Golf it is

So Milton has been showing an interest in Golf. "Why not" I thought. So I started to look into lessons and oh my goodness...So NOT affordable when there is no income for the most part. So what to do???

Well, we already had two golf clubs given to us in Page that are kid sized. Lucky there. We were at Walmart looking for something and I ran across their golf section. $3.00 red plastic golf balls to practice driving. $3.00 golf tees. Then we looked up golf grip and how to drive the ball basics on YouTube. Perfect!

Milton was outside working on his swing.

Today I was in the Thrift store looking for a desk I could use for sewing and what did I find? A putt and return putting green. Complete with water and sand hazard. Boy did the boys have fun with that.

I will be checking out a DVD from the public library once it gets here. A kids instructional video on golfing. I cant wait and Milton is excited. Now we just have to find a mentor who would be willing to stop by now and then and give him some tips.

A new school year

So a new school year is about to be under way but it is starting with a bang. We just moved cross country from Arizona to Ohio for my husband to start his PHD in Music Education. We have been unpacking for a while but are enjoying all of the wonderful things to do so much we keep going out for most of the day and having to much fun. We are facing a few years of full time student life with our new family of 5 and figuring that all out. And then to top it off we just found out that Milo has Type 1 Diabetes. Yeah for us! another adventure to begin within our adventure.

This all happened the weekend before my husband started school. Talk about a tornado hitting. Everything hit the fan to say the least. Milo is doing better now and we have been doing this new life for 2 weeks and there are still so many questions but they will be answered as time passes. But hey...life must go on.

I am excited about our new year in learning great things. We are easing into it this year but have already learned some really neat stuff. I love it when I am learning things for the first time with my children. It cracks me up when Quincy asks about people like Archimedes and Pythagoras. Who would have thought.

Check out my oldest holding an Aligator on the Field Trip page. Road trip with his dad to our new home.

Sorry I have not posted in so long. I did have my Baby boy Pierce Thomas on April 10th at 6:04 am. He was 6 lbs and 4 oz, 18 inches long. We are moving and I will continue to post once we are settled into to our new home of Ohio. Till I post again...have a great summer.

Juice Jello

Check out the Save A Penny Page to learn how to make Jello with your favorite Juice.

How a tree grows

So Milton said that he wanted to learn about trees today. I thought I would share some of the resources I found if your child would be interested in the same thing.


Visit How Does A Tree Grow to learn in a more detailed way how a tree grows. You will learn the word Meristems and how these cells effect how a tree grows.


Also check out these You tube videos to lean about how the age of a tree is determined, watch an acorn grow into a tree

Age of a tree

Acorn grows into a tree (time lapse)

The Giving Tree read by Shel Sivertein (1973)

How To Plant A Tree

ENJOY!

Spring Gardening POOP!

POOP! We got our steer manuer and the boys had to get it to the backyard for me. 4 bags were a tough job for the two of them but they did it.

Milton then had to open the bags using a shovle and then dump them out into the boxes.

Milton got a little help from his little brother Quentin. Quentin then decided to treat the poop as a sand box. He did not seem to mind the fact that it came from a cow.

Warmer Days

Its finaly warming up and Milton is out of town with his Dad so Quentin got to enjoy an ice cream sandwhich in the back yard.

Watering Quentin

Quentin wanted to help water plants so gave him 15 minutes to water the grass in the play area. This is what ended up happening.

YEP, that is him standing in a wagon of water shoes, socks, pants and all.

Slimy the Snail

MEET SLIMY THE SNAIL. To day was a beautiful day out and the boys found this tiny little guy in the back yard. They spent an hour or two outside playing with HER, yes her, and building her places to play.  She was a brave little snail. Even with all of the attention she kept her head out of her shell and did not want to miss a second of her adventure. Click here to see a video of Slimy.

Here is Quentin trying to pick Slimy up.

Can you find Slimy in this photo? The boys thought the fire truck would be a good place for Slimy to live. Milton added green weeds to it to make it more like her home and for food for her to eat.

Look at how they are watching over her.

Food Storage Fun

So we had to change out bedroom around to get ready for baby and the boys were in charge of moving the #10 cans of food out into the hall. This is what they came up with. A fort of course!

