making me happy

Last night Paul and I went on a date.

On a Wednesday. For 4 hours.

Do I even have to say how glorious it was?? We didn't even do anything earth shattering but walking together, eating, talking, and just being together was perfect.

The icing on the cake is that the kids can not wait until Caleb (our new sitter but long-time friend from church) comes again. Next month, kids. We are making this a regular thing!!

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Our morning chores now include the kids bringing down their laundry and putting it in the washing machine. The next day, they fold it and put it away. I feel like the clouds are parting!

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We had this autumn cobb salad tonight. Totally delicious. I am loving our soup or salad Thursday nights!

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We are in the process of painting our kitchen cabinets. The bottom cabinets are painted and the top ones are primed and ready to be painted. Tonight Paul re-installed the lower drawers and doors and I'm loving seeing my kitchen transform. We still have many steps to go but bit by bit, it is coming together!!

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Seeds Family Worship songs are making family chore time fun AND helping us all remember Scripture. I love that the kids ask to turn it on and when they see the verses somewhere else, they are very excited because they now know that verse. We have watched some on youtube, but usually we just shuffle through the songs on spotify. 

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Morning Time. It is transforming our homeschool to focus more on relationships and allowing us to read great books, the Bible, and poetry; we are learning some Korean words each day, talk about the day's art from our daily masterpiece calendar from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, solve a math problem or two from bedtime math (we use the iPad app), and either snuggle or listen while building legos or playing with playdoh. It's been a great addition to our day.

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Daylight savings time isn't my favorite thing, but the sun rising at 6 am is...because now I can get back outside for a walk before Paul leaves for work. I love my morning walk. It is great "me" time, good exercise, and I get to listen listening to one of my favorite podcasts: Read Aloud Revival and Homeschool Snapshots.

I needed a change in my workouts and the Tone It Up workouts on You*ube have been perfect. Lots of variety, short and sweet, and different exercises than what I have been doing for the last way-too-many years.

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This post makes it sound like I totally am on top of my game but this is about what is making me happy, not what is stressing me out, so let's just go with it, okay? :)

A day at camp

On Wednesday, we headed about 2 hours north to attend a day camp for adoptees. Holt International organizes and runs this camp and I was excited to check it out. My kids were a mixed bag -  two didn't want to go and one jumped out of bed super excited.

The camp had about 60 campers and the counselors and staff travel between Holt's 5 summer camps, so they were from all over the US. The campers and counselors were born in a variety of countries - US, Russia, Korea, China, India, Guatemala, and likely others. As a result, this isn't a culture camp, it a summer camp for adoptees, focusing on just having fun together while also exploring identity (racial and cultural) and adoption.

Daniel and Natalie (front right in red and white shirts) playing
 elbow tag with the other day campers and counselors

The consensus? The kids loved it and want to go back next year. Andrew is old enough for the overnight portion of the camp and would love to spend the night, he said, which really surprised me.

I loved that the campers were welcoming, clearly were enjoying themselves and were friends, and they were very excited to see our kids. The counselors were great about meeting the kids where they were. Andrew processes things through drawing and pulled out his art supplies multiple times. I thought it was awesome that this was encouraged and in fact, one of the counselors got down on the ground with him and drew too.

Andrew and a counselor drawing

The adult portion of the day was good too, though I realized again what a treasure our local adoption group is - many of the other families there don't have a local group to connect with.

Will we go again next year? We're not sure yet but only because we have a Korean culture camp option about 5 hours away that we have been planning to check out. It is for the whole family and all the kids would be in day camp (for 5 days) until 7th grade. It is more of a commitment for us, but we would love to try it out sometime soon.

But, I can say that I am so glad we went to this camp and we definitely plan to attend a camp for adoptees again.

homeschooling - the "how we did it" post

Call it rhythm or routine, I think everyone needs one. One of the false ideas I had, though, was that I needed to find ours, set it, and not deviate from it. Ha! Our routine has changed in big and small ways this past year, but I feel like the last few months we have started to hit our stride. In part, I'm learning to make changes as we all change and grow and to find a rhythm that works for us and not try to follow one that works for someone else.

One of the things about homeschooling is, well, you are home. Which is great, except it means your house gets a lot more use each day than when you are at work and the kids are at school. In addition, one of my goals for my kids is that they will learn to care for a home (and cook and learn to handle their finances) before they leave our home. So, I figured out early on that daily chores were necessary.

