January Blahs

It happens every year. I could probably go back to most of my blog posts in January and it is the same thing. January and part of February are months that I wish I could just become a bear and hibernate. Depression rears its ugly head when I am not able to get sunshine and get out and walk. I LOVE to walk. We have been going to the mall a few times a week to walk but somehow the fluorescent lighting has the opposite affect that the sunshine does for me.

Trying to keep things positive while homeschooling can be challenging too when you have children that thrive with being able to be outside exploring. As cold as it is currently where we live some snow to play in would be a welcome sight also as well as a fun potential weather lesson.*ducking*  I know that a lot of the country has been blasted with excessive snow but we have only been blasted with frigid temperatures where even the dog does not want to go outside.

This leaves me with contemplating ideas to lift my own spirit and everyone having to spend so much time inside. Here is a list I have come up with-

1. Try some new recipes. Here are some that I have made this week that we LOVED!

• Blender Muffins Recipe
• Artichoke Spinach Lasagna
• Spicy Black Bean Soup We didn't do the bread bowl but this was so good!

2. Read some good books. Right now I am multitasking and reading both-

• The Choice by Suzanne Woods Fisher
• Seekers of the Lost Boy by Taryn Hayes

3. We've dusted off the Wii as the kids and I haven't played it in a long time and we have been bowling. (oh and Z~girl is an amazing boxer with it) We even brought it over to the inlaws and grandma seems to really enjoy the bowling. Grandpa? He is healing from shoulder surgery on his rotator cuff that was totally destroyed from moving. 

4. Something I want to do is start an art journal and doodle daily. I LOVE to draw...but never do it anymore. If I ever start it is always so therapeutic for me. 

5. Also this year I bought a chronological Bible that I have been working my way through. Honestly I have not read the Bible all the way through since college and I thought this would be a neat way to do it. 

 

A question for any of my outdoorsy friends...How do you get through the gloomy months of winter with a smile on your face?

Tell me I'm not the only one!

Early this month I laid out the month for our homeschool daily work. Last fall I found a handy dandy way to keep track of attendance, lessons, and tests. One problem I am finding is that often we do not do gradable lessons and I do not do "tests". (well except for the ones Z~girl has at Time4Learning) How do I grade that? We work on learning goals until they are learned and for A~man that also includes LOTS of review on past goals. 

Oh, and planning activities for certain days? That totally went out the window. I would do better to write a list for the month of goals and plow through it as we get to it, without worrying that it was done on Wednesday morning and not Tuesday evening. This is no longer a kindergarten science curricululm we are talking about and I know in a couple short years I am going to really need to document Z~girl's eventual high school work if she wants to go to college. 

"Grades" are not essential to A~man's learning but still I like to document the skills he learns so I can build on them. With his developmental delays, to homeschool ADD/ADHD issues demands a whole different approach than his sister requires. 

When I start worrying about documenting things like grades I always feel like I am losing sight on what homeschooling truly means to our family. For us it is to allow both children to learn in a creative, open, and sometimes unstructured way as that is how both of them learn best. A~man needs a certain amount of routine, especially with meal times and special events, but I find the best learning days come on relaxed days when I'm not saying "we have to finish this now!"

I guess that is why we are definitely eclectic relaxed homeschoolers! It works for us.

                                        ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Last, but not least, are some pictures I took of the matchbox swaps we received in the mail. Both kids were absolutely tickled! Z~girl's was the artist Seurat who she loves and A~man's box contained an art museum of sorts with games and puzzles. It's truly amazing what learning you can fit into such small boxes!

Homeschool artist matchbox swap!

This was such a neat concept that when I heard about the group we just had to participate! Each month there is a new topic and you decorate a matchbox to that theme and include things into the box that go along with the topic. Then you mail it to another participant. This month was "Famous Artists" and we picked Vincent van Gogh.

The kids included an ear that they had made out of clay (heehee) a sunflower, jokes, and a write up about the famous artist. I had some confusion (should have read the directions better!) about what size of matchbox. So uhhhh we ended up a little big even though now I realize typically they use the small matchboxes. I was relieved to hear from the mom leading it that she sometimes used big boxes too. 

