Turkeys

Happy Thanksgiving from the turkeys on Liberty Hill - and their feathered friends too :)

These guys have been visiting us every day between 10 and 2 since spring. There are at least 2 families, and they are about as sweet as can be. We can play on the swingset without bothering each other, they don't chase my 6 pound dog away when she decides to yap at them, and they happily remove the evil ticks from my yard.

No wonder Ben Franklin preferred them to the eagle - still love our eagle family though. I'll keep both thank you very much.

Enjoy your day with family and friends !

Nursery - Finally!

Well, maybe the title of this post shouldn't be nursery - more like Toddler Room or maybe even Little Girl Bedroom. Either way...

We did it!

My little girl is finally sleeping in a bedroom, rather than in our 3rd floor school room.

So it's a bit late - Just a year and a half - No big deal.

(insert eye-roll here)

I love the way this came together. AND I love that the only thing we had to buy for this room was her rug. Everything else is hand-me-downs that we pulled together randomly. Can't beat that!

• The window treatments and stool came from an old store display - and I didn't even have to resize them, just stuck them onto the headrail of her shades with velcro. Not perfect, but close enough.

• The armoire used to hold our television.
• The rocker came from her brother's room (I swear that paint looked more red and less pink in his room).

• The dresser was picked up used somewhere, but I can't exactly remember where. It was in my room for a bit, and I think her sister did too.
• The light yellow paint that we picked when this room was built was still in good condition, so we left it alone.
• The crib last held her big sister - Can I just tell you how excited I am to finally get this little girl into a real crib?

She could still use some pictures on the wall, but other than that I'm really happy with baby's new room.

She seems to be enjoying having her own space too. So far she hasn't allowed any drawers to be left open, or a single stray item to be left on the floor - not even a tiny thread or dust ball. As soon as she spots anything out of place she will immediately pick it up, walk over to the laundry, garbage, or wherever it belongs and put it away.

I need to have her train her older siblings. She is an amazing little house keeper.

Shhhhh...

Do you know what today is?

A cause for celebration in our house. Any guesses?

Snow! - What you don't see it? Yes, we are celebrating the fact that approximately 12 flakes fell from the sky in our backyard. You should have heard the chaos when my big girl spotted it. Whoops! Cheers of "It's ski season! It's ski season!" Chairs squeeking as they were pushed away from the table! The sound of elephants stampeding as the kids rushed to the window. General mayhem all around.

There was no way to keep them indoors so out they went to enjoy the 2 remaining flakes. They asked for snowpants - I bartered with them and we settled on Yes to hot chocolate but No to ski pants. I'm a softie :o)

Baby preferred to watch the chaos through the window. I don't blame her. It was nutty out there!

Just wait and see what we can do with two dozen flakes!

My love/hate relationship with google

Soooo... I'm back

- sorta'

- minus a header and a few other weird glitches, but hey, at least I'm back.

Google recently decided that I no longer existed and they deleted my account. All of it. Email, calendar, 2 blogs, reader, docs, analytics, and all of the other google products that I have faithfully used for as long as I can remember were gone. Have you ever lost your calendar, journal, and e-mail at the same time? It is creepy; a strange cross between being left out on the schoolyard and having your home robbed. Not fun!

Thankfully, Googles' amazing behind the scenes guys-in-cubicles worked their magic and were able to restore almost everything. Phew!

So now I'm left with this strange feeling of relief/frustration/righteous indignation (you've-got-to-be-kidding-that-was-so-uncalled-for)/something else I can't put my finger on.

Oh, and since I missed posting Halloween pics while I took my forced blogging sabbatical, I tossed them in here just for fun. That is batman (for the 2nd year running) Cleopatra, and a Daisy, in case you are wondering.

Aahh Google. Can't live with em', can't live without em'.

Nature study for non-artists

Recently, I've been reading Pocketful of Pinecones (great book BTW) and mulling over the whole Charlotte Mason style emphasis on Nature Study.

Nature is fun. It is interesting.

So, why do so many of us avoid teaching it? Okay, to be more real, why do we (we meaning "I") avoid nature all-together? Why do we sit snug in our warm homes thinking that it is just too much of a bother?

I think I've made nature too complicated. I can't even tell you how many times have I decided to be "intentional" about enjoying nature with the kids. I've bought books about it, collected art supplies & backpacks, packed lunches, and tromped the little ones an hour into the woods just to hear "I need to go potty!"

Enough!

I somehow have created this idea that NATURE is only located far away from home and we need to be actively pursuing it. How ludicrous!

