Homegrown Thoughts

Notes on the ordinary and extraordinary events and thoughts in the life of a homeschooling mom of two boys who happens to be slightly addicted to the Internet and all there is to discover there.



Homeschool Convention Recap

Obviously, we also survived day 2 of the convention. It wasn’t as much fun as the first day for me, but I was getting exhausted. It tires me out to be around a lot of people and action for extended periods of time. The main vendor halls were even hotter than the day before. They really need to come up with a solution for that - it’s the same problem every year. Having a couple of big fans for each gym just doesn’t cut it. They just blow the hot air around. It’s not conducive to shopping and buying, that’s for sure! On the up side, the classrooms where the sessions were held were very well air-conditioned this year, which was an improvement over last year when I believe the a/c was at least partially broken in that area of the building.

Our purchases on this day included Beer’s Victor Journey Through the Bible, which we got from Rainbow Resource. We managed to make purchases from them both days. :-) We also purchased Snap Circuits, Jr. from R & D. I would have liked to link to the product at their site, but their site needs some navigational help. Sorry, it’s the website designer in me, but if people can’t find what they want on your site…they can’t buy it! Ending that tangent now.

Anyway…the boys are having tons of fun with the Snap Circuit set and I’m having to limit them to just a couple/few projects a day or they’ll be done with it before 2 weeks have passed. They’re already asking for a larger set. They now know more about how electricity works at ages 9 and 7 than I do at *ahem, enter OLD age here*.

We attended more sessions by My Father’s World, split up for some family meeting and “Bringing Your Child to Christ and Keeping Them There” sessions.

I guess my plan for this year is to plan more. My husband would like to have a better idea of what we are doing and hear less about all I wanted to do and didn’t get done. He thinks actually planning out what we’re going to do in advance would be helpful. That may seem pretty obvious to most, but I, especially last year, did not really plan ahead. I just grabbed whatever we were working on and we did the next thing. If it was going well, we’d do a little more. If it wasn’t going so well, we’d do a little less. Then I’d just track what we did after the fact. I’m also very eclectic and use many different things, so I don’t have anything already made up that tells me when to do what.  Which I like, by the way.  I don’t like the pressure of having to do such and such by a certain date or feel I’m ‘behind’ and have to catch up to…what, I’m not sure!

So, this will be a challenge for me, especially as this is the first year I’ll be schooling both boys ‘officially’. I did almost everything orally with my younger one last year, but this year he will have to have some tangible work for his portfolio to be reviewed, so it should be interesting. He’s not a ’sit down and do it on paper’ kind of a kid. I’ll have to be sure I record our oral schooling or it’ll look like we did nothing. I think I can teach both kids from the same materials in a couple of subjects, so that should help.

Let’s see…I guess that’s about it for the convention and the motivation it stirred. I’m trying to finish up my summer school plans this week so we can get back to in on Monday. We’ve had a long break considering we school year round. It’s always so hard to get back into the groove after a break!  I make the workload lighter in the summer, but I think it’s best for us if we keep doing something.


One day down, one more to go

Just a quick note tonight (ha! Am I capable of being quick? We shall see…). Today was the first day of our state homeschooling convention. After being up in the night herding the family down to the basement for a tornado warning and then shuttling the kids to their grandparents early this morning so we could go to said convention, I was not all that alert this morning. I about fell asleep during Zan Tyler’s morning Keynote, and I’m pretty sure that is not a comment on Zan’s speaking abilities. She is so cute! I did manage to wake up a bit later in the day and very much enjoyed the sessions by Todd Wilson of FamilyMan Ministries. So much so that I attended 3 in a row. And that was not just because they were held in the sanctuary where there were padded pews and air conditioning. Partly, but not completely. :-) He had a lot of good things to say and he is quite the funny guy. Great combo in my book.

Apparently we have to leave at the crack of dawn again tomorrow morning to make it in time for the start of the conference. It’s even more fun to find parking on Saturday than it is on Friday due to the extra folks that come who weren’t there the day before. So it’s a good idea to get there on time or a bit early. I’m glad we only live a few miles away. Have I mentioned that I’m not a morning person? Like, not at all.

I did purchase some curriculum I needed today. I got the next level of Math-U-See (check!) and we’re trying A Reason for Spelling for both boys this year (check! check!). So they’re taken care of. I’m not sure I really need anything else, so I might be good for the coming year. Although my husband is now thinking we should consider using a ‘program’ that has lesson plans laid out for me. My Father’s World, in particular, but I’m also going to look at Heart of Dakota on the recommendation of my friend, Heather. I’m not convinced that this is what we need (I’m very eclectic at heart), but I’m trying to stay open to the idea since I do want to do what’s best for our kids and I realize that might mean that I’ll have to adapt to a new way of doing things.  Or not. We’ll see. :-)

I guess this is as quick as I can be. Not too bad for me, really. I really need to write about my adventures of the day following the Great Geocaching Disaster of ‘08, but that’ll have to wait for another time. I would like to state for the record, however, that after receiving assistance from a fellow homeschooling geocacher, we were able to go back and find the first cache we looked for. It’s amazing how much easier it is to find when you know what you’re looking for! Thanks Randy (and Vickie)!!

I’m off to bed. The morning will be here all too soon.


Just slap a big “L” on my forehead

So today I read my email from the geocaching site and noticed there was a cache pretty close to our house. I decided we should try and find it for a fun little diversion. I’ve known about geocaching and have been registered on the site for a long time, but I’ve never actually gone out and searched for a cache. I located our GPS unit, discovered why it wasn’t working (no batteries in it, ha!), figured out how to download the coordinates file and get it onto my GPS, grabbed a pen and a swag item to swap if we wanted to, and off we went!

First mistake - taking the dog. He hasn’t been on a walk in a LONG time and he’s forgotten how to walk on a leash. It only took him most of the time we were gone to figure out that if he runs too far ahead of me, he gets choked. Also, he mortified my by doing his ‘thing’ in somebody’s yard when I had neglected to bring a bag along, if you catch my drift. Ugh! I’m very sorry to whoever’s yard that was! I’m normally not so thoughtless.

So we all trot up to the location where the GPS took us and where I thought it would be based on a photo somebody had posted. The area was very freshly mulched with a thick layer of fresh grass clippings. It was also planted with prickly evergreen bushes and those red-leaved prickly bushes. Uh huh. We looked for at least 15 minutes and couldn’t find the thing. Much to my children’s disgust I decided we should give up and try another time.

After we returned home, I was determined to make it right for the boys. So I found some other caches on the website that were in easy walking distance, all at the same park nearby. Surely with 3 more to look for we’d get lucky! Well, my computer wouldn’t find my GPS unit to load the information on it. I rebooted, tried all different combinations of plugging in and turning on and went through the whole deal. Nothing. So I decided I’d check the connection to the computer. I pulled the CPU out and disconnected the cord. I then followed the cord back to get to the GPS and found that I had the car power adapter plugged into the GPS unit instead of the computer connection cord. Well, that explains a lot, doesn’t it? Amazingly, once I connected the unit with the correct cord, it was found by my computer quite easily!  Imagine that.

Finally, we were off once again. We headed to the park and followed the GPS directions to the general vicinity of the first cache. My GPS thinks it’s funny and decided to tell us it was in the middle of the road. We searched on both sides of the road, near fences, posts, trees, in bird houses…nothing. So we moved on to the next one. This one was by a wooded area on the edge of the park near a little creek. It has rained here a LOT lately. It was a mess in that area. We searched and searched, but again couldn’t find anything. So we moved on to the final one, our last chance at redemption. This one took us to a heavily wooded area on another edge of the park near the bike trail. This one made me nervous. I wouldn’t be able to identify poison ivy or oak if it was put right in front of me, and there was a mention of possible snakes on the cache entry. I wandered around in circles on the edge of the trail, trying to get my GPS unit to give up its secrets, but we were foiled once again.

o for 4 on our first cache hunt! The sheer humiliation of it all! I really wanted to get the boys excited about it so maybe we’d get outside on a more frequent basis. My older son is still wanting to do more, but my younger son was begging me to take him home. My older son and I were still wanting to search a bit longer, but we had to listen to the plaintive cry of, “I miss my home, please let’s go home. STRAIGHT home.”

Oh well. We’ll try again. I’m hoping after my disappointments today somebody will give me more clues as to the whereabouts of the caches we couldn’t find. I’ll also try to find some ‘easier’ ones that we might have a better chance of finding. I know once we find one, we’ll have a better idea of what we’re looking for and how they are hidden. I suspect a find will get my younger son more interested, also.

Until then, I think I’ll peruse Geocaching 101 and work on washing this “L” off my forehead. At least with the GPS unit I’m only a Loser and not technically “Lost”.


Mesmerizing!

Does anybody remember the group Mummenschanz?  If you’re very far under the age of 40, you might not.  I seem to remember them being on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.  Ah, those were the days.  Well, this video reminds me of something they would do and it’s very cool.

I sat here watching this whole thing, trying to figure out how it’s done. Even after seeing a small clue at the end, I still can’t figure it out! I love watching stuff like this, it massages my brain. And look at the pretty colors..ooooh! :-) Enjoy!

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Snickerdoodles

I don’t know what’s gotten into me, but lately I’ve been on a big baking kick. I’ve been looking at tons of recipes to try and they all look so good and I feel the need to make them all!

My most recent baking foray took me to very familiar territory. Snickerdoodles. I’m pretty sure these are the first cookies I ever made by myself and I’ve made them a lot in the intervening years. I’ve always used the same recipe from the very beginning and never considered trying a different one. Until this week. As I was perusing allrecipes.com, I came across a Snickerdoodle recipe with a 5 out of 5 rating and 2,142 votes! Now that is pretty amazing. So I decided it was time for this old dog to try a new trick and I made the new recipe.

I’ve compared this recipe to my old standby and much to my surprise, there is quite a bit of difference between them. And here I figured all Snickerdoodle recipes were pretty much the same. Apparently not! I don’t notice a huge difference in taste, but the new recipe seems to be holding up better than my old one. The cookies are maintaining a nice crispy/chewy balance that my old recipe would lose in about a day. I generally like to slightly undercook my cookies to keep them chewy but I cooked this one about a minute longer than I normally would have because I mistakenly believed I was making the cookies larger than the recipe called for. It turns out I got exactly the amount the recipe said I would (48 minus the 2 cookie’s worth of raw dough I ate, heh heh) using my cookie scoop. So I might bake them a slightly shorter time next time, but they are actually good just the way they are, too. I did alter the recipe slightly as the sugar/cinnamon mixture they are rolled in was not enough in the original recipe.

Snickerdoodle goodness

Adapted from:

Mrs. Sigg’s Snickerdoodles

Yields: 48 servings

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup shortening

1 1/2 cups white sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 1/2 tablespoons white sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2. Cream together butter, shortening, 1 1/2 cups sugar, the eggs and the vanilla. Blend in the flour, cream of tartar, soda and salt. Shape dough by rounded spoonfuls into balls.
3. Mix the 2 tablespoons sugar and the cinnamon. Roll balls of dough in mixture. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets.
4. Bake 8 to 10 minutes, or until set but not too hard. Remove immediately from baking sheets.

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