Becoming A Heaven on Earth

I can't believe I'm still getting hits for this blog when I've basically abandoned it. I guess it's just people randomly hitting the archives.

I'm a very busy woman these days. Not busy as in chasing my tail, but running as in making things happen. I am creating a Princess Academy in my home - you can read about those HERE. I've been busy getting people rounded up for Donna, the lady that dreamed them up, to come speak to us this coming week. This on top of getting my family rhythms renewed, helping my husband with his business and writing my y/a novel, and making sure the kids are all secure in their CORE has been a juggling act.

But I'm happy. :)

Little Golden Books Online

My thoughts at 09:12 PM, March 29, 2009

I grew up with Little Golden Books. Most of us in the 70's did I think. Anyway, I haven't felt compelled to buy any of the reprints that I've seen in the bookstores, but I stumbled across this blog that has put scanned images of vintage Little Golden Books online. You can find it here: http://goldengems.blogspot.com/ It's images of the ENTIRE book per post. I hope you enjoy!
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"Cleaning Day" - How I'm Getting It Done

My thoughts at 03:09 PM, February 10, 2009

One of the things that I have always done (when I'm smart, that is) is I use Monday for "cleaning day", but you could call it "life skills day" if you like. It's something that Dr. Kimber taught me to do and I have come to realize that anytime I deviate from this course, I end up with a big mess on my hands. I've written about this before, but here's what he taught me to do.

Sunday - Day of Worship

Monday - Clean the house! This is also the day I do any mini-OAMC sessions. I like to make Redbeard;s lunches ahead of time. :)

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday - School days!

Friday - Get out of the house. I like to use this day or the days we hit the museum, or take a field trip over to Craters of the Moon, etc. Sometimes it's simply a day to go to the City Bldg or a park day, whatever, Just because you're getting out of the house doesn't mean you aren't getting schooling done. This is the day you get all that "outer world training" under your belt that is school related. But it gives a change of pace.

Saturday - Family day/Date night - I usually use this day for temple day.

Just some interjections. First of all, Dr. Kimber taught that the reason for "cleaning day" was that if you are a practicing LDS person with children, chances are your house is a mess on Monday. He said the song "Saturday" we learned in Primary should be renamed "Monday". Monday you can still FIND your shoes to be shined! Monday is the day you get everything ready for the week. Saturday is too late! He said this way mothers are not killing themselves trying to do it ALL on the same day.

One of the parallels I see in this to TJed is this - CORE first. Not only do kids need to learn how to take care of a house (I have a problem with FLYlady - the fact that she is even needed on that scale is sad! And why on earth do we think it's acceptable for people to need some weird women from Britian to come in and teach us how to clean our homes, or a SUPERNANNY to raise our children? No, never underestimate the powerful life skill lessons you teach along side academics!) So you teach these core values first in the week. That's not to say they aren't doing dishes or vaccuming all week long - but the deep cleaning stuff like scrubbing walls or toliets - THAT'S done on Monday.

Another thing about cleaning day is the importance of Mother working alongside the little ones. I have noticed over the years how wonderful everyone cooperates and how quickly projects are completed when I work alongside them. When I delegate and say, "You do this and you do that while I'm doing this" almost always (I can't think of a time it worked out, but there might have been ONE, so I say almost) ends up with someone practicing unrighteous dominion and another in tears. Mother must work alongside her children - I don't understand it fully, but I have some inklings why. I just accept it and move on. :)

Tues, Wed. and Thurs. are pretty cut and dry to me. You know what you're doing with your homeschool. Do it!

Fridays. I still consider this a school day, although we take a break from "formal" teaching. It's a day that if Iris is really into a book, we finish it. It's a day that my older girls go to Commonwealth. It's a day we all get to see the world outside of our house. Why? Dr. Kimber taught me that most (not all) Moms experiencing burnout were the ones that never got a change of pace. Moms needed to refill their tank ever bit as much as the kids do. Not only do the kids need those enriching activities (it's how kids learn about the world around them) but Moms need to see that world as well. Jeff Allen from mysuccessfullife.com taught me that without a neighbor, you go nuts. I believe that - I tried teaching in solititude the first year we lived in Idaho Falls - and I very nearly did go "nuts". Friday is a VERY improtant school day.

Saturday is whatever you need it to be. Since Dad is out working all the time, it's good to spend SOME time with the family as a whole. I think it's a great day in the summertime for working as a family in the garden. We have spent the day sledding, tickle fights on the floor, watching movies together, shopping (not always for things we intend to buy right away), etc. Redbeard and I use it as a temple day sometimes because of time allowances, but sometimes we make the last session on Friday night so we can focus on Sat. It's whatever is right for you.

