Southwick Zoo - Mendon, MA

I don't like zoos.
I have my reasons. Let's just leave it at that.
So when Hubs asked if I wanted to take the kids to the zoo to work on animal classification I though. "Eh".
I've been told by friends that this zoo is "different".
I've been told that the animals are "beautiful".
I can tell you that I was pleasantly surprised.
The end.

 Tortoise: Vertebrate - Reptile

Giraffe: (My Favorite of the Day!) Vertberate - Mammal - Males can reach up to 16' high. Babies are born between 5-6 feet tall after up to 15 months gestation. They can drink an average of 12 gallons of water at one time. The veins in their necks have one way valves to regulate blood flow to the brain and prevent them from getting dizzy when they bend down to drink! Their hearts can weigh up to 25 lbs and are strong enough to pump blood up their long necks.
How cool!

 Watusi: Vertebrates - Mammal

 Bactrian Camel: Vertebrate - Mammal

 Capuchin: Vertebrate - Mammel

 Camels have HUGE heads. I never though of a camel as "intimidating" before today.

 Cheetah: Vertebrate - Mammel (terrifying without even trying!) This was Bean's favorite.

 Chimp: Vertebrate - Mammal (So fun!)

 Sloth: Vertebrate - Mammal

 Totally blanking on the name but the baby and adult were sweet to watch.

 Kangaroo: Vertbrate - Mammal - Marsupial (aka babies finish their growth outside the womb.)

 Leopard: Vertebrate - Mammal (Bee-You-Tea-Full colors in person!)

 Lion: Vertebrate - Mammal (lazy sack o'....)

 Rhinosaurus: Vertebrate - Mammal - HUGE!

We saw plenty of birds and mammals though no fish or amphibians.
Guess we may have to head to the aquarium soon!
All in all we had quite a fun day and I recommend you check it out!

Schoolwork on the Mind Without Losing Yours

Problem... Too much to remember...
Solution... 

I have no idea if I mentioned to you all or not that our family has officially taken the first step into homeschooling.
CJ still attends preschool two days at a Christian School, mostly for the friendships and time to himself without his sisters and me.
We also started him in a one day a week program called Classical Conversations (CC). So far, we LOVE it! We've opted to follow the Classical Model with our homeschooling and CC fits right in.
I won't go into all the reasons we've chose the Classical Model here but would be glad to share if you ever want to know.

Anyway... the main work for the elementary ages in the Classical Model is pure memorization. I mean in ALL subjects be it math, science, history, Latin... it's ALL memorization.
That means we have a lot to keep track of over the 24 weeks of material we have to learn and without it front and center I struggled to remember the work.

I headed to our local Christmas Tree Shop (Michaels and Walmart should carry them too) and grabbed a plastic poster frame for about $6.
I framed a piece of fabric I had lying around, not ironed as you can may have noticed...
and, using a dry erase marker, wrote this week's memory work.

We put it up in our dining room across from where Hubs and I sit so we remember to quiz CJ regularly.
Hubs and I agree that this was one of the smartest things we could have done to keep schoolwork on the front burner in our busy home.

A Few Ideas for Driveway Fun

I'm a New England girl.
We have beautiful sunny days all summer and I have to force myself out of the house to enjoy it but as soon as it hits below 80 you can't keep me in!

So the other night I was trying to find things that would keep the kids entertained outside as dinner time approached and they started to get wrestless.

Enter sidewalk chalk.

I've been working on letter sounds with CJ, letter recognition of lower case letters, and recognizing numbers and decided to make it a "teachable moment".

Though the excitement wore off quicker than I had hoped, I had him on the hook for a little while and used that time to get him moving and see what he knows.

I wrote the letters of the alphabet in a circle and called them out for him to run to and scribble over once he got them right. Next time I'll be more purposeful about mixing up the letter order (I didn't think of that until half way through) and I will only use lower case letters since he's got the upper case down pat.)

