punkin boston cream pie!

We went to this great little bakery the other day that has all of these fantastic little pastries, The Rhinelander Bakery in old town Arvada. They have beautiful cakes in a display case, with a door where the customer can open it and take one out to pay for. In that display case, they had a Boston cream pie with fondant poured over it, among many fantastic and pricey cakes, along with plastic "Happy Birthday" cake toppers surrounding the cakes. I'm not sure if you can see this one coming or not, but, let me tell you, I was blindsided, as was grandma! As we longingly gazed at the pastries, Punkin, you were busy sticking those cake toppers right into that beautiful fondant so that they were sticking into the cake by the letter "y." Fortunately, they didn't make us buy the cake, but were able to pour a little more fondant over the holes. I told you that we don't decorate other peoples' cakes, but couldn't really punish you, as I always let you decorate our cakes at home. You were upset, anyways, as you always are when you see that panicked look on my face, so I think that was punishment enough. We bought a mocha cream horn and a cookie, as well as drinks and sat out in the wonderful fall air to eat them. All in all, it was pretty funny, even right when you did it. I'm just glad they didn't make me buy the cake!

Peace

A friend came over the other day and was amazed at how quiet and happy you girls are and how peaceful our home is. Punkin was "reading" a book, Apple was asleep and Blueberry was sitting and smiling happily in her chair. Just to be clear, this isn't always the case. However, it usually is. It's not by chance, either. There are several contributing factors. In Zechariah 8:16-17, it says, "This is what you shall do.... give judgement in your gates for truth, justice and peace." I love these verses in their entirety. I do my best to institute this one in our home. Our peace is directly related to following God. In order to have a peaceful home, we don't watch much television. The drama on every show, used to create excitement, forces an excitement level in the home that I don't want. I play music almost constantly, but I'm very careful about what it is. I play classical, jazz, kid's songs, Spanish kid's songs, audiobooks read to music, worship music and sermons. I also do my best to not get excited when things go wrong. For example, if you break something, Punkin, like you JUST did, I tell you to stand still and I pick you up and put you elsewhere. Then, I clean it up. After that, I ask you what happened. If it was an accident (like it always is), I tell you what not to do next time. If it was done purposefully (which has never happened thus far), I'd tell you that we don't do tat and you'd stand in the corner for a few minutes. But I do my best to never raise my voice. The only loudness is Bob barking or kids playing. If it gets too loud, I'll send you outside to play. I think that peace in our home, though it may sound boring, is incredibly comforting to you. You still get excited, but you control yourself more and unleash when it's more appropriate, like outside. The peace helps you to learn more, too. You are able to cure your boredom yourself with exploration (like how you're putting dogfood in the dog's water right now....) and you're able to concentrate on puzzles or whatever you're doing a lot easier than in a loud or over-stimulating place. I hope you all grow up to be peaceful girls!

Managing our busy life

I get asked a lot how I manage to go to school, raise you girls and do all the other stuff we do. Well, today seems to be a slower than usual day (or I'm running faster than usual due to all the coffee I drank this morning), so I'll explain.

I am a firm believer in doing chores. So, our morning goes something like this: change (and bathe babies) and feed everyone, read my bible, make beds, unload the dishwasher, put a load of laundry in, briefly clean bathrooms, exercise, then shower and/or bathe Punkin (usually babies eat while Punkin and I exercise, then fall asleep, giving us time to shower). This takes until around 10:30, depending on the day. Around 12, we all have lunch. At 12:30, Punkin watches cartoons and I put the babies to sleep. You all usually sleep until around 2:30. During that time, I fold laundry and do homework. Computer time is usually interspersed throughout the day, mostly when I get tired of working. I try to limit it to ten minutes at a time, tho, or I'll get behind. In the afternoon, we go to the store as needed, pick up the house, make dinner and load dishes. At night, we eat dinner at 6:30, change into  jammies and feed babies around 7:00, put babies down at 7:30 and put Punkin down at 8:00. We wake up around 6:30-7:00 and start all over.

It's really not that hard. We're pretty scheduled, tho. You go to sleep faster when you know what to expect. While I'm working around the house, the babies will roll around on the floor and Punkin will play with whatever school project I put out that day. A lot of things we will do outside, such as eat breakfast or lunch, read the bible or I do my homework (if it doesn't need exclusive attention on my part). A lot of those things, like cleaning the bathroom or picking up the house, go super quickly when I do them every day, leaving us with time to explore outside or go to the Apex to swim or play.

Anyways, that's how your days go, girls!

Pasta and oral exploration schools :o)

Punkin- Today, you went to pasta school :o) ! Well, you didn't really go anywhere. You played with Wacky Mac, which consists of four different pasta shapes (wheels, spirals, penne and shells) in four different colors. First, you sorted them. Then, you weighed each different shape. Then, you poured them from one container to another and back again, including through a funnel into a jar. Finally, you glued them to pieces of sponge to make stamps. We haven't used the stamps yet, but we probably will tomorrow.

Apple and Blueberry- You orally explored some plastic chain linking toys and looked at the three different colors of them. It doesn't sound super exciting reading about it, but you both really seemed to be learning a lot. Maybe we'll try something squishy tomorrow. Unless you find something else you'd rather explore ;o) !

Lists for homeschooling

Things to help guide our homeschooling. I'm sorry so much has to do with homeschooling lately. I'm on a bit of a roll right now.

Our Five Priorities in homeschooling:
1. Relationship with God.
2. Relationships within family.
3. Character qualties.
4. Work ethic.
5. Academics.

