Our Everyday Talk

Our first day of Not-Going-Back-to-School 2009!

Now that we’ve officially been back to school for 2 weeks, I’m finally getting around to posting something about our first “official” day of school.   Sigh!

The day that our local public school goes back into session each fall is a day worth celebrating around our house!

What are we celebrating?

1.   Our kids don’t have to get to up early and get all “dolled up” for an hour long ride on a bus to take them to school 3 miles down the road.

2.   Our kids don’t have to waste half their day figuring out where their crowded classrooms are, or stand in line to have slightly tasty, slightly warm, slightly nutritious lunch handed to them.

3.   Our kids get to study what they want, when they want.   Not worrying  that things are going to slow for us and  bored to tears, or too fast for us so that we’re wasting an hour listening to someone talking at us when we were lost in the first 5 minutes.

4.   Our kids can be exactly who they are without worry of being made fun of or bullied.

5.    We get to do what we want, when we want.   We go swimming in the middle of the afternoon, or take a daytrip to The Cities to do something fun.   Our days are ours to decide what we want to make of them.

6.   Along with studying reading, writing, and arithmetic, we studying God’s word, and exploring the world he made.   We are also each studying something that we want to learn more about, just for the fun of learning something that we’re curious about.

How are we celebrating?

1.   We’re eating breakfast whenever everyone gets up (that’s usually between 8 and 8:30) and we’re eating breakfast in our pjs.   One of the rules in our house is that we come to the breakfast table dressed.   But 2 days a year we let the kids stay in their pjs, Christmas Day and on the “first day of school.”   Just because we can!   Typically I would let the kids stay in their pjs all day, but we had agreed to help out with our church’s MOPS (Mothers of PreSchoolers) group, and needed to be there from 9 – 10:30 to help out with the little ones while their moms get some much needed “me time.”  

So we ate a special breakfast that the kids requested – choc. chip pancakes, in our pjs, and then got dressed to head over to church.   I don’t see the appeal of chocolate chips in pancakes, but my kids have always requested these on the first day of school. 

    

Some cute pictures of the kids at MOPS

 

2.   The kids get to pick what subjects they study and when.   Typically, I have a list for each of them that tells them what they need to get done that day.   But today the kids got to pick - because they can.

3.   A special lunch as per requested by the kids.   We had chicken and cheese enchiladas, salad, and cheesecake.

 

Doesn’t this look YUMMY?   And they are magic recipes that have no fat or calories in them at all.   I wish!

We had a great day celebrating the start of another great year of schooling at home!

I am a Curriculum Junkie!

My name is Nancy, and I am a curriculum-aholic.    This is a common vice of homeschoolers.   So much great material, so little time! 

I’ll show you a few pictures, so you have a little window into my world.   And then I’ll tell you the HUGE step that I made in the right direction this last week.

So here’s a picture of my used curriculum that I’ve boxed up according to grade level.  

All of this material has been used at least once – some will be used again, some not.   Like the boxes of 1st and 2nd grade materials.   Unless God has a different plan for us, we will not be using this material again!   But I keep in on hand, just in case.   And Last year I had the opportunity to borrow out much of this material to 2 other families.   One started homeschooling in the middle of the school year, and I was able to supply her with much of the material that they needed to get them through to the end of the school year.   Another friend was looking for some materials to help their kindergartener who was struggling with reading.   The school district wanted them to put him into some special programming, and they were looking for an alternative to that.   I had some phonics materials that they were able to use with him at home in the evenings and such.   I’m glad that I had kept that material, so that I was able to bless someone else with it.

Then I have my cupboard of materials that is full of stuff that I haven’t gotten the opportunity to use as of yet.  There’s also some reference materials in here that I refer to off and on.   There are a couple things that I have used and have a plan to use again soon, in here as well.   This cupboard is 24” long and 24” deep.   It’s kind of hard to see, but the rows of materials is 2 deep, and things are stuffed in here tight!   Good stuff!   No junk, really!

Here’s our schoolroom shelves ready to go with this year’s materials stocking the shelves.

