How do I do it?

Well truthfully, there are days I don't. Today my table looks like this at 4:00 pm. I can explain why everything is there, I just can't explain why it's not put away. First the sewing machine and the scissors are because I hemmed some pants for K and I that we got for Christmas. Behind that is my purple Control Jornal. There are a bag of buttons on the table from K's counting. The red lid is from a Christmas container that my mom gave us full of yummy sugar cereals. By the cereal is a green ribbon, that was tied onto the container. The cereal, well that is from breakfast. The two white things way in the back are from E and I sewing machines. Behind the cereal is Tiny T's Bumbo. (that is where it goes, I have a small house). You may realize that in the amount of time I took to type this I could have had it cleaned off. My excuse for that is I am nursing Tiny T. My plan was to take the picture and write about it later. Next comes dinner. How do I do that? Well truthfully, there are days I don't. Especially on Sundays, we are usually invited to The Man's parents or my moms. (Thanks to you guys for that). So I never have anything planned for Sundays. If I had to cook, I would have to feed my family Ramen noodles, or pork and beans with cut up hot dogs. Other nights I plan ahead. Only occasionally I follow through and actually cook what I planned. When we have a bad day, or no time to cook, I am so grateful for the 30 Day Gourmet. In fact this weekend I was doing some grocery shopping for my husbands grandma, and the store put ground beef on sale for $0.89 per pound. So I bought 20 pounds. I cooked 7 pounds and used some in Spaghetti for dinner, and froze the rest in 1 1/2 pound increments. Last night I made 7 pounds of meatloaf mixture. Made 2 meatloafs, ate one froze one, formed the rest into meatballs with a cookie scoop baked them and froze them in 20 meatball increments and tonight I am browning the other 6 pounds and we are having tacos, and I will freeze the rest in family size increments. Now on any night that I can't get dinner made I will pull out some hamburger and look through the 30 Day Gourmet and make something quick. Well I am off to clean off my table.

Off for the Holiday's or are we?

We are taking the Holiday's off. I didn't think that homeschooling was that big of a deal, then I took a break. I now realize how much I do. From planning and preparing, to helping the children from driving them different places. I do constant research, on what, when, how and why to teach things. The break has been really nice, but I am ready to get back into it. I made my Preschooler a number game with some containers that I got from the dollar store. There were 10 in the pack. I used a marker and wrote the number inside the container. I wrote the number on the outside of the lid. I wrote the number again in side the lid, the same number of times as the number, (for example, I wrote the number 4, 4 times.) because she knows how to count, but not what the numbers look like. She can count how many times it is written, and know which number it is. I also let her count things and put them in the containers such as buttons, mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, dried beans, stickers, or anything I can think of. I am planning on doing Muffin Tin Meals. We will do a counting one with 1 thing in the first tray, so on up to 12 in the last tray. They really like it when we do a food theme to go along with what we are learning.
I let them choose what type of science and social studies they would like to learn about, and we learn it together. Right now, they have chosen space. We checked out tons of books from the library, we even bought some of them. We have done research on Nasa. We have just looked at the stars and talked about them. We are in the process of creating posters with the information we have collected.I really like lapbooking, because it gives them something to do with the information they learn rather than just learn it and move on. It also gives them a review of it as they are building the books. Then they can go back and review anytime they want. They really enjoy showing them off. For Christmas we got a telescope to help us look at space. We are all really excited about that. We also got a rock tumbler. Maybe our next unit will be about geology.
I am really excited about homeschooling and our journey to be a closer family. I am also really excited about this blog and documenting our memories.

Charlotte's Web

This past little while we have been reading Charlotte's Web By E.B. White. We finished it this past weekend. We had planned a party for when we had finished. We made paper mache piggy banks. We learned some facts about spiders. We took a Charlotte's Web quiz. But the best part was our lunch. We had pigs in a blanket, marshmallow spiders, spiderweb dip with cracker flies. We also had egg sac puffs
and gold medal milk. (chocolate milk with yellow food coloring)
This was an amazing book and a great experience to share with my family. I loved it that the kids begged me to read to them. We ate our lunch while watching the movie Charlotte's Web. It's fun to compare what our imaginations see as we read the book, versus what the movie portrays.
To see what more moms are having for lunch head on over to Muffin Tin Mom's

To see our finished banks Click Here.

Architecture

We studied architecture around the world during November. We built Lego houses. We drew cities with many different elements (such as roadways, utilities, parks, stadiums, ect.). We learned about how the first towns/cities were built. (It all started with farming, they didn't have to travel for food anymore.) We went to see the lights at Temple Square and to talk about the architecture of the buildings downtown. To end this unit study we built an igloo in our front yard, thanks to all the snow. We built gingerbread houses. What fun!