Homeschooling & Field Trips

I have always been the type of mom to volunteer in 

my kids classes (when they were in public school).

I was "room mom" for both of R's years of PS.

I really enjoyed it and liked staying "in the know" 

with what was going on in the classroom.

I loved being a part of all of it.

However, when you have 3 little ones

to watch after, 

field trips are hard.

My mom accompanied my oldest (R) on 

his class trip to the NC Zoo last year (1st grade).

So when we moved out here and started homeschooling,

I was looking forward to taking field trips.

So much so that I volunteered to help coordinate them.

I got a great start (sort of), 

but life happened and I dropped the ball.

So another wonderful mom in our group

organized a trip to a local pizzeria this morning.

The kids in their "aprons".

T refused to wear his.

T punching down his dough.

I only had to stop him from eating it once.

J shaping his dough.

A working hers.

R paying attention to the sports 

highlights on TV trying to figure out

who won the Spurs game.

(they lost)

Loading them up with sauce and cheese.

R attempted to make his shaped like a pumpkin

like the one we got on Halloween

The tour...

the question was

"Who here likes salad?"

look at all those hands!!

This place has a huge mixer 

where they make their own dressing.

The walk-in fridge & freezer...

These crazy kids liked it so much - 

they went back in for a second time!

J picking up his baby brother so he can see...

Crazy man R warming up by the fire

(he had to after that chilling experience)

The wood burning oven.

And the results:

T blowing his off after I told him it was hot.

There are no words for this one...

Here is our crew.

We had a great turn out!

Then ironically,

I received a link in my inbox today

that had a couple of cute ideas

for preparing for a visit to the Post Office!!

See here

Super cute and a great motivator.

So with any luck, we will be visiting the post office 

sometime this summer.

I am planning on creating a calendar and "preset" field trips
for our homeschool group.

They will occur on the same day (ex: third Tuesday of the month)

and there will be a list of where we are planning to go each month.

We will see how it goes.

This is one of the many things I am doing to try to get 

and STAY

more organized

in the house and our homeschooling.

I have a lot of ideas!!

So stay tuned to see what "other" changes

are coming to this house!!

I am EXCITED!!!

Two-Fer...

Since I am so behind...

I figured I would give you a 

2 for 1 today!  

Aren't you excited?!?!

So we had been here a few days and I had decided that I was going to

keep the kids out of school for a few weeks

and do some fun stuff.

We are used to a year round school schedule

and the kids were due for a break in a few weeks.

So I figured we could do our break now...

and go and visit the zoo

and the children's museum 

during the non-peak season

(while everyone else was in school)

BUT
was constantly threatening the kids

when they got unruly 

that I was going to send them back to school 

the next day!

Then we went down to the neighborhood school

to get the required information

to sign them up.

While there,

I didn't get this 

warm fuzzy -
"I want to send my kids to school here"

feeling...

I got a ton of pressure from the front office staff

about why I needed to enroll my kids THAT DAY

and get them to school the next day.  STAT!

And just in time for them to teach

my 5 yo and 7 yo

how to

"Say No to Drugs"!

Um, excuse me, what??

My kids have NO IDEA about "drugs"

and personally I would like to keep it that way for a little bit longer.

They are my kids and last I checked my opinion 

is really the only one that matters

as to their schooling 

(well daddy's too).

So this along with LOTS of other 

little things that had presented themselves

previously:

like us considering homeschooling before R started school 2 years ago

Rico telling me he doesn't like school multiple times

he was bored at school

the list goes on...

SOOOO...
with all of these "things" presenting themselves to us

AND

the fact that we had just moved
and it was as good of an opportunity as any...

we have decided to take the leap into 

HOMESCHOOLING!!!

ACK!

We have only been at it for a little over a week,

but so far the kids seem to enjoy it

and they have told me so a few times.

We have visited the library twice for storytime for the babies.

We have become members of the local children's museum

which they ALL loved!

And it has science experiments every week!

 Bubble kids...

 A gave it a couple of tries...

 Then big brother had to help out a little...

The aquarium kept them entertained for about 30 seconds!

 Yes, my boys are milking a fake cow...

 Then there's the miniature grocery store...

the kids could have spent HOURS in here.

They had short shelves (seen in the background)

stocked with real (yet empty) items!

Miniature shopping carts,

and even working cash register computers!

It recognized the items as the kids scanned them...

they had a BLAST here - 

I have other pictures, but they were really blurry

(due to the pitiful camera on my phone).

Then we moved on to the science experiments...

First, we made

"Glow in the Dark Slime"

Then we played with

"Disappearing Ghost Balls"

(or something like that)

these clear balls disappeared in a cup of water

VERY NEAT!

Then there was 

"Ghost Bubbles"

Then T.C. got to enjoy the ball room!

Phew - I am tired just thinking about that day!!

We have had an extremely busy weekend too - 

I can't wait to tell you about that -

but won't bore you with a 

3-fer!!