We've had another incredibly busy week! It's Thursday and I'm exhausted. On Monday we went to the park with friends, Tuesday was Lego club for Claire, Wednesday was NLA, this morning we went to a play with our NLA friends and tomorrow the girls are trying a ballet class demo at a friends house with our fellow homeschooling friends! Chris woke up this morning not feeling well and it seems to have gotten worse since he got back to the office so I'm not really sure if the cold bug will get to us girls by tomorrow. This may not even seem busy to some but I'm a big fan of being home at the very least one or two days during the week!
We enjoyed the Piggie & Elephant play. Kellyn was a bit confused because it was just people. I thought maybe they would have costumes. It was funny and cute. They did different skits from different books. Toward the end the characters realized there was an audience and had us wave our arms, say banana and clap. That was Claire's favorite part she said. Kellyn says it was not great and she didn't like Piggie and Gerald. It was an hour long show which was the perfect amount of time. Kellyn was flopping all over my lap saying she was hungry. It's so hard being a kid with a bottomless pit for a stomach, she doesn't feel full for long! On the way home Claire noticed the clouds covering the sun so she said she wished she could be a cloud fairy so she could fly up there to move the clouds so we can have sunshine. This lead to her wanting to be a cloud fairy for Halloween or maybe a fox instead.
For Christmas my aunt sent the girls dinosaur eggs that you put in water so the dinosaur grows and hatches while its under water. We finally got to do them and they have hatched. Claire is asking all kinds of questions about dinosaurs which is exciting! Claire's egg hatched a stegosaurus and Kellyn's egg hatched a triceratops. We went to the book store and Claire picked The Complete Guide to Dinosaurs while Kellyn picked an Elephant and Piggie book. On the way home Claire mentioned she actually wants to be a stegosaurus for Halloween. Three possible costumes in January, I can only imagine how many times she will change her mind in the next 9 months!
Now we are home. Dinner is in the oven and The Land Before Time is playing. I'm so ready for bedtime!
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Friday, January 22, 2016
You don't always need a plan.
Life is good. I'm having a hard time with the wording to explain how things are going for us so I'll just try my best. We have been in Georgia for almost a year. It's been an amazing almost year. I feel like I've grown so much as person, as a mother, as a wife and I'm really happy. The girls' birthdays will be here before we know it and they will be 6 and 4.
Homeschooling is totally our thing, our lifestyle and I'm loving it. It's way more then I ever could have imagined and it's completely different then I ever imagined as well. Our day to day is really relaxed. Claire has started an 8 week Lego Club class at one of the local homeschool enrichment centers. It's for kids ages 6-9 so she's on the young side since she's not quite 6. She's been the only girl except last week one of her little girlfriends tried the class out too. The teachers say that she's very focused and that she does really well and has a great time in the class and I can see how much she loves it on the way there and after class is over. We have our Wednesdays for a few hours at NLA (Natural Learning Alternative). Claire has her Explorer's class that is for 2 hours right next door while Kellyn and I are together with the Moms and other little kids. The older kids are together the first 2 hours and then the last hour they all come over to where we are and the kids all play together until it's time to go home. Those are pretty much our regular commitments during the week....1 whole hour for Lego class on Tuesdays and 3 whole hours at NLA on Wednesdays. It's great! The girls love library days, we have our memberships to the state parks, zoo and aquarium so we can go anytime or we just enjoy our days at home. Trust me, they are not isolated homeschooled children just because we spend our days at home (I totally thought this about homeschooled kids). They play...A LOT. Just about all day every day. The girls are the best of friends and of course have rough patches like siblings do but it's more happiness then fighting. We have the freedom to meet up with friends at parks and explore lots of new things like state parks and the state parks here are awesome.
Claire is very funny when it comes to learning. She really is a great self directed learner. She's extremely curious as kids naturally are and I've learned so much just from looking up answers to her questions. How do clouds float? What does a leopard sound like? Is it cold in space? What does the fox say? (she asks for the song, she doesn't really care what a fox sounds like). She's very turned off by anything formal unless she brings it up herself. She's mentioned several times that she does NOT want to learn how to read. She does enjoy being read to and she does enjoy writing and asking for help with spelling but it's not an every day thing. She also thinks it'd be funny if Mommy was her teacher which cracks me up. She says she has 6 teachers: "Ms Joy (NLA), Ms Bridgot (Explorer's class), Ms Taylor (Explorer's class), Ms Stacey (Lego Club), Ms Darby (Lego Club) and me!" Not me as in Mommy, she considers herself her teacher which I really love because it's so true. She seems to like math and it's often brought up in the car or if I'm making toast. She always asks for two whole pieces to be cut in half so she can have four pieces of toast for breakfast.
