ToothFaerie

I've never tried to have my kids believe in anything not true. (i.e. Santa Clause, Easter Bunny or ToothFairie) We like having the fun traditions (i.e. stocking, egg hunts, and quarter) but I never want my kids to question what is real or to give others credit for what I do. After all there are years the stocking of goodies is all we can do for them at Christmas I want them to know that was me thinking of them. And I feel the same way about the toothfairie.

So when my daughter lost her first tooth I had put some thought in how I wanted celebrate. The result: her tooth-faerie doll and cards. I bought a cheep fairy doll (hers happens to be Barbie) and told her that as long as she had it we would play faerie every time she lost a tooth. The Faerie leaves not only a quarter but also a small card where I write the date and which tooth was lost.

Charry has been very diligent leaving her tooth and doll on the bookshelf before bed each time so she can get her quarter and her card. In fact after the first three I skipped the card because she didn't seem interested so she made a special request that I not forget the card this time.

It's always nice to know your kids appreciate what you do. And besides making Tooth-faerie cards is a fun way to use up scraps and the extra embellishments that I always have laying around.

Disneyland

For thirty very happy years I didn't go to Disneyland. Not Even Once. I had seen pictures, received the occasional postcard but never actually gone anywhere close. And I never missed it. Not Even Once.

This year life was weird and hard and being a mom/wife was weird and hard. So someone offered us a trip to Disney. My gut reaction was to say, "No Thank you." But I worried about my kids because of how weird and hard things had been, so my husband and I said, "OK." And we all went to Disneyland.

Now as anyone who has been to Disneyland can attest to at the end of the week we were experts, ready to share our new found knowledge with anyone willing to listen. And so I have the following bits of wisdom and advice gained from my experience.

1. Get to the park early as possible, better yet get the Magical morning pass and come an hour earlier. That way you can ride more rides and spend less time in line.

2. Pack a lunch, best time to eat is while in the longer lines.

3. Get a small backpack for each child to carry their own gear, lunch and water.

4. In the gear: dry clothes incase they get really wet.

5. Take a siesta/dinner break to rest and save money by not eating at the park.

6. Set your souvenir budget ahead of time and stick with it.

Now you may be curious how our trip was thanks to our wisdom. Well unfortunately the wisdom came after the trip was over so we won't know if any of that would have helped until next time (hopefully it won't take thirty years to go back.)

June 17th, 2011

I tend to write only when I feel at my absolute worse. When all my emotions are ready to burst and I have to just let them all out. But that doesn't really show how I am from one day to the next.

Everyday is a little different. Sometimes I feel a little lonely. Sometimes I feel a little sad. Sometimes I look at his picture and smile, he had cute ears. Sometimes I look at his foot print and smile, he had my weird toes.

So even though I may have a tear in my eye I still have times when I can remember and smile. God is good and I know this life is temporary. Someday I will see my son again and until then I can love him from afar.

Solar System Part 3

We finished off our solar system project by making a display board, to be honest it looked pretty old school science fair.

Then I had Charry give her oral report. We spent a little more time on the unit than I had intended but I was very pleased with the end result.

Solar System Part 2

So my last blog was about the many learning resources I'm learning to use in teaching. This is more of the ways I'm finding out that she is in fact learning from those resources.

After writing her many mini reports Charry got to make a model of the Solar System. She was very excited because this meant she finally got to use the clay I had bought on sale after Christmas. I also found a use for another sale item, file folders, and some foam peanuts I'd been wanting to recycle.

I glued and label a spot for the sun on one end of the open folder. Then Charry drew and labeled the paths for the other objects in the solar system. On those paths we glued down foam peanuts to hold the models. Next Charry had to make the models. She tried very hard to use the colors shown in the pictures even though I told her she could do whatever she liked. In the end I was very impressed with her. Saturn in particular showed great ingenuity.

Her model was very nice and she showed a lot of attention to details but as a parent I was even more impressed with her painting of the night sky.

What impressed me was not her artistic skill (which compared to mine are quite extensive) but the fact this wasn't an assignment. She was simply playing with cousins and painted what she had been thinking about. This showed me that our lessons had gone beyond something she had to do for school and become fun.

Solar System Part 1

Charry and I finally wrapped up her unit on space. It was suppose to be 2 weeks but I stretched it to 4 because we were having so much fun. For the first week it was typical science lessons. She read from the text book and filled out worksheets. Then I managed to get a little creative. We used a few other books.

Using "The Magic School Bus" to find examples Charry was able to write some very nice reports on different aspects of the solar system.

I also managed to use other multimedia tools. Including movies, websites and the ever so popular i-pod.

Once I started looking for resources it was amazing how easy they were to find. My favorites were Jelly Telly (adorable Christian children web site with surprisingly concrete science facts)

http://www.jellytelly.com/video/journey-to-the-stars/

and my i-pod apps, because she could use them in the car or where ever we ended up for the day.

This week I loosened my grip on my i-pod. After all one of the ways I justified buying it was because it was "educational." So durring school time I decided to let the girls use this wonderful educational tool. Well, it does more than just educate. I've found it to be a useful tool for keeping Child #2 quiet while I try to work with Child #1. And so while Child #2 may not be getting smarter she is getting quite creative.

Right now one of her favorite things to do is make cartoon characters stand on her head. I for one am trying to encourage this, it cracks me up, and I do love a good laugh. Her "other favorite thing to do" is play fashionista with my Barbie App.

I of course also require her to use the educational apps, Star Fall recently released some that are payed apps, and putting the name star fall on them was all it took for me to shell out the dough, I had been quite content with my free apps until that point. They were definitely worth every penny, even the spendy alphabet app, which is just under $3.