Starting Tomatos

So our tomato plants are doing well. Milton had noticed the direction the plants were facing so I wanted to show him how plants lean towards the sun. So we turned the tray so the plants were looking into the house.

 Then before he went to bed we looking at them again and they were standing strait up.

By part way through the day they had turned their little heads toward the sun outside of the window.

Sun, Soil, Water

THE MIGHTY SEED

So my son Quentin learned about plants growing at church this last Sunday. During our Sunday interview about the coming week and what he would like to learn about I asked him is he would like to plant some seeds. It was an instant "YES!" So with things we had left over from last year we collected some pots, soil from last years post and garden boxed and left over organic tomato seeds. The boys were in charge of collecting the dirt (soil) and I put their initial on their pots. The boys picked what kind of tomatoes to plant (I have a lot of fun varieties).

As we planted I talked to Quentin about what plants needed to grow. He shared that water helps plants grow bigger. During lunch I drew a picture of a potted plant and we identified what was needed to grow a plant.

We made our own little castle flag tags to mark the variety of tomatoes that they picked. The boys colored their flags how they wanted to.I also planted some in the smaller plastic containers in the back.

The boys water their plants in the morning using the squirt bottle and I check on then at night. Today is day 2. They are to take 7-10 days to sprout.

LEGOS

My boys love legos, Here is Miltons Stable castle, and more...

Some people don't like the idea of Legos because it does not allow creativity due to the premade sets. We build our Legos one time with the instructions. Its a great lesson in following directions. Then once it is played with for a couple of days it is pulled apart and added to the mass of Legos we have. Now they have to use their own heads to build.

Do your kids like Legos Click here and sign up for a FREE 2 year lego club magazine subscription.

Literature Wednesday

Literature Wednesday

Robin Hood

We are still reading Robin Hood and all of the stories about him. We just got a bunch of larch boxes and we decided that we would build Sherwood Forest and the town of Nottingham.



The church had a little more effort put into it. We made stained glass windows with tissue paper and parchment paper and had a bell in the steeple.

Here is what we did. First I cut the holes in the cardboard box.
Then we collected the following
Liquid Starch
tissue paper
parchment paper (wax also works)
Paint brush (paper can be dipped by hand its just messier)
Container to hold starch

1. fold parchment in half and unfold
2. paint starch onto one side of the paper
3. Place tissue paper onto wet side and paint more starch onto it till wet.
4. Once covered fold the paper in half and press down.
5. I used a heating tool to quick dry it.
6. Trim if needed and tape or hot glue it into place from the inside of the window
7. You or your kids can ad black lines with a Sharpie pen to give an authentic stained glass look.

Here is Quentin next to our finished church. We placed it in front of the window so we could see the colors of the windows. We also made Sherwood Forest the Jail of Nottingham and Prince Johns Castle.

Here is Milton coloring some of the branches for the tree of Sherwood Forest where Robin Hood and his Merry Men lived.

Here is our Jail of Nottingham where the Sheriff had locked up people for not paying taxes or for being part of Robin Hoods Merry Men.

Sock dryer balls

Check out the save a penny page to learn how to make your very own dryer balls from socks and cotton cloth.

Homeschool PE

Homeschool PE

So we took the boys over to the high school track to do a little running and jumping. Milton ran a quarter mile in 2 minutes and 24 seconds (watch it here). Then the boys took turns trying to do the long jump. After Daddy showed Milton how it was done his jump improved a little. Quentin had to try it too. Milton also wants to learn how to do a back flip so we figured a front flip would be the place to start. The boys jumped on the pole vaulting foam mat and Milton tried to imitate Daddies front flip. He is up to an extended arm somersault for now. We were running and jumping for about an hour and they had a lot of fun. Click on the links above to see them in action.

Experiment

Can you see the wind? Well maybe if you live in the high desert and a sand storm kicks up. Milton and I read a little about air currents (Quentin and I happen to see a video about the same thing) and how warm and cool air react to each other.

So we filled a mason jar with ice cold water. The in a small glass bottle we put in hot water. Next we were suppose to all food coloring but I could not find the cheap ones i had. So we added sugar sprinkles instead and let it dissolve.