Learning percentages:
-90% retained through teaching it to someone else with immediate application of what they learned.
-75% retained when practiced.
-50% retained when discussed in a group.
-30% retained when seen in demonstration.
-20% retained through audio-visual teaching.
-10% retained through reading.
-5% retained through lecture (so I probably won't lecture you often ;o) )

How we homeschool

I wanted to write to tell you girls how we are homeschooling now and how our homeschool might look down the road. I say "might" because I am open to allowing you girls to learn in whatever way works best for you. I do, however, have some ideas as to how to guide your learning.

First, we are doing a lot of learning already, even though punkin is 3 and the babies are, well, babies. Punkin is learning  as we do science, math, geography, reading, writing, and art. So, we study nature in our back yard (or house, if the bees come inside and we can catch them in plastic bags, like we did the other day!), count beans or pennies or rice or leaves or... anything! Se look at the map of the United States and see where Colorado, Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida and New Mexico are, so that we have an idea of where all of our family lives. We read bob books, although I'm not pushing reading very much. You are super interested in reading and writing and I let you take the lead. You write your letters, as you please. And you color, paint, write on the sidewalk, play with playdough, and anything else. Basically, you learn while playing. Maria Montessori said that a child's job is to learn as much as they can about the world around them and that they do this through play. So, I provide as many oppurtunities as I can for learning through play, and you do your job!

Apple and Blueberry are learning a lot, too. They're learning to talk by babbling. They're getting around by rolling around to where they want to go. They're smiling or crying to get attention. They're exploring things around them (which we make sure is okay for them to explore!)

My tenative plan at this point is to use the original Konos curriculum. It is a unit study curriculum, where we can study something interesting to you in depth, doing every subject from that topic. For example, if you like tomatoes (which you do), we can grow tomatoes from seeds; learn to take care of them; count, add, and subtract them (as you get older); read about them; draw and color them; learn about the history and geography of tomatoes, etc. The thing I like about Konos is that it uses unit topics related to Godly character traits, such as kindness or compassion. I also like the original Konos because it is basically a big book of activities to do broken up into the units. It doesn't offer workbooks or anything extremely put together (although Konos does offer this, just not in the basic model), which is good for me because I'm not the type to follow a curriculum very well, anyways. In fact, we probably won't even use the Konos until Punkin is at a third grade level. Eventually, you will also learn to copy writings of great people, dictation and report writing, which I'm hoping you don't hate. However, I do think that is one of the "regular school" things we will do because it will teach you reading comprehension and how to write well. Until then, we'll just keep doing what we're doing ;o) !

Another huge part of our homeschooling will be helping others. I'm planning to go regularly to visit nursing homes, soup kitchens and The Children's Hospital. I think that the development of your character is just as important as your education. We will also be starting a family business at some point, probably when Punkin is around 6. Your dad is great at running a business and I think he should teach you how to, as well. This will benefit you in your personal and business life, even if you never open your own business. My parents have a business and I learned a great deal from them. I would like you to have this oppurtunity, as well. Your dad would like to help you become real estate agents and buy a house before you go to college so that you can do that on the side to support yourself.

Well, I think that's about it for our plans for how to homeschool you. Like I said earlier, my plans are based more on you individually. These are very fluid plans. It'll be interesting to see how they evolve!

Why we're homeschooling

I think I should let you girls know now why I plan on homeschooling you. Well, first things first, I think every parent (or guardian, if the parent isn't around) is a homeschooler from the beginning. So, I should say that my plan is to continue homeschooling you into your school years.

I was homeschooled for four years of my life- kindergarten, and my sophomore, junior and senior years of high school. My siblings were also homeschooled at varying lengths and times. So homeschooling isn't a new concept at all.

I would like to homeschool for a number of reasons. For one thing, I believe that you will get a better education. I can tailor you learning to meet your needs. I remember a kid in 6th grade trying to do an oral multiplication quiz by counting on his fingers. I always felt bad for him, but I now know that he hadn't yet made the jump from visual learning to figuring it out quickly in his head. He felt bad because he had to go to special education, but he actually had a lot of smarts in other areas. So, I want to give each of you the space to learn at your own pace. Your dad agreed with it because, "I never learned anything in school!" He took his GED when he was 15, without studying, and passed and went on with his life.

A part of education is the learning of worldviews. Regardless of who is teaching you, a part of their worldview will inevitably be taught to you. We each have a worldview based on the vast and varying circumstances in our lives. It is very important to me that in this better education that I am hoping to give to you, that my worldview will come through. I do NOT expect you to be clones of me! One thing that I greatly appreciated about my parents was that they let me be an individual, no matter how much it embarrassed them (which was quite a bit, I don't doubt!) However, there are some things that are of vital importance to me.

The first and foremost thing that I want you to know is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus loves you very much, like a father loves his children. He died on the cross, was buried and came back to life on the third day so that you can have a relationship with Him. This is not a relationship that requires you to do good things! In fact, it has absolutely no basis on how good of a person you are! The bible says in Romans 3:10 that "there is none righteous; no, not one!" Just like a father should be, he loves you no matter what you've done. He only wants you to love Him and to accept His free gift of eternal life! This is the most important thing I can teach you. I will do my best to not attach anything to the gospel, because it is not a political viewpoint or even specific doctrine that will save you. It is only Jesus!

The second reason is because you are awesome kids and I'm a little selfish. I'd prefer to show you and take you to do cool things, rather than teachers getting to do all the cool stuff!

I guess I'll have to save the "How" for another post, as this one is getting kind of lengthy!