Pied Piper iPad

It's no secret we've allowed the girls to use what electronics we have over the years. I've talked about "tech schooling" and the girls' computerized lessons off an on. I think I even might have mentioned vintage video game family nights a time or two. We've always tried to place limits, but still, the electronics call to them like the Pied Piper of the modern day, and we'd occasionally let them have "just a little" longer because a few moments of peace seemed worth it for days when work was particularly trying.

Sneak "teaching" a friend how to play a game when she was 3.

Hubby and I decided to implement more strict rules regarding screen time toward the end of spring break. With the distraction of illness and just trying to keep things running with one of us out of commission, we let them have way more time than usual. Being kids who still believe in "more is more," they took full advantage. Within a couple of days they began snapping at one another and fighting over games or movie picks and just showing a general lack of regard for one another as they got lost in an endless stream of entertainment. They were like addicts looking for their next hit, and we knew we had to put a stop to it right away.

A Visit to the Botanical Gardens

Long time readers will know our family takes a yearly trip to the local botanical gardens every summer around the girls' birthdays. It's usually the only time we can afford the ticket price plus gas plus time plus snacks for the day. However, I lucked out and won a Twitter contest held by the gardens a few days before this year's spring break for Hubby's school.

Here's a pic from our first trip as a family for comparison.

We allow the girls to have half days when Hubby is off for school holidays aside from summer vacation, so time wasn't a problem this time. We needed to head into town anyway to run errands on Tuesday, so gas wasn't a big issue. So we packed up our own water bottles from home, grabbed a box of trail mix bars, and went to the gardens several months earlier than is our usual.

Bribe vs. Earned Reward

How do you encourage a child to make the right decisions? Some parents are fond of using the carrot, and some seem to prefer the stick. I'm not going to touch on the "war" surrounding which "stick" measures are preferred or even allowable. Instead, today I want to look at the different methods of "carrot" one can employ.

Goal oriented, Sneak's never been afraid to work for what she wants.

When is a reward a bribe, and when is it something that's been earned? I think this is an important distinction when the goal is teaching your child a work ethic and intrinsic motivation. After all, when you break it down, what's a paycheck but a reward earned through a set period of work?

Longing for Nice Weather

This winter's been a bit warmer than it has been in the last few years, but it's been much wetter. We've had the occasional nice day. However, most have been rainy, windy, bitterly cold, or a mix of the three. Typical winter weather actually, when you look at it on the whole. It just makes you want to stay inside under the covers, and after nine or ten weeks of it, you can't help but begin to long for the return of nice weather.

The girls and I have been feeling it for a couple of weeks now. Sneak in particular is practically climbing the walls in anticipation. She's been begging to go to the park for two weeks straight, and she doesn't seem to understand not everyone is as hot natured as she is. Boo Bear and I feel the cold, and we feel it intensely.

Yet on days like this past Saturday, nice weather doesn't seem so far away. We woke up to frost, but it was warm enough to not need a jacket by lunchtime. The sun was shining so brightly, it hurt to walk outside without wearing shades.

So, the girls and I have come to a deal. If they can consistently finish their daily schoolwork within the allotted time, we'll make daily visits to the park, or at least the road that runs beside our house, for a walk when the weather cooperates. And if they can keep up with their lessons and chores without whining or fussing amongst themselves, we'll start going to the playground on Saturdays when the weather cooperates and we don't have other obligations.

If nothing else, we could all do with a bit of exercise and sunshine. Bring on the warm, sunny days of spring. We're ready.

Symphonic Weekend

The local symphonic orchestra and ballet company held a free, first come/first serve family event this past weekend. The concert didn't start until 11 a.m., but the doors opened for family friendly activities at 9:30. Music has always been a big part of my life, and the girls have been showing interest in musical instruments and learning to play. So Hubby and I thought we'd get everyone up early and see if we could snag seats.

We were running a few minutes behind, so we decided to handle an errand we'd planned to run before the concert afterward. It's a good thing we did because the place was packed! If we hadn't rearranged our plans, we may very well have made the twenty-seven mile trip, one way, for nothing otherwise.

Give Sneak a violin, and she's all smiles.

Stations were set up all around the theater lobby. They had a booth where you could learn how to conduct, an "instrument petting zoo," face painting, hula hoops, musical chairs, a coloring booth, photo ops, dancing scarves, and more. 

Cinderella's carriage has seen better days.

The girls had a blast. We nearly had to pull them away from the "instrument petting zoo," and then Boo Bear fell in love with playing musical chairs. Sneak got bored after a game or so and wanted to make sure she explored everywhere. So Hubby stayed to keep an eye on Boo, and I took Sneak around to explore. She gave conducting a whirl, played some percussion instruments, had her photo taken in Cinderella's carriage, and played with the dancing scarves. Then we met back up and found some seats.

Boo Bear was excited to see the show.

Sneak, ever the explorer, soon grew bored with watching the musicians warm up and wanted to go back out to make sure she didn't miss anything. However, the theater was starting to become crowded, and I was afraid we wouldn't be able to find seats together if we gave up the ones we had. So I started pointing out different features of the concert hall's design and different instruments to distract her the few minutes until the concert began.

View of the hall from the stage, taken by symphony staff fifteen minutes before the show began.

Once the lights went down and the music began, the girls were entranced. The symphony played their first couple of pieces without accompaniment, but it wasn't long before the ballet group began sharing the stage. They used clever, minimalistic puppetry and costuming to bring the characters to life. The theme of this particular concert was animals, which is just perfect for the ten and under set.

Mr. Hedgehog enters during, "Mr. Bear Squash You All Flat."

In different parts of the concert, dancers came down into the audience or entered from the back of the theater, allowing the children to see them up close. Between songs, the conductor stepped off his podium and led the audience in music making with simple instruments provided at one of the booths in the entrance or just drumming on their laps. A couple of the puppets, fish puppets to be exact, thrilled the audience by producing bubbles as they "swam" down the main aisle of the theater.

The concert itself only lasted an hour, just long enough to have the kids leave still on a high from the show without growing bored. We made it back to the car, ran our errand, and grabbed a quick bite to eat before the lunch rush was in full swing. Then we went back home, pleased and grateful for having had such a nice morning out.

Get 'em Moving. Keep 'em Learning.

Ever noticed how it seems sensory integration and attention deficit disorders have increased as we've cut back on recess and the amount children play outside? I'm not saying a lack of physical activity causes these problems, but it certainly doesn't help the symptoms. Childhood is a time of intense physical as well as mental development, and the body not only needs but demands all types of movement and sensations in order to facilitate these developments. These demands can present as many of the symptoms listed for ADD, ADHD, various sensory disorders, and more.

So what is a parent to do?

Homeschooling Chat: Cross Curricular Projects

Now that the girls are approaching ten and have the attention spans to match, we've decided to swap from doing a whole slew of small projects throughout the year to one big, cross curricular project. This isn't to say they won't still do some small, short single subject projects. They'll always have short essays, papers, and experiments going on. No, we're talking about a group of smaller projects grouped together covering a range of skills and subjects, all under the same theme.

Here's the girls' finished food pyramid poster.

We decided to start with one of the five basic needs as the basis of our first cross curricular project: food. No matter who you are, you have to eat. Shouldn't you know something about what you're putting in your body well before you're out of elementary school? We think so.

Starting Fresh with the New Year

Hello again. I hope you and yours had a merry holiday season and are having a happy new year thus far.

It's a time for new beginnings, and I thought I'd bring up a few of our fresh start goals for 2016. Some we technically started at the end of 2015, because why wait? Others we only started today, the first Monday of the year. Some may become new habits. Many are likely to morph or fall by the wayside. There's really no way to tell this early in the game, but still we try.

I have a horrible track record at keeping up with resolutions, so this year I'm trying picking a word keep at the forefront of my mind throughout the year. It's no secret I'm more than a bit scatterbrained, so I figure "focus" is a word I can use more of anytime. Therefore, it is my 2016 word of the year, and I intend to implement it in multiple areas of my life and the girls.