Homeschooling is totally our thing, our lifestyle and I'm loving it. It's way more then I ever could have imagined and it's completely different then I ever imagined as well. Our day to day is really relaxed. Claire has started an 8 week Lego Club class at one of the local homeschool enrichment centers. It's for kids ages 6-9 so she's on the young side since she's not quite 6. She's been the only girl except last week one of her little girlfriends tried the class out too. The teachers say that she's very focused and that she does really well and has a great time in the class and I can see how much she loves it on the way there and after class is over. We have our Wednesdays for a few hours at NLA (Natural Learning Alternative). Claire has her Explorer's class that is for 2 hours right next door while Kellyn and I are together with the Moms and other little kids. The older kids are together the first 2 hours and then the last hour they all come over to where we are and the kids all play together until it's time to go home. Those are pretty much our regular commitments during the week....1 whole hour for Lego class on Tuesdays and 3 whole hours at NLA on Wednesdays. It's great! The girls love library days, we have our memberships to the state parks, zoo and aquarium so we can go anytime or we just enjoy our days at home. Trust me, they are not isolated homeschooled children just because we spend our days at home (I totally thought this about homeschooled kids). They play...A LOT. Just about all day every day. The girls are the best of friends and of course have rough patches like siblings do but it's more happiness then fighting. We have the freedom to meet up with friends at parks and explore lots of new things like state parks and the state parks here are awesome.
Claire is very funny when it comes to learning. She really is a great self directed learner. She's extremely curious as kids naturally are and I've learned so much just from looking up answers to her questions. How do clouds float? What does a leopard sound like? Is it cold in space? What does the fox say? (she asks for the song, she doesn't really care what a fox sounds like). She's very turned off by anything formal unless she brings it up herself. She's mentioned several times that she does NOT want to learn how to read. She does enjoy being read to and she does enjoy writing and asking for help with spelling but it's not an every day thing. She also thinks it'd be funny if Mommy was her teacher which cracks me up. She says she has 6 teachers: "Ms Joy (NLA), Ms Bridgot (Explorer's class), Ms Taylor (Explorer's class), Ms Stacey (Lego Club), Ms Darby (Lego Club) and me!" Not me as in Mommy, she considers herself her teacher which I really love because it's so true. She seems to like math and it's often brought up in the car or if I'm making toast. She always asks for two whole pieces to be cut in half so she can have four pieces of toast for breakfast.
A friend gave us an extra copy of a Bob book. We had it for a little bit and then one morning recently Claire picked it up and asked me to read it to her. I read it twice and then she read it to me 5 or 6 times after. Even if she has it memorized it's still her process of learning to read but she doesn't even realize it. I had left and came back into my room after a bit to find her writing all of the words from the book just because she wanted to. I asked her if she knew the words and sure enough she read them to me and she was so proud of herself. Luke seemed to like the story while he was relaxing on the bed.
Sweet sisters.
Goobs
Kellyn. I'm not so sure yet what her learning style is but she's so young anyway and playing is the most important part of childhood for both of them. She really loves books. She loves to be read to, she sleeps with her books and she will look through books on her own for long periods of time. She looks at the pictures and can make up her own stories and I love watching her do that. I'm really interested to see how she learns to read and when it will happen. She's very good at telling stories and has been for quite some time. She also likes to rhyme when we are in the car. She just lists off all words that rhyme with one word in particular.
The girls do still like helping in the kitchen. We haven't been making too many things together lately but just recently they both asked to cook scrambled eggs. They are expert egg crackers, they argue over who gets to do what even though they both know they will get turns but arguing is fun sometimes I guess.
Being outside is so very important. It wasn't really something I thought much about when they were younger. We have always enjoyed visiting the park and playgrounds but since we moved to Georgia I have found that I want to focus on them being outside in nature. We like walking on trails, playing in the creeks and lakes and listening to life around us. It's really helpful to have a community of friends who want this for their kids too so we meet up often outside and NLA is nature based as well. Even when it was in the 30's this past Wednesday the kids were still playing outside.
Kellyn LOVES puzzles. This 100 piece puzzle is her main focus lately and she wants to build it and take it apart 2-3 times per day. She always asks for help and we are getting it done in record time. I just look at pieces and know exactly where to put them. It's fun.
I'm really happy and so very grateful to be apart of the day to day with my girls. We will continue to grow and change things up however we need to. Some may think how we do things is totally awesome and want the same for their kids, some may think we are totally crazy for trusting our kids too much but we are along for the ride together. They are amazing and I love them!
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