First, the morning five. The kids get up, play a bit usually, but they need to complete their morning 5 by the time I'm done with breakfast. Their morning 5 includes getting dressed, putting away their pajamas, eating breakfast, brushing their teeth, and combing their hair/putting on lotion/whatever thing they uniquely need. 

I then tell them the chore options of the day (usually it is 4 options, focusing on one level of the house each day or a general laundry/pick-up day) and we each choose an option and get the chore done. I have to say that while there are days where they take longer than needed, I've been impressed with how well the kids have done with chores. Andrew and Natalie tend to need very little direction anymore on the core chores which has been awesome. I also do a chore, which allows a little more thoroughness to each area every few weeks. As a plus, the house is clean. It's not picked up, but it is clean (note to self - work on routine pick-up time throughout the day...)

From there, we head to the couch and read. I love this part of the day. Each kid picks a book and I read aloud to them. Sometimes the books relate to the science or history we are studying, sometimes a book of an artist or biography of an interesting person, often times an enjoyable story book. The point, for me, is less about what it is specifically and more that we connect before we start table work and the choices are worthwhile reads. 

Grabbing some drinks, we head downstairs to our homeschool space. After making changes in our approach to math, I now start with Daniel on math and reading while Andrew and Natalie tackle phonics and handwriting on their own. If they finish before I do, they can read or draw until it's their turn. When Daniel is done with math and reading, I set him up with his handwriting and phonics work to do on his own before he plays quietly (hopefully!) or outside. I use this time to work with Andrew and Natalie on math (individually or together, depending on what we are doing that day) and writing.

At 11:00 it is snack time so we head upstairs for a Korean video on youtube and a snack before we return to the basement for whatever we haven't finished yet plus Korean, history or science, and piano practice for Andrew and Natalie.

We usually wrap up around 1:00 and the kids play while I make lunch. I would love to have them take over some of the meal duties, but we're aren't there yet (as in - I'm not organized enough for that yet!). Over lunch, we usually read a short devotion and check out the day's art from our daily art calendar from the Met. It has been a fun and easy way to ensure we are at least looking at and talking about art regularly.

In the winter, after lunch, the kids went out to play for a bit. But in the nicer weather, we have been finding that they want to be out later in the afternoon when the neighborhood kids are around. Either way, around 2/2:30, they head to their separate rooms for an hour of quiet time to read, listen to audio books, and play. I try to use this time to recharge for the rest of the day which means some days I read, sometimes I bake or cook, sometime I conquer the to-do list, and other days, I choose a project I want to work on. I also used this time to research something for homeschool or to get ideas about meals or the like.

After quiet time and snack time, the kids would head outside to play, we would go to the library, run errands, or take the kids to an activity: Daniel and Natalie enjoyed a couple of months of soccer skill classes and Andrew loved his weekly art class. When Paul got home around 6, we would have dinner, kids did their after-dinner chores, and then we started the bedtime routine. Sometime during the year we switched from having our Bible reading time at the breakfast table as a family to individually before bed. This has helped tremendously because for some reason, meal time is silly time around here and reading the Bible at meal time was turning into a battle. Now, reading the Bible is snuggle with mom or dad time and we have a chance to talk about the stories one on one with the kids which is great too.

So there you have it - what we did, the overview.

homeschooling - the "what we did" post

Well, we did it - we completed our first year homeschooling all three kids.

The last day of school deserves ice cream for all!

Whew!

I continue to be grateful for this opportunity and overall enjoyed homeschooling this year but I'm not going to lie - it has been hard. I keep reminding myself it was just my first year (with all three) and not give myself too much grief when I felt I was falling short. I have definitely learned a lot this year - about myself, about my kids, and about us as a family. I can unequivocally say that I know my kids in a different way now and in many ways, better. I am learning how they learn, what motivates them (and what doesn't), what things excite them to learn and what they tend to drag their feet on. I am also learning what I need, what excites me to learn with the kids, and what drains me. 

All to say, I know more now than I did a year ago :)

So - here's our year. I thought it would be short but apparently I was ready to journal it a bit for myself...anyway, here it goes. (PS - I have a bunch of pictures, but I also have a new computer and while I know the pictures are on the computer, finding them to put them in this post was not working the way it would have on my old computer, so you now know that one of the things on my summer to-do list is "figure out iPhoto on the new computer.")  

