Wicked Weather and Spontaneous Science

Oh how I dream of living in a tropical climate every winter we're in Michigan. *SHIVER* It is honestly positively bone chilling at the moment. I may have to make some fingerless gloves just to type soon. Our furnace is working over time all the time and I'm still chilled. Peanut keeps wanting new scarves made as she claims her old ones just aren't warm enough! Tropical breezes, warm ocean water, white sands, and pina colada's fill my daydreams.

The chilly white muted one is the picture I took of the farmer's field out my side window one morning this week. Doesn't that tropical beach look so much better than icy fog and trees with everything else blanketed in blinding white cold snow? Having spent half my winters here in Michigan you would think I'd be used to it, but when I think of our southern home and the sometimes close to 60 or 70 degree weather in February I just shiver harder.

However, I digress. I'm supposed to be telling y'all how our week went right? Right. OK.

Monday we did a lot of running around. It was the third that means that it's our monthly errand day. We managed to get everything we needed to get done finished, spend a few hours with Grandma and Papa, and get home in time to let the campers play outside some! Considering that Monday was going to be one of the "warmest" (insert sarcasm within those quotes please) days this week I was really excited about this. They managed to get a full hour sledding and digging and generally being silly in the snow. We did some crafting and finished up a few little projects we had going all before baths and then YCJ read Peanut her bedtime stories!

I can't resist showing y'all the pictures I snapped of outside that night. The one above is of the same hill the children were playing on earlier that day. You can't even see it now and I had the camera in the same exact place!! It was an icy fog that was just hanging in the air to where you could barely see anything at all! The picture to the right there is a close up of the icy fog, you can actually see the ice crystals almost!

Tuesday morning we woke up and there was still some of that fog hanging around at the far side of the farmer's field. Our nearby trees looked almost like crystal tree sculptures! I snapped a few pictures before my fingers froze, had a cup of coffee, and got busy with our school day. Peanut simply blasted through three days worth of lessons like they were nothing! As soon as she'd finish a page in a book she'd ask for the next one! She even finished one of her workbooks ahead of schedule because of this. Which prompted a camper group hug without my suggestion. Everyone was almost as excited as she was. The Cracker Jack's even had catechism class up at the church this Tuesday finally because the weather held enough for local public schools not to cancel, they were excited to go back. I snapped a picture while we waited in the church parking lot of our view of Canada from there ... Much different than in other seasons! Over the snowbanks and fog it was a bit difficult to even see Canada.

Wednesday Daddy had two doctor's appointments in the city 30 miles north of our home. We had set the alarm early because the weather man had insisted that it would dump several inches of snow over night. Nope, no sign of snow at 6 AM. Daddy and I went back to bed for half an hour or so. When we woke up there was suddenly almost two inches of snow on the ground and a thick icy fog. Yay! *Ahem* So, we quickly got everyone read and bundled up to head off on what is normally a half an hour drive. Due to the very limited visibility and extremely poor road conditions we didn't arrive for nearly two hours to the appointment. However, we did make it on time. One of the appointments was for Daddy's pulmonologist and the campers spent nearly the whole time learning about what healthy bronchial tubes look like and what sick bronchial tubes looked like in comparison. They also learned what diseases could cause them to look bad and more about what Daddy's medicine does to help him breath. They spent the second appointment looking at Highlight's magazines.

Thursday the Cracker Jack's did their lessons without any issue. YCJ was actually finished by 1 PM and ECJ finished at 2:10! It's amazing what they can accomplish when they want to. Peanut took the day off of formal lessons, she just wasn't feeling "up to" doing book work. She played quietly by herself most of the day without any issue. Maybe she just needed some alone time after our long day Wednesday.


On Friday I snuck some letter work into Peanut's morning Play Dough time. She really does like doing this and it was the perfect opportunity to finish up two things at once. The page we used wasn't just big wide open letter this time but she's been doing enough cut and pasting lately that I figures we could sacrifice this sheet to Play Dough work. I was also able to catch a shot of Trixie cat "helping" ECJ with his English assignments this morning. Lately that cat has not cooperated with my picture taking efforts. It's too cold again to be playing outside so we'll be staying in some more. As I'm typing this ECJ is on his computer work, YCJ is finishing her math test, and Peanut is watching a Tinkerbell movie on Netflix (she finished the last two days of lessons scheduled before noon today).

