Ultimate Blog Party

WOO HOO! I'm partying online with 5 Minutes for Mom's!!!! I'm still pretty new at this whole blogging thing and as addicted as I am, I still haven't "met" a whole lot of other bloggers. So, I guess this is my chance! Thanks for stopping by. Please leave a comment and feel free to follow me if you'd like!

Let's see, I'm a 30 something artist, wife and homeschooling mother or four daughters. I love creating things. I draw, paint, sew things, make toys, build stuff (when I can). We try to be a pretty "natural" family. I breastfeed...A LOT, co-sleep, wear my baby, yaddah yaddah yaddah. I enjoy fashion although I'm FAR from fashionable, I was vegetarian for 10 years before my pregnancy with my last baby and I'm really trying to get back to it. My kids were raised vegan, but I would say that they are probably 75% vegan still (they LOVE fish).

Feel free to drop by anytime. I usually talk about stuff I've made, things we do in school and on occasion things that I've cooked/baked and I'd love to "meet" some new people!!!

Okay, so on to the prizes!
US1. DUH, shopping spree at Pedal Cars and Retro Collectibles (AWESOME!!!)
US11. Restaurant gift certificate (the hubby and I could use an anniversary dinner out)
US31. Amazon gift certificate (I hear a work book or two for the kiddos calling my name)
US32. Target gift card
US37. Visa Gift Card (aka gas for the minivan)
US39. Be My guest certificate (we could always use a two night stay somewhere)
US41. It's all too much....because it just is.
US57. Yoga kit
US65. OOOOOOH, Fantastic Mr. Fox!!!
US69. Itty Bitty Bookworm (my 3 year old LOVES books)
US73. Amazon Gift card

Okay, I could just keep going on...basically any gift card, curriculum or toddler centered prize would be awesome. Well, winning ANYTHING would be awesome!

Abacus Lessons

Okay, so I love thrift store and antique shop hopping. It's a love that I inherited from my mother. On a recent trip, my mom (who loves boxes and containers) found two very nice little boxes that, we discovered, housed a compass in one and an abacus in the other. And because I am always thinking about school, I enlisted my mother to teach the girls how to use an abacus. Really, I sucked her in to doing it because I never learned how to use an abacus, but it seems like an awesome skill to have. So, the girls had their first abacus lesson today. They picked it up pretty easily and I'm sure they'll be pros in no time.



I guess today was guest teacher day in our little school house. Daddy did a lesson on Islam. I'm really glad that he volunteered to teach the girls a little bit about the faith and how he was raised. I think it's important for the girls to know about a variety of different faiths and to see how they are similar to one another and how there are principals in each that can enrich their lives. I think it is especially important to understand the faiths that helped shape their parents. Hopefully we can keep up the family teaching. I would love for Daddy to incorporate some yoga and yoga principals into the weekly routine and Granny to help out with handwriting (she has the best handwriting) and family history. School is so much nicer when everyone has a hand in it.

Mythical Monsters

We are still working on ancient Greece for history and today we had one of those moments where classical homeschooling and unschooling collide. We're working on history chronologically (which I really enjoy about the classical method). As we were reading Mythical Monsters of Ancient Greece Ashni decided that it would be a great idea if they made up their own monsters. So, they pulled out the craft bin, old magazines, crayons and glue and set out to make their own monsters with these questions in mind:
1. What are your monster's powers?
2. Where does your monster live?
3. What does your monster eat?
4. What is your monster's name?

Here is what they came up with....WARNING: Very Scary Stuff!!!

Jena's Monster
Name: Masstrash
Masstrash lives in the forest and eats babies (yes, eats babies), but only the babies that are in the forest without their parents. Notice Masstrash's multiple three eyed baby heads. Apparently the feet are gates and the ladder is to climb up and to kill it. You have to stab it in the heart right between it's two hairy nipples.

A close up of the scary baby heads. Notice the three eyebrows.

Ashni's Monster
Name: Poisonous Monster
Poisonous Monster lives in the forest and eats insects. The little yellow dots are poison. It has three legs and three eyes. All of the random puffballs and feathers are its babies and if it loses a baby then two more grow. (I'm not sure what's up with the baby theme here). Ashni's monster in into accessories. It is wearing a blue butterfly barrette in its hair.

