Living Room Accountability

I had an idea to help ALL of us (I'm as bad as the rest), make sure we put things away as soon as we're done with them. For now, we're starting with the Living Room. I have my phone/computer calendar set to "remind" me once a day, at different times depending on the day of the week, to take a picture of the family room. When the reminder goes off, I take the picture THEN (or as soon as we get home if we're away from home when it goes off), our goal is to have 30 days of clean room pictures. If we meet that goal, we all get a treat (not sure what, I'll decide that if/when it happens LOL). My HOPE is that, if we can do this for a full month it will have become a habit, then we'll move on to another room and eventually perhaps our house will stay neater w/o so much "work". So . . . I'm going to try to keep adding pictures to this post as the month continues, we'll see how it works. Below is our Day 1 picture (today is actually day 3), I'll try adding yesterday's and today's now.




We're trying something new.

Testing

Trying out Blogaway on my new phone.

What We've Been Doing . . .

Obviously NOT blogging LOL. Rodney finally managed to figure out my computer issues, by completely rebuilding my computer, so I'm working on getting my links and everything set back up the way I like it LOL.

So, in no particular order . . . things we've been doing . . .

• Gardening: The girls got gardening tools & seeds & such for their birthday, so we've been figuring out our gardening for this summer. My parents were here last week and helped. We (and by we, I mean the girls & my mom LOL) have peas, lettuce & radishes in. Plus I got catnip & catmint for the kittens (have I mentioned the kittens yet?), and some calendula. We're also adding a new flowerbed where we'll plant some mixed flowers along with lavender & rosemary.
• Philladelphia: While my parents were here, we spent a day in Philadelphia. We went to the Mint, as well as the historic area. The Mint was abit of a disappointment, it's so automated that you can't see much. The historic district was better. The girls found a wonderfully helpful ranger at the Liberty Bell who took time to explain to them how it got cracked, etc. And was impressed with their understanding of history. He was very surprised that they knew the first president was George Washington, and gave them each a George Washington "trading card" as a result. We chose not to take the Independence Hall tour because there was a large school group going through at the time we had tickets for, and we figured the girls wouldn't be able to see or hear enough to enjoy it with all those teenagers.
• Valley Forge: Another day of my parents' visit, we spent at Valley Forge. The girls were old enough now to be fascinated by the museum there (cooking utensils, etc that would have been used at Valley Forge). We bought a CD that was a driving tour of Valley Forge (there's a free cell phone tour, but we figured that would be hard to use with all of us) and it was very well done. Informative but at a level the girls could understand. They had great fun climbing on the cannons & being "redcoats". One girl would be on the cannon (because cannons are, of course shot while sitting on TOP of them, LOL) and the other would go down the hill a ways and run toward the cannon. When girl on cannon shouted "bang", the "redcoat" would fall over dead. One of the activities for the Junior Ranger program was to keep count of how many deer we saw. I wasn't expecting much, but we saw over75 deer!!! I stopped counting at some point & would just estimate that the herd across the field was around 10, or whatever, so 75 is probably low . . . We also saw a red fox, much better than I've ever seen one in the wild! It was running across a field and we were able to park and watch as it ran along, stopped to pounce on some critter, play with said critter briefly, and keep running. So cool! By the time we'd finished our driving tour, the visitor center was closed, so we'll have to go back another time and actually GET the girls' Junior Ranger badges and certificates.
• Kittens!!! When we visited my parents for Easter, my brother & his girlfriend had kittens who were ready to leave their mommy. So after much discussion, we decided to let the big girls each choose a kitten. So now Socks and Moccasins have joined our family. I must say it's beyond adorable to see how baby kittens and Baby Little Bit interact. They're so curious about each other, very cute!

And I'm sure there's more, but I better get this posted while I can.

Little Bit's 1 Year Check up!

I'm SOO behind on posting, life has been hectic AND my computer's acting up, not a good combo for getting things done. Anyway, before I forget the stats . . . Little Bit had her 1 year check-up this past week. The official numbers are:

Weight 20lb 8oz
Height 29"
Head Circ. . . ok, I don't remember this one, but it's roughly in the 97th percentile LOL

All are right in line with her growth curve all along. I LOVE having a dr. who actually uses a breastfed chart, I can remember the big girls being all over the chart because it was a formula fed chart, duh! Now her slowed weight gain is right in line with what is SUPPOSED to happen, what a novel idea . . .