Our “Busy Table” is set for the upcoming week and the bin next to it holds more educational games and activities to swap things out in the weeks and months to come.   This is all “extras”, fun stuff, that is educational but isn’t part of any regular curriculum.   So the kids get the opportunity to use the things on this table when I’m busy with someone or something else and can’t get to them right away.   They love it!   They feel like they are getting a break, and it’s all stuff that’s going to fill them up with knowledge and wisdom. I could show you my over stuffed bookshelves, cupboards full of board games, cupboards full of educational dvds and videos, cupboards full of educational computer games, but I think you get the point.   I LOVE TO BUY EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS FOR OUR FAMILY !!!

I’m probably worst with Science and History materials.   Noah currently has curriculum materials for Earth Science from 3 different companies sitting on his shelves for this year’s Earth Science.   Oh, and I forgot to mention the bench seat at our work table – full of materials for Science labs.   And History, Noah’s doing World History this year, and he’s got curriculum materials from 5 different publishers for that.    But each one is unique and filled with its own valuable information.    We just can’t ever get enough of Science or History!

But here’s when I come to the good news.   This next picture is all the material that I have gathered up to get rid of.   See I can do it, I can pass some of this great stuff on to another family who will love it and use it as much as we have.   But it has been hard.   I’ve taken some of this stuff on and off this pile 2 or 3 times, before I was sure I wanted to part with it.   Some of it I’m selling on-line, and some I’ll bring to our UPLIFT homeschool co-op in a couple weeks to see if anyone there can use it.

And lastly, I went to the H.E.Y. Fall Rally for our homeschool support group last week.   There was a gymnasium full of tables, all filled with wonderful treasures for our homeschool shelves and cupboards.   I only need 1 more thing for the upcoming school year.   I need Math-U-See Zeta.   I went in hopes of finding someone who was selling their used DVD and textbooks at a bargain price.   Unfortunately I didn’t find it.   BUT, I didn’t come home with anything else either.   I was in a room full of textbooks, and workbooks, and kits, and games, and dvds, and computer games, and you name what else, and I came home with NOTHING!   This is huge friends!   I don’t think I’ve ever gone to a curriculum sale and come home with nothing!   So not only am I in the process of cleansing our home of some unneeded stuff, I also resisted the temptation to bring home more.   Now, I still need that Math-U-See material though, so I will need to look online for that.   But that’s all I’ll buy, I promise :)

Underwater World

We visited Underwater World at the Mall of America a couple weeks ago.   We hadn’t been there for over 5 years I think, and the kids enjoyed it more and got more out of it this time.   The kids loved the underwater tube where they could watch the fish swim around and above them.

The kids touched the starfish in the touch tanks.

The Seahorses were really cool!

   

Of course messing around in the “shark cage” was a lot of fun too.

   

This is the type of place that our family visit once every 5 years and enjoy, but there isn’t enough to hold our attention more often than that.   It isn’t either exciting enough or interesting enough.  But we didn’t have to pay for it this time, and so it was worth the drive down to the cities.   On our way home we stopped and had dinner with my sister and her family, and spending time with them is always well worth a trip to the Cities.

A Day at Summerland

The kids and I went to Summerland a couple weeks ago.   The kids went down the water slide a few times, but it was just a little windy and they thought it got just a little chilly walking up the stairs.   They spent LOTS of time on the bumper boats.   There were very few people there, so they got to have long turns and when they did have to get off.   They got back in line and got right back on again the next time.   

    

 

We have had such a great summer!   We haven't taken any trips or done any huge or spectacular events, but our summer has been full of sunshine, and water, and relaxing fun.  

Clowning Around this Summer

Here are a few pictures from a couple of clowning/magic shows we did this summer.   We were hired by the Coborn’s grocery store chain to entertain at their family carnivals this summer.   I think this is the 3rd year we’ve done some of these shows.   They are a lot of fun, and this year the weather was perfect!  

This little girl was a volunteer many, many times during our show.   She was such so precious, and had such a happy heart!   Her name was Megan, but she was wearing a Hannah Montana shirt so every time she came up they’d ask her her name like it was the first time she’d been up helping, and then they’d call her Hannah Montana anyway.   She thought that was so funny.   Then once after she had been up there at least 10 times, she smiled at them when they called her “Hannah” and said,”You know, my name really is MEGAN!”   Still smiling, but like she could not figure out why they kept calling her Hannah.    So funny!

  

    

  

The kids have decided to pool the money that they've earned from these shows and put it towards a Wii.   They're getting close, just 1 or 2 more shows and they'll have enough.   It's been great motivation for them, and fun to see them working hard towards their common goal.

