Here are some pictures from this past week:
Friday, October 26, 2012
Naropa Community Art Studio
Our dear friend, Merryl, runs a program, at the Naropa Community Art Studio, on Thursday afternoons and has very graciously invited me to bring the kids. It's an amazing opportunity for the kids to have access to a huge amount of art supplies (clay, paint, pastels - pretty much everything you can imagine) as well as to watch some very gifted adults model how they work with different mediums.
Here are some pictures from this past week:
Aderet working on her heart plate with her name in Hebrew.
Aderet's plate with the glaze painted on before it gets fired for a second time.
One of the artists brings her parrots every week.
Avigayil in action.
Avigayil had a really hard day and I think her painting captures that perfectly. But I love that the girl in the painting still has a smile.
Here are some pictures from this past week:
Khan Academy
Adin and I have started to watch a Khan Academy video during his learning time. I'm going to keep a log here of what we watched - and possibly in the future our insights on what we saw. I have to say one of the things I love about homeschooling is how much I'm getting to learn! So far Adin has also really enjoyed the videos.
Electoral College
Deficit and Debt Ceiling
11/2/12 SOPA and PIPA
Electoral College
Deficit and Debt Ceiling
11/2/12 SOPA and PIPA
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Making G.F. Cinnamon Rolls with Avigayil
Avigayil and I made G.F. Cinnamon Rolls today from the recipe on the package of the Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Pizza Crust Mix.
YUM!!!!
Monday, October 22, 2012
Gymnastics - By Avigayil
I CAN ALMOST DO A HEADSTAND BY MY SELF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i have ben practicing for 6 weeks maybe 7 months i do not no. o.k. and i am going to gymnastics 1 week later! I KILLD MY BACK AND MY NECK & MY CHEST i could not bend down ^crunch! ow that hurt a lot. but we got are allowance
i have ben practicing for 6 weeks maybe 7 months i do not no. o.k. and i am going to gymnastics 1 week later! I KILLD MY BACK AND MY NECK & MY CHEST i could not bend down ^crunch! ow that hurt a lot. but we got are allowance
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Daily Notes - Sunday 10/21/12
Today felt like the first relaxing day in a LONG time. We went away for Shabbat but had to clean it really well on Friday as other people were staying in our house while we were way. The amazing part about that is that we got to come home to a CLEAN house!
Gavriel had to be up and out of the house early this morning to help out with the culling of the older chicken flock from the Jewish Community Farm. Gavriel learned Shechita last year and I think this is his 4th time being involved in a slaughter. The rest of us rolled out of bed closer to 9. I got the kids dressed and fed and brought them over to the shul where the shechita was happening.
On a side note; last year Gavriel had brought home about 8 shechted chickens that still needed to be plucked, soaked, salted and rinsed. The kids and I along with Jules, our live in nanny, plucked the chickens and then Gavriel and I did the soaking and salting. After that experience it was very clear to me why people prefer to buy their meat from a package in a store rather than be "closer to their meat". Since then Avigayil only wants to eat "store chicken" - and to be honest I really understand.
I thought that I was only going to be dropping Adin and Aderet off at the shul but Avigayil decided to stay as well as their good friend Laini was there. While Adin and Aderet went over to check out the processing Avigayil kept her distance. I got to go home and take care of some things in the house and they hung out there for a while and jumped in piles of leaves. Our friend Bruce Shaffer took some pictures so I hope to be able to post them here soon.
Eventually they came home, had lunch and played with Laini for the rest of the afternoon and Adin and his friend Tovi took off on their bikes to the Valmont Bike Park.
I had a chance to go to the Book Worm to sell some books we were ready to let go of and get some new ones. As I'm starting to write more often I bought myself two grammer books: Woe is I and Eats, Shoots & Leaves. That way I will know for sure if I was meant to use a colon, semi-colon or comma in the previous sentence after the words "grammer books".
We ended the night we home-made gluten free pizza and Madagascar 3. Well, Gavriel was teaching a class to post Bat-Mizvat girls, the kids watched the movie and I re-organized the bookshelf in the play room. I think I pretty much got the Madagascar plot down from numbers 1 and 2.
It's now almost 10 pm and I'm sitting in Avigayil's room with her hoping that she falls asleep soon. More on Avgigayil and her sleep later...