We did the same with numbers and now that he seems to be figuring out 6 and 9 we I'll go up to 20 and not just 10.

A friend shared the idea of giving drawing prompts which she found on, where else?, Pinterest and that actually proved to be more fruitful than I expected. It may not look like much but getting CJ to draw without help is incredibly difficult. This time I drew a house and asked him to fill it. He promptly asked me to draw a garage on it. What a guy.

I didn't forget Miss Mak. She is starting to recognize her name when she sees it written so I wrote all of our family member's names on the ground to see if she could pick hers out.

I also gave her gross motor skills a workout by drawing a path on the driveway to see if she could maneuver her tricycle around. I was pleasantly surprised that she managed to stay on it for the most part. I'll make it more challenging next time.

CJ came up with a game of his own too. It's his own version of basketball but he hasvarious strictly adhered to rules and requires that you dribble the ball for at least 5 minutes before you can shoot. Rules or not, this keeps him happy for a while.

Bean, of course, crawls all over the place and, in a very cat-like manner, will occasionally stop and look pretty just for me.

So whether you let them run amok or try to make it a learning experience, the driveway can be lots of fun with just a few basics. 

Happy Weekend!

Free Ebooks for Kids

Bethany from No Twiddle Twaddle has compiled a lovely list of free ebooks from Amazon that she considers to be twaddle free. 
In case you're wondering... "twaddle" is defined by Webster as "something insignificant or worthless". Charlotte Mason uses it to describe many different things but in this case, it would be referring to children's books that talk down to children, are dumbed down for easy reading, lack any real content. In a seminar I recently attended, it was defined as such

"If there i a book that your child brings to you regularly and you cringe 

every time they do, it very well may be 'twaddle'".

I am not saying that the list of books Bethany has pulled together are sure fire winners because I haven't read them all myself but 1. they are FREE! and 2. you can always delete the ones you don't like. I have put a few on my phone with future waiting room trips in mind.

The link to Bethany's site can be found here at NoTwiddleTwaddle.com
There is a second, longer list found here on Bethany's Amazon reading list.

{Be sure to check prices as some of them are only temporarily free!}

Tales of a Homeschool Convention Virgin {What Surprised Me}

As I mentioned last week, I attended a home school convention in Hartford, CT this weekend. If you're keeping track, CJ is going to be 4 in August. We sent him to preschool at the Christian school which I grew up in and have enrolled him in preschool again for this coming year. So why did I go? We are intending to start homeschooling CJ in kindergarten and I am a planner by nature and figure a sneak peak can't hurt. The main reason, though, is that the homeschooling world, if you are unfamiliar with it like me, is incredibly confusing! Words like "Living Books", "Sonlight", "classical education", and "unit studies" are passed around and are completely confounding even to a newbie like me with an degree in elementary education.
Imagine standing before an empty table and thirty-seven complete strangers come up to you with arms full of notebooks written in Mandarin and pile those books on the table and your only instruction is to pick out the notebooks you want to use to shape and mold the minds and hearts of your family for the rest of their lives.
Yeah, it feels something like that.
So that's why I decided to bring you along for the ride. If you are new to homeschooling, FANTASTIC!, so am I! I will share with you what I'm learning and hopefully alleviate some of the "overwhelming-ness" that makes you want to cry and quit before you even get started.

So, if all of that already has you quivering a little, I'll take it easy on you and just tell you of the reasons I was blessed and am incredibly thankful that I was able to attend this convention...

1. I didn't realize how much I have missed ongoing education. This was my favorite surprise of all. I noticed immediately that I was absorbing everything I saw, heard, and read like one of those sponges you buy at the store that quadruples in size when you wet it. I was so thirsty for knowledge...
real. applicable. knowledge.
I had no idea how badly I missed it because I have never been a brilliant student. I have always been average and completely underestimated my love of learning. I was a student once again and suddenly missed my college days not because they were the epitome of freedom and fun for me but because I was learning things that interested me from people who are experts in the field in one convenient location.
I no longer think that continuing education is just "nice" and "noble". I believe that it's beneficial and necessary.