And of course, this is all subjective to our own families.

I don't worry about "hours spent on schoolwork" because I teach year round and I know I teach more hours than the school ever thought about. I don't waste time like the schools do either. Athena has commented on the wasted time coming and going from classes, the chattering during, etc. What she knew about public schools socially from the year we had the catering truck serving school lunches has been confirmed through seminary, and what she didn't know she is getting a full dose, and has come to greatly appreciate the way we chose to educate her. Even if I suggest a classic she's not impressed with right away. ;) But that is the task of the mentor - to help them stretch and grow. *grin*

Mind you, I am not saying homeschooling is for everyone and that people who send their kids to public school are giving them a lousey education. I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is what everyone knows - even though the kids are at school for "X" amt of hours, the kids aren't really doing schoolwork all that time. I make sure my kids know their stuff, and if they finish early like Redbeard did in his classroom studies, then instead of having to sit quietly waiting for others, mine are off onto another learning adventure - whether it's from a book or living life. That's all I'm saying.

Parents Night

My thoughts at 09:07 PM, December 18, 2008

Well, if anyone is still coming to visit, I'm so glad to see you. I have been busy with my unemployed spouse for the last month. If you've ever had an unemployed spouse, you know exactly what I mean. :P

Anyway, he's leaving for Denver on the 1st of January - not us - and will be working out there for three months. I'll have much more time for blogging then... and, my spouse will be happy because he is providing for his family. This is very important to any man who believes in his responsibilities. Also, Redbeard had to give up teaching his Italian class to do this, and that was hard for him to do. The kids will be taking an acting class this semester instead.

I wanted to share some pics and video from parent's night at Commonwealth. It was a good night - I only took pics and video of choir... silly me. They sounded really good though. :)

Redbeard was a very relaxed Master of Ceremonies...

Venus singing! She is the smallest girl in the school!

Athena in a relaxed stance singing - cracked us up!

Well, I thought I did a better job filming! And I can't believe how quiet it is! ERG! I hope you can hear it - I don't think you can hear the one boy very well. And I don't know why their heads are chopped off at one point - it didn't look that way in the camera! LOL! Oh well Mom, I tried. ;) If for some reason the video doesn't show up (photobucket and homeschool blogger are not being kind tonight), you can go here to watch it:

http://s144.photobucket.com/albums/r194/Athenasmom/?action=view&urrent=birthdayandparenttg005.flv

Just copy and paste. Homeschool blogger's html isn't working either - I'm pretty fed up. I'm working on changing over to strictly blogger... so watch closely for when I do! :)

Epic Field Trip!

My thoughts at 09:46 AM, December 1, 2008

First, I must answer a personal question...

I live in the Snake River Valley up here in the Gem State, right above the Beehive State. But we go there a lot when family flies in. ;) In fact, I'd kinda like to make it down there for the Christmas lights on temple square this year... but I say that every year. :P We moved here from Texas to be in the "mecca" because we knew our children would seep in the culture, although there is still a lot of our own rowdy Texas culture that maintains - and I don't think it's a bad thing. If there's one thing Texans know how to do, it's be a friend - and I'm glad my children have seemed to retain that part. At least my older children - we'll see how the younger ones do as they get older. And I don't mean that to be a slight on Idahoans - they just aren't as open as Texans - that's all. I LOVE my "new" home of going on 5 yrs in the Gem State! I LOVE being in the mecca! The parts of culture I wanted them to seep from here are a love of family, a love of the brethern and a reverence for things that are sacred. We all needed that (both my husband and I come from convert families, who did their best but it's different...) and it's slowly sinking in. And that's a good thing too! That was probably more than you wanted to know... lol!

Ok, the epic adventure...

We finally got coordinated enough with a local horse owner for he kids to watch him take off the shoes (filed off the nails and everything in front of them) and clean/trim the hooves. He felt it took too long to put the shoes back on with the kids (it was cold and they were already out there over an hour), so they didn't see that, but they learned that there is a line that you can clearly see that if the nail goes into it causes the horse pain - otherwise they don't feel it.

It was a good experience for everyone, even the owner of the horses. He invited the kids back to learn about saddles and what you have to do to take care of those. This time around they learned about the anatomy of the horse and proper care of it. Iris had the BEST time feeding them carrots. I didn't get to go because of the extreme cold and I didn't want my 2 yr olds out in it - so Redbeard took everyone while I stayed home. These are the pictures he brought back to me:

He also took some video - the batteries were pretty dead though (sigh) so he got a two second blurb, but I'll share it anyway.