With a ribbon tied around the little bottle we lowered it into the mason jar. After waiting a couple minutes the green started to slowly come out. This is to demonstrate how hot is lighter than cold. The hot water floats to the surface. We could be how it swirls and how a current works.

Burp Cloth

Check out the Save a Penny page to see how to make your own super soft burp cloths for your baby or great affordable baby gift. I think this may become my baby shower gift staple.

ROCKS!

See what we are going to do with rocks on teh Field Trip page.

Handmade Dryer Sheets

Check out how to make handmade dryer sheets on the Save a Penny page. Get rid of chemicals on your cloths, stop paying for dryer sheets and enjoy the lovely smell of your choice.

Save a Penny Page

So how many of us are not trying to find ways to save money?

I will admit that I am not the best at saving money. My husband would probably say that I do not know how to at all. But I am trying to turn over a new leaf and say "I CAN SAVE MONEY!" How does one save money? Spend less ten you make and get out of debt. June is my goal. Debt free and saving money. Yeah, I can do it.

As you can see above, I have created a page devoted just to that...Saving Money. I will post my projects and ideas there. I want to spend less and practice the 3 R's (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle). I hope you will learn right along with me.

Here is my challenge. Not getting to excited and spend a bunch of money to save money. We shall see. Feel free to leave comments and your own ideas especially if it has to do with the 3 R's.

Water Colors

  Today was our home school library group. I lined up a visitor, Jerry Lindsay, our local National Parks artist in resident to come and talk to our group about water color art.




He taught us how to make a sunset/sky and the idea  of using silhouette in ones paintings.
                                                                                 Christine's Quentin and Milton's Library attempts



The children 7 and up enjoyed it. The younger ones painted for a little while and then went off to play in the children's area.

This inspired Milton to want to practice painting later this afternoon so we both sat down to practice our new learned skills. Here is a sampling of our art.

Milton's-Sunrise and Western          

Christine-Scottish Mist                  








Christine-Black Snow at Dawn

New Look

What do you think of this new look?

Employment Thursday

Ok, this might seem to sound quite strange but I am looking for ways to let my kids earn a little bit of money to show them the power of saving and the value of work outside of their normal house jobs. I find it hard to pay them to do daily jobs that are expected to keep the house running. Putting away your clothes is just a part of life. No one is ever going to pay you to do that.

So as part of a Mentoring class that I am taking through Kathey Mellor (her site is unleashingyourvoice.com ) I was coming up with a list of ways I could improve my relationship with my 7 year old. Consistency was one of my number one things I came up with. So I developed a list of paid jobs he could do.

Clean out garden box $1
Vacuum one room $.15
Pick up hall tiny trash $.10
Rake hay into a pile $.50
Move Rocks $1
Clean out car $.50
Sweep Bathrooms $.25
Dust Picture Frames $.30

These are all jobs my husband, John, or I would do.

So Thursdays from after lunch till 2pm he can do as many of these jobs as he would like to do (and do them at a high level of quality) and be paid to do it. This will help him with time management also, one of his major challenges. He could earn quite a bit of money or waist his time and earn very little.

Where is the money coming from?
We have a large jar that we put any change in that is found on the street or in the house. Sometimes I even pitch in change from the store if it sits in my pocket or purse for a long time. Hey, we live on a budget. So this is how we are doing it. Plus this makes it so he can divide his money among his different places of saving.

For instance he raked up some hay yesterday (snow day and Daddy was working with the kids in the back yard) and after Daddy said his work was good he earned his $.50

This is how the money went
10% to tithing
20% to mission
Then Milton chose the following
10% to fun
60% to college

We will be learning about he stock marked on Monday and will be working on the idea of investing money so that will become a part of it also I am sure of it. With a generation of lazy people being raised right now I see this as a very valuable lesson for him to start learning now. If you want something you earn it not just ask people for it.

Liturature Wednesday

So on Thursday I have decided to put more focus and the classic book we are reading. Classics are very important, Key, in leadership education. You can learn so much from older literature. So many values are obviously displayed in the characters of the books. We have been learning about Honor this last month and decided to read Robin Hood.