Whatever happened to kids playing in the rain?

Or

Catching bugs?

Or

Pulling the bark off of a tree branch?

Or

Just sitting outside doing nothing at all?

Nature shouldn't be made boring by over scheduling.

Nature shouldn't be made difficult by forcing kids to examine details when they are uninspired, write when they aren't able, or draw when they struggle with dexterity.

At the beginning of this school year I decided that I wanted to find a way to make nature study a joy for my kids, rather than another task to be done (and grumbled about), so nature study looks really different at my house now. It is intentionally tailored to my kids passions & strengths (photography for my boy and creative writing for my girl), avoiding our weaknesses (handwriting & drawing).

This is what I have found to work for us:

Day 1 - Enjoy nature

• Hike, look through a collection, observe the back yard, play in a mud puddle AKA - send the kids outside to play and don't tell them what to do (they love this part), but be diligent about asking questions about what/where they were playing when they come back in and make a mental note of their answer
• Allow kids to photograph items of interest, even if it is a poorly composed picture of mud

Day 2 - Research

• Based on their observations on Day 1, choose a photo and print it in Black & White for each child (we use sticker paper, but regular copy paper works great too). Google images is a great source if the kids aren't in a picture taking mood or the photos are too fuzzy
• Encourage kids to identify the subject themselves
• While kids color the photo (colored pencils work best), mom reads aloud about the subject from the internet, guide books, etc. but only while the kids are still interested - when they tune out, I stop. If they stay interested for 2 hours, we keep going for 2 hours (or at least until the baby wakes from her nap). We love using the FIAR digital nature studies . It is one of the highlights of our homeschool.

Day 3 - Write (or more specifically, Talk)

• Allow child to dictate a story about the subject they chose, using it as a character or setting. Whimsey and fiction are not only allowed in our house, but encouraged. (Burgess style - fiction with lots of accurate detail about nature) Mom types while the child talks.

Day 4 - Assemble Nature Journal

• Print dictation
• Ask child to copy as much as is age appropriate (sometimes we skip this, depending on the workload that week)
• Allow child to paste into their journal: dictation, copy-work, & photograph, - Usually the topic that they choose is something of interest to them so they will have a random assortment drawings, magazine clippings, leaves, notes, coloring pages, & internet images that they want to add too.

*I had photos of our journals to include, but I accidentally deleted them (blah). I'll try to add them again later.

We don't do this every week, simply because of time constraints, but it is a system that my family has been able to not only stick to, but enjoy and look forward to.

~ Got a good mud puddle near your house?

Pearls of Wisdom and Pure Gold

There is a strange kind of magic that happens when a group of moms get together. Over coffee, or more commonly, over a screaming child and another one yelling "I didn't do it," our life stories are shared.

Sympathy

Laughter

Friendship

Understanding

As we share our stories, there is always the moment when another mom suddenly remembers her own experience in the same situation, and then begins to share. In these stories lies pure gold. Bits of wisdom acquired through years of experience, trial and, more often than we care to admit, error.

• Give baby tylenol before getting vaccinations.
• Sharpen colored pencils with your eyeliner (not pencil) sharpener.
• Don't expect anything of your kids if you aren't willing to take the time to check up on them. They are only as industrious as you are.
• Always hand-wash bibs while doing dishes to prevent velcro disasters in the laundry.
• If you say it, enforce it - every time.
• Take pictures of ordinary moments, not just major events.
• Reassign chores every new year.

Yeah, most of these insights aren't earth-shattering, but it makes life a lot easier when you don't have to make each discovery on your own.

Not every bit of wisdom is for everyone. I will never make my own laundry detergent no matter how frugal my friends claim it to be. I can afford the $8 every two months thank you. Nor will I switch my family to an all organic diet. I simply don't see how anyone can market pure maple syrup as "organic" and demand extra cash because of the label. It is always organic folks. Personal preference aside, another mom would love these kinds of tips.

This is the beauty of these friendships. I don't have to use their laundry recipe or shop at their organic store, and they don't have to do everything my way either. The bits of these conversations that I pick and choose to apply to my family make my parenting task easier and assure me that I'm not the only one with a child who chews on his toys or refuses to pull a sweater over her head on her own.

Plus, it's kinda' funny to hear the story of how someone's kid got peas stuck in his ear - and how mom red-faced and stammering confessed to the doctor that it was done by his sister ... then to hear another woman pipe up "Oh that happened to my kids too!"

Laughter - now that's pure gold in itself.

1st day of Kindergarden

Better late than never, right?