After 5 years of being a stay-at-home mom, I found the wonder of mothering slowly starting to get crowded out by the mundane feeling. I realized our world seems to surround people with the negative, and complaining about blessings seems totally acceptable. So I decided to fight against that "normalcy" and focus only on the positive. I look back to my first year as a mom when everything was new and keeping house was fun and I aim to have that attitude again. This blog is my outlet to showcase the daily miracles that surround me in my blessed life as a stay-at-home mom so that I will never forget the wonder of it all.



Saturday, May 18, 2013

Sum it up Saturday


 
That?  Oh that's just your every day drawing in the street of a massive person. 
 
I was kind of embarrassed when my neighbor left for work in the morning and found me in the street before 7am drawing a massive human shape.  But she just yelled, "Good morning honey!  Working on a lesson?"
My neighbors know me better than I thought!  :)
 
It was my turn to teach at our science co op this week (we meet every other Friday and the moms trade off teaching and snack duties).  Well, I had the job of teaching circulation.  I was not thrilled.  Why couldn't I have something beautiful and fun to teach like metamorphosis?  Ugh...I was NOT looking forward to teaching this lesson.  But then a friend told me about a game her home school group did to teach circulation that sounded perfect.  I tweaked it a bit for our young group and came up with our own version.  Inside, we had a small lesson about our heart; how its a muscle, how it beats, how it pushes blood through our body, etc.  I taught them that our blood feeds our cells oxygen, and flushes out carbon dioxide.  I told them the blood was kind of like the lunch man who delivers the lunch (oxygen), and then takes out the trash (carbon dioxide).   Once outside, I placed the kids on two teams and each team had three jobs; a cell, blood transporting oxygen to the cell, and blood transporting carbon dioxide away from the cell.  Our cells sat way down at the big toe.  Next to the cell sat our carbon dioxide transporting blood.  Up at the heart stood our oxygen carrying blood who each held a bag of felt food.  At "GO!" the oxygen carrying blood would follow the blood vessels drawn on the ground and run their way down to the cell in the big toe, one on the right and one on the left.  Once they reached their cell, they gave the cell their food.  The cell took the food out of the bag and handed the bag (trash) to the carbon dioxide transporting blood who ran the trash back up to the heart.  Which ever team got to the heart first won.  Are you following?  HA!  The kids had a lot of fun with this activity and we played a lot of rounds of it.  We also did an experiment to see how blood pumps into our hearts, using a turkey baster, and another experiment to show how we bruise, using grapes in plastic bags.  But this is getting wordy enough so I'll spare you the details.  :)

 
Other than our science co op, our week was pretty normal.  I finally got my act together and arranged a birthday party for Logan and his friends.  We went to our favorite park that literally sits on the marina where you can watch seal swim and pelicans dive.  These California kids have it rough I'm telling you!  His two home school buddies and their siblings and Mamas joined us for a day of play and treats.  I LOVE watching home schooled kids get together to play.  I'm always touched by how all inclusive they (usually) are.  Age and gender don't seem to phase them and they just all play together.  We took the kids to the park but I think they really never played on the park.  They soon found two overgrown patches at the parks edge and turned them into forts.  They divided themselves into two teams and played some sort of war game where prisoners were taken and rescued over and over for hours.  Sword fights a plenty! 
 
 
Papa came over on Monday for some "Papa School".  Oh how I'm loving this wonderful routine!  I feel so spoiled to cook away in my kitchen while the kids are being schooled!  Such luxury!  :) 
 
How was your week of home schooling?
Please feel free to share about your week in the comments,  and please leave a link if you care to join me in a "Sum it up Saturday" post.

5 comments:

  1. I love that you were feeling embarrassed about your huge person. That is something I would do and would also feel embarrassed about.

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    1. I loved my neighbor's comment to me. Next time I'm out in the street drawing massive models with chalk (this wasn't the first time), I won't be embarrassed. :)

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  2. At first I thought your kids were outside for art. That sounds like a great game. Might just have to try it with the kiddos as a summer fun time lesson. I feel the same about home school kids and how they all just play and work together. I also love how the older kids step up to help with little ones (mostly the girls do this)without moms even asking. This week was up and down for us as I'm trying to work out co-op. We did have fun decorating some nature journals.

    http://meadowmagic-meadow.blogspot.com/#!/2013/05/nature-notebooks-and-more.html

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    1. Thanks for linking up! It wouldn't let me leave a reply on your blog so I hope you get this here. I totally understand you questioning the co op. I think co ops are easier for small families....one or two kids. For us with more kids and young ones, it becomes very tricky. I'm having the same issues with our co op and we only meet every other Friday. I'm mulling over what to do for next year as well. I was invited to join a co op that sounded more like yours....meeting 3 days a week, and I just thought that that didn't sound like home schooling. I mean, we jumped in to this journey to be at home, to learn together, to have flexibility and freedom. Meeting three days a week felt like a different type of schooling and definitely not the feel we wanted when we decided to home school. My kids wouldn't be with me, they wouldn't be together, and we'd loose that calm flexibility and freedom. So I choose to stay away from co ops that meet that often. But that's just my take on it for our personal family and what we want to get out of home school. I DO like the groups that meet occasionally for a more relaxed gathering. It feels good to meet up, share ideas, give the kids the opportunity to have someone other than me teach them for the afternoon, but I'm still in charge of my kids and their education.

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  3. It's great that you make learning so fun for them!

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