The owner did tell them that he had to do this about every sixty days. That impressed everyone - even Redbeard! It kinda let them appreciate how changing the oil in the car isn't as tough as the transportation maintenance of Joseph Smith's time. It was a good thing. I look forward to them getting to go back and learning more. :) You know, Bonanza made it all look so easy and simple... I think it's good to know that it is not.

Besides "Homeschooling"

My thoughts at 10:13 PM, November 2, 2008

You know, besides all the other stuff we do to make learning happen in our homes, sometimes learning just HAPPENS.

The other day I got off the phone with my Mom - we had talked a little about politics, but not much. Athena apparently was listening (which was fine - if I want a private conversation I leave the room) and started asking questions. While I answered these a very interested Venus came in and listened, asking her own questions. And Iris, never to be left out of a conversation, sat in and listened. Before I knew it, I had given a dissertation on government, the voting process, and what the prophets have said about voting.

Totally unplanned, all happening around dinnertime. It was one of those teaching moments all parents look for, and can have - not just homeschoolers. What cracked me up was I did it all without thinking, and when it was all over they took off to do their own things and I'm sitting thinking, "What just happened?"

LOL!

Epic Adventure Stuff and Our Trip to the Chinese Resturant with the Mom School

My thoughts at 08:43 PM, October 21, 2008

Well, I haven't posted about how the EPIC adventure is going...

IT''S GOING GREAT!!!!

We have been learning about the seasons and how they are important to the Farmer. We used a grapefruit and an apple with a butter knife stuck through it to represent the sun and the earth on it's axis. Athena laughed when she saw what I was doing, but it got the point across and Venus learned some new things. I had planned on going to the potato expo tomorrow but Redbeard won't be in town. I'm hoping we can do the field trip next week.

In two weeks (I'm still hashing out the details) I'm planning on an evening with friends around a campfire. My plans are to have one friend play her fiddle while Redbeard and I tell the story of Porter Rockwell and his first wife, and another couple tells the sweetheart story of Joseph and Emma. Those plans might change, I'm not sure I can make the evening happen the way I envision it, but I think we can pull off a great evening of history.

I need to show you a fun thing we did in Daughter's of Royalty (a Mom school Venus participates in):

We went to a local Chinese restaurant - the lady and her husband that own it are actually from China. She told us all about school in China (we got a glimpse of what it was like living through the Cultural Revolution spoken of in The Red Scarf Girl), dating and matchmaking, and she also told us what it takes to start up a restaurant. She was very through in her talks! We all had fun, and the food was excellent. If you're ever in Idaho Falls, go check out Happy's Chinese located on Park street in downtown! Lilly Sue was very kind - thank you so much!!!! Both of us Moms in attendance (we had 12 girls there) were so rapped up in what she was telling us we both forgot to take pictures before all the girls left! So Venus and her friend got to take their pictures with Lillie all by themselves. :)

More later - I plan to give a complete synopsis of the Joseph Smith time period. Pretty quick here we'll be doing Brigham Young. I got off to a later start than I wanted because of some personal things going on - more on that later too. We just did the bare basics while we waited, but the kids are glad that we're well underway. :)

My Little Sponges

My thoughts at 10:23 AM, September 18, 2008

I want you to know this is NOT a posed picture! I grabbed the camera and snapped it before they looked up. Iris and Apollo were there too, but they took off before I got my camera ready.

This is a picture of them working on a program Redbeard bought to help him teach Italian. They were soaking it up... We've always TALKED about teaching the kids Italian, but never got it off the ground. I think with Redbeard teaching it this year in Commonwealth will help. With the older girls actually speaking it with him, we might end up with bilingual kids yet!

History of Home Canning

My thoughts at 08:28 AM, September 8, 2008

We just recieved four 4 gallon buckets of plums. Well, we had to pick them, but the point is, they were FREE. Canning time! (We used to can every year, but I haven't canned since the twins were born, so my kids didn't remember the process. Isn't that weird that my oldest had forgotten?)

At first the kids were excited, then Athena quips, "Is this really worth it?" A question I've asked myself over the years! So we talked about industry, thrift, and when the Lord blesses, we don't waste. We talked a little about food storage as well. (The plums are cherry sized, so they aren't the easiest to pit.)

