kirstencan

Sometimes

Sometimes when you homeschool, you can't find exactly what you'd like to use for history that day.  Like a little printable plague book.  Or a coloring page of an illuminated manuscript.

So during taekwondo, you make your own. 

Using this as inspiration (the boys liked this book).  Wondering why you're going to this much trouble, as your fine-motor delayed boy will just color the whole thing one color.

Sometimes when you homeschool, you are surprised, and he rocks it.

Yeah, just a coloring page, but he was SO careful with this one, and I was way impressed by the number of colors he used!

Yay for surprises!

Basketball

We are nearing the end of my second season coaching the young women's basketball team at church.

It's been kinda awesome.  But not in the way I expected.

Not that I was dreading it or anything, I love basketball, and coaching is so much more fun than coaching volleyball, which I do in the fall.

I guess I wasn't prepared to learn so much? 

I don't know.

First off, I didn't have to take the kiddos to practice with me this year.  Last year, that was HARD.  This year it was easier to run better practices.  I even made them run a suicide (once) just so if I ever run into my high school coach, Ms. Lawson, I could tell her I did.  Oh, how we hated the suicide.

Thomas has LOVED coming to games.  He's never done that before.  I couldn't coach and keep track of him at the same time.  But this year it turned out that I had to take him to the first game.  We got there early, during the game before us.  He was really into watching it at first, but HATED the buzzer.  Hated in such a way that only sensory-sensitive kiddos can.  He was shaking and wouldn't uncover his ears.

Darn it.  I called Aaron to tell him to swing by ASAP (after picking up the girl from dance - logistics lately has been crazy) to pick him up, making mental backup plans if he wasn't here soon enough (so-and-so can take him to walk the halls).

BUT, Thomas surprised me.  As soon as my girls started showing up, he did a 180.  He greeted them all, and told them to put on their uniform, showing them where the uniform bag was.  He was so excited for them.  When we met with the other team to do the pre-game theme and prayer, he tried to say the theme, too. He sat with the team and cheered "Go Mermaids!!!  Go go go!" Then he sat with our neighbor who runs the officials' table.  He brought his beloved puppy Slush and showed everyone.

When Aaron came to get him... he didn't want to leave!  I was so proud of him.  He overcame his sensory stuff because he was motivated to be with the people he likes.  That's kinda awesome.

Each game, he insisted on going.  The second game he started asking for his own uniform.  He volunteered to give the theme many times (he wasn't taken up on that, but said it with everyone as best he could).  He cheered.  The girls loved him and called him their mascot.  When we huddled, he huddled.  He gave them excellent advice like 'Don't get hurt!' and 'We need to win the game!' that they thought was awesome.  Once he did a funky dance for everyone in the huddle and made them laugh. He asked me several times 'When do I get to go in?'.  The girls took the bench farther from the buzzer and closer to the official's table every game - for him - even though they prefer the other bench.

One game he had a hard time.  He didn't want to go home, but wouldn't stay by me.  Luckily, I knew there were enough people from the neighborhood there who would keep an eye on him.  It takes a village, right?  At one time out, he ran off into the hall, and a couple of my girls who were on the bench just called out 'Got him!' and went to bring him back.  Up until that time I had been thinking how good this was for him, to socialize and all, but then I realized it was also good for the girls.  And how much more did I love those girls when they loved my son?  I now have a new perspective on this scripture.

The girls lost a game.  "Why?  Why did the white team win?"  He was so sad.  When I told this to the girls, they were more motivated to win the next game.

Before the last stake game, he wanted to warm up with the girls.  He doesn't really have the coordination yet.  He has trouble throwing and catching, and wanted to dribble, but couldn't figure it out.  I think we'll be working on this a lot come summer.  But he was glad to get out on the court with the team.

We lost that game.  He cried.  The girls were so concerned for him.  We got to tell him how we still get to go to the tournament.  Now he's excited every Thursday in case it's game day.  And he tells everyone how 'we' are going to a tournament. 

I also wasn't expecting this to be my last season coaching, as I have now been called to be in the Primary presidency (over teaching the children).  I still get to coach them at the regional tournament, but then I'm done.  So I made sure to make the girls cute valentines:

Cookies (that look green, ironically) that said 'Go blue' and 'U R Awesome' packaged in cello bags.

Love that boy.  Love those girls!  What a great time I've had, and how much I have learned! 

Swans

Last year, I helped with publicity for the production of Coppelia that my daughter was in.  Someone else took the photo and I edited it and designed the poster.  This year, they're putting on Swan Lake and I volunteered to take the photo as well as design it.

I was a little nervous about it - especially about the lighting. I bought an external flash and diffuser, so it was really my first time using anything more than the pop-up flash on my camera. We also had some natural light from windows and mirrors as well.