2. I didn't realize that a lot of the seminars aimed at homeschooling moms are applicable to all moms and I dare say that I recommend that stay at home moms and working moms alike could glean something beneficial from this experience. My first handful of classes had tiles like "Exploding Supermom Myths" and "Lies Home School Moms Believe". I assumed those classes would be little support groups for homeschoolers but in reality they were reminders about keeping your marriage first and keeping the reality of being a mom in perspective. There were also classes on discipline like the one given by John Rosemond on "The Well Behaved Child" which had nothing to do with homeschooling at all. I urge you to look into conferences around you and to browse over their class schedule. I have yet to encounter any "Mom Conventions" so this may be a great chance for you if you need a time of refreshment

3. I didn't anticipate how honest everyone would be about what you're in for. For some very strange reason, it seems that the work of a homeschool mom is underestimated. Stay-at-home mom's may understand this too. Ever dealt with the lie that "if you don't work outside of the home you don't actually have a job" or how about the pressure and guilt that comes with staying at home and not having a spotless home with perfectly behaved children, always clean laundry, and no dishes in the sink? I mean seriously, whose reality is this?! Cause it certainly isn't ours! Moms, we have our days where it feels like it's all coming together but once you have been doing it long enough you know that you need to enjoy it but not get too excited over it because tomorrow is a new day and the mess will, inevitably, return! What everyone was very honest about is how homeschooling is a simple math problem...

take the occasional (or everyday) mess and chaos you may already have at home

ADD the weight and time of educating your child in the areas of math, science, reading, writing, history, geography, literature, and Bible... You know what that equals, right? LESS time, MORE mess, MORE personal sacrifice as a parent to make it happen. 

Is it daunting and easy to quit right here? You bet! Does God give you the grace to handle it if you let go of control, let go of the insignificant, and trust that you need to be carried, trained, taught, and disciplined by God just like your little ones will be by you? Absolutely!

4. I didn't anticipate feeling as spiritually refreshed as I did.  I went with one expectation... to answer at least one of my questions about homeschooling. I didn't even matter which one, just as long as I walked away from the weekend a little smarter than I started. I not only had questions answered that I didn't even know to ask, I was spiritually renewed in a way that I didn't realize I needed. Part of that may have been because I went "sans kiddos" and "sans friends". For the first time in ages I could do what I wanted, when I wanted, how I wanted, and I was free to change my mind whenever I wanted. Boy, have I missed that! Also, like it or not, homeschooling is done by a lot of Christians and so Biblical encouragement is everywhere. {I say this with some confidence because I live in Connecticut where Jesus isn't a popular guy but even here, I heard the truths of God spoken at every turn.} God permeated the meetings and the people and it was beautiful.


5. I didn't realize the potential need to rent a Uhaul. Naturally, someone interested in homeschooling will be excited by the "one-stop-shopping" in the exhibit hall of a conference like this but the number of empty suitcases, rolling carts, and yes, Radio Flyer wagons may catch you off guard. I figured I'd be safe with my backpack but sure enough I walked out with two canvas bags that were given to me out of pity because a man saw me struggling with my arms full of books. 

6. The parking garage was packed with minivans but the denim jumpers and Keds were scarce. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of "normal" people I saw and met. {I thought for sure I would be the coolest person there due to the fact that I almost always wear jeans/shorts and am sporting a nose ring.} Sure, there were some skirts but heck, I wore one one day because it was more comfortable. I saw a few head coverings but in those three days and amongst the hundreds of people I passed, there may have been five total. I encountered real moms, real people, who came from all over New England, and they were normal, REAL people who like Starbucks just like me! {This goes for the speakers too.}

See... that wasn't so bad... YET!