Creating Memories

We instituted a weekly "family night" just over a year ago, and it's been a rousing success. The girls look forward to it each week, and not just because that's the night we have our weekly sweet treat. They're still at that age where they want to hang out with their parents. Even when we've been together all week, they still crave time and connection with Hubby and me, and they see more as more.

From our Lord of the Rings Marathon Christmas 2013

I have a confession to make though. I've been getting lazy with planning our family nights. It's so easy to fall into a routine of popcorn and a movie. I only managed to participate in the first retro game night a time or two before the controller that worked with our Nintendo emulator got to where the rumble was a constant thing. That'd freeze my hands up inside five minutes, so we tried using our hand-me-down Wii, but then one of the controllers stopped working back in the summer. And our balance board died sometime last month, so video games are pretty much out. The girls have usually used up their focus for the day before Hubby gets home from work, so the board games and puzzles we have get frustrating for them late in the evening, relegating them to a weekend and holiday only thing. So, what's a mama to do?

Sharing is Caring

No, this isn't an article on teaching your children to share their toys, but it is about how sharing can and is a form of caring for one another. What I'm talking about here is work and responsibility sharing. Perhaps not the most fun form of sharing, at least at first, but it's one of the most important ones we as parents have to teach our children.

I've made no secret about the fact we expect our girls to help out around the house. They've been putting their toys away since they were two, and they've learned how to do a couple of new things each year. It's my job as their mother and Hubby's as their father to teach them how to take care of themselves spiritually, physically, financially, and domestically. If we didn't teach them how to cook and clean for themselves along with how to read, handle mathematics in all its applications, and think critically, we'd be failing them as parents. But that in and of itself isn't what I'm getting at.

It's something I've come to realize as my "bad" joints have started getting worse and even my "good" hip and knee have started giving me trouble. Sharing the work and responsibilities involved in tending hearth and home is a powerful way to show one another how much we love and trust them.

Summer Science, Math, and Home Ec.

As those who have small children in school probably already know, kindergarten through third grade pretty much all cover the same lessons with each year just being a bit more involved than the year before. This helps lay a foundation of the fundamentals in a way that really "sticks" since we all learn through repetition. Now that Boo Bear is in third grade, we've had our hands full with projects and in depth explanations more than we have in the past three years.

She's so incredibly proud of her baby bean plants!

Both girls have always had a strong interest in science, with the biological sciences being of particular interest. So, we're going all out in our life science studies this year, which is one reason we put off the subject throughout the winter in favor of making it a spring and summer subject. Our biggest project of the year started a couple of weeks ago when we did the usual sprout beans in a plastic baggie experiment, and it will end this fall when we're harvesting the fruits of our family's labor.

Branching Out Our Taste Buds

One day back in late February, I was out grocery shopping with the girls and bemoaning the fact our local Aldi had once again run out of gluten free bread. A woman overheard us talking and told us about a new store getting ready to open just up the road called Sprouts purportedly like a lower cost Earth Fare or Whole Foods. Of course I had to go home and look it up.

Inside Sprouts from their website. Not a sponsored post, just an excited mama.

A few weeks later this new Sprouts Market opened. We weren't there at the opening itself, but it didn't take us long to go check it out.

Finding Balance Yet Again

There's been a lot of chatter in women's blogs and magazines about establishing a work/life balance over the past several years. Funny how most of those articles and discussions make it seem like something you set up and that just keeps on going on its own. Yet it always seems I'm having to take stock of what's going on in our lives and striving to find a way to "balance" it out every few months. Am I alone in this?

We've come a long way since 2012!

Perhaps it's simply a matter of the type of jobs Hubby and I have. Upheaval's to be expected for a teacher without tenure, owning a small business, and a failed attempt at career change. Somehow I doubt that's it though. Even when Hubby stuck with the same school for several years in a row and I was simply staying home and schooling our then preschoolers, this was going on.

Reorienting in Coping with Dyslexia

I came across this photo making the rounds on Facebook today. It sparked a bit of nostalgia in me.

Yet another Facebook, "If you can read this," meme.

