Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Good Tunes


A few years ago for the Monkey;s fifth birthday a friend gave us a burned copy of a cd by this fella Billy Jonas. We fell in love the kids and I did with this fella. The Bean's favorite song is Lean on me and the Monkey loves Mount St. Helen from the album What kind of Cat are You? (the title song is brilliant also).

I love his perspective on the world and the wonderful messages in his songs. On super crappy days I like to listen to the song God Is In from the album Life So far. That whole album is great for my crappy days (and good days too). This album is not so kid centric but good for all to listen to (minus one song with a heavier message later in the album, still with a good message).

We are having a lego morning with a side of Billy Jonas' album Happy Accidents (and yes I did pay for it ;)



Last Weeks Kidtopia Update




Explosive Experiments!

Child Labor :)

What happens when you use Child Labor



With life being so busy it is hard to keep up with posting our daily fun.
Last Tuesday was another Kidtopia week. We had the 7 crazy boys and one brave girl wielding hammers and nails and remarkable no one got hurt. The leaf pile seemed to be more dangerous but it may have been the large metal rakes we armed them with...hmmm.
Anyway the kids made lanterns and as an added activity they mixed Ground Dragon Bones, Unicorn Urine and Tears of Demon for an explosive experiment.
As always a wonderfully chaotic afternoon with some great ladies and crazy kids and a little drama thrown in just to make things interesting.
(the drama among other things was the random baby that was in our care for this time slot - she was a trooper in the chaos)

Monday, November 02, 2009

Workbooks

As most of you know over the years we have tried many a curriculum. What we have found is that we are not curriculum folk. Monkey is not even a workbook / work sheet kind of guy which I can appreciate. The Bean on the other hand is turning out to be quite the workbook lover.

She would pull the Monkey's old workbooks off the shelf and plop down to do them. Her own way of course never being one to follow the rules. She is getting to the age though where following the instructions is getting a little higher on her list. She is finding it gets better outcomes although not always as wonderfully creative. Just last night she went on about how ridiculous it was that numbers had to face a certain way because you know what number it is if it is backwards or forwards. She does have a point.

In my search for good workbooks, which I have been looking for for years, I came across Miquon for math and Explode the Code - Getting Ready for the Code for reading at the suggestion of a friend. I was skeptical but briefly browsed through it at my friends house and went home and made a Rainbow Resources order.

The order came and last night while the male folk plunked down for an action packed documentary BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs Disc 1 (which they have watched numerous times in the past decade and there is a story of this particular series in relation to my honeymoon that I will share later) the Bean and I went to her room to try out these new workbooks and THEY WERE GREAT! She loved them, I found them not overwhelming as I usually find workbooks - I am excited. So, minus the Bean stabbing a pencil through her jeans almost resulting in a hospital visit, we had a great impromptu night of homeschooling.