Category Archives: Home Schooling

Kaia Camp Days 4 & 5

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We started Kaia Camp Day 4 off with a little exercise!  We headed to the Dojang when Kaia, Toby, and I take Tae Kwon Do and did a little hooping.  It’s the first time I’ve hooped since last November when I was 32 weeks pregnant.  I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to dance/hoop like I use to, but I fell right back into it and it felt great!

We went from there straight to the local library where the Balloon Fairy was teacing everyone how to make balloon hats.

Then it was back home to make some flower fireworks.  We got the idea from 5OrangePotatoes (I love that blog:-)  We went outside and picked all the white flowers we could find and put them in wine glasses of water with food coloring in them.  We had Queen Anne’s Lace, Yarrow, Daisies, and Onion scapes.  It took a full day before we really noticed any changes, but they came out pretty.  The darker colors worked much better for us. (oh, and that’s a pink cosmos in there!  Not a white daisy turned pink:-)

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After a little lunch break, we made an “I Spy” jar (This idea from The Magic Onions, another blog I love).  Kaia gathered lots of little trinkets and put them in a glass jar.  Then she filled the jar with sand, and shook it up. (rice probably would have worked better, ’cause the sand ended up making the jar a little cloudy).  I would say “I spy, with my little eye, something with a hole in it” and she would have to turn it around until she found the shell with a hole in it.  It’s a fun game… maybe we’ll make another one with rice to keep in the car for road trips.

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Leif enjoyed the jar too, but he was really only interested in the effects of cold on the gums :-)

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For the last day of Kaia Camp, we took it pretty easy.  We started out with a little Tae Kwon Do.  (Kaia took the adult class with me and did great!!  I’m so proud of her… she’s really doing amazing!  And the whole belt system works great for her because it gives her something to strive for and she feels like she’s really accomplished something when she gets a new belt)

After that, we had a lot of reading time, knitting time, garden time, and just relaxing fun!

By the end of the week, everyone was tuckered out!

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Story Dice

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I saw the fantastic idea of story dice here and had to make some! So, I ordered a bunch of blocks and Kaia and I spent a few days last week painting. She made a winter set and a spring set, and I made 4 sets of 4 blocks (extra sets for Kaia’s school K-2 class rooms). It was so fun thinking of things to put on them. We did a boy, girl, turtle, dragon, rabbit, house, beach ball, candle, egg, tree, car, bike, book, cupcake, flowers, boat, hat, balloons, ring, cup of tea, rain, butterfly, and a question mark (to make up your own). You can play many different ways, but the way we use them is to throw them out and create a story with the pictures that are on top. One person will start with a picture and then the next person adds on to the story with the next picture. It’s a really fun way to encourage creativity and imagination.

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Getting an allowance

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Now that Kaia is 5, we’ve decided to start giving her an allowance to teach her about money. We tossed around lots of ideas of how it would work, but then we ran across this article. So, Kaia now has 4 jars and each week gets $2 to put into each jar. “Spending” is for immediate satisfaction… to spend on what she wants. “Savings” is when she wants to save up for big purchases (she can take her ‘spending’ money and put into her ‘savings’ jar if she doesn’t want to spend it that week. “Donation” is for giving to her favorite causes… maybe 2-4 times a year we will empty this jar out and give the money to whatever cause she wants. “Investment” is a more long term thing so she can learn about putting money away for the future when she gets older.
She already had a piggy bank where she would put money that she got for gifts and stuff. So she decided to break the piggy bank and buy a doll with that money. The rest of the money will be split between the jars.
Here is her new doll (it’s a porcelain doll she got for $10 from our local fabric store!) and her money jars.

Day of Adventure

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Kaia and I and two of our friends met a bunch of other homeschoolers on a goat farm tour today.  We drove ~1 hour to the farm and planned on having the afternoon to play.  But, soon after getting there I started feeling light headed and had to sit down.  I broke into a cold sweat and the world around me started getting dark.  Some of the mamas, and the farm owner helped me inside to the couch and got me some cold rags.  I laid down, drank water, munched on some crackers and fruit and started feeling better.  So, after ~15 minutes I got back up to join the grew.  I hadn’t walked too far when it started again.  I was having trouble walking in a straight line.  So I went to lay down in their small shop store and the farm owner (who also happens to be an ICU nurse) took my BP (which was fine) and offered me some gateraide and ice cold cloths.  I felt totally fine when I was laying down… I’m not pregnant, I don’t have a virus, it wasn’t heat exhaustion, it wasn’t my blood sugar… the only thing I can think is that it was vertigo.  I never had any issues with vertigo until a month ago when I was at my Maya Abdominal Massage class and I started getting dizzy when I laid down.  Supposedly, there are particles moving around in my inner ear and they cause dizziness with a change of posture.  So, I wonder if with all the hills we went over and all the turning my head and neck to deal with the girls in the back of the car that maybe some of the particles moved and made the vertigo worse.  Either way, the girls had a blast milking the mama goats and feeding the babies, and my friend was nice enough to take pictures for me.  On the way back we ran into a tremendous rain/hail storm that was amazing.

here are some pics:

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K’s experiment

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We did a little experiment today and styrofoam “peanuts” vs. starch “peanuts”. I have to say, I was very proud of myself for thinking this one up! We put them both in water and watched the starch ones dissolve. Then K and I talked about how the starch ones were easier for mama earth to turn back into dirt and that the styrofoam ones took a really long time and kind-of give mama earth a belly ache. It was fun! It must have been peanut starch, ’cause they smelled like peanut butter when they dissolved

mama’s play time!

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Well, I just dropped K off at her first day of play school! I am still struggling with the “I can do everything and still get a nice dinner on the table” mama attitude, and have realized that in order to keep (or get back) my sanity, I need a break! So, I found this great place just down the street (literally 5 houses down) that has a Tuesday/Thursday play school from 8-11:30!! So, K gets some time to play with friends and learn more than just my 5 song repertoire, and I get time to work on Full Circle Herbs. I am still planning on home schooling, but I think this will be very good for both of us.

So, I am hoping to use some of this free time to start doing an “Herb of the Week” write up. I figure it will be a good way to refresh myself! I will post it on this site.

What else… Oh, we have a contract on the house in Chapel Hill!!! We never did have to put it on the market! And we should close by the end of this month!! So, we went to Chapel Hill again this weekend and did all the final touch ups and trash removal. We were also able to pack up the bees and bring them to Asheville. (At night, when they have gone into their hives, you put a piece of screen over the entrance and strap the hives together so nothing moves. Then put them on the truck and away you go) They are hanging out on my brother-in-laws property where he has a little more space than we do. I hope to get over there at least every other week to do a mite count. That is about all I do now for the bees. Toby does everything else. I am kind of freaked out about getting stung again. After the last sting (which I think was a yellow jacket, but still), my leg swelled up so big you could bounce a dime off of it. And it took a few weeks to resolve. SO, I figure, I should probably stay away from the bees just in case the stings keep getting worse.

K’s first herb books

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I just got these fantastic herb books for K! I know she is barely 2, but I couldn’t pass them by. I’m hoping to home school, so these can be used as part of her science education. They are “A Kid’s Herb Book” by Lesley Tierra and “Walking the World in Wonder – A Children’s Herbal” by Ellen Evert Hopman, and they are both fabulous! Lesley Tierra and her husband are both amazing herbalists and writters. This book has great projects, songs, crafts, education, recipes, and more about herbs!! I can’t wait to use it! The other book by Hopman is more simple, but a great suppliment to the first since it has big pictures and also a short description of the Wheel of the Year and corrisponding festivals.

Yay me!!