Gavriel had to be up and out of the house early this morning to help out with the culling of the older chicken flock from the Jewish Community Farm. Gavriel learned Shechita last year and I think this is his 4th time being involved in a slaughter. The rest of us rolled out of bed closer to 9. I got the kids dressed and fed and brought them over to the shul where the shechita was happening.
On a side note; last year Gavriel had brought home about 8 shechted chickens that still needed to be plucked, soaked, salted and rinsed. The kids and I along with Jules, our live in nanny, plucked the chickens and then Gavriel and I did the soaking and salting. After that experience it was very clear to me why people prefer to buy their meat from a package in a store rather than be "closer to their meat". Since then Avigayil only wants to eat "store chicken" - and to be honest I really understand.
I thought that I was only going to be dropping Adin and Aderet off at the shul but Avigayil decided to stay as well as their good friend Laini was there. While Adin and Aderet went over to check out the processing Avigayil kept her distance. I got to go home and take care of some things in the house and they hung out there for a while and jumped in piles of leaves. Our friend Bruce Shaffer took some pictures so I hope to be able to post them here soon.
Eventually they came home, had lunch and played with Laini for the rest of the afternoon and Adin and his friend Tovi took off on their bikes to the Valmont Bike Park.
I had a chance to go to the Book Worm to sell some books we were ready to let go of and get some new ones. As I'm starting to write more often I bought myself two grammer books: Woe is I and Eats, Shoots & Leaves. That way I will know for sure if I was meant to use a colon, semi-colon or comma in the previous sentence after the words "grammer books".
We ended the night we home-made gluten free pizza and Madagascar 3. Well, Gavriel was teaching a class to post Bat-Mizvat girls, the kids watched the movie and I re-organized the bookshelf in the play room. I think I pretty much got the Madagascar plot down from numbers 1 and 2.
It's now almost 10 pm and I'm sitting in Avigayil's room with her hoping that she falls asleep soon. More on Avgigayil and her sleep later...
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Our Master Plan (Take Two)
The Chagim just finished less than a week ago and we are all slowly recovering. Laundry is getting done, routines and schedules are being created again and tomorrow we are hopefully going to see if we can tweak our "Master Plan" a bit to work a bit better for us.
It really wasn't working for me to be working with all 3 kids at the same time. I like the idea of all us all being able to sit down for an hour and get it all done but it became clear really quickly that right now all of my kids need my individual attention and are not that skilled at working independently.
The new plan is to stick with our morning routine - but instead of the kids doing 1 hour of minecraft time after that they will have 1.5 hours of research time.
I'm hoping that I will be able to spend about 45 minutes with each kid while the other two have their research time. This is basically watching approved educational videos.
Oh, another thing I'm aware of is that I really can't sleep until 8:30 or 9am and expect the morning to go well. So my new goal is 8 am and I'm hoping that will be more than enough sleep.
I'm also really hoping that the kids will start going to sleep earlier and waking up earlier.
40% off and Sales Tax
Yesterday we went to Old Navy to go clothes shopping for the kids. It was 40% off if we used our Banana Republic card. So we had a discussion about percentages and a brief tutorial on how to calculate them.
In order to figure out how much we were spending we also practiced rounding up.
Later in the day Zayde brought Adin to Bicycle village to check out the bike that Adin has been saving for. He called me from the store to find out how much was in his bank account and did some mental math to calculate how much more he would need to save in order to get the bike.
We then talked about the fact that he would also have to pay sales tax. So we calculated that - and he negotiated with Zayde to get him to pay for the sales tax.
This afternoon Adin was able to take his money from Chanukah and birthday savings and working as mother's helper for Mitten and buy his dream bike! I'm so happy for him.
In order to figure out how much we were spending we also practiced rounding up.
Later in the day Zayde brought Adin to Bicycle village to check out the bike that Adin has been saving for. He called me from the store to find out how much was in his bank account and did some mental math to calculate how much more he would need to save in order to get the bike.
We then talked about the fact that he would also have to pay sales tax. So we calculated that - and he negotiated with Zayde to get him to pay for the sales tax.
This afternoon Adin was able to take his money from Chanukah and birthday savings and working as mother's helper for Mitten and buy his dream bike! I'm so happy for him.
Thank G-d for Cattails!
Cattail
Avigayil was having a hard moment so I got her and Aderet out of the house to go to the park.
We found some cattails that were going to seed. The girls and I had so much fun breaking them open and running leaving a trail of white fluffy seeds behind us.
I was really wishing that I had a camera with me to document it.
