Homeschool Home Economics

It's Spring and we have seriously fallen off the Homeschool wagon. If I am honest, I can look back and realize this happens every year about this time. The enthusiasm I had in September is no longer there in April. So to feel better about my kiddos' education, I look back on pictures to make sure we are doing "stuff". And then I get very creative and take that "stuff" and call it school!!! So today is Homeschool Home-Ec day. My kids are cleaning, baking, whining, cleaning some more, whining some more, cleaning some more! It's great.

Here are Simon and Quinn washing the BWT (Big White Truck.) I was such a great Mom. I didn't supervise this adventure one bit. In fact I have yet to go out to the car and see what a great job they did. I'm sure it is spotless.

Home Economics would not be complete without some cooking. Here's Simon whipping up some dried banana chips. These turned out very yummy. I'm always amazed though, at how much time drying fruit takes....and then my boys gobble it up in no time. I have dreams of seeing all this home dried fruits in cute little mason jars all lined up in my pantry. But they never even make it to the pantry. At least I know they are enjoying some dried fruit without all that added junk. Maybe I need one of those mega-12 rack dehyrdrators instead of my measly 4 tray dehydrator. That would be a question for my Green and Crunchy contact, Sheri!!

Liam's comics, installment 1

This must be "Brag about Liam" day. Boy would he love that.
Liam has been drawing comics for quite some time now. As I post Liam's comics, you'll see a lot of similarities between his comics and those of Garfield and Calvin & Hobbes. Those are his favorites. He burns through those books. I just love that he has such a great hobby. I'll admit that much of the humor is lost on me. And I'll admit that I don't always "get" them. But I love them still the same.

We just got a scanner on sale the other day so Liam is now experimenting with scanning his comics and coloring them with a Paint type program on the computer. The results are great. He's doing a fantastic job. Here are his first 2 that he completed on the computer.

Burns' Night 2009

Every year, my mother-in-law, treats her Scottish husband to a night of total Scottishy things. She does this by celebrating Robert Burns, Scotland's most treasured poet. Some of you may have heard of him, others probably not. The only thing that seems remotely familiar to me is "your love is like a red, red rose"....or something like that. I personally believe it is just an excuse for people to get together, get drunk, eat haggis (because when else would you eat haggis) and write silly poetry. Good times! Really it is. We enjoy it every year.

This year, Liam by far, wrote the most creative poem. He was inspired by an ABC song written by The Barenaked Ladies. We had recently heard this song on the XM kids chanel and we all found it quite entertaining. Liam rewrote it, inserted his own special humor, and the result was a fantastic poem. Here it is.

Alphabetics

A, is for aardvark. B, is for bleach.

C, is for chalkboard, for someone to teach.

D, is for dropping, a deuce.

E, is for exceptionally mediocre or loose.

F, is for floccinaucinihilipipificate,

and G, is for Georgia, a southeastern state.

H, is for her, and him, and he.

I, is for I, oh gee, what irony.

J, is for jackpot, you’ve hit it right in the spot.

K, is for kicking, that really hurt a lot.

L, is for licking, like slurp or pow,

and M, is for moo the noise of a cow.

N, is for nausea. O, is for 1, 2, 3.

P, is for pie, a food that’s very tasty.

Q, is for earthquake, if you leave out the earth.

R is for rhombicosidodechahedron, that’s a shape with some girth.

S, is for shut up, I’ll do that in a minute.

T, is for tub, with a couple folks in it.

U, is for umpire, now let’s play ball.

V, is for vacant, this is a free stall.

W, is for Winn-Dixie, full of cheapskate mothers.

X, is for xtreme, I couldn't think of any others.

Y, is for yip-yap, this song is full of it too.

Z, is for Zs, now it’s time to catch a few.

Christmas - Homeschool Fun

So, how many homeschool Mom's out there love the holidays because you feel every cookie made, decoration created, present wrapped, can somehow be categorized as "school!". It was craft central around here and I loved it.

First stop was gingerbread men. This is one of those activities that a mother hates but does only because she knows how much kids love decorating cookies. These poor men were so gooked up with frosting gel and M&M's that I'm sure I heard little gingerbread screaming in the background.

Here's Quinn helping with the baking while wearing Spiderman swim trunks. Tis the season!

I had no idea a child could decorate cookies and 'rock' at the same time.
Next stop...a paper tree. Believe it or not, the kids came up with this idea and then Mom and Dad provided the technical assistance. We have this blank wall in the family room that was screaming for some attention. The kids decided it needed a Christmas tree.

I think I was trying out soap-making that evening so Roy took it upon himself to create a design for the tree. We were all doubtful on its success but he definitely proved us wrong. The tree was adorable. We even put presents under it when it got closer to Christmas.

My special project this winter was the Snowman garland. Simon and Quinn were the helpers this time. I think I'll leave this one up all winter.

We had so many plans for the holidays that kept getting messed up with either weather or illness. We had hoped to get to the Zoo lights and to the Gingerbread House display at Franklin Park Conservatory. The only place we did manage to get to was COSI. The kids and I had fun that day. I love this picture of all of them there. They actually look like the love each other!!

This COSI guy was great. He got right down on the ground with the boys and showed them an experiment to explain shooting stars. Very cool. Finally a demonstration we hadn't seen before.

"Mom, the dog ate my homework!"

Well, Liam can now honestly say "The dog ate my homework." The story begins on a Monday morning when I went to grade Liam's math homework from the previous week. Lo and behold...no homework. Well, needless to say, Liam was not very forthcoming about what happened to his math homework. He tried many excuses as to why his math homework wasn't in the folder, and yes......please try and and hold back the shocked look on your face....he even tried "the dog ate it" excuse.

After about 3 hourse of denial, he finally came forward and told me the truth. He didn't do the homework! For a whole week! Well, being the stearn Mommy I am, I had him do a whole week's worth of homework in one day. To Liam's credit, he got it all done in a timely fashion.

Later that night we all left that house for a few hours. We came back to this.

After all the hassle of dealing with this homework issue, to come home and find out that a dog really can eat your homework.

A cute story about Simon

So the shuttle has launched and it is time to go home. We catch an elevator to go back to our bus and there happens to be an astronaut riding down with us. We can tell he is an astronaut because he is wearing that cool blue suit they all wear.

Simon gets a glimpse of him and asks him why he isn't on the shuttle. With a straight face, the guy says "It did? I must have been in the bathroom, did they call my name?" My gullible Simon explains that he missed it, it already left.

Cute story about Quinn

Our last day on the beach was very nice. We weren't in a hurry and we really enjoyed ourselves. We arrived on the beach at about 10 am to find the tide pretty high still. So we set up our chairs just outside the tide's reach. Of course by the middle of the afternoon, the tide had gone out quite a bit so now our chairs are pretty far from the water's edge.

At one point, Quinn came to us and told us he had to pee. Instead of dragging him back to the hotel, we told him to just go out and pee in the ocean. We remind him that he should go in far enough that the water would wash his pee away. So off he trots towards the water, and back to our books we turn. In a few moments, Roy says "Hey Jen, check out Quinn". He had walked just to the edge of the water, ankle deep, and dropped his pants. There he stood, using the Atlantic ocean as his personal urinal, and me without a camera.