I had to laugh, she has a mole on her leg, that she's had all along, but the doctor noticed it this time (it's kind of in the line of her diaper, and I think depending on the diaper she's wearing, some months the diaper covered it, even when the doctor pulled it down or to the side to check the "diaper area") and I never thought to mention it. Anyway . . . she's not concerned about it, but did want to document it's size for future reference, if needed. So, she pulled out her iphone and took a picture LOL. Gotta love technology :-)

The only other thing the dr. talked about was ticks, since we're going into tick season. So passing along her information . . .

Check daily for ticks, "think like a tick" and check warm, dark, hiding places (creases in the skin, etc) . . . she recommends getting a lighted magnifying glass (like they sell in the map section) to make it easier to check. She also recommends having scotch tape handy, if you do find a tick pull it straight out (do not try to "smother" it with vaseline or burn it or anything, if you "traumatize" the tick it will disgourge it's stomach content into it's victim, increasing the odds of passing on lyme disease, etc) and put it straight onto the scotch tape, and fold the tape around it. Flushing ticks down the toilet is NOT a good idea, they can survive and crawl back up the pipe, eek! But if they're trapped in scotch tape and thrown in the trash, they won't come back to bite again. So, there are the "tick tips" of the season.

Oh, one other tidbit. Talking about Vitamin D supplementation, she said the rule of thumb is, if you can't see your shadow at noon, the sun is strong enough to provide your Vit D needs, just make sure to get 15 min of sun on exposed skin (no window in the way, no sunscreen), if you can see your shadow at noon, then you need to supplement. And of course, when getting Vit D from the sun, be sure not to burn, using multiple shorter time periods if need-be to avoid burning.

Homeschool Resource Review: Download n Go Expedition Australia

TOS Magazine's Schoolhouse Store asked us to review their Download n Go e-book Expedition Australia. This is just one of many Download n Go resources TOS has available, see the whole list here.

This e-book is designed as a 1 week (5 day) unit study for grades K-4th Grade. It's available as an instant download for $7.95.

I'd seen Download n Go ebooks advertised often, and was excited to see one in person. Because we were reviewing this in connection with other homeschooling, and didn't want to lose momentum on our regular studies, I opted to spread it out over several weeks rather than using it as our main curriculum for one week. Since each day was separated into a variety of "subjects" (an animal of the day, Australian word of the day, etc) this was easy to do.

Overall we enjoyed this unit study. My nature-loving girls LOVED learning about the Australian animals & geography (Great Barrier Reef, desert, etc). Also many of the lapbook activities included drawing which is always a hit with them.

I found the layout not conducive to using with 2 (or more) students. The actual lapbook pages are all in the back of the e-book but there are many "worksheets" throughout. This is a LARGE e-book so I hoped to avoid printing the entire thing out twice, but essentially that's what I had to do, because so many of the pages included SOMETHING for the child to write/draw (draw a picture of a wombat, answer questions about the Great Barrier Reef, etc).

Another frustration I had was with the recommended books. I would have found it very helpful to have brief descriptions of the books or at least an age/grade designation next to them. There were a couple that even my K/1st grade children found much too "young" for them (a simple counting book of Australian animals, for example, a year from now my 1 yr old would have enjoyed being a part of things, but I wouldn't expect most K-4th graders to be interested in such books). Additionally, the books were listed by which day to read them, but some, I wished I'd looked through sooner as they were about Australian geography in general and included sections on things we'd covered on an earlier day. So, rather than sorting them by day, or in addition to it, a brief synopsis of the book, including which areas of study it pertained to, would have been very helpful.

Despite those minor frustrations, we learned alot about Australia, and enjoyed it. Personally, I don't think I'd want to use these as our main curriculum (but then, I tend to not like using any one thing as a main curriculum LOL) but I will definitely keep them in mind and if my children show significant interest in a topic that Download n Go has a unit study for, will consider using it, there is a ton of information included and a variety of activities for different types of learners and different interests.

American Girl Experience

For the twins' 7th birthday (which is this coming Sunday), we promised them a trip to the American Girl store in New York City to pick out their American Girls dolls. Since hubby wasn't real interested in taking off work to spend a day at a doll store, and I wasn't ready to attempt NYC alone with all 3 girls, we invited Mama & Papa along. We drove up to Newark, then took the PATH train into the city & the subway to the store.

