My Kids are Funny

Hi all!

It has been WWWAAAYYY too long since I posted anything on this blog, and doubly embarassing since the last post I wrote was Christmas cards I made then never got around to sending. Kind of tells you how busy December was.

Praying you all had a blessed Christmas and are ready to roar into 2012.

I don't have much to say, but my kids have spurted a few funnies in the past twenty four hours so I thought I would share those:

1) Tanner in church last night - "Why is Josh (the pastor) telling us to listen to a song about peeing? Why does he like pee so much?" The song was actually "Yearn" but our pastor has a broad Texan accent!

2) Nicolas in the middle of the night - Nicolas has a tendency to talk, loudly, in his sleep. Last night he woke up his brother, who found Nicolas sitting up in bed. Nicolas pointed at his shadow on the wall and told Tanner, "We need to build him his own clothes closet." Yeah, I don't think so!

3) Amanda tried to pay me a compliment by telling me I am smarter than a pig! Thanks, I think! LOL

Happy New Year!

Eliminating Excuses

My kids have daily chores to do. Some day they may even have weekly ones.

One of my biggest challenges is that they can never remember what they are supposed to be doing, and so spend significant time going back to finish up missed steps, making ten minutes of chores take twenty, thirty or even more minutes to do.

I have tried many ways to help them, including master lists we check off afterwards, and chore packs that they wear on their bodies. The checklists were forever getting misplaced, and the chore packs bothered my sensory sensitive child, who then would remove (and therefore lose) it. The other difficulty I had, especially for one child, was an inability to work through the steps in a logical order. Do you know how difficult it is to wipe down a counter when you haven't reloaded the dishwasher yet?

I think we may have found a solution that works.

I have made detailed cleaning lists for each room. Each list is being taped inside a cupboard door of its designated room. That way they can just open the door, start at the top, and read and complete one step at a time. Voila!

The lists are being posted tonight as our printer was being ornery, but we have been test-driving the lists this week by putting the computer in the room with the list on the screen, and have had fabulous results.

P.S. I can't figure out how to post the lists in here, but if you would like a copy let me know!

Nicolas Creates

Today we finish up our look at what the kids made for Hobby Share Day.

Last, but not least, Nicolas chose to do electrical circuits. Originally they were going to do their names, but realized how slow and finicky it is (the wires are TINY) so instead they made the Big Dipper.

Here is what it looks like in the dark:

 And here is a view of the back, although you can't see most of the little wires as it is sealed up to keep them from being bumped:

That's a wrap for this year's Hobby Share. My kids were so blessed by the parents who took time to share a bit of themselves.

Amanda Creates

Hobby Share Round 2

Amanda took the baking class. Her group was primary students and they learned to make biscuits. According to Amanda they were so easy to do as you mixed them up with your spoon, then your hand, then cut them into pieces and baked them. She was very proud as she was able to do everything by herself. Apparently most of the kids needed help measuring and stirring but she didn't, probably because she bakes a lot at home.

She actually made a lot more than are shown in the picture, but these are the only ones we were able to keep out of people's mouths long enough to take a photo of!

Tanner Creates

Every year our homeschool support group does a Hobby Share Day where various parents share a craft or hobby that interests them with a small group of children. This year's groups included cake decorating, electrical circuits, geocaching, crochet, pysanky, baking, origami and preschool.
For those of you that homeschool, this field trip is always the best attended of all the ones we offer in a year and one I highly recommend you try with your groups.

Anyways, back to our Hobby Share. Tanner decided to try his hand at cake decorating. The class lasted 90 minutes and they were practicing different techniques by decorating cupcakes. He learned how to write, outline a shape, make stars, leaves, and some type of flower. The highlight of the day was making a Westie. To quote Tanner, "My mum made me go through all the stress of making a dog. It was actually very interesting." He was feeling tired by the time they got to the dogs and was thinking about skipping it but I talked him into persevering. He was glad after! LOL

Here are a couple pictures of his creations:

Creating Wherever We Go

My kids have been creating like crazy so I thought I would spend the next few days bragging on them!

These pictures are from our trip to my Mum's a couple weeks ago.

This first picture is one T took of an abandoned building up the hill at Hedley mine.

While at my mum's the kids were delighted at how much snow was still outside. They especially loved the big snow pile next to my mum's where the snowplow had been pushing the snow all winter.

 The kids built a fort in the snow bank with three rooms. Here is N posing in it. For those of you wondering - yes, he did have his snowpants with them and wore them playing outside. He had come in dripping wet so went back out without his snowsuit for pictures as the roof was starting to collapse in places and they wanted to get pictures while they still could. Below is another picture of one of their passages.

Creating a More Positive Car Atmosphere

The kids and I made a journey up to my mum's this weekend. We used the trip up to learn about distance and time estimations by playing a game estimating distances to the next town. I had to admit i had an ultimate, non-academic purpose in mind - focusing them on short--term goals so they would whine less about how long the trip takes! LOL

Here were the rules:

1) As we left each town we read the distance to the next town on the mileage sign, then everyone estimated how long they thought it would take to reach the town (each person had a minimum five minute increment, unless the next town was really close, in which case we did two minute increments). 

2) Whoever won that round was owed a dollar by Mum (great motivation to keep them all playing! LOL). 

3) Whoever currently had the least amount of money got to choose their time frame first so that they all got turns at having first dibs at the most likely times.

4) Once your time rolls past, you were out of the competition. So, for example, if Tanner said 2:23 and Nicolas said 2:28 but we arrived at 2:24, Nicolas would win as Tanner's time had already rolled by.

5) The clock kept ticking at unscheduled stops (taking photos, pit stop) unless Mum called a delay, in which case we added the stop time and recalculated. The only time I called a delay was when I took a 15 minute nap, so we added 15 minutes to everyone's totals when we resumed travel.

6) If the town is one we plan to stop in, the stopping point is where we calculate to. If we are just driving through, we calculate at the entrance to town, where the "Welcome to... " sign is, or equivalent.

 It worked well, and by the time we arrived Tanner had earned $4, and the others $5. The only reason Tanner was down one was that we stopped to photograph the mountain goats he saw, and that meant his time expired by the time we got there! LOL Best of all, I think they are getting a better idea of how times and distances work, so we managed to roll a math lesson in while bringing the whining WAY down!

My Kids Create

We had our first snow of the calendar year and the first one where it was good packing snow. My kids had a blast today, building a snowman and a snowfort. They even shovelled both our driveway and our neighbour's! They wrapped up the afternoon with a snowball fight with Daddy (Mummy has more sense).

I just had to share their create (but expensive) snowman with you! He has cinnamon hair, with a black pepper strip through it for the earmuff band, broccoli earmuffs, stick eyes, carrot nose and mouth, and vitamin drink for rosy cheeks. Gotta love their creativity even while cringing at the effect on my food budget! LOL

Here's the pictures: