earlier, depending on wake up time) I let them watch some TV while I make breakfast. I'm not my best in the mornings. Takes me a few minutes to get up and moving, and once we start our school day the TV goes off.

9am. This isn't an exact start time, we just start whenever breakfast is finished and I've cleaned up. You get the idea. We start off with some sort of montessori style learning activity. Nolan can be involved and we do it as long as they are interested. I'm using an at home montessori curriculum as a guide. I haven't set up the proper Montessori environment (according to the book) and I'm not planning to do everything 100% Montessori. (it's crazy expensive, even at home) We pick a "practical life" activity. Right now I am just going through the pages. Once we have done a few I will give them the options and let them pick what they would like to do. Yesterday the activity was sweeping. I've done that with them before and they got bored very quickly. This time we started out by making sensory balloons. We took a package of balloons, some funnels, and some kitchen ingredients. We used flour, lentils, dried kidney beans, and rice. Mostly because that's what we had. They scooped the ingredients into the funnels until they were full and then I tied the balloons shut.

Kaydence was interested in tying the balloons herself. So I let her try as long as she wanted and only stepped in to help when she asked me to. 

Scooping the ingredients was harder for Nolan. He tried for a while and then he used his hands. He switched back and forth from using his hands to trying to scoop. He would stay very still and watch Kaydence as she scooped and then he would try to scoop again. He got bored filling the balloons before Kaydence did, so he went to play with his toys and we finished up. Now I brought in the sweeping. (We made a huge mess) I don't have a kid sized broom. I thought about buying one, but when my kids get a hold of a broom they generally wave them around in the air. I decided it was better all around not to give them access to brooms on a regular basis. Instead I bought them a little (as in smaller than the one I use) brush and dust pan. I used the broom to sweep into a big pile and then Kaydence helped me sweep it into her dustpan. Most of what she swept went all over the floor, but hey, that's what learning is about. Nolan didn't want to sweep. He was fighting a battle with his superman. 

Then we brought the balloons over to the coffee table. We made 4 of each type of ingredient balloon. 2 for each of them. I mixed them up and the game is to squeeze them and match them together based on how they feel. Kaydence finished pretty quickly and was done, but Nolan spent a long time squeezing them.

After we were finished with that I gave them a few options of what to do next. We ended up playing with our felt There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly set. I bought it used and then found it was missing a few pieces, which was annoying. (My fault for not asking first) We used some other animal toys for the ones that were missing, and the kids don't know the difference. I've also set up a rewards system for Kaydence. Every time she reads me a book she gets one gummy bear. So she read me three books, and then I took a turn reading to her. 

11am we decided to take a trip to the library. I like to go on Mondays because Sam is usually off work and I can look for books without the kids wanting me to hurry. However, I forgot it was labor day so the library was closed. Instead we drove around and enjoyed the pretty Texas landscape. 

12am- lunch. We usually eat earlier than this. Otherwise they beg for snacks and are then too full to eat lunch. While I fix lunch I generally give them the option to color or play with other things. They wanted to watch X-Men cartoons, and I was okay with that. I love X-Men. 

1pm- rest time. Nolan takes a nap. He's usually out for 1 1/2- 2 hours. Kaydence rests quietly on the couch. She has the option to play on the ipad or watch a show. I am going to make her some quiet boxes to play with during rest time, I just haven't gotten there yet. I usually only have her rest for an hour. It's pushing it to get her to lay still for that long anyways. We get up and do her reading lesson. We're on lesson 50! Oh yeah! She loves her reading lessons. Nolan woke up screaming that bears were going to get him. That's relatively new. He will go upstairs alone to play, and then realize he is alone and start screaming that bears are going to eat him. Sam put him to sleep, but wasn't in the room when he woke up so he freaked out. I had planned to do an art project from my Montessori art book, but he just wanted to be held. So we read books and colored instead. Kaydence read me a few more books. Usually around 4 we're done with any official learning that I have for us to do. Sometimes it's earlier than that, sometimes later. Most of this is just a general idea of what our day looks like. Starting soon we'll have dance classes and things like that. We'll adjust our day around those things. Some days (like toady) Kaydence decides she wants to wait to do her reading lesson until Daddy comes home. We're flexible. 

