Weekly Wrap-up: Fazzled and Fried, But Plodding Creatively On

Life. It keeps this Mama busy...and away from her blog for a few months. That, and I fried the motherboard on my trusty laptop. :sigh:  I'm 'around', doing all those everyday oh-so-important activities that keep kids happy, healthy and learning, a home running (almost) smoothly, and a Mama (ME!) sane and grounded.

Despite ushering in 2014 with an icky "belly bug", my hope is that 2014 will be a year of strengthened family connections, new adventures and friends, and lots of silliness. Because silliness IS really, really important. I know I'm a little behind on New Year's resolutions, but there you go.

We're back at school, very much easing into the last half of our year. Some mornings are pretty darn rough getting up! Fortunately, at least for my homeschoolers, fuzzy PJs are acceptable school uniforms. For Mama, too!

Unfortunately Jake must still get dressed and head off to school (which means I have to tumble out of bed and get him to the bus stop even if I'm still in those PJs), but it continues to be so worth it for him!

Snippets from his Quarter Thus Far:

• made a speaker with a piece of metal taped over a paper cup• 
• made a battery using a zinc- and copper-covered nails and a lemon 
• made a lever to lift 9oz of water with 3oz of water using mechanical advantage 
• started exploring Trigonometry 
• started looking at different telescopes for Astronomy 
• learned the constellations and zodiac 
• explored electricity principles

Cati has finished her Life Science for the year! Go, C! She's 30 or so lessons from completing Math, but she's hit the part in the text that is more challenging and has slowed down. And there's her Easy Grammar, Spelling Power, Poetry unit, and American History that she's still plugging away at. What's wonderful is that her attitude towards school is much improved this year! I just wish it would rub off on her younger brother...

...as he's prodding through his short, "core only" days with a chip on his shoulder. :sigh: Isn't there always one? (or is it just in my homeschool?)

Snippets from Homeschooling

Cati 

• read The Hobbit and watched the movie
• had Jazz and Concert band practice
• wrote a Limerick
• learned to commute equivalent fractions, used a compass, found Pi, completed ratio word problems, found the perimeter of complex shapes, and solved proportion problems
• knitted a scarf

Sam

• started reading the My Weird School series with Ms. Todd is Odd!
• reviewed time, multiple digit addition with regrouping, worked on skip counting 7s and 8s
• learned articles and antonyms and reviewed capitalization, punctuation, sentence combining, verbs, and adjectives
• reviewed address, months and days
• completed a notebook page on food chains, consumers and producers and herbivores, carnivores and omnivores
• built a RC truck from a Lego Technic kit

Have you see those plastic band Rainbow Loom bracelets? The band bracelet CRAZE has descended upon our house! (Shhh! I'll admit it; I made one...or two...OK, 3.) Check out Ashley and Steph's You Tube videos here for good tutorials (especially if you're like us and get TOTALLY lost trying to follow the instructions included in the kit). We've run out of bands, but I've got some waiting on my Amazon cart.

I've been learning something new, too! To knit! My Mom taught me a weave or box-knit pattern and I created my first scarf in "ocean" blues and greens (that Cati and Sam are claiming ownership to). I've started a sparkly white cell pattern scarf for myself. I'll share a photo with you next time, when I have a little more to show. I'm hoping to have it completed by...next winter. ::wink::

Oh, and if you want to see the video How To and make your very own cell pattern scarf, watch this! Trust me - it's for beginners!

All this crafting and schooling doesn't leave much time for cooking. Perhaps next week I'll have a recipe to share with you. Did you create anything amazing in the kitchen this past week?

 As always, special thanks to these weekly wrap-ups:

 

The Homeschool Mother's Journal: The One Where I'm Home Alone

IN MY LIFE

I'm not sure I like this 'home alone' stuff. :sniff: :sniff:

My kiddos wanted to spend more time with Grandpa and Nannie Lobster, so they packed up and went back with them after their visit here. They've been enjoying some SPOILING TIME while I've had "downtime".

I get that moms, especially single moms, NEED time away from the kids, and the kids NEED time away from mom, but I get bored...and a little lonely. I'm not one of those moms who wants time away from her kids that often. I enjoy them - their zaniness, messes and questions - even if they exhaust and challenge me too!

But it's TOO quiet when they're gone!

Yeah, quiet. :sigh: There ARE days when ALL I want is quiet for 5 minutes. How about you? But several days of JUST the fish tank bubbling in the livingroom - until I sold it to another homeschooling family - and the click of laptop keys and I need the TV on for "background noise".

I'll admit it..."Ricki", "Ellen" and "Judge Judy" kept me company some afternoons. That Judge Judy!

(Psst! Unfortunately I didn't take many photos this week to share.)

I'M GRATEFUL FOR

Family and friends who give of themselves, their time, energy, and even money, to my kiddos, and enrich their lives with new experiences and wonderful memories. Thank you!

