Keeping them busy….

I went on a hunt last night. I had to find a new way to keep the girls busy for a little bit so I could finish making ornaments and Christmas Cards. I would have simply let them help me but there are a bit too young to do some of what I’m doing. They can help make the ornaments but spraying them with acrylic paint is definitely a “mom only” job.

Like all moms I try to avoid using the tv as a babysitter, though sometimes it is the easiest option. I wanted Sam to do something at least semi-educational and without a satalite dish my channels are very, very limited. So I headed to my favorite place~ cyber space !

Take a peek at PBS Kids. These are the only shows they get to watch that aren’t from a purchased dvd or tape. Sammy LOVES “WordGirl”. Even Jolene watches that show! I am all for anything that helps them practice reading in a fun way.

Also, if you’re worried about kids messing with your computer fear no more!

My sweatheart found a great software program called Peanut Butter PC. We downloaded the trial, loved it so much that we went back and ordered a copy. It creates a desktop for your children, as many as you want on one pc, and YOU choose which icons they can see and click on! No more finding out your files are missing, photos have been edited, or computer settings changed (our daughters LOVE to change the background and screensaver images). Simply hit CTRL-ALT-P to enter a password and get back to YOUR desktop screen. Sammy loves that it writes her name in the clouds when it loads.

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I am terrible at keeping a to do list… it is a love/hate relationship as I LOVE them, I just can’t seem to remember to use them. I have a flash drive (with U3) that lets me run programs off of it, so I went in search of some “to do” type software that I could use on it, in the hopes that making my list available no matter where I was might help me actually use the program. (I was going to use an online calendar, which I won’t name, but discovered they track my activities) I downloaded “Accomplice“, here is a quoted description from their site:

“Accomplice™ is a software application that helps busy professionals like you manage your to-dos, goals, and notes, then sync them with your team.
This isn’t some trivial to-do list, and it isn’t an overweight project management suite. Accomplice has just the ingredients you really need to stay on top of your busy life, integrated into an intuitive and flexible system.
It works online and offline, integrates with Outlook and other software you already use, and syncs with your PDA. Oh, by the way, it’s free.“

Once the Holidays are over I’m going to start using it to keep track of what I want Sam to do with school. You can add something to your “To Do” list, put it “ON” or “OFF” your plate, and add multiple notes for each task. You can even collaborate via email with others! It took me a few minutes to really get a feel for it, and I know I am totally under-utilizing it right now but I still love it.

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Well, the sun has risen, which means my girlie girls will be up soon….time to go refresh my cup of coffee!

Hanging in there through the holidays…

I think my mom was surprised….  On Monday morning of our week long vacation to “Nanny’s House”, we still got up and did “school”.  I was up way too early in the morning, mainly because I’m used to getting up early, and Sam wasn’t too far behind me.  I think she got up around 7am, maybe 7:30.  I had only brought her workbooks as a just-in-case.

I’m glad I did. She wasn’t awake more than fifteen minutes when she asked me “Is it Monday Momma?” When I said yes, she ran over to her book bag and asked me to pick out some stuff for her to do.  We curled up on Nanny’s couch and did a few math sheets and some reading sheets.

We did the same on Tuesday, which ended up being enough “book work” for the whole week.

I had tried to explain to my family that “school” happens all the time, you just have to be looking for an opportunity.  We went spotlighting deer (just to look…. not to hunt), and Ganny (grandpa) ended up spending two hours talking about deer and turkeys, where they live, what they eat, what they sound like.  JoJo can do a mean deer impression! Not to mention the “adding” practice we acquired while adding the three new deer to the ten we had already seen.

It is a little frustrating, however, when you know you’re with a group of people who don’t approve of homeschooling and they ask  your child a very simple question only to have your child become totally ignorant.  For example:

Nanny: “How many deer does that make Sammy? We had 29 and we just saw one more!”

Sammy: “Twenty Ten”

I was close to screaming!  This child can count to one hundred!  Why in the world would she say twenty ten and not thirty!

