“Insta”-replay skipping ahead to Christmas

So I have been even more lax than normal about blogging, mostly because my mind was preoccupied with school for most of the last few months.  And not the homeschooling which I love sharing but my school.  It is my final year and senior classes are hard! Then as I was finishing up my hard classes came the holidays and more distractions. So I won’t bore you with my math but I will share some of our holiday fun!

We put up our tree early, during the Thanksgiving break. It is full of memories and personal ornaments.

My mom celebrated her retirement with her entire family! It was great to see the Idahoans.

Since so many cousins were in town we had a Ward family Christmas party. My aunt Sandy showed her music teacher skills, letting the kids play along with a variety of percussion instruments while she played piano.

We seemed to spend a lot of time at shopping centers yet still forgot a few gifts, sorry.

I finally got to go to the movies with my family, last month I stayed home to work on school while they went on more than one occasion. And Mary Poppins Returns was a cute movie.

Christmas Eve at my moms was a blast, so much laughter. And Christmas crackers which are a family tradition. Merry had three crowns on at one point.

Another Christmas tradition is the girls playing Christmas songs. Honestly I don’t think they are getting any better, but I think they would if they practiced.

A Christmas tradition I hope to keep is going for a walk before eating all the goodies. And I spotted a hummingbird, although it’s kinda a blur in the picture.

My brother-inlaw and his family were in town the entire week after Christmas! We had a great time visiting, not many pictures but I had to share this one, someone knows how to spot a camera.

New years is coming, and that means new goals. One of mine is to blog more, I like being able to look back at my year.  Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that the new year will inspire you to reach for a few new goals.

“Insta”-replay: picture of the week

September is off to a good start. Girls went to visit their great grandmother, without me so no pictures. And we finished up our first week of school.

In order to stay on schedule, we doubled up on subjects and tried to stay focused.  I also attempted to stay focused on my own school, not sure if I succeeded or not.

Long story short, I took only one photo last week:

Merry completing an experiment. 

Hopefully next week I’ll pull my camera out more!

“Insta”-replay: goodbye summer

August is over, September begins.  Where I’m from this marks the end of summer and being of fall.  Despite the calendar insisting the first Day of Autumn isn’t until September 22.  Which to be honest has always kinda bothered me, but c’est la vie.

We already jumped back into school so summer break has ended.  How did we finish of the season?

Planning for next year: 10th grade

Highschool is tough yo plan for.  On the one hand you want your child to enjoy learning and find classes that interest them.  On the other hand you see your child’s potential and want to push them to continue to learn.

Hopefully Charry will have a balanced year of  working hard on things she enjoys learning

Planning for next year: 7th grade curriculum choices

Usually I start with my older daughter, since each year is a new grade I’ve never planned for before.  But this year I started with my younger.

About half of her subjects will be following in her sister’s footsteps, the other half will be new curriculum I’ve never tried before.

“Insta”-replay: heat wave continues

The summer continues to be a hot one.  Funny thing is, we have still been busy, I just haven’t been taking pictures.  So here is what we’ve been up to:

We went up to Washington to visit family.  They live right on the Idaho border so we spent a day visiting that state as well.  And exploring cute shops.  As a bonus it was an artists day so roads were closed off and artists stalls were set up.

The main reason for our visit was to go camping.  It was our first camping trip of the summer and the only pictures I took were of a deer outside the bathroom to show my kids.

Because of the heat we have been spending time inside.  This week that meant legos! 

And Aunt Katie had leftover crafts from a party so she let the girls stencil plates.  It was a lot of fun and allowed directed creativity which is a different sort of crafting than they usually get.

The month is half done, I’m nervously waiting for my summer grades.  Coming up is the start of the school year! Summer has gone fast but I expect the summer weather to continue for a while more.

Planning for next year: morning time

So over the years I’ve found various ways to work with both girls together.  We had calendar time, knuffle bunny adventures, we did combined science class, then history class.  I enjoyed every one of those! This year we are trying yet another together time; story time.

My plan is to read a picture book a day, focusing on the literature.  We’ll look at different art styles, different story telling devices, and different audiences books are written for.  My hope is to encourage my girls to look at all books not just novels and to enjoy literature even if it is written for a slightly younger audience (which not all picture books are.)