A Summer full of baseball

No one in this family is a baseball fanatic, but you’d be hard pressed not to think so this summer.   The boys decided to play baseball this summer and we joined a fun league in St. Cloud.   So for 9 weeks we’ve driven into St. Cloud 4 days a week for either baseball practice or games.   The boys have never plaid league baseball before, so it was a big learning experience for them.   They had lots of fun, and by the end of the season, had improved some.   They had some really good players on their team, and at the end of the season made it to the championship game.   It was a night game under the lights, and announcers over the PA system that announced their names.   Quite an event.   They lost the game 10-5, but Noah scored the first 2 runs of the game which was huge for him.   They tell me they think they’d like to do it again next summer. We’ll see …

   

         

   

We also went to a couple Riverbats games, courtesy of some friends.  The Riverbats are the collegiate league that plays in St. Cloud.

                             

And we even made it to a couple of Twins games too.   It really has been a summer of baseball!

           

Sonshine Music Festival

J.D. and the F.L.O.O.D. team performed at the 3 day Christian Musical Festival in Willmar last weekend.   He did some magic, a puppet show, the “We All Want to be Loved” human video, some clowning, and some balloon sculpturing.   Afterwards our family enjoyed some great concerts.   We saw Matthew West, Family Force 5, Hawk Nelson, Skillet, David Crowder, tobyMac (Yeah baby! ;), and Reliant K.

The FLOOD team on Thursday

 

The FLOOD team as clowns on Saturday 

Hanging out at the camper

The boys in the SONSHINE ;)

The kids at the concerts

Matthew West

Hawk Nelson

Family Force 5  -  I have to bite my tongue SO hard not to say, “You call this music?!?” when they listen to these guys.   Now I know how my mom felt.   At least these guys have a more wholesome message than music I was listening to, even if the head banging noise is the same.

And saving the best for last . . . tobyMac!   He makes me giddy like a teenager.   He’s the same age as me,  and I’ve been a fan for almost as long as he’s been singing.   And he’s been singing for a lonnggg time.

4th of July

Todd's parents joined us for a fun weekend.   We spent time relaxing on the water, playing games, golfing, eating lots of yummy food, and fireworks.

       

              

This is a little bay on the Sauk River that is the closest point on the river to our back yard. 

         

If you walk through the marshy low land for a tenth of a mile, and then trek up this big ol' hill . . . 

                                  

You'll end up in our back yard.   I've looked, and can't find a picture of our backyard - lots of pictures of kids and animals in the backyard, but none of just the backyard.

Some birds we saw while on the "Chain of Lakes" . . .

         

Blue Herons and Mallards

           

Hannah baiting the hook for her brother.

J.D. driving the boat

The kids swimming

That evening we went to St. Cloud for fireworks.

Happy 233rd Birthday America! 

We Love Little Baby Ducks

The momma duck that had built a nest in our front yard, had 11 little babies about a month ago.   They were only here for about a day before she brought them down to the pond, so I'm glad the kids got a close-up look before they left.

All Things New Puppet Show

Our Pastor is doing a sermon series titled, "All Things New."   It has been a fantastic series!   A couple weeks ago our family performed in a black light puppet show dancing to the song "All Things New" by Steven Curtis Chapman.    Everybody played a few different parts.   Todd was the water, then the earth, then a flower, and then a Hallelujah sign.    The kids were fish, then flowers,and the Hallelujah signs at the end.  It was a ton of fun! 

This video isn't very good, but you'll be able to get an idea of what it was like.   It takes a few seconds to load, and the song is about 2 minutes long.

 http://naturewood.typepad.com/our_everyday_talk/All%20Things%20New%20blacklight%20puppetshow%202009.wmv 

This is certainly a new way to worship our Creator.   Using puppets, flourescent paint, and black light bulbs.   Our church does black light puppet shows 2 or 3 times a year.   The kids love them.    And the adults do too, I think.   Just like anything, no matter how neat it is, if its done too much it has less of an impact because people aren't sitting up and taking notice anymore.   I actually don't think puppet shows and the like should be done in a regular worship service, unless the empahsis of the act really is to worship God, and not just entertain us.    I thought Ann, and the rest of her crew, had their hearts on the Lord the whole time.

Whatever you do, work at it wholeheartedly as though you were doing it for the Lord and not merely for people.   Colossians 3:23

Nancy