Learning to read backwards and upside down is how I learned to reorient letters. I seriously thought everyone could do it until I asked a coworker about something on a sign posted outside our window, and they responded by questioning how I could read the sign. It was only five years ago, when Hubby was taking the Ortton-Gillingham training that I learned it was one of the earliest methods of helping children with dyslexia learn how to reorient letters. Unfortunately, it's also a method that's effective for just 5% of those dealing with dyslexia, and while I might be part of that percentage, the girls aren't.

When Perfectionism Threatens Progress

Long time readers might recall our frustrations over Sneak's perfectionism, manifesting as early as eighteen months when she refused to speak until her annunciation was up to her standards. Before then, I'd always assumed it was a learned trait, but recently Boo Bear has been showing more and more signs of the perfectionism monster stalking her. So, I've begun to wonder if there isn't some genetic component. Lord knows I've been fighting perfectionism as long as I can remember, as have the majority of the women in my family.

There's this perception that perfectionism is a motivating force that drives people forward through thick and thin until they get everything just right. It's not. At its root, perfectionism is a paralytic. Either the fear of failure keeps the person from ever starting in the first place, or they try, get something wrong or off, and then get so obsessed with that fact they never move forward or try again. "If I can't get it right, why should I even try?" is a common question asked by perfectionists.

Because of this, it can be a homeschooler's worst nightmare.

Your Words Matter: The Long Term Impact of a Teacher's Word Choice on Elementary Children

Here in the U.S. there seems to be a mindset amongst officials, parents, and even some teachers that the early years of a child's school career only matter as a starting point. Pre-K through third grade mostly focus on teaching a child to sit still and be quiet for hours at a time, to read and write and count and tie their shoes, and how to follow rules. Beyond this, little counts. Marks given in these grades don't count toward graduation or college acceptance beyond the child having passed through them to get to the next level, so what does it matter?

First Grade/Pre-K field trip to Cook's Natural History Museum.

Yet, it's in these early grades where we develop deep rooted ideas of self. Ask a child to describe themselves at the end of each year, and you'll see almost every one will have the same answer from third grade through the rest of their lives. Where do they get this self-image? Where did you get yours?

When Homeschooled Children with Learning Differences Feel Self-Conscious

When I got home from work one day last week, Hubby asked me to step in with Boo Bear's reading lessons. For the first time, she was refusing to make use of the tips and tricks for readers with dyslexia he picked up with his Orton-Gillingham training. He was at a loss for her reasoning and becoming frustrated.

Boo Bear working on her handwriting and spelling.

I immediately had a suspicion. Sneak hasn't shown any signs of having inherited dyslexia, and Boo Bear, while she's seen me read every day throughout her life, hasn't seen me use similar techniques since she was a toddler because I haven't needed them as much since Hubby stopped needing my help grading papers. So, I suspected she might be feeling embarrassed because it seems to her that her younger sister is "smarter" because she doesn't struggle as much with reading.

My New Year's Resolution: Acceptance

My resolutions for 2014 are simple. There's just the one, and it's acceptance of self.

Goodness, that sounds self-involved and pompous, but let me explain.

Like most of the women in my family, I'm a perfectionist and a control freak. It seems to be inborn. And, while those traits can have some positive points, by and large, they're destructive. They can and often do lead to self-destructive behavior. When you're a parent, there's nothing you do that affects just you. There's the crux of my resolution. I need to learn to accept certain things about myself not only for my sake, but for my daughters.

Avoid the Stress Haze

All the traditions and social occasions this time of year make for some of life's most memorable moments. However, it's all too easy for those memories to get lost in a haze of stress as you rush from one event to another.

When I was brainstorming blog and video ideas earlier this month, Hubby and I came to the unsettling realization we didn't have a lot of clear memories of Christmases past. We have some photos and a few really short video clips, but just to remember them without those aids, there was nothing there.

When your children want to do something sweet, you let them, even if it makes you look like a fool.

Saturday didn't start out so well this past weekend. Hubby's sinuses were trying their best to drown him, and I lost the fight with a migraine that'd been trying to set in for days before.

So, the girls played and watched movies with Hubby, while I tried to sleep of the migraine.

Later that evening, the girls decided they wanted to make me feel better by giving me a makeover before they got their baths and had me paint their nails.

I think they did very well for a first go, and yes, I did wear that look for the rest of the night.