i overheard the girls playing the other day and it hit me, that the girls are at the age where they can really play together. ivy will engage in conversation with june and the two will have their toys talk back and forth. so many amazing memories to come for these two.
today benny and ivy turn 10 and 2. it was a stormy night last night and rainy all day. we wanted to stay home and not be out on the roads. benny had a sleep over with his friends on friday so today was our family day. i wanted to make sure to document our day even if it was going to be ordinary. the girls wanted to wear pretty dresses for the special day too. which is mostly the case every day.
i ordered the kids presents on amazon and half of the order never made it even with the two day delivery. benny opened up a few gifts with his friends on friday so that only left him with a book and a toothbrush to open today and two books for ivy (she opened her scooter last night so she could ride it before the rain came). they will get the rest tomorrow.
as i was reading ivy her new books june asked if she could take pictures with my camera. i had never let her use my dslr before, but after a few instructions she was ready to go. she did good.
while jeff was making the birthday muffins and dinner the kids and i made snowflakes.
benny requested his favorite pasta dish that is one of ivy’s favorites too (she eats two helpings). during dinner i told benny and ivy their birth stories which of course made june want to hear hers. then we got ready to sing happy birthday which was difficult for ivy to understand as she just wanted to eat her muffin. once she realized what we were doing she became happy. she wasn’t able to blow out her candle but benny was there to help.
it was an ordinary day but a special one too. i now have a ten year old which is so hard to believe. benny keeps this picture in his room and every time i see it, it takes me back to that amazing day i became a mama.
happy new year! it seems to be the tradition around here to have a new year post. i have done it the last several years so i better keep that tradition alive. each year i write this post i go back and read my previous posts and always seem to find a trend. i end the year completely burned out from too much work and i am searching for balance in my life, along with some weight-loss. ha!
i am not putting any pressure on myself this year. that said, i have made some goals with jeff to help things run a bit more smoothly around here and i am pretty excited to implement those goals.
one of our big goals is a weekly prep day on saturdays after breakfast where we spend a few hours prepping food so it is readily available for us, mainly the kids as they eat a ton. we had our first prep day on the 31st and it has already made life much easier so hopefully we will stick to this. we made two bags of popcorn, sweet potato fries, cut up carrot sticks, cut up broccoli, washed blueberries, prepped sourdough for bread, quinoa salad, and a batch of home-made gummies. the past few days have gone really well with meal prep and snacks ready to eat. our goal is to waste less, spend less and make healthier choices. we also started the year with a major pantry purge and this also has made things run much smoother.
another goal is to read more. i suffer from insomnia and part of the issue is i spend my nights in front of my computer editing so by the time i go to bed i have a hard time transitioning. i am hoping that with shutting things down an hour earlier and reading it will put me to sleep faster. plus i get to read more books, yay! i long to read more so i really hope i can stick to this. i am reading clan of the cave bear right now for my book club (love it) and so far i have not had any sleepless nights while reading before bed. fingers crossed for a year full of good books and lots of sleep!
i got a new camera in december. wahoo! it was a long time coming. i had my mark II for six years and it never let me down. i am loving my mark iv so far and i know it will be just as good to me. below are a few pictures of the kids playing with some gifts on christams morning. more pictures of my family that i actually print would be great for 2017.
lastly, getting in shape. i am going to accomplish it this year. i just know it!
that does it for my goals.
wishing you all an amazing year!
last monday was the first day of 4th grade and pre-k for benny and juniper. the week was a good one as first weeks of school usually are. the kids were eager to do school work and it was fun to watch their excitement. we signed up with a local charter this year that is all homeschool based. we get funds that can be used for books, supplies, memberships, and lessons. seems too good to be true. we will see how the year goes and we can always do things different next year if it doesn’t work out. our routine this year will continue with being relaxed homeschoolers as we have been in the past. we hit the books three days a week and then meet up with friends twice a week to play outside and explore nature. this week we met up on with our tuesday nature group at the beach and on thursday we had friends over. benny still managed to read an entire book on thursday and woke me up on friday saying he “needs another book”, as he was already having withdrawls…i love it! another fun thing we are trying this year is no screen time until friday nights where we will make a sourdough pizza and watch a family movie together. the kids have to finish their work through the week to earn this reward. it worked really well. after watching too much tv during the summer i think they really needed this and it was nice to see them spend their free time with books and toys. the kids have also played several round of monopoly with their dad this week. i feel like we are all the right track and i am excited to see how the year goes. we do so much better with routine and a plan. the kids know what to expect and it gives me the motivation to give them everything they need.