Wednesdays we attend our local libraries reading time. The boys enjoy the stories and Milton does a little volunteering during craft time. I found a couple more books with Robin Hood stories to supplement our current book.

So what I have started out with is a few different pictures of Robin Hood to include the Disney version. I also found maps so we can follow where his adventures lead him. The one you see on top is of the Sherwood and Barnsdale area of Nottingham shire.(county). This not only shown the towns but the location of many historical Robin Hood events. Under that are two other maps. One of just the County of Nottingham  and where it is located in the country of England and and older map of old England. This is to help incorporate geography and to help the life of Robin Hood to come alive.

The packet of paper has a real timeline of the documentation and oral history of the hero of the people. It also has an pretty extensive history of Robin Hood and some of his other Merry Men to include places lived, marriages, burials and geographic locations of events. Also the history of King owned forests. I even found pictures of the head stones of Robin and Little John.

So how is this exciting to a 7 year old? It makes it real. He was a real person. After just sharing these maps with him the afternoon he was already able to point out the location of Nottingham on a different England map in a book about knights.

Then this afternoon we watched the Disney version of Robin Hood and pointed out parts of the story that was the same and ones that were different.

What now? I plan on having Milton locate and plot the places on the map where Robin Hood and his Merry Men go so we can see all of the places they go and to identify places that are still existing today from their adventures.

The New Bulliten Board

So I have this big Bulliten board in our dinning room and in the past months it has just become a catchal for drawings and other random thing that the boys had decided to put up there. I have decided to reclaim it and have it help me with my "Structured time, Not content." Now granted it will seem like structured content but it is all based on things that my children have shown a spark in or I would like to introduce them to to see if it will create a Spark.

What is a spark? It is a glimmer of interest in a an area that my children have shown an interest in. For instance, my kids LOVE outer space. We have a telescope, tons of books on space, a glow in the dark solar system and stars in their room and even a clock that projects some real life images in space. My 7 year old has been into space for about 3-4 years and we have even made up our own song to learn the order of the planets to include everyones favorite pluto. My 3 year old has know this song for almost a year already. With that said, It is my job to take these Sparks and expand upon them. There are many ways for me to do this. The bulliten board is just one more way for me to enforce and remind myself what they are interested in.


So here is my newley organized Bulliten board. My kids love it when things look new and frankly so do I. It is devided into 5 sections. This keeps it organized and prevents me from craming to much in one subject area. I just used ribbon and thumb tacks to divide up the board.

My 5 sections are
Family Jobs & Employment Thursday
Stock Market Monday
Crazy Tuesday
Liturature Wednesday
A place for the boys to display recent projects

Right now I will go over the Family Job section.

Here is the Family Jobs Section

In each of the small boxes the e names of the family members are listed in one of the colored boxes (Daddy, Mommy, Milton, Quentin)

Then I made lots of little cards to represent jobs that need to be done Daily, Weekly and Monthly.
These are the extra jobs each family member must do on top of every day tasks.

Boys must every morning
Go potty, Make bed, say prayers, get dressed, Pledge of alliegnece and eat breakfast, clear their dishes & brush their teeth.
Milton also washes the breakfast dishes every morning and Quentin puts away the silverwear.
These jobs are listed on a simple chart in their room and kitchen

Once all of this is done then they do their extra jobs and these change every day. They are all tasks that they are learning to master and maybe one new job to learn. Today Milton learned how to clean floor boards.

Their evening jobs are extra jobs to help keep the house clean before bed. We are still working on getting this down (to include my husband). After dinner we are all to clear our dishes. Then we do our evening job before doing any last minute picking up and getting ready for bed and book reading. We have a ticket reward system for completing ones jobs. I will explain this in another post.

In my job area I also included a picture of a well set plate setting for the boys to observe.


How to keep your jobs organized

I use a 3X5 card holder froma system I was using before. It has
12 Month dividers
31 Day dividers
My little  job cards.( I wrote a letter in the bottom right corner of the jobs indicating if it is to be done daily, weeky, monthly, bi-weekly or by-monthy. You could also do seasonal.)

