Roxborough State Park

On Saturday we went to a library puppet show at Roxborough Library. And since the state park was right next door, we headed over there afterward.

The puppet show was a cute one based on a book about a cricket that thinks she's ugly.

Afterwards Anna made a cute little craft, but Mia wanted to explore the library play place.

From the library we headed to to the state park. The day was beautiful and in the high 60's. We enjoyed a picnic lunch and went on a little hike. This was our first trip to this particular state park. I think we'll buy a state park pass this year and enjoy many of them!

We didn't stay too long as we had to go home and get the house ready for Becky, Arek and Max, plus Arek's brothers, David and Adrian. Yes, they are here in Colorado! And they were quite exhausted after a 23 hour caravan trip. We took it easy last night and then we moved them into their new house today! Becky will be staying with us for a few months as Arek has to stay working in L.A. through June and they want to do a few things to the house before they start living in it. But we are so happy to have one of the older kids living here. Who's next??

Spring Break

The girls are on Spring Break for two weeks.We are still homeschooling three days a week since we took a week off in February. But since there is no preschool and the speech therapist in son vacation we have some down time.

On Monday Lorelei came over to play. Yesterday, we met Logan and his mom and sister at the aquarium. Denver's aquarium is just okay and expensive. We much prefer the Aquarium of the Pacific in California! But the girls really liked all the fish, Mia especially. And they saw mermaids!

After that we headed to Cherry Creek Mall to eat lunch and play on the playground there.

Today we headed down to Pueblo with Lorelei and her mom to visit the children's museum there. The girls had a blast!

We got to watch a Food Detective play and take a dance class.

The weather was in the 70's so we even had a picnic.

But we are tired today so tomorrow and Friday we will be staying home!

Oops

Yesterday we were supposed to take the kids to a magic show at the library. But I read the wrong entry on my calendar and went to the wrong library. As it turned out there was a program that day at that library. But it was acting out the story "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble". Well, at least it had the word magic in it!

Anna got a starring role.

It was fun and the girls got to bring home "magic pebbles". That probably trumped a silly old magic show anyway!

Keeping it Simple

Last Saturday the girls went to a superhero birthday party.
Here's Tuck the Wonder Pet and Super Girl!

The party was CRAZY! The Mom made capes for all 12 kids. She had elaborate games and even painted a mural of gotham city and made a three layer cake with fondant. I got tired just looking at everything. There were stations that the kids rotated through. Here they are saving the baby from hot lava!

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This mom seemed to thoroughly enjoy spending incredible amounts of time and money perfecting this party. You could tell that was how she showed her love and that she was incredibly talented! I could have spent the same amount of time and money and it would have looked like &%#@. (In case you doubt me, look at Mia's costume.) So...I always stay simple!

Talking about simple...the girls were very happy with a little light up ring to celebrate St. Patrick's Day!

Happy Frist Day of Spring!!!!

In Our State

So marijuana is legal here in Colorado. Unless you live in our county where they passed a law that no city may make it legal. Really, I haven't cared too much either way. Until...applications to Colorado universities went up 30% in one year! Presidents of the universities say it's because of our quality schools. Haha. Not that they are not good quality, but who are we kidding?????

It'a a long way until our littles go to college but if this stays the course I see two problems.

1. My kids might not get into colleges here if the competition is too fierce.

2. Do I want my kids going to a university where the majority of the students are potheads?

So...if you live in another state, please push to make marijuana legal in your state so your students can go to school closer to home!

Stations

We try to switch up our quiet time every day. One day we might have art boxes. These are boxes I put age appropriate art supplies in for them to work with. Another day we play with our quiet time boxes and on another day they get to do quiet time together. Which, as you can guess, is not very quiet!

Today I was reading someone's blog. Almost every idea I have is stolen from someone else's blog, by the way. She wrote about not letting the kids watch T.V. when you have important things to do but give them stations to go to. Well, I'm all about letting the kids watch T.V. when I have something important to do! In fact, we have some T.V. time every day. But...I thought her idea would be a great novelty for quiet time. So today we did stations!

Here is Anna at the puzzle station.

And Mia enjoying the art station.

Success!

But this will be a once a week thing. I really like my 45 minutes uninterrupted time to get things done and rest. With the stations, I'm up every 15 minutes to help them rotate.

Life

We have been having snow every few days. But it's different than December to February snow. It's much wetter. Spring snow. And it melts the next day and we can go have fun. The last two weekends have been home maintenance days,on our and Becky's new house. So after a morning of chores we have been taking the girls on little outings to parks and trails.

Tomorrow we finish the last of our maintenance, touching up all the paint throughout the house. We saved it for a nice sunny day so we could open the windows and not breathe in the chemicals. Next weekend will be back to normal-fun!

