January Fun

Happy New School Year to all!

We have decided to start a "co-op" with just one other family, our kids' closest friends and my bestest homeschooling Mama friend ever. Their kids are 12, 7 and 3 and everyone gets along fabulously and we have decided to play for certain, every Tuesday. This is a welcome thing for me, as I am needing things to be very scheduled lately, or else I will just rest. I could give up anything for rest, even food, which always is a bad choice when pregnant. So, if there are plans then it helps me tremendously.

Yesterday we had them over for a meeting of the minds. Me and Trish and all 7 of our kids wrote on the dry-erase board everything that we want this co-op to be. We have readers, non readers, fans of all different types of activities and I was worried that the group would be more divided but everyone was just 100% enthusiastic. the ideas we have so far are roughly divided into "Things we are going to do at the house" and "Field trips"

Here was everything that the kids came up with:

Nature Center

Crafts

Science kit/Chemistry

Sculpey/Femo (oven drying clay)

Cooking

Insects

Experiments

Reading

Making Videos

Science Center

Library

Art Institute

Music

Nature Study

Sports

Another big part of this is the fact that we are starting our own "book club". After some mediocre to abysmal experiences with other book clubs in the past, we decided to do one on our own terms--after all, the spirit of the thing is to motivate kids to read--even ones who already like to read could always use a little boost to read MORE, right? We want something that gets us to the libraries (we want to see lots more of them in our library-loaning system, there are so many!) that gets us spending more time reading to and with the kids, and that gets the older ones to do more independent reading. Stickers, little trinkets, charts, and something "big" at the end like a pizza party or a gift certificate to a bookstore would be the grand prize at the end (June?) We are still thinking about all the details.

The first thing I want to do, that all the kids seemed "into" was a unit about the Wright Brothers and the beginning of aviation. We will start with some biography-style books from the library and then build some little planes and then maybe --hopefully--take a field trip to The Henry Ford museum and see the real deal. A Unit Study! Yay!

Well, the Christmas break from my work helped us get our house ALOT back on track and I am happy about that. We switched around our living room which I like to do when the xmas tree comes down, so it isnt so drastically "bare" and sad. I love the new setup and hope to keep it this way for a long time. The house looks bigger and we are facing the windows and the southern exposure of the sun that comes in here about 2 hours each afternoon...lovely!

Campfire Scouts started back up and the meeting went fairly smoothly I must admit! Trish and I, who are the leaders of the "Little Stars" group (age 6 and under) brought in big frozen bowls of ice and the children got to sprinkle rock salt on the ice and see how the crystals are formed and broken. Then we put food coloring on the melting/crackling ice and the color seeped down and illustrated the intricate ice patterns very well. We cut out some paper snowflakes, ate our snack and were on our way. Cool!

Its Girl Scout cookie time again, and business has been slow indeed. Greta has sold 2 boxes so far and says she wont go back if thats all she sells, so I hope Daddy and I dont have to buy 150 boxes ourselves this year...Steve is going to take the form in to his work, but he doesnt work at the kind of place where a ton of people buy a ton of cookies. But Greta is still in Girl Scouts, and tonight I have a meeting for Mickey's possible new Boy Scout troop! This is a very open and liberal troop and hopefully will work out for him. His best friend is going to be joining it and I think it is time for something disciplined and structured without me for Mickey. Its very cool that it will be on Tuesday nights because that is my ONE night I am free. It stinks though because that was the one night I could have prenatal appointments....although we might be able to do it on the weekends, or maybe late after Boy Scouts. But tonight is a parents meeting so I am anxious to go check it out.

Details to follow! How have you all been?

MamaJoy