2012-2013 Curriculum: The Extracurriculars

 

 

 

Since I just spent the entire morning and afternoon piecing together my curriculum order (*finally*!!) with several last-minute changes and then placing seven different orders,  I'm feeling a bit ill over the final tally, so I will try to think about something pleasant - the fun schtuff....

 

Art - No real changes here.  We are happy with Meet the Masters and Artistic Pursuits.  I picked up some more construction paper after I discovered last week that we were out of red, purple and pink.  I think that we blazed through those colors during last Valentine's Day..

 

Music - Piano lessons for Jordan and Rylan with their grandma Judy will stay on the schedule.  New this year - Rylan will begin Suzuki violin lessons, starting tomorrow!  I am pretty excited about this.  Rylan will be learning from one of the homeschooling moms in our group who is an accomplished teacher.  Lessons will be in her home, and there will be a once-a-month group lesson.

 

P.E. - (giggle.. that just seems silly to me)  - Karate continues to be the sport of choice for Jordan and Rylan.  Owen has professed his love of tumbling, and Rylan wants to try tap/ballet.  These may, or may not, happen.  I am only human, and the budget will only stretch so far.  Owen gets precedence, though - he doesn't have an 'activity' as of yet...

 

Scouts - Jordan is gung-ho for another year, and I will continue to dump as much of the responsibility for all badgework and paperwork back onto Jordan's (and Dean's) shoulders.  I can't handle any more on my plate.  But I do enjoy the (relative) quiet of the house on camping weekends (although I could do without the headache of the prepwork), and seeing fellow homeschooling/scouting mom friend Deanna at the occasional scouting event - just about the only time I see her!

 

      As for Rylan... sigh... I don't know yet.  I would like for last year to just 'go away'.  Some of last year's Daisies are continuing on in another troop, but the troop is affiliated with my former co-leader, so that ain't happenin' for us, which really saddens and frustrates me to no end.  Our original troop is still in existence, but 95% of the girls are older  - like 9, 10?  And that is just too much of an age-difference for Rylan to be the only youngster in the bunch.  But - we may stick with the troop as a last-resort, simply because familiarity feels comforting, and I really, really like the present leader.  :)  I have contacted another mom, who was Rylan's unit leader at summer camp - but that was a week ago, and my hopes are dimming.  I would be totally happy with this responsibility just. going. away.  I am beginning to think that the continuous road-blocks on this scouting journey is a sign that we should just give it up.

 

 

Now... I need a breather from this damn computer, so I'll have to tackle the rest another day!

Saturday nights just aren't the same...

It's just me and the kids this weekend, while Dean is finishing up his Woodbadge thing for scouts.  We had a lazy day today, since there were no karate classes this morning.  Jordan's friend, Abbi, came over for several hours to hang out with us.  (I realize that if I say 'play', as in 'Abbi came over to play', that just sounds weird, now that the kids are getting older...). We watched 'Megamind', then we went out to Pizza Hut for lunch.  Colin stuffed his pizza AND his toy car into his (half-full) water glass and threw everything ELSE he could get his hands on, within a ten foot radius of the table.  I am certain I looked as outnumbered as I felt, since I so clearly had it under control...  When we finally got home we rode bikes around the neighborhood, and Rylan and Owen screamed at each other the whole time because they are both just so damned competitive - neither one is willing to be last at anything.  Abbi went on her way shortly after that and then it was nap time for me and the little kids.

Unfortunately, Owen evidently drank waaaaaay too much root beer at lunch, because he wandered downstairs after an hour or so, looking panicked and stressed as he hobbled around the corner, clutching himself.  He didn't make it.  To make matters worse, there was also diarrhea involved.  *Super*  Never mind that there is a bathroom two feet away from his bedroom.  He just HAD to come all the way downstairs to go.  Probably because he knew what was about to happen.  I just wish I had known...

So our evening was off to a fantastic start.  After starting the third load of laundry for the day, it dawned on me that I had yet to pick up Owen's prescription.  Owen does a nightly nebulizer treatment of Pulmicort (for asthma maintenance), and we had to miss it yesterday because I forgot it then, too.

Don't judge!