We're going to start a kindergarten level math program soon, as well as handwriting without tears. Or something similar. I'm leaning towards singapore math, but I'm not sure just yet. 

Here are some afternoon silly pictures from me and Bubba. It's one of his favorite games. I make a silly face and he tries to copy it.

To Montessori or not?

I thought I had my whole plan for the next few months worked out. Not on paper (I really need to sit down and do that) but it's all in my head.

I think I posted a little bit before about how I decided we would worth through my Montessori books before we moved on to a curriculum set. (Right now I'm looking at Sonlight, it's been my favorite for a while) I want time to do lots of hands on learning and really focus on finishing Kaydences reading lessons. (Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy lessons) Then when we're finished I'd like to move Kaydence on to Sonlight (or a different one possibly) and keep Nolan working on Montessori type things until he is older. I was really comfortable with my plan and excited to get started. We went to church this morning and my mind was wandering a bit to homeschooling and I felt so at peace. Then this evening I started questioning everything. My whole carefully thought out plan! I thought, "Oh my gosh, what am I doing?! This is all wrong, I need to buy a curriculum set NOW." Luckily some part of my rational brain was still functioning and telling me not to rush to anything.

Maybe it was the back to school buzz? I'm so excited for all the kids getting back to school. Public and homeschool, and I'm excited for all the teachers. Kaydence and I have been talking a lot about how we're so glad we can learn together at home. She is ready to go! I wanted to sit down and plan out at least this months lessons over the weekend. It ended up being kind of a busy one, so I didn't get there. I think I need to remember that I planned to give myself a week to get organized, re-arrange some things in the house. I want to set up a "school room" where our play room currently is and turn my sons room (which he doesn't sleep in anymore) into their play room. My mom suggested using Nolans room as our school room, but I like the play room better. It's more open and we can spread out a lot more. Maybe it's just the stress/anticipation building? I don't know. I don't feel stressed. I'm not even worried about not having our school room set up. I've got to find some more book shelves and a table for us to use, but that will take time. Eventually it will be set up the way I want, but in the meantime I'm not worried.

I'm just really second guessing myself. Not the decision to homeschool, I know without a doubt that right now it's the best thing for us. Will that change later? I don't know, I try not to think too far in advance when homeschool is concerned. (just the thought of high school makes me cringe) Just what if I'm approaching it the wrong way? I don't exactly have a ton of family support. It's kind of a weird feeling. On one hand they support me, but they are also quick to make comments about why I need to send them to school, but all in a positive we want the best for you sort of way. It's not anything negative. My husband is supporting me, but he's really not nuts about it. So sometimes I end up feeling like I'm doing this alone. That isn't the case because I've been trying to make some more homeschooling friends. The homeschooling community is really great, everyone is so quick and willing to help.

I just wanted to write this down, because homeschooling isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Some days are amazing, and somedays I know I'll be second guessing every thing. Next time I go into panic mode I'll have to remember this and remind myself that it will be ok. Also, since I originally started this with the hope that maybe other people getting started would read it and feel like they weren't the only ones having a hard time. Tomorrow I'm going to spend some time getting organized and hopefully the next post will be filled with our great "back to school" week. I'm going to ride out my insecurities tonight, and hopefully tomorrow with a fresh perspective I'll be ready to roll.

Sorry it's been so long! I hit a serious block this summer and switched into survival mode.

That makes it sound a lot worse than it was. Basically the kids and I were going stir crazy being stuck in the house all day. Except for the pool, and they were getting bored with the toys in the house. My mom came during that time so we got to get out of the house a bit. I had to get creative and change things up. Also my computer broke. So for a while I was just hoping it would magically work again. It's still broken, but we do have more than one laptop. We've been busy bees. I'm not going to do a long post right now. This is just basically to say we're still here and I'll be posting what our new "school" year will look like.

I spent a lot of time looking at different curriculums, but I decided for this year I'm going to work through the montessori book that I already have. I also got a montessori art book that we were going to do this summer, but it took forever for the book to come. We're going to focus on reading and getting used to being on a more formal schedule. (with lots of wiggle room of course) I decided it would be a good transition year. We're going to go check out a co-op next week too!

Look for another (better) post soon :)