Homeschooling Update

When I was a regular teacher my fellow teachers and I used to talk about how great it would be have skills-based classrooms. What we meant was the children would be grouped together by skill instead of by grade for those subjects that are skill-based. They could still be grouped by age for the knowledge-based subjects. It was a complicated dream for a public school. But...for homeschool it's easy!

The skill-based subjects are reading, math, writing, English, music, keyboarding, foreign language and art. For these subjects it is best to master one level before going on to the next.

The knowledge-based subjects are science, geography, history, religion, music appreciation and art appreciation.

We have not started any of the knowledge-based subjects yet. I will be doing kindergarten level science and history with both of them together starting in the fall. I may need to alter Anna's work a little bit but it will be so much more interesting, thorough, and fun to do it together.

For the skill-based subjects, Mia has been doing mostly kindergarten work. And as she finishes a level we go right into the next one whether we are "in that grade" or not. If she is having trouble we can slow down and supplement until she gets it even if that means not being at "the right grade level".

Mia and Anna have very different academic strengths. Anna is not as far in math as Mia was at her age, but she is further in language. I find this strange as Mia is so much more interested in books than Anna is. But it doesn't matter. With homeschooling we can go at their paces.

Right now we have Mia signed up for two different homeschooling public school options for next year. We will have to decide on one as legally she can't do both. One is science and Spanish for three hours Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. It is close to home. The other is all day Friday, further from home. On Fridays she would have one hour each of: art, music, PE, language and scientific method. We are leaning towards the Friday option.

Right now Mia's curriculum is:

All About Reading Level 1 (Just finished Pre-Reading level today)
Handwriting Without Tears Kindergarten
Singapore Math Kindergarten B (Just finished A today)
Bob books Set 2
Xtramath.com for math facts

Anna's curriculum is:

Abeka letters and sounds (She will be starting All About Reading Pre-Reading in about three weeks)
Math games and activities (Probably will start Singapore Math Kindergarten A in the fall)

They still do art class on Fridays, swimming lessons on Thursdays, field trips, play dates and homeschool coops. Homeschool park days will start in May and on good-weather days before that. We had one today!

Field Trip

Last week we went on a little field trip to see one of their favorite books come alive, Lyle, Lyle the Crocodile. Our first stop was this cute little place. We had to stop and dump a bucket of water out from a leak. This is the future home of some very special people, Becky, Arek and Max! We are so excited that they are moving to Colorado!

After that we stopped by our new favorite library. Just love a library that has a puppet theater and kitchen. Not sure what those have to do with reading, but fun. Story time was just starting when we arrived. Lucky for us!

There was a phone you could pick up and listen to a story. Both of the girls left it hanging after they were done. They had no idea that you were supposed to "hang it up". All they know are cell phones. Haha. I remember Becky not knowing how to use a rotary dial phone the first time she had to use one when she was about nine. She just stared at it and said, "What do I do?"

After the library we went to the play. Which we all loved.

We ate lunch in the car afterwards and then stopped by speech therapy on the way home. It was a fun but tiring day!

One Two Punch

Recently both girls have obtained shiners. Mia's was more of a yellow color and never really turned black. I had the vacuum tilted back and she thought it would be fun to step on the front of it. So not fun. The handle smacked her in the face. It happened so fast she was in shock and she actually didn't know what had happened.

Anna's poor face is a little more beat up. Her legs got tangled in the rung of the stool when she tried to get down and the stool fell on top of her. They are pretty heavy metal stools. She now has to ask us to get her down.

I get some good stares out in public!

Catch Up Part II

So I just wrote my catch up post and then found some more pictures of things we have done in the past month. So here's Part II!

We went to a Mardi Gras party with our homeschool group.

They learned a little bit about Mardi Gras and then made their own floats. Mia and Anna worked on one together.

Beautiful work girls!

Then all the floats were put in a "parade".

We also went to the monthly Seedlings program and saw Linda the Jungle Lady.

We got to watch turtles race...

and see a turtle older than me!

But all the kids were amazed at the albino python!

We also made a trip to Treehouse Discovery for a little snow day fun.

Okay...I think I am caught up now!

Catch Up

I have gotten a little lazy with the blogging lately. But since it's my photo album for the girls to look at later and remember the things they did in their childhood I need to get better! So here is a recap of some things we have done the last month:

We went to see Peter Pan with Daddy at our local theater.

We went to two birthday parties. One I particularly loved due to its simplicity: cake only to eat, in the home, a couple of games, six kids. Here they are playing with the puzzles they brought home.

We went to Family Bingo Night. The girls loved it even though we only stayed until half-time. Of course, they didn't know it went on after we left. :)

Okay, I'm going to do better in March!