They had fun trying to recreate classics from a Vincent van Gogh coloring book we had. A~man chose The Bedroom and also a self portrait after he had cut his ear off. 

Z~girl chose a different self portrait and also Starry Night to decorate her box. (which is one of my favorites)

They had an absolute blast painting and decorating the boxes!

I will have to do a follow up post of the boxes that they received. Z~girl already got hers and was happy to discover that it was done about one of her favorite artists from some art games she has done. Also she ended up exchanging hers with one of her local homeschool friends which was pretty cool. Her friend did an amazing job but I will share those pictures after A~man receives his box. 

I'm totally treasuring activities like these... hoping they will keep enjoying learning like this for awhile. Before I know it Z~girl will be doing SAT games. I am so not ready for that chapter of homeschooling!

January Begins!

We have been schooling very lightly the last couple of weeks and I had big plans at the end of last week to plan our goals for the kids for January. In walks a very nasty cold halting any type of progress. Thankfully it only lasted 4 miserable days which I am thankful for as sometimes in the winter they last weeks for me. Also so far no one else has gotten it.

But...after feeling icky off and on the last month or more with this and that I have decided to do a fast for the next few weeks that my friend Amber over at Adventures in Mindful Living told me about. (check out her blog for awesomely healthy recipes!) It's called a Daniel fast and it is predominantly Bible based (the book of Daniel ;) but the food part specifies no meat, dairy, sugar (except for fruit), artificial ingredients and only drinking water. Basically vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, etc. I like all the foods but....my struggle physically will be with the no coffee and no cheese. My two weaknesses. I'm not sure if I will blog much about it as it is a little more personal but I am hopeful about making some spiritual and physical changes.

Tomorrow will be a teacher work day so I can plan out the next month for their school goals. Z~girl's main ones...are getting a jump on her math and also getting her writing homework help. She has such a great imagination but has a difficult time putting it down on paper. (or the screen) She is a major perfectionist and struggles with not wanting to ever make a mistake. Hopefully in between planning though we can make a ginger bread house that didn't manage to get made, (did I ever mention the pumpkin we carved a month late this year?)but I guess better late than never. I also found some fun 2 player games that I think both kids would enjoy doing together.

 

What word would you choose for 2014?

This is a blog post I wrote today...well actually yesterday, haha, for work that I thought I would share in my personal blog also.

Here it is the last day of 2013 and as cliché as it sounds I do not know where the year went. It seems like days are often long but the year flies by! This is also the time of year when many people think about New Year’s resolutions and things that they would like to change. There are changes I would like to make but sometimes it seems like “New Year’s Resolutions” can set a person up to fail if the goals are too complex. Something that I saw online this week seemed like a good alternative to that, and could also apply to the upcoming homeschool year.

I read where some people pick a word for the upcoming year. Then they use that word as a theme for the next year. I think I may do this for our home school, although I admit, I haven’t picked just one word yet.

Here are some possibilities I have come up with for my family-

Create

Simplify

Serve

Listen

Grace

Adventure

When I do pick that word I am hoping to include it in our home school journey and make it the theme for the year. The trick for me will be picking just one! I’m leaning toward adventure. This next year I would love to do more traveling and road-schooling and making fun learning memories for my children as this summer I will officially have two teenagers. Before I know it they will be adults and I would love to fill some of their memories with more hands on learning, discovering new places. I would also like to start back letterboxing, which is something our family used to do often years ago.

If you were to choose a word as a theme for your 2014 homeschooling year what word would you choose and why?

Sometimes you just have to laugh....seriously.

It was a wonderful Christmas week but it was incredibly stressful for the A~man, which consequently made it very stressful for all of us. No matter how calm we try to keep things there is a huge build up of excitement this time of year. Then it seems to nosedive afterwards because all of festivities are now over. The presents are all opened and it's now time to go back to our regular diet...as we do not normally eat a lot of treats.

This results in a lot of meltdowns and crying. A lot of obsessing throughout each day about "what's next?" Time to get back in the routine that not every week will there be something exciting going on. I do try and schedule fun activities weekly, but many days even though we are schooling lightly right now, involve staying at home playing games, watching videos and playing educational games.