Note to self: do NOT go into NYC on St. Patricks Day! There was a huge parade right in front of the AG store, so we had to walk several extra blocks to get to it, but once we got there, the girls had a BLAST!! They'd already decided which dolls they wanted, A1 got "Kit" and A2 got "Josefina".

What they didn't know until we got there was that they also had spending money from all the grandparents to get accessories to go with their dolls. After much deliberation A1 got Josefina's weaving loom (even though she got Kit, she loves weaving so wanted the weaving loom) and Kit's bed. A2 got Josefina's oven and baking set (which she'd been saving her allowance for), her bed, and her doll.

When we first got to the store we stopped at the bathroom and a woman who worked at the store happened to come in and stopped to talk to Little Bit and A1 (A2 was in a stall). Later we saw her again and she was understandably shocked to see that there were "2 of you" when she saw A2 with A1. Then after we bought everything, we'd stopped at a bench to get the dolls out for the girls to bring with us to tea, and then check everything else at the coat check. The same woman happened to come by and stopped to talk to us again. She ended up spending more than half an hour with the girls, explaining to them how to take care of their dolls' hair & skin, and just talking to them. She found out we were there for their birthdays, and went and got them birthday stickers, doll-sized shopping bags (that are SOO CUTE!!), bookmarks, and some, no longer available paperdolls for their respective dolls. As she left, she gave me her business card, she's a personal shopper for the AG store, and had done an EXCELLENT job, even if we hadn't arranged for it, hee hee.

Next we went to the Cafe for an American Girl Tea. It was SO cute!! They had seats that clipped onto the table for the dolls, and insisted on bringing a Bitty Baby "loaner doll" for Little Bit too, even though she was too young to care, and just meant one more thing to keep her from grabbing, hee hee. They also brought tea cups and plates for the dolls, accomodated our being vegetarian, and were generally wonderful! The food was good too :o)

By the time we finished tea, my Dad wasn't feeling good (we later found out it was a kidney stone), so we had the challenge of figuring out how to get all of us and all the doll stuff back to the car when Dad could barely walk. I'm sure we made quite the picture, I had the diaper bag on my back (this is why I like a diaper bag that can be a backpack or a shoulder bag!) Little Bit in the wrap in a front carry, was carrying one huge shopping bag, and had A2 with me. I'd brought along a couple reusable shopping bags in case they were helpful in carrying stuff home, so we put some of the smaller items in one of those and A2 carried that the whole way. Mom was carrying 2 more huge shopping bags and A1 was "helping" her carry one of them, which I'm not sure was much help but at least kept A1 with us when we didn't have a hand to hold. And we made it! The girls were AWESOME about helping and following instructions and keeping up.

As we were driving home (Dad was in enough pain that I drove, you KNOW my dad's not feeling good if he lets someone else drive LOL), Dad decided he needed to go to the hospital, so I called hubby to meet us at the hospital (he was working late, was was literally next door to the hospital) so we could leave his car for my parents and he could ride home with us. And we left my parents at the ER. They were there all night, but eventually saw someone and confirmed that it was a kidney stone. So Mom & Dad were here an extra day or so, but got the kidney stone taken care of (hopefully, Dad's still having some pain, he has a follow-up appointment on Fri, when he'll be back up here for all 3 girls' birthday celebration (on Sabbath) anyway), and headed home.

So, things didn't go quite as planned, but the girls got their dolls and their tea party and their NYC experience LOL. I haven't downloaded pictures yet (and Little Bit is currently asleep on my lap) so I'll add pictures once I do, and I still need to get the pictures Dad took from him too.

The girls have been taking their dolls with them everywhere, were very sad when I suggested we NOT take the dolls, in teh rain, to the library yesterday LOL. And have rearranged their loft bed to make room for the dolls' beds, and such.

Gratituesday: SPRING!!!

We had a lovely taste of spring last week, and then a cold, rainy weekend, just to remind us that it is only March . . .but today it's GORGEOUS out again!! My kids spent the morning outside! I have clothes hanging on the line . . . A1 is gung ho to start gardening!!! I LOVE this kind of weather!!!

See other Gratituesday posts here.