i photographed our school room last weekend. it has been on my list of things to do for awhile now, but i was waiting until it was completed. after hanging up the alphabet banner a while back i decided it would probably never be 100% completed and i will never be 100% organized (though i am a bit ocd when it comes to putting things back to where they belong). so this is what it is, for now at least until i change things up. our schoolroom has made its way around our house (it started in closet) and i am glad i finally got my way and we turned our “movie room” into a school room a few years ago. the room originally had a large tv on the wall, jeff’s (ugly) brown recliner front and center and an array of toys lined up along the walls of the room. at that time the school room was downstairs in an extra bedroom. the plan for the movie room was to eventually get a large sectional couch and really make it a comfortable place to relax. the couch was never in our budget and finally when i was pregnant with ivy and we had to turn the office into a bedroom for benny i got my wish to turn this space into a schoolroom. the tv stayed on the wall though for a while until i finally won the debate that it did not belong in the room. the funny thing is that this space is now a favorite place for us all to gather. jeff loves to play in here with the kids after work or on the weekends. my computer is also in here so i spend my nights working away in here. our collection of curriculum, supplies and toys has been added slowly over the year. around benny’s third birthday we started buying less meaningless gifts and more educational things. crafts, books, art supplies ect. so here we are six years later homeschooling full time in this fun little space. nothing is organized by age or subjects, maybe one of these days i will do that, but i just add things to empty spaces as we get them. benny’s desk is the round oak table. i bought this from a lady in cambria off of craiglist and i told her i was going to use it for homeschooling. she was so happy about that as she had homeschooled her kids as well. all his daily curriculum is on the square basket on his desk. he uses markers for his mapwork in history, and colored pencils for his time line pieces and for any artwork he chooses to do on his own. for our nature journals we use water color. june has her little area right next to his and she will sit there off an on throughout the day drawing pictures, working on fine motor skills, or just playing. she likes to turn it into a teacher’s desk too.
we keep all of our library books in the yellow and white tote next to the white chair. this way they all stay in one spot. we check out several books at a time and this has helped us not get too many late fees lately.
the most recent thing i added was the peg rack for our dress up garments. our dress up trunk was stuffed full and by adding this the kids can grab their favorite gear and not make a huge mess digging though the trunk. i think it is really cute addition to the space too even if it is in the hallway.
we love books. i have several books in here from when i was a kid and books that we have collected over the years from amazon, thrift stores and used bookstores. when benny was at sloca there was quite a big list of books that we had to read each trimester and i ended buying them over checking them out as i wanted the kids to be able to pull them out and look at them over and over. i will often walk in and see benny reading one of his books that he read in kindergarten or his primary years and it always makes me smile. this is a great way for him to remember his history too as we have many picture books full of history.
we also love games and puzzles. these are what keeps juniper entertained when i am working with benny or if i am reading aloud they will all build legos or puzzles together. when ivy goes down for her nap june will use this time to paint as ivy likes to pull everything off her table. soon ivy will be joining in but for now we have this system.
we save screen time for the weekends so we usually start our day inside and then we head outside for a few hours before dinner. then we end up here in evenings doing art hub and the girls playing legos with jeff. we are usually downstairs in the morning for a few hours making bread, eating breakfast and listening to audio books then we start our school day around 11. the girls and i wake up around 9, which is pretty late but that is one of the many advantages of homeschooling. benny will get up in the morning around 7:30-8:00am and read or listen to audio. if he is really motivated he will work on his math.
while i was taking these pictures benny was doing an art hub and ivy was hiding in all the places she likes to hide in or trying to get in the picture. she is just too cute and benny is becoming quite the artist, making me so proud.
even though we have this designated space we still have areas throughout the house where the kids can be creative, play and read. since they won’t be in a traditional classroom i really just want to surround them in a place where they can be inspired to learn. we do a weekly nature group, ballet lesson, drum lesson, hockey, swim lessons, park playdates and we try to do boo boos once a month. we get out plenty but my favorite days are when we just get to stay home and learn together.