Now that we’re home, it’s hard to get back into the swing of things. Part of the problem is we have a ton of crafts to make and cookies to bake for Christmas gifts.  Maybe I can could reading the cookie mix instructions as our “Reading class” for the day!

Hoping everyone had a great Thanksgiving!!

2 + 2 is NOT 22…. hmmmm.

I must say, this little misunderstanding between my daughter and her math concepts is getting old.  I can’t decide if she simply is not “getting it” or if it’s just easier to say 3 + 1 is 31!  AGGGHHH!!

I have tried her counting up string, counting beads, counting beans, counting pennies (what a disaster that was!).  I’m not giving up though.  Today I’m going to take Kelly’s advice.  She posted a comment earlier suggesting placing painters tape on the floor and letting them “Hop Up” as they add.  I went on a cleaning spree yesterday and now have floor space to do this fun activity!

We’ll follow it up with a worksheet, Sam always likes those.

I’m confused, however, with regard to her math abilities.  We went through one of her department store math books yesterday and she did subtraction with NO problem!  I wasn’t even helping her.  I wasn’t going to show her subtraction yet.  We’re still in our first semester of Kindergarten for goodness sakes.  I’m more interested in making sure she can read.  She just jumped in and brought me the worksheet when she was done!

Well, confused and still guzzling coffee, I’m off to my favorite math worksheet site to print off some “problems” for us to “HOP” into today!  Have fun with your homeschooling today and God Bless!

Now we’re getting somewhere!

Sam has almost mastered her sight word flash cards. So why is she still having trouble reading a book? Well, because not all the words in the book were included in her flash cards. Leaving Sammy to be almost able to read an entire book.

Today, I tried to fix that problem for her. I made her some sight word flash cards based on her “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” Dr. Seuss book.

This plan worked great in reverse.  Sam finally caught on to reading the word “would” and “could” by my constant reminders that it was in her “Green Eggs and Ham” book.  She was so excited when she could finally read the entire book on her own.  Seeing her struggle with “One Fish” today was sad.   So I’m off to print her cards…  help her learn the words that are in the book.    Then she can proudly say

“I can read TWO books all by myself!!”

A Counting Up Craft

My daughter is having some math issues. This gives me great grief as I am pretty proficient mathematically. I’m very visual and it was driving me nuts every time she would add 5 + 1 by starting with 1,2,3,4,5…….. 6! The number one reason for this is simple… well, she’s in Kindergarten. She turned six after the “Birthday Cut off” for public school. THEY say she’s in Kindergarten, I say she’s almost in First Grade. Doesn’t matter now, she’s home schooled… I can teach her whatever I want. SHE wanted to learn addition. She did okay with it, once I convinced her that 2 + 2 was NOT 22!

It wasn’t until we purchased the “Hooked on Math: Addition” workbooks that I realized the concept I was trying to teach her actually had a name: Counting Up. They put a little line on the top of her work book pages that had the numbers 1-20 on top. She could put her finger on “2″ and count up 2 more numbers to get the answer 4…

We started using her ruler as our number line for all of our math worksheets. Worked well until we had 8 + 9. Her ruler stops at 12. So I created a “counting up” chain for her to use. The instructions are below:

Supplies:

The numbers 1-20 printed on cardstock… feel free to use mine Number Cards

Plastic straws (about three will do)

String, or cord… anything your kids would normally use to make bracelets or beaded keychains etc. Mine was some sort of plastic stuff

Tape

Scissors

Beads, to weigh down the ends.

1. Cut out the number cards

2. Tie a knot in one end of your string and add three to four beads.

3. Cut the straw into pieces (at least as wide as your tape, not wider than the number cards) and add them to the string.. you need twenty total pieces of straw.

4. Add three to four beads, leave some room (at least six or seven inches) then tie another knot.

5. Be careful with this step… make sure your numbers are all facing the same direction and in order and tape the cards to the straw pieces.

My daughter lays hers across her table. She finds the first numeral in the equation, and slides over the number of numerals to be added to the first one… the last card she touches is the answer!

