Groundhog Cupcakes.

In honor of Punxsutawney Phil not seeing his shadow and bringing us closer to spring we decided to make groundhog cupcakes today. I found the idea on the Family Fun website. I couldn't find the exact ingredients listed in the recipe but we improvised. And who doesn't love an excuse to have a cupcake!!!!




I was able to get these unfrosted cupcakes from our grocery stores bakery.







1. Cut a small hole in the top of the cupcake to fit an Almond Joy into.

2. Cover the cupcake with white frosting.

3. I cut a small piece of a marshmallow to make the eyes. Glue all of the candy pieces on with a dab of frosting. (If you have some chocolate frosting it might work better for gluing the pieces on the face. The white frosting showed up more than we wanted it too.)

4. Use a small little nonpareil as pupils for the eyes.

5. We used a small pink heart for the nose, black bats (these were in our Halloween sprinkles container), and we used chocolate chips for the ears.

6. Sprinkle some crushed Oreo around the base of the groundhog for dirt.

7. Enjoy!!! We did!





Here is the link to the recipe.
http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/groundhog-day-cupcake-685681/?cmp=SMC-FB_FFUN_[groundhog-day-cupcake]_[recipe]_[familyfun.com]

"Hearts 4 Kids"

I was driving in the car the other day. I had the radio on 91.3 HIS Radio. I heard them talking about an outreach program that they are doing right now. It is called Hearts 4 Kids. They have asked that churches, schools, or any other type of group or just indiviuals who would be willing to make Valentine's Day cards for children that are in the hospital. They will deliver them to children for you. When my children were younger they were hospitalized several times. With my oldest we visited the hospital many times in her first three years of life. It was always nice to recieve gifts from people. No matter what the gift was it helped to know that someone was thinking about you. Just a simple card that said "Get Well Soon" meant so muc.



I decided that our family would break out the craft supplies and get to work. I have set a goal of 30 cards. We began folding paper, sticking stickers, tying ribbon, and stamping stamps today and in no time we had seventeen cards done.






Here is the link to HIS Radio's website with all of the details for "Hearts 4 Kids" in case anyone else is interested. I'm going to be mailing ours so if anyone else wants to make some I can always put them in the envelope with ours.

http://www.hisradio.com/headline/hearts-4-kids

Schools In

OK, so I know it has been a bit since my last post. What a holiday season! It was nonstop with all kinds of goodness. But I think I can finally say, PHEW!!! I finally feel like our lives have gotten back to a somewhat normal schedule. I do have to admit though, all of this wonderful snow that keeps falling all around has been a big help in getting us all to slow down a bit too.
After our second week of school off for our Christmas break I decided that perhaps I needed just one more week to re coop. I wanted to get lesson planning done and some organizing of closets done too. It was of course another crazy busy week and I didn't get to any of my planning or organizing until Thursday and Friday of that week. But it happened......just when it was supposed to.
Today I have this overwhelming feeling that I am digging the year round school schedule. Monday and Tuesday this week were really awesome school days. There was no complaining from anyone and everyone really seemed to be focused. I was hoping that with 3 weeks off that perhaps everyone, including me, would be really feeling the school vibe. And it worked! WOO HOO!
Today was one of our interesting school days. We needed to make it to the grocery store. The roads in our neck of the woods were covered white with snow again. So that meant the whole family ventured out to get groceries. I haven't driven in the snow enough to be comfortable doing so. (But I have a goal to learn how to drive in it because there is obviously going to be a lot of it this winter.) We did have several other errands to run so we didn't get home until lunchtime. By the time we had lunch and a few choirs were done by us all we started school. It was about 2 o'clock by then. Even with my 14 and 11 year old this isn't the best time to be starting your school day. We were all feeling tired and not very focused. Needless to say. It was what I like to call a "necessities day". Math and reading were done and then everyone had sometime to themselves to play. Some days this is the best we can do. There is no point in trying to force school when everyone is already tired. I am just setting myself up for disaster.
Tomorrow is another day and we will tackle the things we didn't get done today then. I am looking forward to the rest of our school week. I hope it goes as well as the beginning.

Giving

As our children grow we try to train and teach them to be caring and compassionate people. Making sure that they use their manners and are kind to others. But nothing is quite as amazing as when you get to see them show one of these characteristics to you all on their own without being prompted by you.

My 11 yr old son melted my heart the other day. Ever since the day after Thanksgiving he has been trying to come up with his own money so that he could buy his own gifts to give to his family and friends. He has always loved giving gifts to others that I have bought but this year he has wanted to buy his own with his own money. And here is where he melted my heart. He received some money in the mail as a Christmas gift and the next day he was ready to go shopping because now he had more money to buy more gifts for everyone. Now you talk about a proud Momma. I was so proud of him for wanting to spend his gift that he received on others. How selfless of him. And I have to tell you that this made his Momma want to buy him just a few extra things for Christmas for him being so willing to spend his money on others.

I love this boy. He is becoming a great little man. He has also been very helpful with making lots of gifts as well. We have made a brown sugar and sesame oil body scrub and lots of bars of soap. And he is making his own Christmas cards to give to everyone. We save our Christmas cards from the previous years and then recycle the pictures and characters on them to make new cards. He does better at sending Christmas cards then I do.

You know as a stay-at-home I don't get paid money for a full time job but seeing my son be so giving it is "Priceless".

Go with the flow.

This is our 10th school year homeschooling. You would think that perhaps I would be able to get everything done on our lesson plan for the day. But one thing is for sure with homeschooling you have to allow yourself to go with the flow sometimes. And leave it at that. Don't second guess yourself with, " But are they learning enough?" or "we have to get this assignment done today." I can guarantee you that it will not be the end of the world if your day doesn't go as planned. And believe me there will always be tomorrow (Lord willing). It is so easy to get caught up in the things that we didn't get done for the day. But what really matters is, what did you get done for the day. Because some days with life as crazy as it can be, the best that we can do is make sure that everyone is fed, bathed, and loved. And this is especially true when you have little ones running around.


The first several years of our homeschooling experience there were many days when me and my children snuggled up on the couch together and read through our stack of library books. As we read we would learn and touch on all kinds of different subjects. We could be counting the characters on the page as well as naming all of the different colors we saw on each page while we were reading the story. It can be tough to get through a lot of sit down book work time when you have little ones so you have to take what time you get and make the most of it. Try to cover as many subjects that you can at one time. You can certainly use the sand in the sandbox as your chalkboard and practice writing the alphabet in the sand as you play together. And you can count the cheerios on the high chair tray and build the different letters too.


Something that I have seen over the years is just how different your school day will change the older your children get and the more experience you get with homeschooling. You will see that there will be more sit down time as their attention spans mature. All children will develop and learn new concepts when they as indiviuals are ready for it. I have taught my 14 yr. old daughter with Down Syndrome addition and subtraction for many years now. But it hasn't been until this year that I have really seen her grow and come to understand this whole process. I do have to believe that it is partly because of the math that we are using this year. I have been using Math-U-See with both of my children. This is a new program for us and so far it is working really well for both of them. Jasmine requires a lot of repetition in her learning and you get that with Math-U-See. Plus both of my children are visual learners. So anytime that you can teach them something that they can actually touch and feel it helps them to understand much easier. But also Jas is just mentally ready to understand the addition taught this way.


With my 11 yr old son the Math-U-See is working well for him because the lessons only take about 10 - 15 minutes to complete. But also the approach that they use in this math with really focusing on patterns and codes to help remember the math facts has really helped him to learn and retain the math. As well as there are blocks that they use to build the facts out of. The past several years he has used Saxon and Swithced On Schoolhouse math. I loved the Saxon because of the thoroughness of the lessons. However the lessons would easily take us 45 minutes to finish for the day. And he is boy through and through so good luck getting him to sit still for that amount of time for just one subject. With the Switched On Schoolhouse it is a computer program where all of their work is done on the computer. At the beginning of the school year he seemed to enjoy this but as the school year went on he got tired of having to do the work on the computer so we started to print the lessons out and he would write out all of his work. These lessons could also be quite long.

Homeschooling is a constant learning process for everyone involved. I have said many times that I have learned just as much if not more than my children have over the years of teaching them. And perhaps the biggest thing I have learned is to go with the flow and take each school day one day at a time. You will be surprised with what will get accomplished because trust me, it is the important things that will get done for the day. And the rest will be there tomorrow or the next day.

If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.........

One of our all time favorite childrens book is "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" by Laura Joffe Numeroff and is illustrated by Felicia Bond. It is a sweet little story about a little boy that gives a mouse a cookie and the cause and effect that takes place afterwards.This is one of my favorite illustrations. This is a true depiction of milk and cookies contentment. Love his little pooched out belly.










This author also has some other great books similar to this story. "If You Give A Pig A Pancake", "If You Take A Mouse To School", and "If You Give A Moose A Muffin".


I stumbled upon this little companion book at our local library's used book sale for $.10.

We decided to give one of the recipes a try.The look of anticipation!

"Lily's M&M Crunchies" definitely get our vote for yummy goodness. They are certainly crunchy with the M&Ms and rice crispy cereal. This was a great way for us to spend our day together on a day with snow and rain blowing around outside in the cold wind. Nice and cozy warm in the house eating milk and cookies.

Do we really have to????

It is only December 2nd and the Christmas spirit has totally taken over us all in my house. Even so, that Me, being the teacher is saying, "Do we really have to do school?" I'm just a big kid anyways and when it comes to Christmas my inner kid is screaming inside, "Let me OUT!!!" Each day it is a matter of deciding which one of our many Christmas projects we want to tackle. Yesterday is was putting up the tree and getting it all decorated. So far today it has been putting up the other decorations around the house. I love to watch my kids each year take more initiative in the decorating. It is a good thing that they do enjoy this season as much as I do or they might be saying, "Ah come on MOM, not another Christmas project."

We even have a special entrance for some extra helpers. We found this idea on the Family Fun magazine website. And then we made our own version.

I happened to find and elf hanging around under the tree.

I guess I must quit playing now and put my teachers cap on.