Singing in the Rain

I get a bit crazy when cooped up in the house with the kids for a couple days in a row, as many of us do. Why do I always find it surprising when my kids start grating on each other’s nerves (and my own) and forget that they need to get out of the house too.

One challenging day when my son was a couple months old I decided to bundle him into his baby sling, wrapped us both in my jacket, grabbed my umbrella and headed out for a walk around the block in an autumn rain. It was soothing to both of us, the fresh air and the rhythm of my steps, soon I was literally singing in the rain. Both of us entered the house with a smidge more joy in our hearts and spring in our steps.

During one of our more recent rainy days, (of which we have had quite a few, thankyouverymuch) I decided our learning for the day was to be a walk in the rain. An opportunity for us to observe nature and what happens around our neighborhood, how things compare to sunny days.

We don our jackets and umbrellas heading out into what I would call a steady drizzle. Not half way down the block the rain stopped completely which gave us a chance to observe what happens when it stops raining too! So much learning, so little time. *cheesy grin*

The novelty of the umbrellas quickly wore off so I became a pack mule of sorts sliding them through the front pocket of my hooded sweatshirt. Along with my daughter on my hip for the last stretch to home after following her brother’s example rolling down a small (very wet) hill.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We did see some interesting things, a dead worm being devoured by ants, water dripping off tree leaves, robins hunting for worms, to name a few. A few more observations: the rain made the petals of a neighbors tree that was in blossom fall; when we (and by ‘we’ I mean the kids) walked in the extra soggy grass around the park it sounded like we were in a swamp (my son even lost a shoe - laughing hysterically - to the squishy mud); lots of birds started singing; the air smelled nice and fresh.

I forced myself to let them be kids. To explore and laugh and chase birds across a baseball field. Inside I might have cringed, (several times) especially those few steps my son took in just his sock. On the outside I managed a smile, encouraging them to experience.

My most favorite observation that my son said as we meandered along was that the rain made everything look, "more beautifuller." After saying it he corrected himself aloud, ’the colors of everything look more beautiful, I mean."

I pondered that comment for the rest of the walk and many of these rainy days since. The rain did indeed make the colors more vibrant, the birds sing louder and the grass to grow faster. It was so green; almost what I imagined the emerald city to be like. The blooms of flowers were as beacons shining their colors as never before.

I begin to wonder (the deep thinker I am *wink*) if I let the rain in my life bring out the colors more vibrantly or do I cover them with grey.

I do.

I think to myself, most of the time,

I do.

These rainy days when nothing is going my way and I just want to stay in bed or yell at the world. These are the days that make the good days look even brighter. Without the grey, the purples and reds and yellows of the world would fade.

No, I cannot always see past myself to look out of the grey rain clouds, but when I do I see that there are a thousand colors out there. In every small moment stands something shining its light brighter because of the rain. These eyes need only to glance away from the grey to find it there, vibrantly singing.

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Earthquakes

A local learning center that we love has an event every second Saturday of the month and the kids and I usually try to go after dropping Adam at work.  They always have a theme and this month's was earthquakes. 

I've talked to my son a bit about what happened just over a month ago and we've prayed for the people in Haiti quite often but some of these hands on learning activities really gave me a much deeper understanding of what happens in the earth. 

First experiment.  Seeing how the damp ground changes when shaken.  Our building began to fall after my son shook the earth.  It was a very clear illustration of how easy it was for buildings to fall due to eathquake liquefaction.

There were many other fun demonstrations but the favorite was one that made a tsunami.

We made a sea shore and placed a people to see where they would stay safe. 

Creating a wave with the plastic lid we watched the erosion.  They stayed safe for only so long until...

...they went for a swim. 

Very effective learning for all of us and a ton of fun.  The most fun is always the hike afterward and today was no exception.  I always wish for my real camera (not my phone) when we are here but never think to bring it, or bring it but never on the hike because it's big and clunky.  So pardon the picture quality...

One hour of excited energy burned off!  Granny and Grampy are arriving soon! One of us will be going to the airport at midnight to get them :) Kids are beside themselves excited, me too. :)

Home Learning

My son made the cutoff for kindergarten this year by nine days. For many reasons Adam and I decided that official kindergarten wasn't going to start until next September. The biggest reasons are that he would be one of the youngest in his class and we want him to be 18 when he graduates not when he's already on his way into a dorm room.

I thought this would be a good opportunity for us to try our hand at homeschooling. I like everything about schooling my kids. Still I find myself very intrigued by the idea of unschooling but I'm not a fan of that term because to some it sounds the same as not schooling or not learning. (Even though that is not the case.) 

Last August I picked a couple of curriculum books that work on both pre-reading and pre-writing skills as well as a set of pattern blocks.I did get all excited at first and schedule out a curriculum of what we were to do on which day (generally three days a week) and had success with that but now we seem to just find things that he is interested in and take those on as they come. We make sure to do letter sounds and sight words often and math with legos and just try to make it fun for all of us, two year old included.

So far so good. It's possible that my son is just making this easy for me because he's very eager to read and is a motivated learner at the moment. He does it on his own for the most part. Yesterday, he really read to me, really reading the words! He loves playing with his calculator and enjoys finding numbers that he can add up to make the same number. Like 4+5 and 8+1.