So here are the five I plan to start with (and why.)

Growing Strong Inside: because it was my favorite.  I received this book as a birthday present when I was three, and I still have it.  Some stories stay with us forever, this was one of those.

Grumpy Cat: Grumpy cat is a meme parents will laugh at, we bought it for my husband.  It’s funny to parents for different reasons than why it appeals to kids. But it is written with simplicity and humor for kids. 

Monster at the End of this Book: I learned a new term this week, “meta fiction”, that’s when an author talks to the reader making them a part of the story.  This is one of the classic examples.

Ubi Ferra Sunt: “Where the Wild Things Are” in Latin. Some stories are translated into lots of languages and read around the world.  So what makes a story easy to connect with and why do some inspire across languages.  The author’s story verses the author’s words.  Also I love Latin and this one is simple enough that we know all the vocabulary.

Dinotopia: I’ll be honest this story bores me.  But I love the pictures and the idea.  And it is a good example of a picture book that wasn’t written for young children but rather for kids their age.

So those are the first five with talking points.  I’m excited to see how this new start to school goes, and if it lasts the entire year!

“Insta”-replay; Stayton is where it’s at in July

So earlier I shared the small town fun at the beginning of July, apparently Stayton likes to have small town fun at the end of July too.  Who knew?

They have a town wide Summerfest with lots to do and here are our highlights:

A car show, we looked at grownup sized cars too, but they weren’t as fun.

Lots of photo opts.  Charry was less than thrilled, at least I didn’t make her take a picture with Santa, who was there.

We took every free chance to win a prize and ended up with a myriad of cheap plastic toys.

We went on a scavenger hunt through the various local shops and discovered some treasures not on the list. Turns out Stayton has a lot of second hand stores, and I mean a lot!

And we saw Aunt Katie who was volunteering with a organization that feeds hungry children.

We then came home exhausted and sunburned.  But it was a fun morning.  It is still to hot to spend much time out doors but a big event was just what we needed to get out and stretch our legs.  And we found out a little more about this place we live.

Planning for next year: 2018-2019 School Plans

As most who know me can attest, I love planning and start planning way early.  But It does tend to take me a long time to work out all the details.  For example, I picked out all my curriculum for this coming year back during spring break but still don't have all my plans hashed out.

I thought it might be fun to take a trip down memory lane and look at how I handle planning and how those plans have evolved over the years.

Even when Charry was just entering Kindergarten, when I first started this blog, I prepared for the entire year ahead of time.  Of course that was simply picking a theme to go with the letter of the week and jotting down a few activities and web sites to go with that theme. I still have the binder with my weekly plans all neatly printed out.

For the grade school years my plans were more weekly goals than detailed lists.  Rather that specifying page numbers and assignments I simply planned which books we needed to work on each day.  For example we had daily workbooks which I scheduled for every day but science we only did three times a week, since there were fewer lessons.  I still divided up the books and compared the number of lessons with the number of days I wanted to do school, but I didn't necessarily write each lesson down, just "science today" or "finish unit."

As the girls got older the curriculums became more intense.  Each year  I seemed to add a subject that needed not only done each day, but needed specific things done so that we could finish during the year.  The first of these was Latin.  This was also the year I started giving the girls planners so they knew what they would be doing, although I think my motivation was more purchasing these really cute planners.

With Junior High I found I was the one in need of detailed plans since Charry was working independently on so many subjects.  Keeping track of what unit she was in for quizzes was much harder that simply asking questions about what she was learning.  So my plans changed again, this time she had a simple checklist of subjects to do and I kept a master list of what assignments needed done. So even though I had a master plan for the year, she still got just a general schedule for the week.

With High School we are changing things up again.  Charry likes to know how she is doing and what she will be doing.  If she has an experiment or test next week she wants to know ahead of time.  So I'm working on making an assignment list for her. This helps her know when she's gotten behind, some subjects are easier to put off than other.  It also gives her an idea of what she can do to catch up, i.e. which assignments she can double up on. 

So my planning has remained pretty consistent, I start early and strong.  If  I only plan for half the year, only half the year gets planned (that has happened twice), so I do the entire year at once. If a subject doesn't need broken up by me I just plan to do as many lessons as it has.  I spend most of my energy on the subjects I have divide up.  And until recently, my plans were just for me, the kids had just checklists (which I love).