Preschool/Kindergarten is creeping up on just becoming kindergarten soon. Two of Peanut's new kindergarten books were added in this week on Tuesday just after she finished one of her preschool workbooks! After completing the book, getting in the center of a group hug, and being presented with the rest of the stickers from the book very officially she was ecstatic. A very short time later, while she was doing her online lessons, this is how I found her celebrating! She had stickers everywhere except for my "new" desk thank goodness! We finished up the letter Q this week and of course did a lot of work with our Play Dough to strengthen our hands. Yup, I'm still doing a few minutes of Play Dough each day with her as well and still finding that it makes a difference in how my hands work that day.

YCJ is doing very well in third grade. As I'm sure you can see in the picture it was recently discovered that she sits close enough to our stereo to listen to music while she does her lessons. This has cut down on her frustration a lot as those headphones block out the "outside" noises that distract her so easily and she's able to put what she's doing to the music she's listening to. Every math problem now sounds different if she's saying them out loud because it depends on what song is playing while she's doing it. Her reading has taken off in the last week or so, to the point where she is almost reading all of her lessons by herself now.

And sixth grade with ECJ is still driving me batty. I know he's not intentionally doing it but it seems like on the days he does his chores with no issue he drags his lessons out. And vice versa! So some days all of his chores are done and he begins class on time only to sit at the table all the way until 4 PM and not finish his work! Other days his chores take much longer than they need to, he has to redo several of them he just didn't do right, and he's finished with his lessons no later than 2 PM. I just can't make hide nor tails out of it to be honest. He's back to reading Little Women again because we want him to really read it this time and we would also like a written report on it, we'd caved earlier in the school year and allowed an oral report. As you can see sometimes Moragon would rather he stop reading and give her attention.

Moragon even attempted to hide from the cold under one of our towels it's been so chilly lately. And Thursday morning I found Squeeks hiding in the corner of the stand up shower in the second warmest room of the house. The weather outside is not fit for man nor beast!

All in all this week wasn't a "normal" week for us but it certainly wasn't a difficult week lesson wise either. I'd prepared myself heading into this week for only 3 days worth of lessons for the Cracker Jack's and five days worth of lessons for Peanut (which I know she can do in three days) who then surprised me and did 5 days worth of lessons in only two days! I'm looking forward to a weekend of relaxing and reading. Due to the colder temperatures this past month and a half I've reread over 10 of the books I've read about a thousand times before. I always tell myself during the warmer months that I'll have tons of time to crochet when the snow flies but then forget that when it's so cold my hands hurt to bad to work long on any small repetitive project. It's a good thing that I own so many books or I'd never keep myself busy enough not to get cabin fever.

Posts you may have missed this week:   
Menu Plan Mania
First February Winter Bucket List Link Up
Mailboxes and Memories - this one contains a pretty good step by step on how to make mailboxes (like for valentines) out of construction paper and pasta boxes
Four Little Ideas for Valentines Day
What Works for Peanut


Who we're linking up with this week:   
Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
Homegrown Learners
Faithful Mom of 9
and
Great Peace Academy

Find us on Facebook here or subscribe to the blog for tips on homeschooling, book reviews, how to get your children helping out in the kitchen, and to see many pictures of the cute kiddos, plus much more!

What Works for Peanut

I've decided to start doing these what's Sharing What Works posts a bit differently, at least for the month of February this year. I'm doing this because the children are so vastly different from each other, and so far apart in their grades, that not everything that's working works for each of them. So, with that in mind, this month I'll be doing one post each (on Thursdays) on what's working for one specific child/grade and then do a post at the end of the month about what's working in general for all of us.

This week I'm linking up with Our Busy Homeschool in Sharing What Works. And the focus this week is on Peanut who is almost completely finished with her preschool work and has already begun to work on her kindergarten work.

There are a lot of things with Peanut that have been working for a long time now...

