Little House and Little Rug

So Tuna and I have been reading Little House on the Prairie. I think we're about halfway done now. We're at the point where the family gets malaria, is rescued by strangers, and spends some time recovering from their illness. Pa is too weak to work outside, and Ma needs help inside, anyway, so Pa sets about the business of making Ma a rocking chair. 

One of the parts of the Little House books that bores me to tears is the in-depth explanations of the monotony of everyday pioneer life. Laura goes into excruciating detail about how things are done at times in the book and it's just boring to read aloud. 

This rocking chair was no different, except that I had an activity planned for weaving that tied in nicely. So we did it yesterday, right after reading. 

Paper plate weaving is about as simple as weaving can be. You just notch a paper plate and go to town with your yarn. Here is a good explanation of how to begin your paper plate weaving. To finish it off, clip the threads on the back of your plate and tie them in knots around your weaving. This will prevent your work from unraveling.

Tuna's woven round has been dubbed her new Barbie rug. It's just the right size. 

Tuna's paper plate weaving final product with tied-off ends

Have you seen the hula hoop weaving tutorial? I think I'd like to try that with some wool yarn for a small area rug. The concept is the same as the paper plate, just on a bigger scale. 

A Very Good Reason to Homeschool

There are countless valid reasons to homeschool your children. I have my own:

1. The public schools failed my children, miserably, and in different ways (failure to provide what they needed to learn, failure to protect from bullying, teachers saying mean-spirited things to them, low standards, test-oriented instruction, to name a few). 
2. Bullies and bad influences from peers
3. Individualized instruction available only to homeschoolers
4. To allow time to let my children develop into their own, whole, healthy adult selves. Schools don't allow for this. Oh, sure. In high school, you can choose a couple of electives (but even those are somewhat dictated if you intend to go to university). But until then, you learn what you're told, when you're told to learn it, how you're told to learn it. There's no deviating from the scope & sequence. No trial and error. No individuality. 

Today, Bay spent several hours disassembling an old skateboard, taking off the old paper design, painting it, and researching how to remove rust from the screws so that she can reuse them when the paint is dry. Construction/destruction, determination, art, science -- all in an old skateboard. 

Those same hours were spent by Tuna watching tutorial videos about her beloved Minecraft, and she will, no doubt, use that new knowledge to do new things in her Minecraft world. 

I approve. Three cheers for individuality and free expression of self!

Our Day in Photographs

Power Point presentation

Waiting for her sister's presentation to be over with so we can paint. Just a touch bratty, no? ;) Myth Busted: Homeschool kids are not all compliant little drones. Hahaha!

Art time

Her masterpiece -- I like it!

Painting her palm and arm just like they did in ancient Africa

 Hooray for washable paints!

Love Love Love

I love, love, love that my kids can play at a playground, carefree, together. I love that their age difference does little to keep them apart when they're away from the school mentality that "everyone younger or older than you is worthless."

I love, love, love that my 14 year-old has fun swinging on the swings with her little sister. I love that she is the one who asked if we could go to the playground. I love the pure joy on her face in this picture. 

Making Butter

Tuna & I are reading Little House on the Prairie. I'm finding it beneath her reading level, but it's a fun read and there are plenty of projects that we can do to extend the concepts. Plus, Tuna is really enjoying it. So that's okay. If anyone has any suggestions for books for Tuna and I to read together, I'm listening. Or watching, as it were. I'm considering Caddie Woodlawn for our next read aloud.

We read three times per week, two chapters per session. Rather than try to match activities based on what's happening in the book, I decided to just offer Tuna activities based on prairie life in general, to give her an idea of what life was like for Mary and Laura in Kansas.

Today, we made butter. I first asked her to name me some things that prairie settlers had to make for themselves, rather than rely on a store to buy them from. She answered things like houses, pots and pans (these are things most prairie families would buy from the general store, so we discussed this), milk, cheese, and, eventually, she came around to butter.

So I brought out a small container and some heavy cream and told Tuna that we'd be making fresh butter today. She added some salt because she prefers salted butter, screwed on the lid, and started shaking the cream.

At one point, she asked, in a somewhat concerned voice, how long I thought it was going to take to turn to butter. I took over shaking the container for a little while. Tuna took another turn and said, "I think it's butter now. It's not moving anymore." So we took a look inside (I knew what I would find: whipped cream) and I explained the process of turning cream to whipped cream and then to butter. So she started shaking some more.

Eventually, it stopped moving almost entirely, and I had a tired nine year-old on my hands. We opened the container and there was our creamy, golden-colored, soft butter. Tuna spread some on a thick slice of bread and ate it up, with a new found appreciation for life on the open prairie.

Next up: taffy pulling

SuperMom has Left the Building

Dirty dishes stacked in the sink.

Five loads of laundry waiting to be washed. Or moved from the washer to the dryer.

Restarting the dryer so you don't have to iron. Wait. Iron? Ha! Do I even own an iron?

Dog hair peeking out from under the love seat.

Bedroom floors that haven't seen a vacuum in weeks.

Sound familiar? You might be a homeschooler.

And if you are a homeschooler, and it doesn't sound familiar, please feel free to bestow your wisdom upon me.

I really think you have to pick the most important things out of each day and just do those. And I think down time is crucial. I'm an introvert. After spending six straight hours with my children, teaching them (and learning a thing or two as well), I need to just chill for a couple hours. I do not need to clean.

I cook from scratch, three meals a day, most days, plus snacks. I homeschool. I do it all.

Except that I don't.

How could I?

So today, my new housekeeper started. I hired her to come twice a month to help out around the house. I wonder if she knew what she was getting into. Surely our home isn't too terrible. And she was kind. She kept assuring me that it's because I'm so busy.

It's true. I am. Busy, I mean. If I'm not cooking, serving, planning, or teaching, I'm making memories with my family or having some private time that I need each day.

Anyway, my house is so clean right now! It's not perfect. I can only pay her for three hours twice a month, so it's not spotless (but I am splurging to have her do a five hour deep clean next week, yay!). But it's so much better than it was. And that helps with my sanity and my inner peace. I know it's good for the entire family in the same way.

So I'm okay with paying for help. I need it.

And I think you all should too, if you can.

It makes such a wonderful, wonderful difference.

PS Check out the cool optical illusion Tuna and I did today. Found it on Pinterest!