Amberlicious Month Three

I forgot how quickly they grow.  She's already doing 360s and rolling to her side on her play mat.

She's starting to grab toys and play with them.  As a result, she's reminding me to braid my long hair more.

Her personality is coming out more, with dimpled smiles and squeaks.  She clearly recognizes her daddy and looks like an elf princess perched in his arms surveying her domain.  

She went on her fist bike ride this month.  No worries, we figured out years ago how to put a car seat safely in the bike trailer.  She's as safe there as in the car.  We only went a little over a mile, because mommy couldn't tow her much farther. She seemed to like it so we'll try a longer ride this weekend.

Jared initiated a neat scavenger for her and us over the weekend.  We walked around following his map from place to place.  He handed out a new clue as we reached each special spot.  It's awesome to be able to encourage those spontaneous moments of creativity.

Titus likes to share his iPad and his discoveries with his little sister.  I wish I had a picture of his special discovery the other day but I will do my best to describe what happened.  We were at a park with a big wooden playground.  Chris and I were sitting on a bench talking and I was feeding Amber.  We see Titus walking over to us with something pinched between his forefinger and thumb.  The object in question is making a high-pitched squeak.  It's clearly not a mouse but we are in denial of what it is until he gets closer. 

It was a bat.  Poor thing had been injured and must have crawled between two of the playground logs to hide.  It just wasn't expecting the "Mighty! Mighty! Titus!" to come along.  Unfortunately, it was too injured to take it to a wildlife rehab center.  Chris took pity on it and gently took it over to a quiet area under a bush to pass quietly.  The kids followed him like the pied piper but courteously left when he said it needed to go to sleep.

Amber is going to have quite a life.  She has three awesome brothers with very different strengths to share.  She's sort of like Dorthy in the "Wizard of Oz".  Titus is her fearless lion.  Jared her intelligent and imaginative scarecrow.  Lance her loving, sensitive and caring tinman.  However, I don't think Sarge would fit very well in her bike basket.

*Note:  She does have more than one outfit but apparently purple is her most photogenic color.

Tigers and Bears! Oh, my!

"I go cow-cow?" asks the two year old emphatically.  "Cow-Cow" is his word for Cub Scouts.  Cub Scouts is a favorite activity in our house and my two-year old is no exception.  When Chris can't bring him, boy do I have a bummed little boy to cheer up. In fact, my normal ham (has to be in every photo) is not in the photo below because he was already in the car waiting to go!  So here's my "Join Cub Scouts" pitch.

Last year a friend convinced my husband and I that Lance should start Cub Scouts.  She motivated me with the phrase "It's a guy thing, something you don't have to be involved in."  As a homeschool mom, that was all the motivation I needed, my plate was already full with activities for the boys.  Joking aside, it has been a great experience for the boys and I encourage anyone to join.

Lance is now a "Bear" and Jared is a "Tiger".  The motto of their pack is "We do stuff!" and they most certainly do.   The den and pack meetings are a lot of fun. They work through their requirements for new coveted belt loops, their next badge, do skits, crafts or go on field trips; like this trip to the police station.

The pack does an additional event each month, usually overnight camping, but they also have other fun weekend events on non-camping months.  Two of the boys' favorites are rock climbing and zip-lining/ropes course.

 

The homeschooling mom in me likes all the stuff they learn.  They learn physical science and carpentry skills by preparing their vehicles for the "Space Derby" and "Pinewood Derby" each year.  These, like the other weekend events, are always open to the whole family which allows no excuse to not join in the fun.

And if that wasn't enough, they also learn life skills with the annual "Popcorn Sales" fundraiser.   I was amazed at the learning opportunities afforded this year by selling popcorn door-to-door.  The boys really jumped into it.   They worked on their sales pitch and refined their manners. They also learned the importance for finishing the job by delivering all the popcorn weeks later (harder in some ways than selling it). They finished each sale saying "Thank you for supporting our pack. See you next year!".  I'm especially proud to say my boys sold the most popcorn of any family in the pack, because they did it all on their own. Chris and I only chaperoned.  Their motivation was of course the foam dart guns on the prize table, but, hey, whatever it takes, right?  Grandpa Bob bought Titus one for Christmas to level the playing field.

