pinterest...

My newest addiction...

The other day I was a little upset because people were posting all sorts of things about internet plagiarism and giving the original author credit which I agree with but they took it one step further. Pinterest should delete posts that do not comply. These are probably the same people that support government health care but I digress....

The next day I saw a post (and honestly I can't remember where) that compared the major social media sites. It went something like this:

twitter - I'm eating chocolate

facebook - I like chocolate

foursquare - This is where I'm eating chocolate

instagram - here is a vintage picture of me eating chocolate

youtube - here is a video of me eating chocolate

linkedin - my skills for eating chocolate include...

pinterest - here is a recipe of the chocolate that I will one day make but for now, I'm content with just looking at the pictures and dreaming.

I'm not sure why this bothered me, so lately, I've actually been DOING the things on my pinterest boards. The kids and I made heart shaped cupcakes for Valentines Day, I made constellation cards which I LOVE (not sure about the kids ;) ), we did a glow stick bath, finger painting place mats, and tonight we made banana smores. Yummy!!! (I've got pictures below of everything but the banana smores because we ate them too fast. ) So if you are so inclined, you can look me up on pinterest at www.pinterest.com/hugsarehealthy.

Space, our next frontier!

So, I think it's pretty normal but we are once again trying a new foot for our homeschooling. We tried Earth Schooling and it just didn't fit us well. (It had elements that I liked but not enough.) then we tried to just expand on what our homeschooling group was doing and that just didn't hold his attention long enough. So new we are trying monthly themes that HE chooses. So far, so good and this is our first month. ;)
This month he choose space! And more specifically, planets. We have had a planet mobile that we were slowly working on but we hadn't done anything intense on the planets. I think I am enjoying it as much as he is. Around new years, I did some research and found some templates for mini books for a lap book. I like these because it pulls everything together for both of us. I got everything printed out and cut out what I wanted to then put it all in our "working tub" ( which is just a red tub with everything that we are studying now.)
On the days that we work on our lapbooks, we bring out the tub and go to town. I found an amazing site with videos of all the planets (and more)called Space School. He picks the planet we want to learn about then we watch the video together. As we watch, we go through out different actives. Sometimes we watch it once through then watch it again and stop when we want to and sometimes we just stop as we go the first time thought. I like to do our theme studies twice a week and on the other days we do math or reading. I try to keep them all on the theme but...and on top of that, not every theme day is a lap book day. Sometimes we will do science experiments and some days like today, we do cooking.
Today we made planet cupcakes. They are not sized correctly but they are colored and positioned in the right order. We made them with the Fun-da-middles cake mix and j wanted to add red dye to the batter. Then I just got white frosting and frosted them. After that I let him get creative. I printed out a sheet with all of the planets on it and mixed some food coloring and water in a small bowl for each color. We had to be careful because the frosting was still soft but we got the hang of it. The complicated ones like earth and Jupiter we painted with a brush. Some of the others we decided it would work better to just dip the tops into the color. He got creative with mixing the colors too. We even put rings around Saturn.
After we were done painting I was going to make him label all of them but them decided neither of us wanted to be there all day so I wrote the names of the planets on a pieces of paper (in random order) and without telling him the name, he had to label each planet. He did very good. Then we took a picture and ate our planets!
So much fun!
In love and light,
Steph, Anna, jaiden and Lilli

I love homeschooling!!!!

This is one of the many reasons I love to homeschool my kids. After dinner tonight we were talking and planning our upcoming week. We are learning about apples so I want to do some cooking. I asked jaiden what he wanted to cook and he said apple candy. After a bit of conversation I figured out it was candy / Carmel apples so... We made some, tonight! We are making apple cinnamon oatmeal in the morning too! I love my life and I adore my kids! (notice the hand in the picture)
In love and light,
Stephanie

Garage sale day

I have been debating having a garage sale for about 6months now and I finally bit the bullet. Today was the culmination of a month of planning. So as we were getting ready for our sale, jaiden kept saying, "I want ..." or "I want ..." so I decided to give him an opportunity to earn his own money. I told him he could have his own snack sale. He figured out what he wanted to sell and I figured out the price. Then he made a sign! It was so well ... Cute! I knew he would get board or sleep in or all of the above but i think it was a great real life was to teach him about money (which we have been talking about lately). We also worked on coin recognition and adding /subtracting. He made about $10 but I think mast of that was Nanay buying whoopers.
The sale went well, the house is a bit emptier, and I have a little extra spending money so I can finally get my honeschool room set up! Jaiden plans on buying more legos with his new stash. Below is a picture of the 2 working their booth.
In love and light,
Stephanie

Fall nature class

As usual, this past thursday was "class" day the this week officially started our "fall" lessons so we decided to take a nature walk. We went to a local park that has a nice 1mile walking trail. I was so impressed that we held the kids attention. For almost an hour talking about birds, trees, bugs, plants, leaves and the like. Each kid had their own clipboards with a worksheet to make notes of what they saw. I also made a sheet with some of the common georgia trees and their leaf shapes. We all had a so much fun! Next week we are going to do a little apple science so that should be fun.
In love and light,
Stephanie

Apple picking

Last Saturday our group went on a little field trip to go apple picking. Truth be told we all got a groupon. ;) It was quite chilly when we got there but we still had an awesome time that included the apple cannon, the petting farm, the hay ride and finally apple picking. For the record, jaiden likes red apples and Lilli likes green. I think they ate their weight in apples before we left!
With the 1.5 hour drive up there, I decided to stop by Burt's Pumpkin Patch before heading home which was right down the street from the orchard. it's such a drive that I don't think we would do it twice in 1season... I think we were all about done by then but we did get a few pumpkins (and a few pictures). Needless to say they were both asleep within 5 min of getting back in the car. Great trip now I just need to figure out what to do with all of there apples!
In love and light,
Stephanie

Crazy busy week

It has been one crazy busy week and as I was planning out October, it doesn't look much better in the next few weeks. But the good news is we are having fun. This week we finished (or so I thought) jaidens "county fair" lapbook but when we went for show and tell on Thursday, I found a few more thinks I wanted to add. Maybe tomorrow but today we matched on. Today we went apple picking! Our group got a groups to go apple picking and today was the day. On the way up we talk a bit about apples but it was really the groundwork for the next few weeks. So there's not much"educational" in this post (not that there wasn't anything educational in the day but just not any new ideas) but there are some great pictures for the grands. I will post some pictures of the finished lapbook when it is done, or just close enough. ;)
It was a beautiful day to go to the mountains! On the way up it was 57 degrees and never got about 65 the whole day. We started with the apple cannon which was fun but for me, I wouldn't have paid extra just for that. We mover on tithe petting zoo which was great! Lots for the kids to pet and play with. After that we hit the hay ride so we could do the apple picking last. The ride was neat because we got to see to back part of the farm where they had the pumpkins and corn. After that we finally got to pick apples. The kids were awesome! I think they ate as much as they picked and that's a lot of apples. I bought an extra 20lb bag (a peck) so after the kids filled theirs, they helped me with mine. It was so beautiful up there and it was so nice to appreciate nature and all of the abundance there is really is. I will not soon forget that trip!
As if that wasn't enough, we decided to stop by the pumpkin patch too since it was right down the street. That was a quicker trip (even though it was really busy). Surprisingly the kids weren't very interested in picking out a pumpkin. They just wanted to play on the really big ones. We got a few they made the hour and a half trip home even though the kids don't remember that part. 5minuets in they were out. We came home and took a good hot shower and are now settelin' in to a nice warm bed. Life is awesome!

In love and light!
Stephanie