I was pretty much silently chanting 'Don't screw up, don't screw up' the whole time, but I am pretty happy with how they turned out:

We just had fun and tried a lot of different poses.  Our 'Odette' was very easy to work with and so gorgeous that these HAD to turn out, right?   Still, I let out a deep breath when I uploaded them and saw that I didn't completely screw up.  We have several workable images.  And yeah, I blew out the whites in a couple, but for a poster that really works out okay.

I think we'll be going with the first image for the poster, but I might work another one or two into the program.

It made me really want to dress up MY girl and take a nice ballet portrait of HER!

a Juliette

When Thomas started cub scouts, I was impressed by some of the activities in his books and thought that Princess was getting gypped.  Plus, we want her to learn a lot of the 'scout-y' stuff, too.  I was going to have her just do the cub scout stuff for fun, and then Aaron thought that maybe we should have her do the Boy Scout stuff instead of cub scout since she's just about old enough.

And then he said, "Or, we could get her a Girl Scout book instead."

Duh.

Cuz she's a girl.

Duh!

So, I emailed my friend (and Girl Scout Leader extraordinaire), Lori, and asked where I could get a book for her to work on on her own just for fun.  And guess what?  Lori told me we should enroll her as a Juliette.  What's a Juliette, you ask?  It's like Girl Scout independent study.  Except you're REALLY a Girl Scout.  Patches and everything.

Awesome.

Had I known about this earlier, we totally would have started doing this years ago.

It might seem a bit odd to have a homeschooler doing an independent study girl scout thing, but there aren't many troops nearby that are accepting new girls.  And they're not close enough anyway.  And by close enough, I mean in the neighborhood so she could walk there herself, since I spend enough time driving these kiddos around.

Plus, it would probably conflict with dance (3-4 times a week now!), and she doesn't want to stop dancing.

She's super self-motivated, though, and used to doing independent projects, so this is right up her alley.

Also, apparently her arms have grown at least 2 inches since last winter when I bought her that shirt...

Anyhoo, we headed to a Girl Scout shop (who knew?) and the people there got us hooked up with what we needed.  Not expensive either.  We picked up a handful of patches that she wanted to work on since we were there, and she's started working on three of them already (I keep them until she's earned them).

We also signed her up for her first GS outing - a Women in Engineering workshop at the university which sounds awesome.

So, yeah, another THING, but I think this will be a good thing.

Girl Scout in the house!

The Plague

I made a little printable book about the Plague for the boys to do for history.  Gotta Love Monkey's illustrations.

He was pretty much grossed out by the whole discussion and doesn't want to talk about the plague anymore. ;)

We read that about 1/3 of all the people in Europe died from the plague.  So I got out 9 Lego minifig's to illustrate that point.

The boys were mesmorized, since I was using Lego guys, but didn't think that three was that many.  So we counted the people on our street and figured out that about 15 people from our street would have died from the Plague.  Whoa!

But the whole time I kept thinking 'Bring out your dead!'

History is fun.

Gifts from my mom

This year I didn't make a single handmade gift for Christmas.  Not one wait, I made melty bead stuff.  Still...   You do what you can do, and goodness knows that 2010 was just not my year.

My mom, however ROCKED the handmade gift department.  She made me some new crocheted necklaces, which I LOVE.

She made each of my kiddos a book sling.  Super cool, since with bunk and loft beds, bedside tables aren't really an option.  And since my mom changes my kids' sheets when she comes up (I know, she rocks), I think she was frustrated by finding piles of books in their beds.  All. The. Time.

Book slings.  Genius.

Hmm, the boys need to clean under their beds...

Here's Monkey's.  Super cute animials including monkeys on his favorite color - green.

BTW, this is how you transition a 5yo from a Monkey room to a space room.  You make a monkey bunk.  He has monkey sheets and pillowcases, monkey toys, his window bunting and monkey pictures were all put up around his bed.

 
Here's Thomas' made of train fabric.  The pink papers are 'posters' of elephants that Monkey made for him and taped up.  Sweet.

And the girl's.  If we ever get her shelves up, I'll show you the rest of her room.  I LOVE it.

She found the idea from an online tutorial - which one, Mom?

Mom's best handmade gift, however, was a Jayne hat for Aaron.

That's right.  A Jayne hat.*

Not only did she start the project several times because she wasn't happy with the colors, and use the softest most awesome wool, she packed it in a cardboard package box with straw packing material and THE NOTE.  She totally went over the top with this gift and it was all her idea. Aaron loved it.  And I stole the hat once to shovel and it's pretty awesome.

Thanks for modeling, Monk!

And a HUGE thanks to my mom!  Great ideas, thanks so much!

*The Jayne hat is from an episode of Firefly.  Watch it.