I know most families are overbooked with activities but I must say it might be worth dropping something else and trying this out.  The great "They" say there is nothing more impressive on a resume (not even Ivy League credentials) than being an "Eagle Scout".  I'll be curious is my boys make it some day.

Note:  For those mom's like me who are sewing adverse; never fear!  The Scouts no longer have achievement patches, only "belt loops" and "pins" (no sewing required, yay!).  And for the few patches on the uniform, I use this awesome stuff called "BadgeMagic", which is conveniently available right next to the patches, so you'll never have to pick-up a needle :-)

Their ideas...

When the new year started, I knew we needed to start school again, but frankly I hadn't made a plan for the week.  So when I announced last Tuesday morning that we needed to start school, I was pleased when Jared asked "Can I do my Rocket Phonics?".  We have not opened that book/curricula in over six months.  I was excited, that he was excited about doing something; so we kicked right in.  That led to starting up all their core curriculum again, most of which we hadn't touched since Amber was born.  It turned out to be a nice and easy way to start out the new year.  Thankfully, they weren't done sharing their ideas of how our school days should go.

Jared also voiced a real interest in the idea of writing in a journal.  He had seen an episode of "Clifford The Big Red Dog" about journal writing.  They also enjoy doing the "Draw-Write-Now" assignments and I decided to combine the two and for this I found the perfect composition notebooks.  These notebooks have room to draw on the top of each page and wide lines to write down below.  They are devouring these journal books.  I'm really enjoying all their creative ideas.  I limit them to an hour first thing in the morning, but if I let them, I think they'd spend hours everyday drawing and writing in them.  I am careful not to correct anything they write in these journals, the journals should be a way to express themselves freely and to practice what they learn in language arts.  Over time, I hope to see an advancement in their spelling, sentence structure, and vocabulary.

Lance "reignited" a keen interest in volcanoes after borrowing a video from the library.  He looked up Mt. St. Helen on Google Earth and watched videos from links found there.  Then he made models of exploding volcanoes, complete with doomed villages, in the sand box.

Titus, not to be left out, has been our creative/craft idea king.  The other day, he rummaged his way to the back of the craft cupboard and came out with old marshmallows.  I brought out the toothpicks and we started making letters. The letters then morphed into constellations.  When his brother completed the assignment they were working on they made their own creations.

Love Parachute - note the heart at the bottom

Jet Plane

Today, Titus started drumming on an empty container in the kitchen.  This reminded me about the containers I'd been saving to do a "Tom-Tom Craft" with the boys.  

I decided to I follow their lead on changing things up and updated our schedule.  First change was to get back to scheduling in Excel (yay!).  The second was to literally turn things around.  I transposed my spreadsheet so that the dates were now the columns and subjects the rows.  This allows me to print out a schedule similar to the one I was handwriting.  It also allows the flexibility to add/change/move around subjects easily.  I am now posting their schedules on the entertainment center (so they can't forget/miss them) and color coding them with things they can do on their own vs. things where they need my help.  The idea is that hopefully they can be more productive during the day when I'm occupied with Amber.  We'll see how it works in the weeks ahead.

We're going to do what I call our "Core Curricula" Monday to Wednesday and incorporate History on Thursdays and Fridays.  History is too reading intensive to do the same day with their reading and language arts curricula.  

Here's what our new schedule looks like:

BIBLE (M-S):  We are back to doing our CLE Bible curricula everyday.  I have struggled with how to approach this subject more than any other subject in our house.  I have felt pressured to do more to make my children incredible scholars and other lofty goals.  Most of my plans haven't made it past Tuesday of the new week, with us ending up doing no Bible work at all the rest of the week.  Reality set in this year and what is really necessary is for them to know and love the bible.  With CLE, they learn about the bible and its easy for me to teach and most importantly they like it so much they ask to do it.  This is exactly what I needed and its been sitting on my shelf all along.

