Bayus
Resurrection Morning!
Sunday, April 4th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments
Luke 24
1On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” 8Then they remembered his words.
9When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. 12Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
The kids checked the ‘tomb’ this morning and got a surprise as well!
The Last Supper…
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments
Luke 22
17After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. 18For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”
19And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
20In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
We had a great time tonight as a family reading through the final supper of Christ with his disciples and his crucifixion. We talked about what it means to be guilty and have to pay a price for your guilt, and what it means to have someone who isn’t guilty choose to volunteer to pay that price for you. Now that is love!
The kids will be checking inside the canister (aka tomb) in the morning where there are currently broken pieces of bread and some juice that they put inside. Stay tuned for what happens next!
Just for the record…
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments
….4 and 5 yr olds aren’t great at ‘guided relaxation’.
Bayus informed me at bedtime, on the first night in his new bed/bedroom, that the tree and green canopy is ’scary’. I asked him if he didn’t want it in his room (I don’t want to take it all apart and return to IKEA but I will) and he says he wants it at daytime but wants me to take it out at night 
Yeah, that’s not happening. I went in there and tried to do some bedtime guided relaxation (I do this on occasion with Hannah and she always has great dreams after) and lets just say 4-5yr olds aren’t fantastic at this. Me- ‘I want you to go to a place you really love, a happy place, somewhere you feel cozy….’ and he interrupts with ‘hey! I got Fred Meyer in my head! (grocery store) how did Fred Meyer get in my head?!’ to which I talk to him about his imagination and then get him to resettle and I start again- this time going with the Fred Meyer idea. Halfway through talking him through the ‘experience’ including things I know he’ll like (colors of favorite foods, sounds he likes, tasting a cookie from the bakery) he interrupts again ‘hey mama, you forgot the baby. I saw a baby there and it was a girl baby with a lady. Why didn’t you talk about the baby? There was a baby in my head, didn’t you see it? I don’t like babies. They are always trying to touch me, I don’t like babies. Babies are cute but I don’t like them’. 
Ok, kid- go to sleep, I love you but I’m out.
Check out the new bedroom!
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments
You know how when you get a great idea, and that great idea grows with more great ideas and then you find yourself stumped on exactly how to make that great idea a reality? I’ve been stumped for a while now. My kids bedroom began with great ideas but after the first several steps, cool though they were, I was at a stand still. The things I envisioned for the rest of the room either didn’t exist or I needed more man-power and time than I had. This past weekend it finally all came together!
Picture 1 is the view from the door looking in, there are glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. I have a cloud/raindrop window treatment planned but its not made yet. To the left of that picture is the kids closet which has another castle curtain and to the right is the kids chest of drawers (small as most of their clothing is in the ikea baskets and shelving in the closet).
Picture 2 is from standing in the corner with my back to the chest of drawers. You can see a glimpse of the castle closet but from this view you can’t see how the top tabs of the curtain are made to make it look like the top of a castle wall. The tree here is from the pet dept at IKEA and is meant for cats to climb on. It has a series of small shelves which the kids are using to put all their stuffed birds, monkeys and other appropriate animals in.
Picture 3 is my oldest son’s lower bunk. He has his magnetic wall to the right and his flickering castle lights at the head of the bed. I still need to make him a kingly sign for over the head of his bed
Picture 4 is the top bunk where my daughter sleeps with her fairy land in the ‘clouds/forest canopy’
Picture 5 is down below my youngest’s loft bed which is the ‘forest floor’ where the guinea pigs reside and I plan to add some lights under here and change the bean bag chair/stuffed animal storage to allow for more room in their nook under here.
Picture 6 is a closer picture of my youngest son’s bed here just under the tree tops. He LOVES the color green and chose this perfect tree/leaf printed bedding from IKEA. I found this 5′ circular green netting canopy in the outdoor decor section at IKEA and I just used some green thread to tack it up and billow it to be the tree top.
The Chef
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments
Elias woke up and saw that daddy was working from home Friday, excitedly he asked if daddy was making pancakes (common weekend occurrence). Eddie said he wasn’t but that he could do it if he wanted. Elias pondered that suggestion and then went to the kitchen, found the recipe book (Joy of Cooking), read the recipe and made the pancake batter (with only a few questions of us), cooked them up and little bro Bayus set the table for us all to eat together!