usually when ivy goes down for her nap we get the paints down and june gets to create for a few hours. this way she doesn’t have to worry about ivy grabbing everything off her table. on this particular day she went with a mixed medium of markers and paints. it was fun to watch her go from one medium to the other. we have recently gotten hooked on art for kids hub. i will have to have another post for that. the kids are loving it and it is such a great resource to have for homeschoolers.
a few weeks ago benny asked if he could make cookies. the timing was most likely bad as i told him not today but another time soon. i then told him now that he is a “master reader” he should do it himself. he loved that idea even more. we mentioned it to his dad that night and his dad insisted to help him. so that night they made cookies together. a week later he asked again and i said yes and this time you should do it all by yourself. and he did. and they were delicious!
reading came pretty naturally for benny. he has always been a good reader but he had yet to fall in love with reading. he would read when it was assigned to him and he started the year off taking about a week or two to finish a chapter book. not because he was a slow reader because he would only read for 20-30 minutes a day. he would spend his mornings reading garfield or other comic books. which i am totally ok with. my thought is as long as he is reading i am happy. i did however really want him to fall in love with reading. coming from a family of six who all loved to read i really wanted this for him. i have so many memories of being lost in books as a kid and i wanted him to have the same memories and read the same amazing books. but i never pressured him i just always encouraged him and we logged his success as he finished a new book.
for his ninth birthday he had a sleep over. when his cousin joe was being picked up the next day we exchanged christmas gifts with the kids a month late. my sister had gotten him diary of a wimpy kid book one. it was a favoirte and of joes and as kid who loves reading was a pretty quick read. i know nothing about the series other than that it wasn’t “rich” literature but again as long as he was reading i was happy. he started the book the following day and finished it that day. we then found out that there were 13 books in the series. so off to the library we went and picked up a few more and requested others. he also picked up several other books that i would say where more my take on “rich” literature. he finished four wimpy kids books in one day and was on to the others. he couldn’t put a book down. he had fallen in love with reading. farmer boy, stuart little, the entire ramona series and a few others of beverly cleary’s books. he said strider was his favorite out of all of these. in the last three weeks we have made 3 trips to the library and he is reading about 8-10 books a week. basically most of his free time you can find him with a book. he is the first one up in the mornings and will often have a book finished before we are out of bed. i was keeping a log of all his books this year but at this point i can not keep up.
so i guess my point of this post is that even if they are reading the books you wouldn’t choose for them it is all part of the process of getting them to love reading. so i am very thankful for those wimpy kid books for doing just that for benny.
on tuesday we met up with the central coast nature explorers at moonstone beach in cambria. we had visited this same spot when benny was just a few months old and again a month ago to celebrate ivy turning one. on both occasions we stayed on the grassy picnic area. on tuesday we went down to the beach and discovered so much more to explore. there were grassy fields with wildflowers and a creek. the beach itself was full of the most beautiful stones. we collected several of them to add to our nature shelf. benny had fun climbing the rocks and giving me anxiety. ivy just wanted to eat the rocks so she stayed in the ergo most of the time. i grabbed my camera towards the end of the outing. at that point ivy was snoozing in the ergo and benny was not in my view. so i got some sweet pictures of my little june bug. she had so much fun looking for seashells in these rocks. we brought a few of her treasures home with us too. it was a good day and a much needed adventure for our family.
working in benny’s history timeline journal is one of our favorites activities so far this year. it will be so fun to look back on this at the end of the year and all the years to come. last week we learned about henry viii. today we finished up the chapter with his timeline piece.
as benny was working on his work, juniper brought a coloring book to her table. she has a hard time coloring in coloring books on her own and usually needs me to help her. she will color independently on plain paper but she is not too motivated when it comes to coloring books…until today.
she started coloring this seal and was so proud that she “did it all by herself”. she was coloring within the lines which was bringing her so much joy. she slowly was working on this and then returned to it again tonight and finished it. she then gave it to daddy. it was a bit of a break through for her and so much for for us to see. she got so much encouragement along the way too!
then we have a few pictures of ivy sitting at the table “coloring”. it was all fun until she decided to put the crayons in her mouth.
