A lovely, unscheduled day

In the past few months we’ve gotten into the groove of having something scheduled almost every day of the week. Some days it’s just a playdate with friend, some days it’s outdoor “school”, some days it’s our day at the community center for homeschool classes, sometimes it’s a park day. I’ve never been so attached to my calendar! And it’s really brought home the funny notion that I used to boggle over when my kids were younger, “Why is it called ‘homeschooling’ if we are never home?” I understand that sentiment now.

One of the things I used to worry about when Silas was a toddler and we were contemplating homeschooling was being bored. Not having enough to do. Because, really, I think we were bored a little when he was that age. We had just moved to Seattle when he was two, and no matter how proactive one is, it still takes time to build community and make those connections.

The point is: we aren’t bored much now.

But it was so lovely to have this day appear yesterday where we had NOTHING planned (except gymnastics in the late afternoon, but I’m not even counting it!). No playdates, parks, or classes. Free to do as we pleased.

After a semi-disastrous trip to the YMCA where the kids got to play in the gym and I go to dance (there was some disagreement about leaving and deals were struck and broken, and well, you know how that goes), we got to come home and figure out what to do with ourselves.
It started with a snack picnic in the backyard. And some books were read, too.

Then we tried our hands at writing our names in hieroglyphs, inspired by Pepi and the Secret Names.

And after that, a dance party was in order!

Which evolved into some awesome free box play. Empty boxes FTW!

And then we decided it was time to head to the beach. I am SO incredibly grateful to live 3 minutes from the beach. I love it.

There were *three* driftwood shelters! Silas designated each for a special thing (sleeping, cooking, slaughtering animals [??!!])

A dead crab to study

And just take a deep breath. Exhale. Life is good.

FM Victory!

I just had to pop in here and share this victorious photo. Silas and his friend H. like to make things with Snap Circuits when they play sometimes. If you haven’t heard of or played with snap circuits, you are in for a TREAT. They have lots of smaller, affordable kits to check them out and see if you like them, and then they have the big kahuna kits which have LOTS of pieces and LOTS of projects to try. We have the really big one, the 750 piece one (I couldn’t find a link to the exact one, ours came with a great hard plastic carrying case that organizes all the pieces, too).

So the boys have been interested in building an FM Radio for a while. They tried it a couple of weeks ago, and somehow it didn’t work (though a really cool solar-powered fan did!). They decided to give it another try yesterday.

I should mention: these kids are just starting to read. They relied on the photos in the project booklet to build the radio themselves. I checked it over at the very end and found one tiny piece that needed to be added, but other than that they did the whole thing themselves.

And it worked. We danced to Kesha in celebration!

DPP Day 14: Good Buddies

Sometimes we get very lucky in life. Sometimes our best friends have kids and those kids become the best friends of our child as well.

These two bicker like siblings some days. But so much love, too. They call themselves “bro” and “sis.”

Could I love them more? Seems impossible.

DPP Day 13: Waffles

Our advent calendar activity of the day was to have waffles for dinner. Truth be told, this is not the most unusual activity for us; we probably do it at least once a month. We are all waffle fiends. They are one of the very, very few things August will eat (and I cant sneak orange vegetables into them easily and with no ill effects!)

I wanted to make it a little more special than regular old waffle night – so I decided to try Carrot Cake Waffles. It was much more fussy recipe than my normal (fabulous) sourdough one, but it was a fun change, and they were delicious. And plus? I made fresh maple whipped cream to go on top. So, yeah. It kind of kicked ass.

And there was bacon.

What’s your family’s favorite breakfast-for-dinner meal? I’m always in the market for new ideas!

DPP Day 12: Playing School

I was asked to be on a panel representing homeschooling for parents that have kids that will be entering Kindergarten in the fall of 2013 at the groovy preschool that Silas attending for a year (age 4-5). The other folks on the panel were all schooling parents in some form, representing different schools and different ways of doing kindy (half-day, etc).

Whoa.

Sometimes I forget how amazing homeschooling is. Just listening to all of the ins and outs of navigating public school, the way that “the man” will come after you with scary letters if you miss more than three days of school, the way that the kids are just beyond exhausted for the first three months…I started to get so overwhelmed with how many concessions people make in order to make school work. Don’t get me wrong – these parents all by and large loved their schools and were there representing them in a positive light.

But still I sat there thinking, man we won the prize though. My husband agreed. He attended for moral support (and because our kids wanted to come and play in the school in the childcare while we were occupied) and he agreed – it was bewildering to hear about “the real world.” How very little control you have, how much you give up of your freedom, of your child’s freedom, in order to make school work.

Some useful things that came out of it for me, though. Several parents and one of the kindergarten teachers talked about how some kids really thrive on the predictability of structure, and it made me wonder about how fluid our days are and if that’s a good thing or not. I like it, but it’s making me examine if it works well for Silas or not. It might! But it might be interesting to explore other ways of being, too. In a cooperative way, of course.

A few times over the past couple months, I’ve become aware that Silas and various friends would play school. Some of these kids attend school, some don’t. But today, I got inspired to ask him if he wanted to play school with me. He did, enthusiastically! So I printed out some fun-looking worksheets and experiments from Pinterest, and away we went.

He really does know so much, and I so take it for granted. His reading is really improving (not that we’re in a hurry, but he has been working on it and it shows) and I’m thrilled that he knows how to add quarters because of playing Plants vs. Zombies (each quarter is worth 1 sun!) You can learn things from video games. Duh.

We had a lot of fun playing school, and I even made him a “hot lunch” like his school friend is always so happy about (chicken nuggets and homemade french fries, apples and a cut up cheese stick).

And then we played video games together. And had dance parties. And all was good.

DPP Day 10: Helpers

My guys, helping make dinner by chopping mushrooms.

Do your kids like to help in the kitchen?

DPP Day 6: Gingerbread House

Something that Silas has wanted to do for a long time that we’ve never managed to make happen is making his own gingerbread house. So this morning, when I walked into Trader Joe’s and was greeted by a self-contained kit for $7.99, I knew we had a winner! We made a last minute substitution to the advent calendar line-up, and away we went.

The kit is really cute, requiring only an egg white and a few drops of vinegar to mix up the frosting (and it even comes with its own pastry bag thing to pipe the frosting!)

Needless to say, much fun was had, many candies were sampled, and all in all, it was a big hit.