Celebrating The Princess

Yesterday Miss Lily turned 5!! I cant believe my gorgeous baby is five, I am a firm believer in making their birthday special in any way I can, he party was on Saturday and daddy had to work yesterday so I had to make the best of it around the house as best as I could. So what did we do? Lots of gifts, and specials. I decorated the house still and surprised her with a picnic at a church below our house where they was served lunchables (her favorite) and cupcakes! Then for dessert after dinner we had ice cream cake Yum!

Before she went to bed she told me it was the BESTEST birthday ever and ask when her next one was! Haha. So that means I done my job, my baby had a fantastic birthday so I got to go to bed happy.


Some of the things I did to make it special.

• Decorated before she got up (actually before I went to bed because some morning she wakes up the same time I do)
• We have a tradition of having pancakes with icing and sprinkles on birthdays, we started it last year and have had it on every birthday since.
• Picked her favorite lunch (added cupcakes of course!) and had a picnic (another one of her favorites!) 
• Planned out gifts (Im a planner! ha) so that she would have something going on all day long. When she first got up she opened her birthday outfit, before school she opened some Melissa & Doug magnets, after lunch she opened a sprinkler and new swimsuit (a gift they all (excluding Nolan) enjoyed!)
• Before Dinner, she opened her main gift of the day which was a Nancy Doll she had been begging for that I told her she might get for Christmas. (sneaky mom!)
• Dinner. Pick some of their favorites! We had chicken parmesan crescents http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/2013/04/chicken-parmesan-crescents-recipe.html green beans and Ice Cream Cake (which she is in the background right now asking for a piece "Ice Cream cake for meeeeee, Ice cream cake for me..." Guess she liked it.)
• Right Before bed She opened some new lotion (such a girly girl) new nightgown and a book. 
• She had other gifts to just open randomly throughout the day as well. They dont have to be costly gifts (ex. she wanted some make up so she got like 5 things of $1 makeup, kids are easy to please at this age.)

Decorated the Dining Room

 

Her Gifts for the Day. Helped to keep it festive!

Breakfast Tradition

 At the Church having a picnic

 Happy 5th Birthday Gorgeous Girl

 After we got back from Lunch she got to open

 a gift it was this suit and the sprinkler.

 Her Ice Cream Cake.

Happy Birthday Sweet Princess. Glad you had a great day. <3 

Our experimental education.

If you go back and see the post from 2011 you can see well... Traditional education doesnt work that well for my Kinesthetic learners ( when learning takes place by the student carrying out a physical activity, rather than listening to a lecture or watching a demonstration.) So we are experimenting with doing more hands on, more computer work and less worksheets, we have generally been doing a lot of hands on but I am taking it to the next lever this year and I actually have been told by Jonathan that school is fin now since most the worksheets are gone (This is a kid that wasnt looking forward to the first day of school, most kids are excited about starting school, I know Lily was and I always was but not this kid) I wanted to do unschooling but I couldnt wrap my head around it, just couldnt do it, and I wanted to do Charlotte Mason but I didnt think it would work for us either so I am doing my own thing. =-) We will see how it goes. The subjects I will be teaching but not limited to (whether by hands on, computer, or the dreaded paper worksheets are):
-Reading
-Cooking
-Bible
-Science
-Social Studies
-P.E/Health
-Math
-Art
-Journal
-English

Why... Hello there!

I had honestly forgot about this blog (forgive me!) but  its been a while and I wanted to start another one and happen to come to blogspot and I was already logged on and found it. (I told you its been a while) any whoo. I wanted to start blogging again, especially since our homeschool style has changed. (Funny that I look back and we have had problems since 2nd grade but I have fought it and tried to keep with the "traditional" style and its still not working for us.

Any way: I thought I would update on our life, a lot has changed since 2011.