Ok, it’s cheesy, but it got her to do her math homework

Turkey Sam, Turkey Jo and Momma Turkey… Puppet Crafts

Thanksgiving Turkey Puppet Craft

by Momma TaderDoodles

Great for young ages too!

Supplies:

(per puppet)

One brown paper lunch bag

One paper plate

Feathers (colored feathers sold very inexpensively at local craft stores… i.e. Wal Mart )

Glue

Stapler (because I have little patience)

White, Black, Red and Orange construction paper, fun foam sheets, felt, etc.

(you can also use “wiggly eyes” instead of making your own… I just couldn’t find mine)

Crayons or Markers (paint if your brave… I was not)

1. Color the bottom of the paper plate. I tried convincing my girls that this part should be brown but they both insisted their turkeys did not have brown behinds…

2. Fold the paper plate in half, and staple feathers between the edges, so that if forms a fan. This can be glued. I would recommend that you apply the glue and feathers and pinch it together with clothespins until it’s dry. I do not have that kind of patience and neither do my children, so we stapled ours together.

3. For the face, cut out a red “beard” and glue it under the folded bag bottom (i.e. inside the mouth).  Jo still thinks this is his tongue, I got tired of arguing with her…  once she started playing with it the “tongue” theory made it quite funny!

4. Cut out an orange triangle for the beak, white circles for the eyes, and black irises.  Use whatever glue you want, based on the type of paper/foam/felt your using.  We used basic elmer’s school glue and it took forever to dry.

5. Lay your tail down on the table, apply glue to the middle. Don’t drench it, but this is pretty heavy so be generous.  Lay your bag on top and press it onto the tail.

6. Allow ample time to dry.

Doodle Bug had a blast playing with a turkey on each hand.  She went in the other room and had long involved conversations with them.  Tader Bug (my baby) stole my turkey and with a bird on each hand she ran the hallway pretending she and the turkeys were flying!

Have fun! and Happy Thanksgiving!

Momma

The Homeschool Blog Awards!!

Hi Everyone!

I hope everyone is having a great start to the week! I’m pretty excited… we usually don’t get a lot of school work done on Monday but Sammy was in a particularly good mood all day. We even managed to do a little Pre K with JoJo. No balloon testing or coconut bowling, just your basic addition and some reading.

I want to shamelessly ask my blog readers and fellow bloggers to please click this image and consider nominating me for the “Best New Homeschooling Blog”.

I know, shameless blegging… forgive me

Other than that please check back with me tomorrow, either here or at Too Busy To Clean to see JoJo learn about basic bathroom toilet seat repair…. these pictures just cannot be staged.

Chicka Chicka What?

One of the great perks to home schooling is that you don’t have to just “do a book”. It’s not just workbooks and textbooks.

“Chicka What?”

Yeah, that’s what I said! It’s a cute little book about ABC’s that climb up a coconut tree. They must set it to music at some point during class because Sam would come home singing the book everyday. This book was the one and only thing she asked us to buy when we moved to home schooling. All she wanted was to have her own copy of this book. Ok, no problem.

I went looking for some fun things we could do with Chicka Boom and found some wonderful ideas here at the Virtual Vine!

I wish I could say we did a bunch of Chicka activities, but we didn’t. I’m a slacker, I know. What I did do was notice a coconut for sale at the grocery store. Since both my girls, upon getting their own copy of the book, have become fascinated with coconuts why not buy them one. I was less than $3, so what the heck… let’s get a coconut. It’s sad that I was 20 something before I ever saw a real coconut, so even I was a little excited.

They went nuts! (no pun intended)

We talked about coconut milk and looked at the tag to see where it came from and then looked on our map to find the island. It took about an hour to explain to Sam that not ALL islands have coconuts and they do come from some places that aren’t islands. This whole conversation turned into a lesson about islands, which turned into a lesson on volcanoes…etc, etc. Phew! Hubby and I got tired fast!