   

“Insta” -replay, too hot, can’t even

“Insta”-replay: Small town 4th

Happy July, a rare weekly update!  Without school taking up our time we’ve been busy!

Charry was feeling crafty after her sister’s niffler project so she found a few pet rocks, and found paint without me realizing it.  One minute she’s asking about looking outside for rocks, the next said rocks are staring at me. At least they have friendly stares.

We may be a little obsessed with the Animal Crossing phone app. First a fishing tournament and now a gardening challenge, it’s like being outside with out interacting with people.  

One of the things I was excited about when we decided to move into a town was small town event, and in Stayton, Fourth of July is a big deal.  Girls were looking very patriotic, especially Merry with her giant bow.  

One small town tradition is the annual parade, even before moving here we always came for the parade.  So we have a few favorite floats, like snoopy flying the postal plane.


Another tradition we enjoyed even before moving is the fireworks. We sat on blankets at the local highschool.  Along with friends, family, and most of the town.

The display was awesome this year! I was surprised by how long it went.  And there were a few types of fireworks I hadn’t seen before.

We finished the week with a family movie night! 

The month has started well! Yay summer.

“Insta”-replay: June, a little of everything

The second half of the month flew by, I’ve been mostly focused on my school, with midterms and all.  But we’ve managed to squeeze in some family fun.

Tennis continues to be the thing we are all equally bad at.  But it’s fun to learn together as a family.

Girls had their end of year recital.  I enjoyed being a class mom and just hanging out with Merry.

Both girls continue to love dance and are already looking forward to next year!

We tried some Japanese sodas with glass marble stoppers. Neither child is a big fan of carbonated beverages but the novelty made them worth it.

Merry had a project idea, to make a niffler habitat.  She learned about paper mache, sculpting clay, and hot glueing. 

Her finished project was so cute, I convinced her to let it stay if the front room, at least for a while.

So that’s how we began our official summer. Hope you are enjoying time for relaxing and creating!

“Insta”-replay: a good start to the summer

We have reached the halfway point in June, 

We started the month, and our summer, with a road trip with Grandma! It was a quick trip but we managed to squeeze in lots of fun.

Kezi and I had fun taking pictures.  I was the mean aunt who told her she should eat her hamburger but she didn’t mind, or listen.

We saw the cousins dance.  It was the highlight of our trip!

After we returned from the trip we reinstated family game night.  Nerts is harder to teach when the kids didn’t know how to play solitaire.  So they learned two new games.

I’m taking summer classes, so I’ve been working on finding a nice quiet place to study.  I ended up clearing my vanity, which works great!

In our attempt to stay active and take advantage of being in town we are kinda learning tennis.  Right now most of our knowledge is coming from you tube videos.

And Charry is still finishing up school! She has one more test, which she’ll take later today, and then she’ll be done until next year!

The next few weeks should be busy ones for us, full of fun summer activities!

“Insta”-replay- so May, that was a thing

Somehow May came and went without a blog post... It’s almost like I was so busy finishing up the school year that I ignored the internet.  We did stuff, I took pictures, and now (a bit late) I will share them. But in reverse order (because I uploaded them wrong and I don’t want to take the time to re-upload, sorry)

Merry finished school just as the month was finishing.  I think she was eager to get to summer break!

End of year recital is coming! I’m excited to see my girls dance!

May had some beautiful sunny spring days.  So I made the girls play outside, they quickly found the shade.

We are trying take advantage of community events, like the firemen’s pancake feed.

And we are exploring the community a bit more, like visiting the historic Brown house, which happens to be across the street from us.

Robert and Mearen were in town for a weekend so we enjoyed a little time with the little cousin.

Big events in May included: Engineering Day at OSU.  I had to navigate the campus with out Jon’s help since he had work.  Luckily there was a map online and most buildings were clearly labeled.

Mother’s Day was another big event. Nothing says I’m a mom like buying myself an American Girl doll that I have wanted since I was 10.

And of course the biggest event, May the fourth! It was extra fun to have Toby and Odin visiting and to be able to go to the event at our local library!

So that was May, I hope the month was fun for you all as well.