Playing and Learning on her
LeapPad Ultra

School Zone Workbooks

Using soft cubes for counting and
stacking

Memory games

Games that include counting 

Laminated place mats she can
write and erase on

Using Play Dough to "build" letters

Crafting

Small dry erase board (and marker)
to practice writing

Play Dough before book lessons
to strengthen her hands so
it doesn't hurt to write and color

Her very own small vacuum to help clean the house

Computer "lessons" and educational games

Taking the day off of lessons
if her head hurts or she's not feeling
up to working that day

Working on her morning binders
each day we have lessons

We've learned since September that these things work. Some we do every day, some once a week, and some only when she wants to. But, they all work. I had to let go of the idea that she needed to do x amount of official days of schooling and if she wanted a day off to simply let her take one. She still learns on those days, just in a more hands on fun type of way than using the computer and finishing her workbook pages assigned. I had to let go of the fact that although some weeks she's done in three days with five days worth of lesson plans some weeks she needs all five days. And the whole family has had to take a step back and just let her learn instead of forcing a recitation of the alphabet or having her count when she's just not in the mood to do it. Since someone is always reciting the alphabet (either in their heads or out loud) while brushing their teeth and we're always reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to her as part of her bedtime ritual, she's actually able to recognise most of her letters even the ones we haven't done formal lessons on and recites the alphabet often without mistake. 

She's a very head strong little girl who is sometimes your best friend and sometimes wants nothing to do with you. She learns best with repetition being done on one subject but in a lot of different ways and she straddles pretty much all of the learning styles you can read about in so many books. At this time teaching her may take the least amount of time each day but is the most involved. It doesn't matter what time of day or night it is if she's ready to learn something she'll learn it and sometimes will ask for a bunch of different things to be done that just weren't on the schedule for the day. 

With Peanut we roll with the punches. And for now being this relaxed with her works and I think it probably will work for a long time. I know that I'll have to work on getting her to do more lessons in the future as she rises through the grade levels, but with her it will never be all about the book work. There will have to be stories read to her and hands on projects done almost every step of the way to make the concept she's attempting to learn "stick". And that's OK. 

Using such an eclectic way to teach her actually shows it's face almost everywhere we go ... She was the first child to grasp the concept shown by a model at the doctor's office of which bronchial branch was the healthy one and which one was unhealthy ... All because the instant visual contrast and textural contrast clicked within seconds for her. As her vision continues to fail the visual aspect may eventually be something she can't use, but for now and until that time it we employ it in almost every aspect of her learning.

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Four Little Ideas for Valentines Day

There's plenty of things that you can do for Valentines Day. But here are a few things we start with starting the first of February.

Make construction paper heart tree ornaments. We left our artificial (the "porch tree") Christmas tree up just for this purpose. I showed Peanut, and reminded ECJ and YCJ, how to make paper hearts. Then they made ornaments out of them. It looks cute plugged in (pre-wired tree) and it's pretty to look at during the day as well.

 Use hearts to make cat and mouse faces for either more decoration or construction paper pets! I didn't come up with this one, it was an idea and creations by YCJ. Now I have heart faced kitties playing with heart faced mice all over my home and found in some of the weirdest places ... like peaking out from under my bathroom door.

Make mailboxes for valentines (or mail) out of pasta boxes! When I was a child we made these a bit differently for our class parties. But, I liked this idea and we ran with it. All you need is an empty pasta box, scissors (and a knife for the adult if wanted), construction paper, glue, tape, and crayons. We did ours in stages but they could be done all at once. If you'd like to see my walk through for it you can check it out here. 

Make strawberry (or pink/red) pancakes. We prefer real strawberries but not inside of our pancakes. But, taking Nestle's Strawberry mix for milk and sprinkling a bit onto your pancake will make neat pink patterns and give them just a hint of strawberry flavoring. These were a BIG hit with all of the campers. I add butter to the pan for Peanut's pancakes because she likes the flavor cooked in not melted on top. She says it makes them "soggy".

We'll be doing more during the next nine days or so and I'll post a few other ideas next Tuesday. Linking up this week with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers for List It {Tuesday}.

 Find us on Facebook here or subscribe to the blog for tips on homeschooling, book reviews, how to get your children helping out in the kitchen, and to see many pictures of the cute kiddos, plus much more!