We know have four (FOUR!!) kids:
Jonathan: 9 in 4th grade, loves science, animals, gaming (minecraft much?) and wants to be a game designer when he grows up (or thats what he picked this year but I totally see it working for him) He does amazing doing school sometimes, other times its a fight tooth and nail to get stuff done, we are no longer fighting tooth and nail to do stuff... Why? because I KNOW stuff he doesnt want to learn he wont actually learn, yeah maybe he will get it but as soon as we move on I know everything I taught him will be gone. So new rule. He hates it we skip it. Easy at that.

Lily: 5 TODAY!!! Shes in a preschool/kinder mix. She is a smarty pants! Loves everything school related, craves work and flies through it, generally she will do more each day then planned and by Friday shes complaining because she doesnt have any more work.

Wendy: 3, she is doing an introductory to Preschool. I know that some of the stuff is too advanced for her but she enjoys what she can do and so I allow her to do what she wants. She seems to be getting it pretty well though and that makes me happy.

Nolan: 13 months (July 19th 2012 we welcomed his handsome face to our family) Like Elmo, Mickey mouse and music but his favorite toy is his daddy! Daddy walks in the door and I become chopped liver, and well we all know how much people like chopped liver.. Especially people in this house.

So there you go, you met the most important part of this family and this journey, my amazing kids!! =-)

School Time?!?! Torcher Time?!?!

School has NOT been going great for us Jonathan is amazing when its hands on and then its stall-city in his head. I promise you his eyes light up when its something like an experiment or ANYTHING that he gets to use his hands on but bring out a worksheet and the kids eyes glaze over with a wall of defense. He stubs up and will take [no kidding] an hour to get a math sheet done of simple math problems that I know should only take him 15 minutes on his worst day but bring out the math game we made up where you jump in the answer and have to do something silly when you get there [more on this later] and he is jumping for joy asking for more. So we have been looking at our options on different learning styles and right now we are doing a inbetween [We call it McKinneyStyle] version of traditional and unschooling. That means its things that interest him but hes not just running around all day playing with matchbox cars and we call it school [If you have the ability to do this kudos to you! I just cant get past the part of my brain that sees traditional school as learning] so instead we are doing things that I know he will learn from but no paper work [or every little. we havent done any paper work this week] which means, games [board or ds], computer, tv and reading [the things he doesnt mind to do and will do without being ask twice] and we are going to continue doing our journal. We are still doing "school" for hours each day but things that should last 30 minutes are actually taking 30 minutes or LESS. We are all much happier this way so as long as its working we are gonna stick with it. Any suggestions on what I could do to add more FUN to our learning? He's in second grade if that matters.

Busy busy busy,....

Thats what explains me the last few weeks and honestly its starting to get to me. Im trying so hard to keep the house perfectly clean, keep the kids happy and get our work done and its starting to drag on me. Im gonna have to tweak our schedule some. I plan on trying to clean the house at night right before we hit the bed then when we get up the house will be clean. Aside from my personal stress level going up simply because I dont like dirt everything has been going great. I havent been posting much have I do have pictures and such that I need to write and share with you all and I will. When I get the extra time but right now extra time is not something I have much of and when I do Im in the shower. I am "just" a SAHM but I cant believe how busy I stay!

I am starting to plan out our United States notebook that we will be starting in a few weeks like I needed to add something else to do to my plate but its all for the education of my son so I am not complaining.

This week...

Had been going okay [if you dont count our horrible Monday where we was in school for literally all day because Jonathan didnt want to do his lessons.] then it sbeen great. Possibly its because after Mondays episode me and Jon both had a talk with Jonathan and let him know school is NOT an option one way or another he has to get an education. So he's been doing better. Today was a very good day. It was Wacky Wednesday so we made a tornado in a bottle and he really enjoyed that.

Week One was....

Great. It went perfectly. Though it was a introductory week. Next week will be the real test. It will be the first week of actual school that includes all our subjects and more than 4 hours of school. We shall see. One thing I do need to do is find Lily more things to do during school. Shes not happy with her small amount of work each day so I need to add more. She is really enjoying it even more than I thought. Yesterday she cried because we didnt have "ghoul" =) I hope she keeps her passion for learning.

Heres a picture of my sweet girl from Monday when we was playing with pudding paint :)