1.So using a calender decide which days you wont your weekly things done (mon, tues, wed...)
2.Place these job cards in the day to be done. Once you reach that day and the jobs are done put them in the following weeks place and they are ready for you when that day comes.
3.As days pass move days number to the next month

As your system becomes complete you need but pull down the days cards, move them to their next day and pull out the next days and assign them to a family member.

Even or Odd

So people ask me all of the time what curriculum I am using and I always say "We actually don't use one. We learn from things that happen everyday." I am sure some people think I am crazy and I am not to worried about this. So here is an example of how it works.

Now I am not a big game person but we do have Reader Rabbit for the Wii and it is 100% educational. So Milton was not able to pass a part of it because he did not know what even and odd were. He really wanted to pass this part of the game of course.so a couple of days latter I wrote on a 3X5 card the numbers 1-40 having all of the even and odd numbers lining up in a column. Then I wrote the lever "E" over the even columns and "O" over the Odd columns.  Then on the back and just wrote some random numbers, mostly two digit. So after explaining to him the we look in the ones column of a number to determine if its even or odd and then I had him flip over the card and circle all of the even numbers. I also gave him a ditty to remember. "2,4,6,8, who do we appreciate? 0!" That took about 4 minutes. We have talked just as short about the numbers when the opportunity comes up about 3-4 other times. Tonight at the table during dinner I asked him if he could remember his even numbers. With little thought he rattled them off. Then I asked for the odds and he was able to figure it out without any promptings from me.

He wanted to learn it and now he has. No matter how many places are in the number he can tell me even or odd. No hours of work sheets drilling it into his little noggin. Super M was ready to learn it.

GREAT DAY!

Last night and this morning I started reading a book titled The Children You Want with the Kids You Have by Marie Ricks.  As far as I can tell this falls right along the TJEd ideals of kindness and teaching our children how to work and in a loving way. So I have learned that I need to retrain my children. She claims that children can learn to listen the first time. Today I have implimented the first step and on Monday we will be having a Family Home Evening on the subjuct of Obedience. This works out perfect becuse this month we are focasing on Honor and we havent touched on Honoring your Father and Mother yet. Sweet! All I have to say is paciance is the name of the game.

Ricks also talks about how to train your children to work. So off to the store we went to build each child their very own cleaning kit. This will also help witht he chores thay are already doing. Their kits are now under their bathroom sink and they will be able to get to their stuff all on their own. I also picked up an apron pattern to make the boys a hopfully more manly vertion of what is on the pictures. Maybe more toolbelt langth and super hero cloth of course.

So here is Quentin cleaning kit (3 years old). He has a feather duster (for quick dusting) Magic eraser, spnge, cloths, water spray bottle and a container of Scotch Brites new non toxic sanitizer wipes.  Quentins simple cleaning jobs during the week include cleaning door knobs, adn wiping the dinning table. He will now also be helping with removing his scribbles from the wall and occasional dusting. 

Miltons Cleaning Kit (7 1/2 years old)
His kit includes cleaning gloves, cloths, feather duster, disinfectant wipes, Simple Green Cleaner (non toxic also), magic eraser sponge and a handled scrubber.

Milton is normally in charge of cleaning switch plates and dusting among many other tasks. He will also now start helping with the Bathrooms and "wall art"
Tonight I taught Milton how to scrub the tub and how to clean the sink in the bathroom. He used comet for the tub but I will not be putting that into his kit. He has a creative mind. Who would have taught he would be shouting through the house "THAT WAS AWESOME" over the excitement of scrubbing the tub. Hey, I'll take it!

My children listened to a Brite Music tape the other day about service. So off we went today to do some service. I am a member of a website called findagrave.com. Low and behold someone actually wanted a photo from our cemetery. I explained to the boys that this is service even though we are not taking food to someone and that we can do service for those we do not know. I took the boys and after walking around for an hour looking for the death year of 2008 we finally found it. The boys enjoyed the walk and we have decided to try and photograph all of the graves that have yet been added to the site. About 30 more names to find. We were extra excited to find 3 additional names today that we just happened to run across. We also had a conversation about when infants passaway. There was an entire section that was only little ones. I was able to share with Milton that the bodies are in the ground but every spirit returns to heavenly father and that all babies get to live with heavenly father forever. He said that he was crying inside but it was a good thing to be able to explain to my little growing man.