I just got an iPhone today (a few days later than the cattails) so I would be able to have a good camera with me at all times in order to document these moments of super fun spontaneous learning.
Avigayil was having a hard moment so I got her and Aderet out of the house to go to the park.
We found some cattails that were going to seed. The girls and I had so much fun breaking them open and running leaving a trail of white fluffy seeds behind us.
I was really wishing that I had a camera with me to document it.
I just got an iPhone today (a few days later than the cattails) so I would be able to have a good camera with me at all times in order to document these moments of super fun spontaneous learning.
Daily Notes 10/18/12
I'm going to try to keep notes at least a few times a week on what we do. Even if it's just a few lines.
Today was our first day of trying our new schedule - which is me working one on one with each kid for 45 minutes while the other kids get a total of 1.5 hours of screen time. Right now they can use half of that for minecraft or other approved entertainment and the other half has to be some kind of research. The video time is definitely one of those things that keeps evolving.
In any case - I first learned with Aderet. She had not eaten breakfast yet so that kind of slowed things down but even so we were able to do 3 pages of ETC, a page of math and read a Bob Book together. She had already done her Hebrew in the morning. During her video time did some minecraft and then watched an episode of How Things Work. She told me after that it was about corn and all the different products that can be made from corn. She was particularly excited about using corn to make oil for mechanical purposes such as drilling.
Then I worked with Avigayil. She wanted to do IXL math so I signed her up for that. She practiced for 15 minutes. She also did several pages of ETC. I started putting some of her ETC words into Spelling City but she was pretty done at that point. For video time she watched an episode of America's Test Kitchen as well as the How Things Work episode with Aderet.
With Adin we had a conversation about goals. We talked about how we could incorporate writing into his life in a way that excites him and practically works for him. He liked the idea of writing blog posts and he on his own initiative wrote his first one today about buying a new bike (which he ended up doing - I'm sure pictures are to come). He did not have any math as we were unable to coordinate with Safta that well this week. We watched an 11 minute video from Kahn Academy on the Electoral College and talked about it. Adin thought that the Electoral College was the stupidest idea ever and wondered who came up with that idea. I probably learned that at some point but did not remember. I'll have to look it up. For his video time he watched America's Test Kitchen on how to make Pizza (which he was very excited about) as well as Myth Busters (which was about how germs spread).
I guess that was more than a few lines!
Today was our first day of trying our new schedule - which is me working one on one with each kid for 45 minutes while the other kids get a total of 1.5 hours of screen time. Right now they can use half of that for minecraft or other approved entertainment and the other half has to be some kind of research. The video time is definitely one of those things that keeps evolving.
In any case - I first learned with Aderet. She had not eaten breakfast yet so that kind of slowed things down but even so we were able to do 3 pages of ETC, a page of math and read a Bob Book together. She had already done her Hebrew in the morning. During her video time did some minecraft and then watched an episode of How Things Work. She told me after that it was about corn and all the different products that can be made from corn. She was particularly excited about using corn to make oil for mechanical purposes such as drilling.
Then I worked with Avigayil. She wanted to do IXL math so I signed her up for that. She practiced for 15 minutes. She also did several pages of ETC. I started putting some of her ETC words into Spelling City but she was pretty done at that point. For video time she watched an episode of America's Test Kitchen as well as the How Things Work episode with Aderet.
With Adin we had a conversation about goals. We talked about how we could incorporate writing into his life in a way that excites him and practically works for him. He liked the idea of writing blog posts and he on his own initiative wrote his first one today about buying a new bike (which he ended up doing - I'm sure pictures are to come). He did not have any math as we were unable to coordinate with Safta that well this week. We watched an 11 minute video from Kahn Academy on the Electoral College and talked about it. Adin thought that the Electoral College was the stupidest idea ever and wondered who came up with that idea. I probably learned that at some point but did not remember. I'll have to look it up. For his video time he watched America's Test Kitchen on how to make Pizza (which he was very excited about) as well as Myth Busters (which was about how germs spread).
I guess that was more than a few lines!
my new bike (almost)- By Adin
Hello people!!! If you're reading this I probably know you. Any how my name is Adin. I have been saving up money for a bike. The bike I want is $449.99(450.00). It's expensive because it has hydraulic brakes, 6" shocks, a 13" frame, and 24" wheels. I'm probably getting the today at Bicycle Village.
THANX
THANX
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