Last summer was literature unit study style a la Five in a Row. There was much to love about this, especially starting our day reading books together. Our favorite books were The Salamander Room and The Story of Ping, but any of the books with their curriculum are wonderful and worth reading, regardless of using FIAR.

In the fall, I felt that we needed something else. I love many aspects of FIAR and we actually ended our year with a FIAR unit for something different (The Great Gray Bridge and the Little Red Lighthouse - great book!), but the jumping around for history and science was driving me nuts. We needed a bit more time and chronology for these two subjects. In addition, some aspects of FIAR worked great for Andrew but less so for Natalie and Daniel. Add to that, I finally read The Well-Trained Mind and decided to make some changes. 

In came Story of the World Volume I for history which has been a huge hit for all of us. I bought the audio version of it and as we listen to Jim Weiss (one of the best narrators out there) tell us all about history, the kids enjoy the corresponding color pages (I was skeptical, but it turns out coloring really does help they pay attention), complete the narration questions, and during the week we read other books related to what we are learning in history. It's fun, it is chronological, and it is world history, not just western civilization. We are a little more than half way through Vol I and will pick this back up in the fall.

We also tried Apologia Science - Flying Creatures. I really like so much about this curriculum, but it turned out to include too much detail for my young scientists. While there are experiments and hands-on activities included in the curriculum, they weren't happening (my fault, not the curriculum). And my kids really wanted experiments to happen.

Paul and I want science to be mainly interest driven at this age, and the cries of "we want experiments!" and "what about our bodies - how do they work?" lead to shelving Apologia for now and instead learning about the human body for a couple of months. This was a huge hit! Each week we focused on one system or part of the body. One day we read about the system or part (heart, brain, etc.) and then a second day that week, we did some hands-on activity or experiment relating to that system. We included narration, some note booking about the experiments, and just really enjoyed the whole thing. Win-win for us! 

After the human body, we started on plants but that lasted...a week. A Magic School Bus book on plants and a couple experiments, and we were ready to move onto...the African Savanna. The cries of "I just want to learn more about cheetahs!" were heard and we have been enjoying learning about the savanna using videos, One Small Square book (fabulous book), and each child created a lap book about an animal of their choosing. We finished it off with a trip to the zoo to find all the animals from the savanna right here in town.

Another win for us was Writing with Ease. I have been a strong believer in the power and effectiveness of copy work, narration, and dictation but getting it all together to get it done regularly was proving to be a struggle. The workbook-style WWE was perfect. It was getting done, the kids enjoyed the different stories (which lead to many audio book selections throughout the year), and I liked the little additions of grammar too. We will continue with this next year too.

In other language arts, all three kids used Explode the Code phonics and this continues to work pretty well for us. It also allows the kids to do work independently, which I'm finding valuable. All the kids really improved their reading - Daniel IS reading - and that has been fun. We need to work on more free reading but that is one of my summer goals. Handwriting improved too - Natalie and Andrew are learning cursive. They love being able to create loops like mommy :)

Korean - yeah, we did it, though we could do it better. But, we had Korean school each Saturday, we worked on the homework during the week, we watched KWOW on youtube or Pororo or lately, Octonauts (believing that hearing Korean each day is important - or at least fun), and the big accomplishment is that we can all sing the Korean alphabet song. So there is that. I'm hoping to spend some time this summer figuring out a plan for Korean at home for next year so that it is ready to go during the year. I was finding it hard to plan as I went and it therefore didn't get done as well as I would have liked.

One of the biggest changes we made, though, was with math. I started the year convinced I needed a workbook-based program because I had three kids at three different levels and they needed to be able to work on math by themselves, once I got them started. I also thought they needed to do math at the same time because that was a suggestion made by another homeschool blogger. We had been using Horizons Math with Andrew and decided to try it for everyone.

It wasn't a flop - in fact for the first half of the year it worked great for us - but by the time January rolled around I was realizing that we were all dreading math. I kept thinking "isn't there more to math than worksheets?" So, I started reading more about math (how we learn it, when to learn it, how to learn it), researched some other math programs, tried Cusinaire rods with Horizons, ditched everything for a couple weeks and just read math books (Life of Fred and a few other picture books with math concepts) and finally decided to just try what I had thought I wouldn't try: two math programs. Together. I bought Miquon Math and Rod and Staff Arithmetic - two different programs but they each have something I value: simplicity, affordability, and flexibility, while still having a rhythm and sequence to them.