THINGS I WORKED ON

Mostly I watched a UNIQUE selection of DVDs, read "beach books", worked in the garden, played with the animals, sold some curricula, and continued on with home improvement projects.

I moved on from DECLUTTERING/ORGANIZING to PAINTING. Our "leftover" paint cans caught my eye one day, so I looked through, found what colors we had, and started repainting some areas around the downstairs. We're looking cleaner and brighter!

And complained to Rosie, our Golden Retriever, about the mud. :sigh: With all the rain we've been having, parts of our yard, especially around the chicken coop, have turned into  slippery "mud bogs".

HOMESCHOOL HAPPENINGS

I attended a planning meeting for a new co-op. One of my goals for this upcoming year is for Cati and Sam to have OTHER INSTRUCTORS, VARIED LEARNING EXPERIENCES and TO MEET NEW FRIENDS. So, we'll see how things "pan out" with this new co-op.

HOMESCHOOL HELPS

Have you seen the website Teachers Pay Teachers? Well, I got this idea to click on the FREE button and then 3rd grade (for Sammy) and voila! download "mayham"! You should check it out! Lots and Lots of cute downloads!

MY FAVORITE THING

Chinese take-out...for the 4th of July. Happy Independence Day! BBQing or picnicking without the kids just seemed like too much work...and NO WAY am I brave enough to mingle with the CROWDS in-town for lake space!

IN THE KITCHEN

But what I DIDN'T do was cook much. Why bother for ONE PERSON, right? Well, OK, I cooked, but nothing exciting. :wink: I did spend QUITE a bit of time pinning crockpot SOUP recipes on Pinterest though. Do you have a recipe?

PEOPLE AND PLACES
• Walmart • Hannaford • Post Office • Library • Garage • Dollar Tree •

SOMETHING TO SHARE

As ALWAYS, linking up to these WONDERFUL blogs:

A Peak at Our Week: The One With Rearranging and Thinking Ahead

In My Life This Week
Phew! We had some H-H-HOT temperatures for a number of days. 90+ degrees with high dew points! It was kinda miserable. And we don't have AC, just lots of fan. I was SO relieved that the rain arrived and cooled us down.

And my divorce become final. I started June as a newly divorced Mama. Some days it seems surreal and others too real. But either way, I march on.

On The Menu

SUMMERTIME IS SALAD TIME. So, on Saturday and Tuesday I made up salads: Chinese Chicken Salad, egg salad for sandwiches (because eggs are CERTAINLY in abundance now), pasta salad (made with ham and cheddar), tuna and pea pasta salad, macaroni and turkey bacon salad, and fruit salad (with cantaloupe and strawberries).  Our favorite salads made for QUICK lunches and dinners!

Hint: Assemble salads with lettuce without the dressing. Mix it in right before eating so it doesn't get soggy throughout the week. And anything crunchy? Add those before eating, too, to keep the crunch.

Homeschool Happenings
A declutter, reorganize and rearrange of the diningroom/school room. The room is only 10x10 so I moved the table under the window instead of floating in the middle, then relocated the desk/hutch and a bookcase against another wall. After going through our supplies, I organized them onto the shelves. I'd like to get some pretty boxes for supplies and a throw rug for the floor, but that's for another day.

I also started looking over next year's curricula and began making plans for our new daily schedule. It's fun to look ahead to the fall even though we have "the lazy days of summer" ahead. How are you doing with next year's planning?

Funny how just changing where things are makes them new and exciting again. Sam rediscovered the Magnetix and started building with them again. Magnets and a metal tin make for loads of fun!

Places We Went, People We Saw

♥ Mt. Washington Scout Camping (S) ♥ Kayaking/Swimming (J/C) ♥ Portfolio Reviews (J) ♥ Softball (C) ♥ Scouts (J) ♥ Clarinet/Band (C) ♥ 

Our Favorite Thing
We went on our VERY FIRST kayaking trip this weekend, a few hours spent paddling around the lake. We saw several families of Canada Geese and some Loons. Nothing more relaxing! (But we ended up with some sore muscles and sunburnt legs.)

Something to Share

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The Little Things - Freedom to Play
As the Garden Grows...S-L-O-W-L-Y

As always, linking up to these AWESOME blogs:

Freedom and Time to JUST Play

There's ALWAYS something truly special about just letting the kids BE and DO without guidelines, without expectations, without conditions. It's inspiring to see what their minds will come up with. Sometimes even surprising! 

"Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity." - Kay Redfield Jamison (Contemporary American Professor of Psychiatry)

Now, this WASN'T surprising, but my Sam spent a WONDERFUL warm afternoon doing this:

Did you notice the socks over the pant legs? :laugh: A creative way to make sure your pant legs do not get stuck in the spokes of your bikes while riding. That poor, poor bike has been taken apart and reassembled numerous times!

And he also did this:

I'm not sure you can see his facial expressions in these photos, but he was so INTO his imaginative play that he was making different machinery sounds for each of the construction vehicles.