Elias then the found a Sunset cookbook (more pictures) and brought it to me to tell me he want to make a souffle next, its a tie between that and chicken kiev. We had a discussion on the differences between stirring, whisking and folding ingredients together as well as what a roux paste is and how many more things he can make once he learns how to make a roux. Ahhh, the Joy of Home Schooling ala the Joy of Cooking!
Next on the menu:
Chicken Kiev for tonight (with garlic roasted asparagus and brown rice) and he wants to make the souffle for Easter Sunday breakfast!
Sometimes my husband throws ideas and assignments out to the kids that are far more than I think they can handle….and often they surprise me with their capabilities. I’m so glad that between my husband and I we can balance one another and each bring our own strengths into the raising of our children, I’m blessed!
The ‘Wall of Love’
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments
Sometimes I get these ‘ideas’, sometimes they go as planned and often they don’t. The other day I was at the grocery store in the office supply aisle (its an addiction) and I saw one of those items that immediately causes me to think ‘I love this so much I need to think of a purpose for it!’- heart shaped post-it notes! Right up there with new colored pencils and the perfect journal is my affinity for notepads, and if they are colored, shaped, and patterned well then its LOVE. I brought them home with the plan of having them available to my budding writers to jot down things they love and add them to the sliding glass door (aka dry erase board/command central) whenever they felt the whim. I figured over the course of weeks we’d have this lovely wall of positivity. The positivity is there but it didn’t take weeks, my kids took the idea and ran with it….for about 4 hours in one sitting! Note after note, giggle after giggle and only occasional requests for spelling help (would have been a good idea if they had asked a time or two more) and now we have this lovely ‘wall of love’ right next to where we eat our meals and do our daily school work. I often find myself standing there letting my eye meander about from note to note and smiling at the sweet hand writing, phonetic spelling, and heartfelt thoughts. This is one of those projects that didn’t go as I planned- it went better!
(click the pictures if you want to see them bigger and read some of the notes)
We’ll miss you Great Grandma Lucie!
Monday, February 22nd, 2010 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Great Grandma Lucie Ingeborg Boecker, long time Ridgecrest CA resident, passed away on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010. She was 83.
Lucie was born Dec. 18, 1926, in Berlin, Germany, and moved to California in 1961. She spent many years volunteering in the community as a Pink Lady at Ridgecrest Regional Hospital. She was also involved with the Eastern Star and White Shrine Organizations in Ridgecrest.
Kid Powered Toys!
Monday, February 22nd, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments
Something I truly love is an afternoon listening to the kids play games from their own imagination, especially when their imagination is bursting with ideas from our recent field trips, books and learning together. Back in August of 2008 I was inspired by some ‘habitat boxes’ that were at an exhibit at our local zoo. I took detailed pictures and vowed to make this for our family- which ended up being 7 boxes so I could gift them to the other families in my home school group as well. That box combined with a good set of play silks are about the best kinds of toys available for children of all ages (habitat box has some items that would need to be held out until a child is past the age of eating the contents). Here are some of the highlights from the past few weeks of how my kids have used these ‘toys’ plus their own ideas!
- mini marshmallows with wood skewers and a tiny battery operated tealight provided many giggles and fun for 3 and 4 yr old friends ‘roasting marshmallows’ over their campfire (and the older kids wanted in on the fun too!)
- Yellow play silks worked as a sandy desert and blue silks were used to make the Mediterranean sea and the Nile River to go with their Egypt Playmobil. Some of the yellow play silks were on occassion waved over the whole scene to create sand storms as well as used to cover some artifacts for the archeologist playmobil men to find.
- The kids used the piano bench to be the pier in Seattle and their legos to build the Seattle Aquarium. Pieces of the habitat box were used in combination with play silks and some under the sea Playmobil to create the underwater scenes (under the pier). Kelp forest silks are hanging under the pier, yellow silks for sand bottom habitats and rocks form rocky bottom habitats…all kinds of fun!
So far 2010 has been rich with FIELD TRIPS!!!