It's funny because I notice most of the learning happening not from anything I'm doing or teaching but mostly from his initiation. All I do is provide an environment that encourages learning and attempts to make it fun.

There are a lot of teachers in my family and I know that a public school education is good, even great. I turned out decent and everything! If we choose not to go this route for our children we are by no means saying it is not good. We are making choices based on our family and individual child’s needs as their parents. I like to see his motivation, determination and even frustration. Scratch that, I LOVE it!

Is it going to be more work? Yes. Am I sacrificing me time while my kids are at school? Possibly. Are my kids going to have gaps in their education? Probably, there certainly are in my own. Am I going to regret it? Absolutely not!

We may not make the decision to homeschool every year and we plan to keep our options open to what the future may hold. Honestly, I'm not going to miss the lack of me time. In 16 or so years I'll have more of that than I want!

No longer will I say that we are sort of homeschooling or just trying it out, we are on this ship and ready for the next adventure.

Vaseline, Silly Putty, and Lipgloss, oh my!

Thanks to my busy, dirt and mess magnet, typical two year old I thought I'd share some things I've learned recently in the stain removal department..

A couple of months ago she reached the jar of Vaseline off the bathroom counter and it was wiped all over the front of my favorite dress of hers. Here's what worked to get it out:

First I scraped off as much as I could with a metal spatula. Then I scrubbed it with dawn dish soap and soaked for a long time (a couple days) scrubbing every so often. After air drying, I dabbed it with rubbing alcohol. Let dry again, rinse and repeat dawn/alcohol cycle again. An again and again for a couple weeks until it came out!

Next it was silly putty on a leg of pj's that my MIL noticed when she was folding the already washed and dried laundry (yup, I'm spoiled, she folds my laundry!!!). To remove the silly putty I first tried freezing it like gum but it was very stubborn. Then we read online to use hand sanitizer. My friends, it literally took all the gooey stuff right off! Then dawn again to get out the rest of the stain perfectly!

Next she found a glossy lipstick and painted it all over the front of a dress grandma made her! So to get out my glossy lipstick first I dusted it with cornstarch and rubbed it in a bit to absorb any excess so the stain wouldn't spread or bleed. Then I scraped it off a bit a put it through the wash cycle. Then I scrubbed the remaining stain with my current favorite grease stain remover. Yup, dawn dish soap is pretty high on my list at the moment!

A bonus tip that my Mom shared with me is that one package of lemonade kool-aid will take the hard water stains off my dishwasher. It did! And I'm not planning on ever drinking it again because I don't think my plumbing needs such a thorough cleaning thatnkyouverymuch!

So just in case anyone else out there has a child who seeks out the hardest to remove stains, it's out here!

Suddenly a big boy!

It's been almost three years since I started this blog, THREE YEARS!!! Just a short time ago...

Now we are enjoying this age with our baby girl but it seems like just yesterday he was saying things like, "choo choo nunnel" and smelling roses.

It wasn't yesterday though, because yesterday he asked to have his training wheels taken off. Yesterday, he blew his mommy's socks off! Yesterday he made himself and both his parents proud. Trying and trying and that first real try once we put the pedals back on, was awesome! He did it! HE did it!

It's hard to focus on something (the post of the basketball hoop) and steer away from it! So Adam took him around the park while I pushed my daughter on the swing and we cheered him on. His last ride was about 40 yards or so and I was cheering all the way!

Then as I was pushing him on the swings he really 'got it' pumping his legs to keep himself going. How is it that my baby boy is big enough for all of this, not to mention some other things that for him I'll keep off the whole big internet! It has been an amazing week...

I'm glad he still says things like,"Mommy what was the name of that movie again?" "The Little Mermaid." He emphatically replies, "Yes! It was a little scary, but I still joined it."

Well my son, I have enjoined every moment of you! You are amazing!

Volcanoes

This post could also be titled "The ah-ha moment where I see how unschooling really does work." Oh, and if you think unschooling means unlearning or not educating think again and click on the above link for a plethora of definitions and explanations.

About a two weeks ago now my son asked me to tell him about volcanoes. I was able to put about a dozen sentences together about the topic to tell him about hot lava bursting out and cooling into rocks.

After him asking me to tell him again and again over the course of a few days we made a trip to the library last Monday where we picked out some volcano books. I now know more than I ever wanted to about volcanoes, and ash clouds, molten magma, pahoehoe (said pa-hoh-ee-hoh-ee) and 'a'a (said ah-ah) lava.

He knows more than I wanted too! One book has a section about Mt. Vesuvius. They cast the voids in the lava where the decomposed people were. Ah, yeah I didn't read that part, but he's a bit analytical and won't let me skip over any pages so he looked at the pictures and asked me, "what is that?" I said it was a concrete rock and he looked at me and said, "Mommy, it looks like someone dead." I just said "yeah, it does" while prying the page to turn it.

Long story short, he still can't get enough information about volcanoes and is just eating it up. It's really neat to teach them stuff when they want to learn it! One of the books had instructions to build our own volcano.

Of course we had to try it! What fun to teach him to gather the equipment and follow the steps of the experiment. It is more of a demonstration of the way an ash cloud works and it is proves it's point quite well. Just a bit of flour blown several times through out the day can cover an entire kitchen!