In my defense, the little bugger hasn't missed a nightly dose since he started on it in April.  Secondly, Walgreens sucks.  They are supposed to be open 24 hours.  I keep forgetting that the one we use went a  lame-ass route several months ago, and started having 'hours of operation' in the pharmacy - of which I never remember what they are, and the forgotten pharmacy trip always dawns on me AFTER closing time.


(In a totally unrelated thought - have you ever considered how many different number combinations for commonly used things you have floating around in your brain?   It's no wonder I have no idea where my mother lives, or that it took me two full years to memorize my husband's cell phone number.  But I can tell you that my favorite track on MyloXyloto is '5'.)

So back to my fascinating story about soggy pizza, diarrhea and closed pharmacies....

I could not very well skip two nights in a row of treatment, so we headed off to the only Walgreens left in town that has its pharmacy open 24/7.  It was 7:00 p.m., and I had to wait 20 minutes for them to fill the prescription.  The kids were watching a movie in the van, so I killed time wandering up and down the aisles.  This particular pharmacy used to be familiar ground to me - it is located next to the neighborhood I grew up in.  I can remember purchasing my first makeup there, candy and soda and whatnot.  It's amazing all of the different kinds of stuff you can find at a Walgreens.

And then I had an imaginary conversation between my 21 year-old self and my 41 year-old self.   

"You are so lame!  It's Saturday night....and you are at a drugstore?  Comparing prices?"

"Shut up."

"At least buy something...  How about nail polish?  You used to be cool and buy stuff like that..."

"Be quiet.  Jordan has these wart-thingies on some of his fingers- let's look for a remedy for that.  Oh look!  Bandaids!  Have you ever seen such a wide variety to choose from?"





"Who the hell are you, and how did I turn into such a...a..."

Mobile me....

The stars were aligned for this recent birthday, in the gifts department:

* a most generous husband
* the good fortune of a well-timed bonus at work
* it satisfied both the wish for caffeine AND techno-gadgetry!

I became the proud owner of an iPad, and co-owner of an espresso machine! I have to share the espresso machine with my husband because our birthdays are 20 days apart, so it really was a gift "to us".   (Although he picked it out and ordered it as a surprise,  using our combined birthday $$$ from his folks - thanks Pat and Van!)  I've been practicing using it over the past week (after getting over my fear of using the loudly-hissing steam thingy), and I think I'm getting the hang of it.  If anything, I'm just padding my ever-growing resume...



'BARISTA'

(yeah, I totally did not make that...but it's pretty tho', isn't it?)

Dean arrived home with my new iPad on Wednesday night, so I've spent a couple days getting acquainted with it.  I haven't synced it with iTunes yet - I'll tackle that item today.  You see... I have no idea how to do that.  (shhhhhh!)  Every time I've attempted to use iTunes, I've failed.  It is NOT intuitive, dammit!  It's the whole computer data overwriting the iPod/iPhone data thing.  My contacts are an absolute mess.  I don't even know where my mother lives.  I can drive there, I just can't *tell you* her street address.  Pathetic, I know.

It wasn't until this very moment that I realized how much I've missed my laptop.  No, that wasn't a slam on the iPad - I certainly don't miss the hefty weight or the hot underside of a laptop... I've missed the freedom of portability!  It is a rare moment for me, when sitting in front of the computer, for the true and genuine thoughts to come tumbling out.  It's typically noisy, and a messy desk isn't exactly inspiring.  The best stuff.. the raw, uncensored stuff, usually crosses my mind when we are on the go.  A good turn of a phrase, a candid observation... So many of these gems have been lost to me because I had no way to write or remember, other than an occasional snippet entered into the Notes app on the iPhone.  Pen and paper you say?  pppfft.

The First Day of School

I love seeing the pictures that have been flooding Facebook and blogosphere for the past few days - so many kids looking so excited for all that is in store... kids in front of school buses, front doors, school signs, in their classrooms, at home at the kitchen table... lots of different firsts, and all of the them look pretty wonderful!

Yesterday marked our first day for this year as well.  My homeschool calendar runs from August through July, schooling throughout the year and taking the last week off each month.  And then, here and there, we take off an extra week (or two or three) depending on the ebb and flow of the seasons.  Jordan just got home from his visitation with his mom in Oklahoma, so we took off the beginning of August and waited until he got home to officially start.  We'll go straight through and take off the last week of September.

So here is our "First Day Picture"....

Fantastic....

They look super-excited, don't they?

Here was my soundtrack all day...

1.  How many of these do I have to do?

2.  Can I play Minecraft now?

3.  Hey!  This is actually good so far!  (Jordan, talking about The Phantom Tollbooth)

4.  I have completely forgotten how to do Roman Numerals... what do I do again??

5.  I want to do Math!  (Owen)  (He means 'play' with the new balance scale we got)

6.  Can we watch Phineas and Ferb now?

7.  I'm hungry!

8.  What time is it?

9.  There is gross stuff all over my pencil.  Can I have a new one?

10.  Ewww!  Mom!  Jordan put his eraser up his nose!!!!!!!!!!!!

11.  Why don't you check your email, while we go out and play????

12.  What composition book?

sigh.

I don't think I am ready for day two just yet...

I need another shot of espresso in my mocha.

Hope your 'first day' went better than mine!!!



Curriculum catastrophies



I remember that the first summer before we started homeschooling I spent a minimum of 6-8 hours a day (or as long as 14 mo. old Rylan would let me) digging around on the Internet to look at curriculum and figure out how I was going to homeschool a (then) second grade Jordan.

Two regrets:

1.  I missed out on several precious weeks of Rylan's sweet babyhood - weeks I should have savored after working a full-time job during her first year of life.

2.  Five years later, I haven't learned a damn thing.

I hate the curriculum vortex that happens on the Internet.  You could spend hours.  Days.  Weeks.  And still not be any closer to a decision about what you want to use.  I have spend MONTHS trying to decide what direction we should take this coming year.  And I am still on the fence about a few items.  I want things simple, yet effective.  I've got three kids to school this year (four, if you count the 1on1 activities that I should be doing with Colin), so I need to make maximum use of my time.

When I sit here at the computer (also the 'school room'), all I have to do is cast my eyes upward and side-to-side as I scan our bookcases to see some of my spectacular (ie. expensive ) curriculum failures.  Even though I have spent hours this summer combing through the shelves and purging several boxes worth of stuff I won't use, the shelves are loaded to the max.  I don't even have room for the new stuff that will be arriving any day!  Most of what I purged were things I didn't purchase anyway.  They were relics from my teaching days - and mostly just full of 'busywork'.  Kids don't need 'busywork' - they need to get the meaty stuff and then go off and play.

Why so many failures??

1.  I am a curriculum crackhead.  I love new books.  They're shiny.

2.  Unfortunately, teachers-in-training do not take a college-level course called "Choosing an Effective Curriculum".  When you are a public school teacher, the district's so-called *experts* make the choices and you unpack the boxes that were dumped on your work table, number the books with your trusty Sharpie, and make nice, neat stacks on each student's desk in preparation for the first day of school.  And then you take home the teacher's manual and cram the night before you teach the lesson, while you eat Chinese take-out and watch CSI.

3.  I love the 'idea' of a comprehensive curriculum that pulls in multiple resources and materials.  Case in point: The Story of the World.  I love, love, love how in depth the curriculum goes, and all of the different books you use and the numerous projects and mapping exercises that you complete over the year.  And every year we fail to get very far.  This will be Jordan's FOURTH year learning about Ancient History (and Rylan's first!).  I totally suck.   Also - what I love does not necessarily translate to what they love.

4.  I fail to be realistic.  I always over-plan and under-execute.

5.  I didn't think about the type of children I had... I read the reviews based on other people's children.

6.  I based my opinion on the merit of a workbook by the one stinkin' lousy page that was available under 'preview'.  The rest of the pages to preview were, of course, the empty boring pages at the beginning of the book and the table of contents.  WHY do they only let you see one or two actual work pages?  It doesn't matter if you use Amazon, Rainbow Resource or even the publisher... there are very few companies that let you page through the entire thing.  Life of Fred is a very nice exception, as well as Real Science-4-Kids.