Monday, February 22nd, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments
A look into our school room (and Workbox System )
Monday, February 22nd, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments
We have a room off the kitchen that is our ’school room’. Standing at the door of this room I am looking at Elias and Hannah’s shared desk.
This room used be used as a toy/play room but all toys in the house have been sorted into like boxes and labeled and moved to a finished shed that is detached from this room (out the back door). We now rotate whatever play things are in the house and this ‘library toy system’ works very well for us. That freed up this room to be an open space for school learning. That transition is why it has taken me 6months to actually start the workbox system once I learned about it and decided it would be a good fit for us. You can see Elias’ set of boxes there beside the table in the back of the picture.
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Here you see Hannah’s boxes all set up. I chose an adjustable shoe rack and boxes purchased via The Container Store and the stick on numbers and such are direct from Sue’s website, its the 2 student starter kit which is not expensive and saved me valuable time and money because I didn’t have to put it together Workbox System Starter Kit (2 Child)
Elias’ boxes have the same assignments but in a different order. My kids work differently and so I put their assignments in an order that I think they will work best with. I have more active and get-up-out-of-your-chair assignments put in boxes between writing assignments and such for my son because I know he will be happier and do better at his sit down assignments when he’s had some movement in between. Also they work at different speeds, so again- I set up in a way that makes sense to me even if at the end of the day they have done the same work.
Hannah’s boxes have in them (or had, she had started box 1 already):
box 1- Morning chore/routine chart (I believe I have a downloadable version of this on my blog)
2- Bible (we are listening to an audio version I have on CD using the reading schedule from my motivated mom’s planner)
3- journal with assignment written on strip of paper
4- scale drawing picture of a bird (I made this worksheet to reinforce the lesson we had yesterday in ECC about maps and scale. Last time we started ECC I had them map a room to scale and I didn’t feel like having them do it again, this is a less intense and fun shorter refresher type lesson to understand scale)
5- First Language Lessons Peace Hill Press Store
6- Writing with Ease (same link, one of my big goals for this year for the kids are their writing skills which is why I have these. I integrated these two programs last week before I re pulled out ECC)
7-Exercise worksheet (another worksheet I made which is great to put in the line up between a lot of writing work before I ask them to do math or something)
8-Math U See (MFW suggests using Singapore to add on to their curriculum once you get past K and 1st, when math is integrated into the program. I felt like their integrated in math was totally fine but once you get to older math and they ‘outsource’ I went to MUS. I tried Singapore but I am not a fan of that program in the slightest, I’ve found MUS to be a much better fit for my goals for my kids)
9-letter writing to their friend in Spain (my journal assignment above, usually written on a sticky note or strip of paper in their journal, varies from writing prompts Write Source – Writing Topics to memorization copywork, to response prayers to our bible listening, to what I assigned today which was a response letter to a friend in Spain that wrote to them this week. So in box 3 they wrote a letter, when they hit box 9 they bring me their journal and I help them get that draft into a final form and help them get out stationary and write it up so we can mail it. I’ve at times used thank you notes and such as journal assignments. Usually my journal assignments are a time I don’t correct work, its a creative writing time and I just let it be whatever it is and however it comes out of them….just depends)
10- piano (timer is in box already set for 30mins, notebook has book names and page numbers for assignments they need to practice during their 30mins, when their timer is up they can call me in to the piano to try to pass songs if they feel they are ready)
11- chapter book (again 30min timer and this is for pleasure reading, I don’t quiz them on what they read or ask them to read aloud- its just for their enjoyment)
12- I have this one turned around because we don’t need it for today
Things that I have put in boxes that weren’t in there today include:
Daily Oral Language
Teacher’s Outlet – Carson-Dellosa: Daily Oral Language
Book Basket (basket full of library books for the kids to browse that are on the topic of learning we are focusing, this is always available but at times I will put a sticky note in a box with a timer that says look at books in the book basket for 20mins and when the timer is up come and tell me about something you learned/thought was cool)
Living World (science being used right now with MFW ECC, I grouped the weeks reading assignments into one sitting the other day which worked well for this week and I will do some weeks when I feel appropriate)