Yellow plums

Red plums

So as we're pitting and using the victoria strainer, someone says, "I wonder how Emma did it?" I said aloud, "I don't think Emma canned like we do, because I don't think canning jars were around in the 1830's-40's. (Remember, we're only going up to Joseph's death.)

Iris using our victoria strainer to "chop and strain" - takes two steps and puts it into one!

So we looked it up, and I was right! It WAS different! In case you're interested, here's some websites on the history of home canning:

History of Canning Jars

Canning History

History with Basic How To Can Info

Sufferage and Canning

(This is a cache file - I couldn't get the original link to work, but it had pics and some neat info.)

If you're home canning with your kids (or by yourself) and you need some labels, here's a free printable site:

Canning Jar Labels

I'm putting mine through the little scrapbooking machine that turns paper into stickers. :)

So that's it today. Something totally off track, but interesting. Maybe we'll throw a blurb into our lapbooks about it. :D Oh - and it was a CORE lesson too - Redbeard relearned it pays to READ THE DIRECTIONS, as one batch came out syrup for pancakes!!!! LOL!!

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Day 1 - Our Timeline Adventure Begins (Very LDS content)

My thoughts at 03:35 PM, September 2, 2008

Today was the first day of our EPIC Adventure: Timeline, A Mtg. With Prophetic Minds. We started with prayer and singing "Latter Day Prophets".

We had our study of Joseph Smith during devotional, mostly taken out of the book, Boys who Became Prophets. The girls were very impressed that he whipped a man that had whipped his wife, commenting later that it was hard to do, but knowing that the man had whipped his own wife spurred him on to teach him a lesson.

We dismissed Athena (she is past Love of Learning stage - she has promised to read the book on her own), and she took the boys to play. While that went on I printed out the paper dolls for the 1830's (http://www.pastpatterns.com/doll2.html) during which we discussed clothing and how women and children didn't have all the clothes they do now. I showed them some pictures of clothes online, and they got excited (go figure) when they saw a shirt and tie just like the ones in Joseph Smith's painting. :)

While they colored and cut out the paper dolls I read to them from the book "You Want WOMEN To Vote Lizzie Stanton?" by Jean Fritz. The chapters are only 6 pages long, with 8 chapters total - perfect for finishing in a two week period. I got this book from Diann Jeppson - she buys these books for her Mom School. As we read through it my girls were appalled that when the women married everything they had became property of their husband's and there was no recourse for the woman. I'm not a big feminist, but there were wrongs that were made right with the sufferage movement. So anyway, we had a wonderful discussion about that.

Then we constructed our lapbooks. We looked a few over on the net, and picked a basic layout. Then we made a "wardrobe" section, in which we put all the paper doll parts on there and wrote about the clothing for that time period. It was fun... a little more time consuming than I would have liked, but at least now all we have to do is add stuff as we go, not construct the whole thing. But the girls learned a lot about planning ahead in the construction of them, and saw Mom goof up and still made it work, so it's all good. We'll get to nutrition later.

That was about it today - Venus has a book for Daughters of Royalty to finish and Iris has her reading skills to sharpen. Math and Science come later - LOTS of it. So Moms, if you're reading this don't panic - your grandchildren will be getting that too. Honestly, I think it was a spectacular first day - most kids at school just learn "getting to know you" stuff on their first day - I think we're ahead. ;)

The girls told me they LOVE this stuff. I've got to do better by my boys though... so I'm "cooking" up some surprises for them. Wait til you see what I come up with. ;)

Now for the big surprise. Previously I had mentioned Emma Smith - I don't remember why, and it was just in passing. When I started talking to the girls about the sufferage movement, Venus says, "was Emma Smith a part of that?" I told her no, that it was when she was much older - that when she married Joseph the laws were like the ones that Lizzie Stanton was so upset over. (Lizzie Stanton was born in 1815 BTW). Later we're putting together the wardrobe sections of the lapbooks, and I asked what the girls were naming their paper dolls. Iris says, "SALLY! Cause I like that name!" (lol - Athena wanted to name her Sally!) Then Venus says, "I'm going to name mine Emma, for Emma Smith". I told her that was funny, because I had thought of that too. Could I name my doll that? She says, "Sure". A little later we're talking some more about Emma, and I look down and Venus has decorated the front of her lapbook with "Joseph & Emma" - with a man giving a woman a flower. I promise when they're done I'll post pics. But as I'm looking at this I become overcome with emotion as I realize that not only will my girls have a love of the prophets, but of their wives and possibly mothers as well.

I hadn't even thought of that.