Not back to (brick and mortar) school!

   It's almost like I've lost control of my life these days...  Definitely not as I had envisioned my homeschool days to be.  I'm constantly bombarded with music lesson and babysitting requests (blessing and curse) and with Beans' dad out of work, I feel like I can't refuse.  Out of the house, for 6 to 10 hrs a day, focusing on children that are not mine, love them yes, but still..not mine.  Ever had that feeling of an all consuming brainfuzz? Completely numb? Vacant shell?  It's almost like my soul is having a tantrum.  But then, I get to reunite with her:)  And it's all better.  We aren't focusing on any unit studies yet really, but I have some ideas. So far..

     I love how Beans decided to draw a sun for sunny and everything she loves about Downtown Tampa instead of writing the words.

                                               Parachute time with homeschool friends!

                                                  Beans being beans!

  We've also started a great pen pal web with her friends.  She is loving this!

Summer is here...

   Which means a lot to someone who experienced sending their child to school for the first time.  Beans attended a VPK program at a small Montessori school and it was a pretty cool experience.  She made lots of buddies and loved her teachers. They had great materials and I was able to be in the class any time I felt like.   I did find a few things questionable in their manner of disciplining and the way some of the material was presented but Beans and I would just discuss it later. Example: Her assembled book of Antarctica had pictures of polar bears.  In a parallel universe there may be polar bears in Antarctica. In our universe, pretty much just penguins and seals. And more curious was their reaction when I thought I was just (hopefully) politely reminding them that there were no polar bears in Antarctica. "What? Really? But it's in all our materials!" says Director. Me: Silence and awkward smile hoping I didn't come across as some sort of smartass.  I do sort of think Beans may have been pushed a little much to do things she wasn't quite ready for like double digit addition in Pre k. In turn, causing her to sort of hate math now when she used to love it.  So, I would say I'm glad it is over.  But there is some good news!  I am now their official Kindermusik educator and teach the wonderful kiddos there every week and Beans still gets to see a lot of her friends! But yeah, glad to have her all to myself again.

we all fall down

  Broken computers, missing cameras, lack of ideas, confusion, exhaustion, bouts of depresion, numb feelings have taken up a lot of days in which I've been absent from here.  Also, lots of adventures, hugs, friendships, learning, and I love you's.  I feel the toll not jotting down everything has taken.  I don't like that feeling very much!  Beans has grown bunches and gone through many changes, phases, and obstacles, and we're ready for more.  Yesterday was Earth Day and we decided to get up and go on a bike ride adventure to Sweetwater Farm a local organic farm open on sundays to the public with vendors, workshops and more.  We counted butterflies, dragonflies and lots of trash:(  We got caught in the rain, then under a bridge and biked and biked for about an hour.  It was a fun adventure and I would happily do it again in a heartbeat!  The farm is a wonderful place where kids can get dirty, make friends, listen to live music and eat organic goodies, also learn bunches about farming. I;m hoping to post some pics.. this computer isn't even mine..hmm

hello..

Wow. It's been over a month.  I keep being told that I bit off more than I can chew by agreeing to being my niece's learning coach, but I think I am now beginning to adjust.  Life is definitely different since my niece began virtual schooling, but it is nice to see her so happy to not be in her former middle school.  I just barely have time to breathe and eat and do other things I normally took for granted.  Public Virtual schooling is pretty intense and not very fun.  I will try to portray our life since last post in pics:)

                                              Fall Printable preschool pack!  Beans approved

                                                            Scarecrow puzzle:)

                                      Halloween Craft party with homeschool group!  Beans was a snow queen....for about 2 weeks..

                                                           NOM

                                                         Bingo!

                                                 Bean's Monster face!

                                          Clifford is at the Children's museum until December..and Beans is very happy about that:)

wild and crazy life!

Our days have been nuts!  Never a dull moment and definitely in and out, in and out of car!  My 11 year old niece has started Florida Virtual School for 7th grade. The kid is a prima ballerina, amazing dancer and middle school and her dancing was overwhelming for that poor girl so we convinced her parents to try the virtual school and I'm her learning coach.  Beans and I are loving having her home!  Picking up my 8 year old nephew from school has started too in the afternoons, so we have to be done, fed and watered by 1:20 every weekday, which makes the mornings (heck, the whole day!) hectic.  Anywho, I've tried to not let Beans school mornings get out of whack, actually we've had some pretty exciting days:) We went on a trip to Sea World with our homeschool friends, so Fun and we learned bunches!

 About different Manta rays, sea anemones, sea horses, Octopuses, etc..etc. In the Manta aquarium.

 Beans got to "go into" an aquarium tank!

Penguins!
Beans got over her fear of a certain ride and loved riding it with her buddy. She also did a whole lotta walking that day.  We were pooped by the end of the whole day.
 The rest of the week was pretty insane. I was in charge if craft duty for art in the park morning. We made toilet paper roll characters. Originally this idea popped into my head on letter O day when I couldn't come up with an idea for craft.  It's pretty much a toilet paper roll with 8 holes punched into the bottom. Add some pipe cleaners for the "tentacles" and some googly eyes and voila!  I'll post a  pic soon.
 Other fun stuff!

 Beans doing one of her end of summer activities.  This is her favorite! This time I used home made play doh and it looked way better than the last time we used it.  Light brown doh for the sand and I added glitter to the blue dough for the water.  Beans is using toothpick umbrellas and some of her favorite small toys fo the "beach".

 My Niece clowing around:)

 Bean's Favorite boy is moving away and saying goodbye was the saddest part of our weekend.  Her buddy was insistent on having a sleepover and was fighting back tears and so was I! They got to play one last game of Candyland until they see each other again maybe in a year or so.. We'll miss them very much!

 During the weekend I made Beans a geoboard which she and my niece love!  I was grocery shopping and spotted  some gridded foam boards. Got those for about $3.  Popped some thumbtacks into them and  voila!  I noticed I needed to adjust it because with the pressure the tacks would come out so I then hot glued all of them this morning and it's great!

 This is activity related to our music month.  Counting xylophone tiles.

 Sequential Order with the same xylophone cards.

 Building a paper Xylophone.  Beans would pick the longest of the pieces and then glue them in order. I demonstrated first and then she was all over it!

 Peg games we scored at Good Will for $2.  Great for Math!

Practicing writing skills with her sand tray. The sand is ornamental from Michaels.

Until next time! She's awake!

Not so holiday feeling type of monday

Today's not so great. It's labor day, I've just been trying to get stuff done.  I can just dream and fantasize of a life in which all I need to worry about is raising my kiddo...one day..one day.  Bean's dad just took her out to have fun. She's was being so sweet and fun and I had a mile long list of things to do: Lesson planning for music students, homeschool plans, music morning planning and organizing, taking care of student loans and other finance related hoohaa online, going over Learning coach training for my niece's first year of virtual schooling, cleaning our place. Yuck, I'm being a total downer..ignore me!

We finished up weather month and starting our Music month:)
Beans got a brand new drum kit, a gift from Bean's dad's boss, head of Crush Drums and percussion.

  She really loves it and even talks to it!  She's been playing it everyday and we'll have some fun little jam sessions to the tune of the itsy, bitsy spider..(her choice)
We started our first music morning with friends last week and it pretty much consisted of instrument exploration: keyboard, scarlett's 1/2 size classical guitar, accordion, floor tom, bongos, rhythm sticks, shakers and bells.  I brought my classical and played a few songs like 'Shortening bread' and ' Twinkle variations'.  We want to make it as fun as possible so were going to do it mostly themed on The Beatles.
I made some yellow submarine magnetic characters for storytelling.. The house where I do music mornings has a whole wall that is a magnetic chalkboard! Lucky...

 We checked out some cool dvd's from the library that are Beans approved:)  'Notes Alive! Dr. Seuss's My many colored days', featuring the Minnesota Orchestra and 'Reading Rainbow - Zin Zin Zin a Violin', is a very fun, informative and capturing video that Beans and I enjoyed watching 3 times so far!  They feature children playing in an orchestra, the role of a conductor, the different sections of an orchestra, and the names of various musical instruments and feature the amazing, percussive theater group Stomp!
A few books we've read so far are:

I'm in the works of making a music themed sensory box and other montessori related activities for this month.  I'm a huge fan and believer of the montessori method and plan to base most of our homeschool curriculum and activities around it and the philosophy.  Making time to make materials and such has been a bit hard for me but when a little time to squeeze an activity here and there, it goes well!
One fine motor activity we did yesterday was marbles on golf tees!

   I didn't have foam blocks for the tees, so Beans used some clay blocks, which she had to use a little extra muscle power for.

 Beans loved this activity and even got pretty creative with stacking and rolling the marbles in the tray until they connected together and resembled letters:)

We also squeezed in some art time!

Last week we finished up weather with fun activities like placing umbrellas on the 'beach'. Beans LOVED this:) so fun.

 Sun coloring, cutting out and lacing.

 Cloud painting!  So fun dipping cotton balls into watercolors and sticking them on the paper and watching them rain a whole lotta colors.

Until next time!

Another week flies by..

Beans and I have been up to a lot.  It's been a bit stressful to keep up with everything but I guess we're managing. We had a busy week and not so very busy weekend.  Our homeschool group began art in park on Tuesdays again which means that Beans will nap on Tuesdays at least!  So far our week normally looks like this: Mondays- themed homeschool mornings (this month weather) 'Spanish hour' with friends in the afternoon.
Tuesday - Art in the park mornings - biking in the afternoon.
Wednesday - Music morning with friends - Letter day in the afternoon
Thursday - playgroup morning - baking in the afternoon.
Friday - Homeschool morning - swimming in the afternoon
Saturday - Art class/ Library / children's museum..aka Downtown dance:)
Sunday - cleaning day! (lesson planning)
I really didn't know it was that busy until now.
Anywho it's almost two in the morning..so I will attempt to rapidly summarize my adventures with Beans.  We had attempted a few last minute science experiments with the weather kit we got from the library (which Beans accidently destroyed a piece of! A part of the anemometer:( I tried supergluing, failed and ended up using a piece of tape..I'm awaiting my judgement call from the library to see if I have to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a plastic anemometer that still technically works btw)
One of my favorite experiments found in the kit was the water cycle in a jar.  I took a pic detailing instructions and materials needed.  Beans has become pretty familiar with the water cycle thanks to the Magic School Bus and the Glazer Children's museum. But this really helped to actually demonstrate it.

Here is our 'Greenhouse jar'.. Beans had a blast putting everything together, she loves loves dirt.  This is what it looked like on day 2.  On day one Beans kept checking on the jar to see a 'cloud' would form.  But she was still a bit excited when she saw that it had begun to rain inside the jar when we checked on it in the morning.

Other fun stuff included the very anticipated thermometer in the freezer experiment.  The experiment was very simple, but still very fun for Beans.  We put one thermometer in the freezer and one on the top shelf of the fridge and waited an hour or so before taking them out.

 It's kind of hard to see but of course the freezer was much colder, it was below zero! Which Beans found very interesting.."Below zero? What? That doesn't make sense!" It will in time beans.  I then helped Beanpie record in her little journalmajig.

More good fun was the tornado in a bottle! Everyone should make this with their child. It's pretty much just a flat bottomed bottle, water filled 3/4 way, drop of dish soap and coloring, and marble. Swoosh and shake.

Our last Monday morning consisted of all things clouds!  Beans is using flat marbles to fill in dots on her cloud magnet sheet.  These are great activities for developing fine motor skills and hand/eye coordination. I love this site for finding these printables..http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/WeatherMagnet%20Pages.htm

We then proceeded with a 'cloud' experiment.  We added drops of water, using a dropper, to a cotton ball and waited to see how many it took until it began to rain. It took a LOT of drops.

 Beans was very anxious to get to work on our cloud book and I think it came out great! It was way fun making it.  We used 3 sheets of construction paper folded in half. We then hole punched the edge and tied it with some hemp. Then we got to work with the contents. We used felt, stickers, construction paper,water colors, glue and markers. These are a few pages.

Soft cuddly cloud book.

I've been getting into the hang and really enjoying putting together Montessori inspired tray activities for Beans.
Some of her faves over the weekend were the juicing activity..

  And she loved making bracelets and necklaces out of heart beads, pipe cleaners an shoestring.

But I think the thing she enjoyed the most was lying in that little Ikea bed and pretending it was hers..wacky kid!  That reminds me, I should go to to bed:)