LANGUAGE ARTS:

• Journal Writing (M-S)
• CLE Language Arts Grade 1 (Jared only)
• Easy Grammar - Grade 3 Student Book and Daily Grams (Lance only)
• All About Spelling Level 2 (Lance Only)
• Pentime - Cursive Practice (Lance Only)

READING:  In addition to continuing to read and narrate the "Christian Liberty Nature Readers" we have started our CLE Reading and "Rocket Phonics" curricula again.  I absolutely adore the readers in both curricula and the boys do also.  In addition, we always have a couple read-aloud books going and the boys have their own books to read.

MATH:  We have returned to our summer schedule of Calculadder (M-F) and CLE Math (M-W).

PIANO (M-S), CC REVIEW (M-F), HISTORY (R-F), SCIENCE:  No changes here from previous post.

Some days I feel like we change our schedule more than our clothes around here, but that's part of the reason I homeschool.  I love having the flexibility to continual improve on the whats, hows and whys of teaching my children.  My desire above all things is to ignite a life long love of learning.

Just because she's cute!

Safari

Early last week, I came downstairs to find Lance looking up the word "Safari" in our 1828 Noah Webster dictionary.  He said couldn't find it and sure enough it wasn't in that dictionary. We decided to find out how old the word was and it turns out it didn't become part of the English language until the 1890s. The work has Swahili/Arabic origins and means "journey".  Looking back on the last few weeks, I found it very aprepo. 

Jared's last SVT was December 21.  Though we managed to avoid the ER by the skin of our teeth, it was the proverbial last straw for me.  My body broke down. I got a cold the next day and it lasted over two weeks.  The entire situation took a toll on my spirit as well.  Having your son endure three life-threatening events in four-month period can wear a person down. 

I've mentioned before that I have control issues - I'm a fixer by nature.  Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do to fix Jared and the doctors said there's nothing they can really do either at this point. It's hard for a fixer to accept that all they can do is Trust in the Lord and I'm no exception.  As a result, I have frequently felt abandoned by God despite the abundant blessings He has given us; like our four beautiful children.  

Over the last two years my hope/faith had been growing a little, maybe trusting in the Lord was enough. Jared seemed to be thriving. His activity levels were high.  He had fun this past summer swimming and playing with his brothers.  I started to hope again that one of these days I would go to the cardiologist and find out my prayers had been answered and Jared was miraculously healed. These episodes have made it more difficult but I will always keep praying for a miracle. 

Today, I saw Chris pull Jared down into his lap and hug him so tight Jared was laughing and complaining. I could see the tears in Chris' eyes.  When Jared left the room he said: "Sometimes I wonder if this is the last time." I nodded and said I know.  Knowing I'm not alone on this journey is both a blessing and a source of pain.  It's hard to see such pain in the eyes of someone you.  We both put on a good show of strength, but it is still just a show.  

A friend gave me a little ray of hope last Sunday.  I told her I was switching Jared back to his old liquid vitamins.  I said when I went to re-order them the other day, I had the sudden thought maybe I shouldn't keep Jared on them.  I explained I had switched the boys to new liquid vitamins early this summer because they had ionized minerals that help to detox the body and improve focus.  I was pleased with the vitamins and they seemed to be helping.  The thought that made me stop giving them to Jared was "what if they were doing their job too well and decreasing the effectiveness of Jared's medications?"  My friend said she thinks those moments are the Holy Spirit talking to us.  I'd never thought of random ideas that way, but it is comforting knowing that God is still talking to me. I just need to listen and trust more. 

Jared has definitely been more spacey this week as a result (mental confusion is also a side effect of one of his drugs.)  But if the SVTs don't return, I can cope with his spaceiness with patience and grace. I'm hoping to move forward with our journey again this week.  Our lives must go on as normal as possible for Jared and the sake of our three other children.  Chris and I have always said "We don't want our children to survive, we want them to thrive!".  To do that we must get back to enjoying every part of the journey, wherever it leads.