They bowled down the hallway with the coconut and dressed it up in hats and scarves. JoJo toted it around like a baby for days.

This weekend, David finally agreed to drill a hole in the coconut and check out the milk.

Even I was shocked to see that the milk wasn’t “white”. I almost feel silly being over 30 and not knowing that coconut milk didn’t look like milk at all.

We couldn’t get the girls to drink the milk. I don’t blame them, it wasn’t that great. David and I were shocked to see that it didn’t taste much like coconut (I can’t stand coconut). Even the coconut stuff didn’t taste like coconut. Sounds crazy huh?

I have decided that I’m going to have to be more careful about what they get to read. All I need now is to have David come home with a hundred helium balloons trying to show them that monkeys can not fly with balloons (Jo’s favorite Curious George Book).

Happy Homeschooling!

My car stinks…..

God has a wonderful sense of humor…

My wonderful husband came home from a long day of earning the bacon, probably so I could leave it in the fridge too long- forget to cook it- and eventually have to throw it out, and announced that he was “very sorry” but he rolled a skunk with both left tires on my car.

“Happened just over the hill there, I’m very sorry honey, but your car stinks now.”

Thanks, just what I needed. Don’t you know our children HATE my car. Sammy thinks it stinks already. Nevermind that the funky smell is their fault. Chicken Nuggets and M&M’s don’t stay fresh on the floorboard forever. I’d clean them out but I can’t find them for all the dry erase books and Happy Meal toys on top of it all!

Any other day this week I would not really care that my car stinks. Today, however, today I needed to drive it somewhere. Right then. We are down to just one car while his is in for repair, and I needed milk and bread (and apparently noseplugs) which meant I now had to take my stinky car to the store. Of all days honey, today?

I left, held my breath a LOT, and made it to the store and back. I had to go inside twice because on the first trip I bought chips and soda and totally forgot about the milk and bread. (It’s been a long week okay) I hold my breath again and head home. Upon walking in the back door I hear:

“Ask your momma, she’ll tell you”

She’ll tell you what? I wasn’t even here!

Tader Jo runs past Daddy to ask me “Mommy can you take me to see the skunk?”

Why OH Why did you tell her you hit a skunk? Apparently my children asked about my whereabouts and instead of telling them what I TOLD them to tell them (mommy went to go get something for snack tonight), he told them that I went outside to smell the car. HUH? Why would you do that?

So for two hours this is what came out of our mouths (mainly mine, as HE was conveniently ignoring her)

The skunk isn’t outside
No we can’t go see it
It’s in heaven
Daddy squooshed it
It’s flat, in the road, disappeared, and in heaven
Yes, in heaven with your hamster
No, we canNOT go see the skunk
No, we canNOT go find another skunk
No, I do NOT want to take you outside to smell the skunk
No, we can NOT HAVE a skunk, you have rats a cat a dog and fish… I draw the line at skunks!
NO it’s not on the car
No it’s not still out there

Yes, I will open the encyclopedia and SHOW you a skunk…… this is when our Pre K science class began.

Our New Book of Knowledge Encyclopedia’s only had one stinking picture of a skunk which was NOT enough to quench her curiosity. So we headed to Google…

I pulled up a zillion skunk images… which was still not enough. It would have been enough but Daddy started to get interested at this point. He started clicking on the image links to see if he could find “fun skunk info” and unfortunately he did in fact find “fun skunk info”. He found Skunk Haven… yeah…. a entire site about skunk rescues and adoptions and skunk breeds…

I had find the legal site about skunk owning and listen to the whole brood whine that skunk pets are illegal in Virginia. Can someone explain to me how my HUSBAND hitting a WILD animal in the road somehow becomes us considering owning a SKUNK?

Yes, school happens anytime around here, thank goodness for Google…and while I really would have enjoyed watching Clay Aiken play “Are you smarter than a 5th grader?”, thank you to the skunk who lost his life so we could find out that skunks can’t be fed over the counter pet food… I will carry that tidbit with me forever.