The homeschool desk

There are lots of places for homeschoolers to do their school work. One might think a desk is a good place. At least that would be the traditional approach.  We use the floor, the couch, the table, the tree in the front yard or just relaxing on the front porch. We have lots of other fun places where we like to "homeschool" as well.

The park and the beach are great places to homeschool right?               



Physical Education....check!

 

Working on their climbing skills.

Socialization...check!!

 

 Here is a horse shoe crab that one of our friends found on the beach. Too cool! We even picked it up.

Biology...check.  Ecology...check. 

 

MOSI is another fun and educational place to take your children.  

Optics...

 

Nutrition...

Physics...

Robotics...

 

Future doctors? 

Anatomy...

Since we have passes to MOSI, we were able to go to the zoo and the aquarium for free. That's right. I said it. FREE!

MOSI

This is the most adorable porky pine. She was my favorite creature at the zoo. She paid no attention to the fact that there were thirty people standing there watching her eat her fruits and veggies. She just kept on eating. 



Zoology...

 

Here are my other favorite zoo creatures. Oh.. Wait. Those are my mine.

Like a police lineup



The ostrich wanted her picture taken too.  

 

The Aquarium 

 I don't think anything was cooler than the sting rays. Say cheese!

 

 

Ichthyology...

LEGOLAND

So what did we learn at LEGOLAND? My children learned to drive a car. They even gave my five year old a drivers license.



As close as my teenager is getting to driving a car for quite a while!

.

 

 They learned how to.. Well.. Never mind.

 They learned how to shoot their mom. Wait.. That wasn't very nice.

 

  We have such a short time with our children to watch them grow. There is plenty of time for desk work. We need to get out and have fun with them whenever we have the opportunity. We need to laugh with them. We need to make memories. The workbooks will always be there.

 

 

So we got cable .. For a couple of minutes. :)

So we have been anti-cable for about three years now. That's right. You read it. We do not have cable.  Not even bunny ears.

On Tuesday we were on the phone with the cable company having our internet speed increased. I thought maybe we should get cable because there are certain things we do not get on Netflix such as the news and the History channel. I was a little upset when we were not able to watch the Bible series.

The cable guy came that day but he didn't have a cable box. Really?

So we scheduled another appointment for the next day between the hours of 12:00pm and 2:00pm.
12 o'clock came. No cable guy. 1 o'clock came. Still no cable guy. 2 o'clock came. 3 o'clock came. Yep! You guessed it. He never showed up. So I called the cable company. The cable company called dispatch. Then I waited until 4:30pm. He still was not here. So I called again. Finally at 5pm the cable guys made their grand entrance.

They spent an hour trying to figure out why the cable would not turn on. They went in the attic. Everything worked there. They went outside. Everything worked there. They played with our TV. They played with the cable box.


Then they took the plate off the wall. HA! Someone had cut the cord. Apparently we were serious when we gave up cable three years ago.

m

So they had to find the line and add to it. Viola. We had cable. They left and I turned on the TV to discover that there are literally thousands of channels.... and nothing to watch. Really! We watched Little House on the Prairie for a little while (a little nostalgic memento from my youth). But there was nothing else any of us wanted to see. Nothing. At all. Even after you stripped away all of the commercials by using the DVR there was still nothing at all that any of us wanted to watch. Strangely enough we didn't want to turn it off because we were actually paying for it. So we watched for the rest of the evening with a growing since of "what in the world did we just do?"

From the moment we turned on the cable box, we felt like we made a mistake. Why would we spend $53 a month for this? Really? So we can sit here every night flipping channels and saying there is nothing on television, feeling guilty for wasting money if we turn it off. We literally forced ourselves to watch a couple of shows and tried really hard to enjoy them. Finally, my husband did the greatest thing of all. He walked over and unplugged the cable box. The next day I called the cable company.

It went something like this:
Recording: "In a few words please state why you are calling."
Me:  "Cancel cable"
Transferring.. On hold..
Operator: "Good afternoon.... Bla bla bla bla bla."
Me: "We had cable installed yesterday but we changed our minds."
Operator: "Was there anything wrong with our service."
Me: What I wanted to say. "Yes! It's horrible. Why would I spend 53 dollars a month for a service that I already get for 8 dollars a month. I am great at finding other ways of wasting my hard earned money. I do not need your help."  but of course I didn't say that. :)

If there is a show that I really want to watch I can watch it on Hulu or Netflix. And if I absolutely have to I can just buy the series on DVD or blue ray.

So we learned a lesson. We really do not want or need cable. Glad we got that out of our system. :)

Starting over!!

Once upon a time in a daycare close to you lived a woman who cared for little people. In fact, they were all very little. Five of them were under the age of three.

                                          This was probably the busiest time in her LIFE. :)

They made music 

Tot Spot Band

                                                                  They read books

 

 They got messy 

They played dress up

                                   They talked about how they were going to break out of

 daycare.

I will use the key and then we will make a run for it. No more veggies for us. HAHAHAHA!!

 LOL! Just kidding! :)

 Then as the woman's children grew so did her daycare children.

 
 

                                                                      They laughed

                                                                   They created

                                                                  They cooked

They looked cute

They Learned 

And then these beautiful babies started Kindergarten. Along came more beautiful children.

 They baked 

They got messy 

Okay.. Well not normally this messy.

They had fun!

 

Old daycare kids have come back to visit 

But now it's time to start over again. My little people are moving on to Kindergarten. 

About a year ago I began to have some serious baby fever. Then all of a sudden one of my daycare parents GOT PREGNANT!! YAY FOR ME!! :) I wanted a baby and God provided. :) Only I didn't have to do any of the work. 

Here he is. So sweet!! 

Soon I will have this little peanut but I have to wait because she is still cooking. :) 

(This peanut does not belong to me so don't get any ideas).

Did I mention I was starting over? I was serious.  I am so excited!! :)

Disclaimer: This is only a handful of the children that God has blessed me with. I love my job!! 

Scrap Wood Art

             So my 13 year old and his friends were acting like boys and broke the boards holding up the mattress on his bed a while back. After months of asking me, I finally fixed it.

             Off to home depot we went.  I am very thankful that they will cut the wood right there so I did not have to teach myself how to use a saw. eeeek! That might have been a little scary. When the gentleman at home depot was done cutting the wood he asked if I would like the scraps. At first I said, "no" but then I thought about it. I thought about all the different things we could do with the scraps of wood. I had the guy cut the scraps of wood into smaller pieces.

We came home and gathered some supplies

and quickly got to work.

My abstract artist