I could watch him, with a smile, all day. His contentment and happiness is contagious!

"Play energizes us and enlivens us. It eases our burdens. It renews our natural sense of optimism and opens us up to new possibilities." - Stuart Brown, M.D. (Contemporary American Psychiatrist)

A Peak at Our Week: Easing into Summer

In My Life This Week

Inspired by Melis at The Joys of Home Education and My Party Passion, I decided that what my kids and I needed were some new family traditions. Or to revive "forgotten" ones. So, we had FAMILY FUN FRIDAY! I baked up some quick nibbles and we spent a couple of hours playing Sorry! and Way Back When in History. Would you believe that I came in DEAD LAST in Sorry!? :sigh: But I redeemed myself in History! 

Things I'm Working On
Have you seen "Lost"? Yeah, that drama show from 2004-2010 where passengers of a plane crash survive on a remote island and deal with "the others". I started watching it on Netflix. Why didn't someone tell me about it before? Totally hooked! I'm working my way through Season 3 right now.

On the Menu
• Cheese Pizza with Baby Carrots and Greek Nonfat Yogurt Ranch Dip and Apple Crisp • Chicken and Cheese Quesadillas with Chunky Salsa and Apple Crisp •  BBQ Chicken or Hot Dogs with Tator Tots and Applesauce • Chop Suey with Tomatoes, Garlic and Onions • Meatfloaf Patties with Potatoes and Cantaloupe •

Homeschool Happenings
We've moved onto SUMMER SCHOOL around here. I can't say as we're DONE with the year, but our days are short and our free time long.

Jake is still working a couple of hours each day to finish up Biology and his Civil War paper. I back-tracked with Sam and restarted Hooked on Phonics. (An informal on-line assessment showed weak phonetic and blending skills.) But my BIG GOAL for this week was to get EVERYONE reading more.

I also got our portfolios caught up and ready for review which is TOMORROW. 

Our Read Aloud
Guess what? The kids seem to like The BFG (Dahl)...and we might actually get through THIS book! It IS kinda fun to read! Any suggestions for the next humorous book? Mathilda, maybe?

Places We Went, People We Saw
• At the S__'s for Board Games, Kayaking and Biking (All) • Cook-out with Family (All) • Swimming at the Lake (C/S) • Boy Scouts (J) • Doctor Appointment (S) • Portland Sea Dogs (J) • Clarinet (C) • 

Our Favorite Things
After a week of cold, soaking rain, the sun FINALLY popped out, dried us out and warmed up the temperatures.

Something to Share

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As the Garden Grows: SFG, Seedlings and Spring Blooms

As always, linking up to these AWESOME blogs:

A Peak at Our Week: Rearranging

In My Life This Week
With the help of my oldest son - I needed MUSCLES! :wink: - I rearranged my bedroom, moving the bed to another wall. He dragged up the LONG bureau from the diningroom (emptied of school supplies) and placed it at the foot of the bed...and removed a tall, narrow bureau and a headboard. I'm liking it much better (even though the wallpaper needs removing and the walls painted). I have some BIG PLANS for changing things up around here, but I'll be doing a little at a time.

I suppose I'll soon have to get a "move on" and get our portfolios up-to-date and contact our assessor, and start REALLY thinking about next year. Have you started yet?

On the Menu
♦ Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole ♦ Cereal and Fruit Night ♦ Baked Ranch Chicken with Roasted Potatoes and Corn ♦ Cheese Pizza and Apple Crisp ♦

Homeschool Happenings
Same ol' same ol'! Just wrapping up those final loose ends before (a much needed) summer vacation. Jake continues to work on his civil war battle strategy paper and Biology. Since Sam is being a bit more - AHEM! - "challenging" with school lately, Cati decided to move on with SOTW without him. It's the final thing she has left and I can't blame her for wanting it done. And Sam? Well, I am hoping he'll finish up SOTW and 2 pages of Math NEXT WEEK. Or the week after?

Our Read Aloud
I'm not sure why read alouds flop around here. Perhaps it's our up-and-down schedule and finding a good time? or maybe what I'm choosing to read doesn't hold our attention? This week I decided to start  The BFG by Roald Dahl. Wonder if we'll finish this one?

Places We're Going, People We're Seeing
♦ Boy Scout Camperee (J) ♦ Portland Seadog Baseball Game (All) ♦ Movies (C/S) ♦ Scouts (J/C) ♦ Softball (C) ♦

Our Favorite Thing
The Marsh Marigolds are blooming in and around the pond near the beginning of our road. They're bright, sunny flowers that are quite beautiful among the dark, deep greens of the pond. We watch for them every spring, along with the cacophony of the Spring Peepers who have been out for some time now.

Something to Share

Other Blog Stuff (Clickable Links)
As the Garden Grows: We're Sowed and Blooming
Question-of-the-Week: Food Savings
Clucks and Quacks: Little Girls Ranging with Big Girls

As always, linking up to these AWESOME blogs: