What If I Don't Have All The Answers?

So far in our homeschooling adventure I'm feeling pretty smart. I've been able to explain addition, subtraction, grammar and phonics without having to resort to Google...yet. I haven't had to stop and look up an answer...yet. I don't need the answer keys in the back of the books...yet. But I know the day is coming, and approaching fast, when Ella is going to ask me a question and my brain is going to go completely blank. I'm pretty sure it will involve the semi-colon, but it may come sooner than that.

I choose to believe that when that moment comes I will have the humility and the good humor to be able to say, "that's a great question. I don't know the answer, let's go look it up."

This weekend in the middle of a blizzard I was confronted by the sudden realization, and accompanying panic, of not knowing the answer. There weren't any complex weather related questions asked, but as I watched the snow fall and fall, I was gripped by massive anxiety. I had no idea what to do in two feet of snow. My husband is a little busy in a war zone at the moment so it was just me and the kids and "Snowmaggedon" as the storm has been named and I was in charge. Me, a Southern California girl who doesn't like to be cold.

I looked at my sweet children, the weight of knowing that I was responsible for their safety settling heavily on my shoulders...and driving me straight to the good chocolate on the top shelf. I knew that I didn't know what to do. But Ella and Jack didn't know it. They were completely unfazed by the storm, totally at peace and anxious to get outside and play. They looked at me and figured that if Mommy wasn't scared then they didn't need to be either.

So here's what I learned...I won't always know the answer. But it's my reaction to not knowing that my kids will remember. Besides, there's always Google.

Don't Call Me Mommy

So if you've been following the news you may have heard about this small snow storm hitting the East Coast. You know, the one dumping an ice age worth of snow? Yeah, we're right in the middle of that. It's just swell. And the kids and I have been stuck in the house since yesterday morning. So we're going on 36 hours of blizzard enforced quality time. And if I hear "Mommmmmyyyyyyyy" one more time, I may lose my mommy mind.

I know it doesn't make much sense since we're homeschooling now and they're with me all the time anyway. But I think there is some powerful psychological shift that takes place in the tender minds of my munchkins when an outside force, like the blizzard that won't end, makes our together time less of a choice and more of a sentence.

Hopefully the snow will stop tonight and tomorrow I can dig out our front door and toss the cabin fever siblings out into the freshly fallen snow. Then I hope the only "Mommmmmyyyyyyy" I hear will be from one of my children stuck in a snow drift.

Too Much Information

So here we are getting all cozy and snuggled in, preparing to wait out the storm and building up our arm muscles to dig ourselves out in a few days. In preparation for the ridiculous amount of snow we're supposed to get, I have stocked up on food, water, batteries for the flashlights, glow sticks for the kids, and I pulled extra blankets out of the closet and finished the laundry so we can at least freeze in clean clothes.

I also made sure we have plenty of no cooking required meal fixin's. One of the things I made was hard boiled eggs. Ella and I both love eggs. Jack, well, he's still on the fence. But even if he won't eat 'em, he has plenty to say about 'em. Here's Jack's response to hard boiled eggs. "Awwwww, little baby chicks. So cute. Such cute little babies."

Yeah, that kinda makes it difficult for me to enjoy eating eggs. Ella on the other hand replies, "yes, Jack, little baby chicks. Yummy." Then she chomps down right in front of him. Yep, that's my little carnivore. Fortunately Jack doesn't seem terrorized by his big sister's unrepentant egg munching.

But it does make me wonder...have I taken Jack's education a bit too fast? He loves animals. So we read books about animals, we watch the kids animal shows on tv and we play animal games. But when Jack starts calling hard boiled eggs "baby chicks" maybe its time to steer away from animals for a while...at least the animals that we eat.

Happy Friday!

Pre-Snow Snow Day

By now you've all figured out that we don't close our homeschool for snow. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow as long as I've got my fuzzy socks and comfy sweater, we're cracking the books. Today however we had a pre-snow snow day. The weather smarties have warned us of a big ol' storm heading this way that may dump close to 30 inches of snow on our humble Southern hamlet. So today, school was closed so we could prepare for the storm.

We had to return books to the library, stop by the grocery store (along with everyone else who lives in this town apparently), get gas and go sledding. Wait, what was that? Did the merciless mommy just say sledding? Yes, in fact I did. Since we will probably be trapped in the house for the next two days, the kids and I bundled up and hit the slopes. Well, we hit the slope on the side of our house. It's actually perfect for sledding. Sometimes it's good to have a house up on a hill. Not when the driveway is iced up and the mini-van can't get traction, but when you've got two kids with sleds...totally worth it.

I did try to squeeze some educational time into the sledding. Ella keep heading to the left and sliding up the embankment before skidding to stop in a small ditch. No matter where she started she always ended in the ditch. So I told her a little bit about gravity and the shape of our yard, but she was usually swooshing down the hill with an "ok Mommy!" before I finished the sentence. And Jack, my fearless 3 year old, was right behind her.

So today our school was a crowded grocery store (emergency preparedness) and a snow covered hill (physical education and the physics of sledding...tell me you wouldn't have signed up for that class in college). Now tomorrow, when the snow is actually falling it's back to books and hand rolling beeswax candles. More on that project later.

Hello, my name is Michelle...

...and I'm an educational toys addict. Well, addict may be too strong of a word. I mean I can stop buying dvd's that feature singing puppets teaching the history of ancient Egypt anytime I want. And those blocks that randomly shout out the names of dead composers while playing their most famous musical works...those aren't educational...I just like the colors. And the hand held game that teaches advanced calculus, well...uh...that one is harder to explain. Ah, is that the sweet sound of denial I hear?

Yes, I have a problem. I bought into the mass marketing hysteria that tells parents that if we don't buy our kids the most advanced, newest technology toys then we are dooming our children to a life of intellectual inferiority and that their inability to read at 18 months or solve for x in kindergarten or recite the great works of Shakespeare while simultaneously analyzing the orbit of Neptune in middle school will be all our fault because we didn't spend $50 on a talking platypus that teaches the Dewey decimal system...in Spanish.

Well, no more. I'm taking a stand here and now. Educational toys are great and I'm not tossing out the ones we have, but I'm not going to feel guilty for not doing flashcards at dinner time or for refusing to pipe Mozart into their bedrooms while they sleep.

Sometimes playtime should just be fun. Toys don't need batteries and graphics and loud buzzers to be educational. Tinker Toys, crayons, dolls, plastic dinosaurs...all fun and both battery and pressure free. And anytime kids use their imaginations should count as educational time. Our world would benefit more from a generation that can imagine new solutions to old problems than from a generation of children who have forgotten how to play.

My Children are Spies

Well, maybe not official CIA endorsed spies, but they're definitely on the way. Today they each got binoculars in the mail. As I have mentioned, we're studying birds and flying things for science so to make it really interesting (and because I'm just a super cool mom) I ordered a kids field guide and binoculars for each of them. I love Amazon.com. And I didn't even get paid for that plug...that's how much I love Amazon. Where else could you get a duvet cover for a dog bed, marshmallows, a Shamwow and a sump pump all in one place and with free shipping?

*Note...that wasn't the actual contents of my shopping cart. Just so we're clear. Ahem....anyway...

So today the box with the smiley face logo arrived and we were all excited. Jack got a pair of kids binoculars. The ones that the manufacturer swears will survive the catastrophic drops, crashes and bangs that a 3 year old can inflict. Ella got a grown-up pair of "binocs." That's right, I said it...binocs. That's the way we roll out here. She loves them. They make me laugh (not to her face of course) because they are so huge on her little face.

Anyway, as soon as the cool new gadgets were out of their boxes, the kids had them glued to their eyes. So here they are, my adorable children standing in front of our kitchen window, both with binoculars up, staring out at our neighbor's house. Technically I think they were looking at a tree and searching for birds, but to drivers passing by I'm pretty sure it looked like they had our across the street neighbors under heavy surveillance.

So here's hoping that our bird watching doesn't turn into a Homeland Security investigation.

Scientific Proof That I'm Right

Once again the schools are closed today due to snow. And once again the merciless mommy is making her kids do schoolwork. And I think I'll be able to get away with it until Ella is old enough to talk on the phone with her friends and figure out that when it snows this much they don't have to do anything school related. Then I might be in trouble. But until then...bwaahahahaha!!

Many thanks to those of you who asked if Ella finished her work card or if she had to pull a math marathon. She did a great job and finished everything by Friday afternoon. And I mean early afternoon, not "4:59 and 59 seconds still counts as afternoon" afternoon.

One of our last adventures of the week was our first science experiment. We're using Apologia's Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day for her science text so we're learning all about birds and critters with wings which, unfortunately for me, also includes insects and other creepy crawly things that have mastered flight. Ick. Anyway, our first experiment was to make two different gliders out of cardboard and straws and see which wing design was more aerodynamic.

Ella loved this and couldn't wait to test fly her gliders. First she had to fill out an experiment worksheet where she had to write her hypothesis. She guessed that the narrow glider would fly further because most planes have long narrow wings. I peeked ahead in the text so I knew that the long narrow wing is more aerodynamic, but I was more than a little worried about whether our backyard experiment would work out that way. Ella would have to toss both gliders the exact same way to accurately measure which one went further. I'll admit it, I was pondering ways to rig the experiment if necessary. Now I'm not proud of skewing scientific research for the greater good (*cough* United Nations), but I was willing to to toss the gliders myself with a little extra oomph on the narrow one if it came to that.

But dear friends, never fear, my integrity is still intact. It turns out that the laws of science can't be thwarted, not even by an enthusiastic 7 year old. The narrow wing glider won hands down. And when we sat down to complete Ella's worksheet and I asked her what her conclusion was she said, "That I was right!"