Today he about wore us completely out. Hubby, Z~girl AND I. He would overhear a conversation we were having, or hear someone talking on the phone, and instantly think we were going somewhere or someone was coming to our house. (grandparents) If we were to tell him when we were seeing them next he would talk about it constantly (not exaggerating) until we saw them. It completely makes my head spin with the constant questions.

But then something will happen, it always does with him, that completely lands us in hysterics. A couple of hours ago I was reading some work emails and discovered two new emails that said they were sent from my iPod. I do not have an iPod. A~man has one and he had just gone to bed. I'm still trying to figure out how he did it but somehow he had made two recordings of himself whistling a tune and sent it to my email account. It was hilarious! Yet....we do not want him unsupervised on the internet and we thought we had the settings to where he couldn't go online. I do not even know how he figured it out by himself!

I also had a bit of a flashback to his night of calling friends years ago and wondered if he may have emailed the sound file to people in my address book...but no...it only went to me. (thankfully as it was sent to my work email address) We did look at his iPod to try our best to make sure it doesn't happen again. Internet safety for kids is very important to us. There is too much junk out there I do not want them to see.

Well, I am hoping for a much calmer week!

Mosaic Review: Hello Fresh

This last month we were given the opportunity to try something different that we had never experienced before. A food review! How could I not jump at the chance to try out food, especially healthy recipes that I might not normally try? Also, it is delivered directly to your door fresh. The food comes in a heavy duty insulated box with ice packs. It was plenty cold when it arrived and in fact I kept it in the box (closed) for a couple of hours as I initially couldn't put everything away. The arrival was especially nice the week before Christmas with all the scurrying around we did.

Hello Fresh has it all figured out in four easy steps. First they create yummy recipes that we discovered were very easy to make. Next, they do the shopping for you and then deliver the fresh ingredients along with the recipe directly to your door each Wednesday. It's all laid out for you and most of the recipes can be made in 30 minutes or less.

The first recipe we (okay, I admit hubby did this one) tried out was Sauteed Chicken with Ginger Parsnips & Carrots. This one was also my favorite! The combination of chicken, parsnips, and ginger was an unusual dish.... I have never tasted anything like it! We will definitely be repeating this recipe. My hubby made mine without almonds though as I am allergic to them. The good thing is they were sealed up so there was no cross contamination with the other foods.

(pictured with the almonds obviously)

The next recipe was Yogurt Marinated Shrimp. With this recipe I can honestly say this wouldn't have been a dish we would ever have chosen to make. But what was it my mom used to say? "Try it, you might like it!" (or maybe that was Dr. Seuss?) We did try it and it was very good! We do on occasion eat shrimp but the marinade used ingredients that we would never have thought to put together. The neat thing is most of the ingredients are included for each recipe with the exception of things like olive oil, salt and pepper which we always have in our kitchen.

 The third dish, which I made this time, was Classic Beef Stew with Chickpeas and Green Beans. In the cold months I make stew often but this recipe was completely different than my own. I have never added chickpeas to it before and very rarely green beans! I made this one on Christmas Eve at lunch and it made enough for all four of us but I added more beef broth than called for. The recipes we tried out were each two servings but this one somehow made more than enough for the kids, hubby, and I. It was very good but I admit that I still like mine better. Surprisingly, Z~girl loved the addition of lemon to the dish which I was even hesitant to add as I had never heard of it before. It definitely added a nice twang to the dish. 

Here is the cost per week:

Classic Box (3 meals)-

2 people $69

4 people $129

Veggie Box (3 meals)-

2 people $59

4 people $109

Shipping is always free!

The quality of the food was very good but for our budget it is too expensive. Still, it is cheaper (especially considering the gas to drive) than going somewhere nice to eat at a restaurant. The nice thing though is that there is no contract and no minimum monthly order, so if you wanted you could order the box once a month even. I can see Hello Fresh being a great gift idea for newlyweds or even new parents! 

If you are interested in trying out their service you can sign up now and use code XN6V7C at checkout to receive $20 off your first box.

 Here is where you can find Hello Fresh on the web-

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Oh I forgot to add! Sometimes the boxes come with a little extra surprise! Ours came with a gift card to order wine online.