7.  I used the "We might use this... someday...." excuse.  No more.  If it's not being used now, or its proven its merit and is sticking around for the other kids, it's going to a new home.

So... what are we using this year?  I think I have made some pretty good, solid choices, but a post about it will have to wait for another time - so much to do today, and so little time to do it in!



Fifty Shades of sunburn...

Today I took the kids swimming at my mom's neighborhood pool.  While my mom supervised the little ones in the kiddie pool, Rylan and I went in the big pool.  As we were swimming, I noticed three different moms, on three different sides of the pool, all reading the exact same book.

I read that same book last month.  The whole trilogy, actually.  In four days. 

I didn't really intend to read the series.  We had briefly discussed it as a pick for bookclub, and then we all ultimately decided against it because the subject matter had potential to be disturbing.  Then, several weeks later, as the kids and I entered the library, there was Fifty Shades - sitting in the Here and Now section.  (A special section of top book picks that are in high demand.)  I guiltily slipped it into our library bag.  It was back on the shelf within 24 hours.  I managed to sit with the dilemma of how to get a hold of book 2 for about 8 hours before I succumbed to curiosity and downloaded it on Kindle.  The next day I ordered book 3.  I have no idea what the kids did that week, or what they ate, or what they wore... but the good news is that they survived my mental vacation with minimal emotional scarring.

I will not discuss the obvious, but I will address the critics who say that E L James cannot write, that she stole ideas and ripped Stephenie Meyer off (???), or that she glamorizes the male in a dominant role.  While it is true that this series may not be for everyone, there is no glorification here.  I also know the kerfluffle over where this storyline orginated from, but this rewrite has absolutely nothing to do with Twilight...

James can write, and she used the narrative tool of describing the main character's inner thoughts to elevate the task of character development to a whole different level - heck, that IS the crux of the story - the transformation of both Anastasia and Christian.  If you read beyond the rather annoyingly constant ...um...er...'events' that advance the plot, you get to read a fascinating stream of inner dialogue as Anastasia comes to terms with discovering her desires, limits, strengths and weaknesses.  It really is good stuff.  I also admire the way James changed up her writing style within the story when it came to the snippets of emails scattered throughout the chapters.  There were some truly witty and hilarious volleys back and forth.

Two things annoyed me though:

1.  The constant use of 'Holy crap'.  I think it was used at least 263 times throughout all three books.  (just a guess).

2.  "He is so hot".  Really?  Is E L James BFFs with Paris Hilton?  That phrase is just...so... 'icky'.

I totally did not intend to write about reading this series.  Number one, because my mother reads this blog.  (ewww).  Number two - I so wanted to totally avoid the obvious.

BUT

Seeing those moms, all engrossed in their books and ignoring their children actually made me chuckle - I would have died from embarrassment to read those books in public like that. 

"Don't mind me, I'm just sitting in my lounge chair.....reading mommy porn!"



One of Betty's favorite things...

Today is my grandma Betty's birthday.  She would have celebrated her 90th year...  When grandma talked about her childhood in the wilds of northern Wyoming, she mentioned that she loved to go to the different community celebrations in the summertime - the county fair (her mother lead the women's cooperative extension), tent revivals, and vacation bible school.

So in honor of grandma's birthday - let's celebrate the agricultural backbone of our community and go to the county fair!

Day one
(with Dean and the kids, and some family friends)

The doggie spash zone was by far the best part of the fair...

(Dude!  Where's my car?)

(Cam the Ram.  ver. 9.1)

"Does this make me look fat?"

The 4-H projects

(all of these projects were completed by various kiddos in our homeschooling group)

(and there were several more that I didn't take a picture of...)

(mainly because I couldn't find them)

(Like sheep.  And goats.  How did I miss them?)

WOW!  What talented and dedicated kids!

Day 2

(Grandma Judy, me and Rylan)

My favorite part of the fair... the quilts!

Collecting plastic eggs from stuffed chickens.  Where's the challenge?

First pony ride!

First amusement park ride!  She giggled the whole time...

That's my girl!!

Love you grandma... you are never far from my thoughts...