Wordless Wednesday...Springtime Sledding

Our School Day

So, just because I haven't, I thought I'd share our daily school schedule. I decided a while back that I needed to have a good weekly schedule, so that when I didn't do things, I would at least know what we needed to make up. I'm really not very good with schedules. I start out really well, but eventually, I just was to adlib some things. It took me a while (this is our fourth year homeschooling) to get comfortable with not sticking exactly to a schedule or feeling like the kids are going to be behind. I've let go of that. The kids are well ahead of the standards (even with my free form schooling style). Anyway, this is what our schedule looks like:

9am: School starts with reading of house rules (we've kept this tradition since we started homeschooling. Our house rules reflect our expectations in our home and outside in the world)
9 - 9:45: math
9:50 - 10:20: spelling
10:25 - 11: reading
11 - 11:30: language
11:30 - 12:15: history (M,W,F) or science (T,Th)
12:15 - 1: lunch/free time/clean up
1 - 1:30: geography (M,W,F) or art (T, Th)

We try to incorporate lots of field trips, library trips and outside time (weather permitting). Some of the field trips we've had this year include:
Plays (Wizard of Oz and Fiddler on the Roof)
Pink Palace Museum in Memphis
University of Memphis Art Museum
University of Mississippi Museum
Civil Rights Museum
Fiddling Rooster farm
blueberry picking
various gallery openings
Strawberry Plains

I really like to be out and about doing things, so field trips are super important to maintaining all of our sanity.

Um, let's see. What else? Oh, okay, what we're reading right now.... My girls are hooked, HOOKED I tell you, on audio books. So we are listening to the Golden Compass right now. Actually we have the entire Dark Materials trilogy. They love it. I think this series may have knocked The Sister's Grimm out of the water (for Jena, anyway). We're just finishing up the Golden Compass. On their own, Jena is reading one of NUMEROUS Nancy Drew Mysteries and Ashni is reading Lilly Quench and the Black Mountains.

I will attempt to do a weekly school post here. It will probably help to keep me on track.

Would anyone like my three year old....

As I type this, my brilliant and beautiful three year old in going on her 30th minute of continuous screaming. Now, if she were a normally content child, I would be prompted to maybe call the pediatrician out of concern, or make some futile attempts to calm her, but she is NOT a normally content child. In actuality she is quite the cantankerous little ball of wild hair and funny quotes and today is no different. To the outsider, Bijou seems to be a very bright and energetic little girl with lots to say. But behind closed doors (be it the doors of our house, or our van or a public bathroom) the evil, wild eyed monster comes out. She screams and screams and scream AND SCREAMS, to the point of making us all want to run screaming in horror to a quiet corner to rock back and forth and suck our thumbs for comfort. Any little thing can set her off. Most recently (and my least favorite part of spring/summer) is her flip flops and their unhealthy relationship with gravity. Every car trip is punctuated at some point or another with the wails of, "Somebody get my SSSHHHHHOOOOEEEEEE! My shoe fell OOOOOFFFFFF! MMMMMOOOMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYY, nobody is getting my shoe! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!" But it's not just her shoes. It's any and EVERYthing. She needs to be in control and if she's not....look out. Just for kicks and giggles, I thought I'd share some past meltdown causes. Bear in mind that these are not, I repeat, NOT exaggerations. These are all actual causes for meltdowns.

1. Aforementioned flip flop fall off (daily).
2. Shoelaces touching the ground. Not untied, just touching the ground. Usually with this one, I get, "Mommy, you need to tie them better. Tie them better mommy, they're not tied good enough"
3. Socks being put on crooked
4. Wanting a peanut butter sandwich and then, gasp, getting one!
5. Not being able to have donuts for dinner.
6. Her sleeping older sister "touching her". This one was truly ridiculous because she woke up, came in our room, we sent her back to bed and two seconds later she was screaming that Ashni was touching her. So, basically, she went and got back into bed next to Ashni and pitched a fit that she was touching Ashni.
7. I swear, SWEAR, that she cried for ten minutes one afternoon because she was drinking all of her own juice! "I'M DRINKING IT ALL, MOMMY!!!! I DON'T WANT TO DRINK IT ALLLLL!"
8. Mommy can't make Elmo appear on TV on demand. Now we generally don't turn on the TV during the week while the kids are up, but on occasion my mom will let the little two watch Sesame Street. So apparently we should be able to make Elmo materialize on the screen on demand.
9. And I quote, "Zion is crying and it MY turn to cry!"
10. Not being able to close her older sister in the van door.

I could probably go on, but I think you get the picture...
Her bedroom has grown quiet, which can only mean that she tired herself out and gone to sleep. Sweet sleep, the comfort of us all. Maybe she will wake up a newer, happier version of herself or maybe she will sleep all night and we'll start all over again tomorrow. But while she's quiet and looks SO angelic, would anyone like to give my three year old a good home???

Dia de los Muertos

On, yet another, thrifting expedition yesterday, I picked up a little pair of white canvas sneakers for Zion (the previously painted robot sneakers are still a bit big). These were only $.50!! For some odd reason, they were screaming for Day of the Dead skulls!! So I spent a couple of hours this afternoon listening to Jimi Hendrix and painting VERY tiny skulls. I don't know if it's some sort of sickness or masochistic side, but WHY in the world would I choose to paint something do detailed on something so small??? (I mean, I had to paint them with a toothpick and a VERY tiny brush....)Who knows, but I think they turned out pretty cute!