The biggest change, though, wasn't the curriculum, but our decision to focus more on what each kid needed to learn and know than on what the next page in the curriculum was telling us. What this has looked like for us is that somedays we learned a concept with Miquon, we spent some time playing around with it and seeing it, and other days we pulled out the workbooks and worked out some problems. Andrew and I focused on money for a couple of weeks, solidifying things with a lap book, problems in Rod and Staff, and with picture books (there are some great books on money which were lots of fun to read together). The last few weeks have been about math facts and understanding how addition and subtraction work together. Andrew loves lap books, and Natalie wanted in on the fun, so we made an addition and then a subtraction lap book to have the facts right there for reference and see patterns in the equation, we reinforced math facts with wrap-ups and pages in Rod and Staff, and worked through the inter-relationship of addition and subtraction with triangle flash cards.

So far, it's been working pretty well. The kids understand math better and are retaining more of it. But even more than that, they are enjoying it again. Not every day, but overall, they are less anxious to be done with math for the day and more interested in learning more and playing around with what we are learning. I love that! 

There are some things that didn't get into the mix this year that I really wanted to include - art and composer study was one of them. Nature study, strangely, too. But these are fun, enjoyable things that I am hoping to include a bit this summer. I'm not sure how that will play out yet in a fun, laid back way, but I have a bunch of ideas.

Whew. Long post! There is more I want to get down, but I think that will be in part 2 - the "how we did it" post.

what I have forgotten about myself

Life as a Christian, adoptive, homeschooling mom and wife demands a lot of me, each and every day.

In many ways, I'm okay with that - I'm so very grateful for this life I am living. But sometimes, I forget about who I am, at my core. I'm relearning who I am, in many ways.

I am a child of God. First and foremost. Even the days I don't act like it. But I am trying, everyday, to strengthen that relationship. I have always loved going to church and as the more I read the Bible, the more I enjoy it. But prayer has always been the hardest part for me. I don't really know why, but I am learning, slowly, to pray always, pray often, and to just pray.

I am a lover of books. I love reading. I read for knowledge, for understanding, for escape. Sometimes I am focused too much on the first two and not enough on the escape part and then I find myself up until midnight because oh, how I needed to open a book and got lost for awhile.

I love hiking. Not the "let's hike all day and carry our stuff on our backs and keep hiking the next day" kind of hiking, but the "Thank you Lord for strong legs and a working heart that allow me to hike up this beautiful mountain you created. You restore my soul through all you created." The sound of the birds, the crunch of the twigs or snow, the tall trees, the vistas - they are balm for my soul. Doing it with my family is icing on the cake (when they are not complaining about it!)

Using my hands to create makes me happy. For me, that is scrapbooking, making a garland from paper hearts and twine, cooking, cross-stitching, or hopefully as I get better at it - knitting. I have tried making photo books online and it drives me insane. Insane. Then I realized that the satisfaction, for me, is creating the book with my two hands. It sometimes costs more and takes longer but the process of creating that book is so much more satisfying.

I need community. I still can't decide if I am an introvert with extrovert tendencies or an extrovert with introvert tendencies but I know this - I need my alone time (see above about books!) and I need time with friends. During my first year of being home full time with my kids, first I hunkered down to figure out this whole SAHM thing. Then, I realized I was spending a lot of time with littles and needed other adults! I connected with a few other moms regularly for playdates and that made being a SAHM amazing (I'm talking about you Michelle and Amy). I am finding that the same thing holds true now in my first year homeschooling 3 kids - my first few months were hunkered down figuring some things out but now, I need community (my kids do too). A couple sledding dates with snacks and hot cocoa, play time for the kids and chat time for the moms is making all the difference. A regular bible study with 4 other amazing women is a highlight too.

Time with my husband, as his wife and not as the mother of his children, is vital. Our pastor often mentions weekly date nights as important to keeping a marriage strong. During my professional career, Paul and I worked in the same office or at different offices just 2 blocks apart. We got into the habit of a weekly coffee date over lunch time where we could talk, dream, and relax for an hour (and a couple times, discuss referrals! and travel plans!!). I don't miss much about my professional life, but I really miss our weekly coffee dates. This isn't part of our schedule right now, but it needs to be. Weekly, regularly, and just us.

I keep learning new things about myself, but sometimes, remembering who I am is the best lesson. And for Jessica and Erica (my college roommates), this hasn't changed either - I still love to talk before I fall asleep :)