Maps and Globes (used it the same way as Living world this week)
Window on the World (ditto to last two for this week, may be different in future weeks as to how I split up the assignments on any given day/week)
board games (if it fits in the box I’ll put it there, if not I’ll set it next to the racks with a sticky note in the box)
Picture crosswords Poof-Slinky.com – Online Store
sudoku
play dough (not often by itself but I’ll combine it in a box when appropriate, like once last week I had a reading passage with the kids and so I had clay in the box for them to work with while they listened and they LOVED this)
craft
30min timer with a sticky note that says ‘Webkinz’ or ‘BrainPOP’ (sometimes free time and sometimes with a specific thing I want them to look up and watch appropriate videos and then come tell me about) BrainPOP – Animated Educational Site for Kids – Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health, and Technology
sewing free time or specific project time (they have their own sewing machine set up in a different room for this)
Latin
Commander Mark drawing program
Online Spanish (available through our library)
Meanwhile this is Bayus’ spot that he chooses to inhabit intermittently through the day (he’s 4, 5 in April). I don’t change out his 6 shelves every day but I do try to mix some of them up every few days, he loves ‘doing school’ and will pull out one tray with an activity out at a time. At the moment this picture was taken the shelves are kind of messy and there is too much on top of his table- ideally the top is clear and each shelf has one tray with an activity each on it.
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And this is my spot where I’m at right now. I sit here working on my own stuff and drinking tea with occassional times where I get up to do some house chores or check in on their work or help them with something that you saw in the top picture will have a tag that says ‘work with mom’.
I have a form I made myself that I’m trying out for next week where I have pre-planned the workboxes. I looked at the weekly assignment chart in the ECC teachers manual and just plugged assignments into boxes in incremenets that made sense to me and left off stuff that I’m covering in a different way (like we have our own math and such). I don’t do ECC exactly, its a back bone. I use it as a form and a direction in which we are going but I give myself plenty of freedom to use what I feel is appropriate and needed and leave the rest (one of the perks of being the ‘teacher’). I give myself permission to read a bunch from one book one day rather than read 2 pages from it all 5 days of the week….or split one assignment into smaller chunks if I feel it can/should be…..or completely replace their suggested assignment with something else that I feel will reinforce the same idea but inspires me more. I’d say 3-4 boxes were typically used this week for MFW ECC specific assignments.
PS- for anyone that doesn’t know, ‘MFW’ stands for My Father’s World My Father’s World – Homeschool and Christian School Curriculum and ‘ECC’ stands for their curriculum you can buy called ‘Exploring Countries and Cultures’
Also one other thing to mention: Had I seen this type of box system to use with the workbox system ideas I would have absolutely done it.
Daily Thoughts on my Tots….: Workboxes
Here’s a link to the chore charts.
I love that when my kids ’start their day’ they are dressed, fed, teeth brushed, pets fed, hair brushed, bedroom clean and ready to go!
Other information:
In the picture that shows ‘my station’ you can see my home school planner open beside my laptop. This is the one I designed and sold copies of this past summer.
Bayus’ assignments can be all kinds of things, here’s an example
Feeling brilliant today… | LifeVentures
Right now we have some new years goals as a family which have resulted in me making the chore charts now reversible. Once they finish their morning chores they flip it over (they put them on the fridge) and work on their ‘healthy family goals’ for the day (flipping it back over in the evening when its time to do evening chores). The healthy goals include things like filling a water glass that they set at their spot at the desk/table and I fill small glass bowls with things like baby carrots, sugar snap peas and clementine wedges.
Oooh another note to add- the sliding glass door between the kitchen and the back room is my ‘white board’. Dry erase markers write on it wonderfully and wipe off easily. I have a suction cup caddy thing from the shower section of a store that sticks to the door and holds a few pens and the eraser. I have a few to do list items there that are right behind my chair for me (and my phone is always at my station and I can turn around and put notes up when I get a call I need to write a note about) and the other door and other side of the doors I can use throughout the day as needed when I need to put something visual up for the kids. Also the blue lines you see in that image is blue painters tape, I love that stuff and have about a million uses for it because it doesn’t leave a residue on anything. In this picture I’m using it on the back side of the door to create straight lines to write on on the opposite side of the door