I should have taken a picture because my driveway and street were filled with the most mini vans I have ever seen. The pizza delivery guy had no problem finding the house for the party!
This is the fourth cookie decorating party I have hosted, and we have grown in numbers from the original three families with six kids in attendance!
I have learned a few things along the way...
1) Expect some degree of crazy and be okay with it. This is especially true if there are going to be twenty kids under the age of 8 running loose in your home.
2) Keep the food simple. I ordered pizza, made coffee for the moms, juice boxes for kids and fresh fruit. Dessert was cookies that the kids would decorate and I had each family pay $3 per kid (moms ate free!).
3) Make the cookies ahead of time. The first couple of times I did this, I had the kids help roll out the dough and cut out the cookies, but we seemed to lose momentum when we had to pause to wait for the cookies to bake.
4) Limit the number of cookies. I used to make a somewhat unlimited number of cookies. This year I made enough for each kid to decorate two and had some leftovers. The leftover cookies are still on my counter.
5) Don't make a big effort with the activities. I had everyone bring Valentines to exchange and bring a box (or plastic grocery bag) to collect their items. The kids passed out their Valentines and then commenced playing in the basement until it was time to eat.
6) Be okay with the mess (see #1), it's probably going to be crazy and messy.
7) Accept help. My friends are so sweet and helped pick up the mess and even swept the floors before they left. My roomba took care of the rest.
8) It's okay to let your preschooler skip to school to stay home and enjoy the fun!
Our party was a success and I am so glad that we can get together like this a couple of times a year.
This year I changed up my cookie recipe and made chocolate sugar cookies and tried icing them with marshmallow cream (straight from the jar!) and also strawberry flavored icing. The chocolate cookies were a success! Here is a link to the recipe I used. I made three batches because my cookie cutters were big.
A successful school day for us includes starting each morning listening to The Same Page Podcast Core Memory Work. This is a three-to-five-minute episode that we listen to every day for a week. It introduces us to and helps us memorize a passage of scripture, a poem (or two), a passage from Shakespeare, and is leading us through the Presidents of the United States. It is my favorite way to start our day and sets the tone for everything else.
After the podcast, we read from the Bible or a devotional book and follow with prayer prompts from our prayer calendar or journal. Starting each day gets us all in the right frame of mind for learning.
After our time in the Word, we launch into our read alouds. We are in the middle of the books, The Wild Robot, and we are all loving it.
Jack has been reading The Secret Chicken Society aloud to me, and we are almost at the end. Other things were are reading aloud are Brave Red, Smart Frog which is a series of Fairy Tales, we are almost finished with The Playbook, a inspiring book of life lessons learned from sports, and Words That Built a Nation that introduces us to important documents like the Constitution and gives background on why these documents are important to our nation. It's a good overview of our country.
In the middle of the day, we typically break to go to the YMCA so I can work out and the kids can have some time with some of their friends. If the weather is nice (or not too bad) we will stay and play at the playground.
In the afternoon you will find us finishing up with Math (we are using Singapore Math 2) and also Language Arts (we use The Good and The Beautiful). Jack loves Math but it is more of a chore to get him to do Language Arts and it often ends up being our last thing of the day.
We have a stack of library books that we are working our way through. They range from fictional picture books to non-fiction books about nature and geography and history. They are always changing and we sometimes we focus on one topic that we are really interested in. We also listening to a handful of different podcasts that relate to Science, History, and Literature when we are riding in the car.
On Tuesday afternoons Jack goes to a robotics class at our local community center. He is really enjoying learning how to write basic code to program the Edison Robots they use. If the weather is nice, Isaac and I will run to play at a playground during Jack's class.
Right now Thursday nights have been our night for Jack's basketball league.
He has really been loving playing basketball every week and his team has been doing great hustling, listening to their coach, getting better and dribbling and shooting, and learning some basic plays.
One day this week, Jack got busy during one of this breaks. I thought he was riding his bike, so I was surprised when he came in and informed me he had moved a bunch of firewood that needed to be moved. He had tracked his time and did it all without telling me. I was really impressed by his initiative.
We try to play board games at least once a week. Sorry! was the pick this week. And it's never a surprise if I discover Jack has decided to take something apart so he can put it back together (like a kid's IKEA chair).
If the weather is nice (meaning not pouring down rain) we try to spend as much time as we can outsides. Sometimes this means the kids are exploring our back yard, digging in the dirt or creating their own games.
Sometimes I go with them to the park across the street. Jack is really improving with his mountain bike skills on the little trails in the woods at the park.
They also like adding to the fort they have been helping to build with the neighborhood kids.
They love the merry-go-round and swings, and sometimes we find something like a frisbee and practice throwing it.
This past Saturday I took the boys to a friends birthday party. They had a blast participating at a nerf war at a church gym. Complete with boxes that they could reconfigure to their hearts desire.
Our weeks seem to follow some version of this. It's been a cold and rainy winter, with no snow, but it really hasn't bothered us too much. As long as we can find some sunshine here and there, we are good to go. We haven't hit the February blues and our homeschool is ticking along like clockwork. I think that being flexible and open to changing things us makes us all happier in the day-to-day.
A Look Back at February: Week 21 (Jan. 28- Feb. 3)
Another week of still nursing a
cold for me, and another snow day (but no snow) for our community.
Even so, the kids enjoyed playing
outside in the sunshine, even if it was cold (not much keeps us inside).
Jack
is loving basketball each week and scored again during his game. The
team they played was a really good team and Jack's team managed to stay
with them the entire game. We were proud of all of them for hustling
through the entire game.
Following the snow day, we
had several warm days. We were able to wrap up last week with friends
and bikes at the Amnicola Riverpark playground. It turned out to be a
gorgeous day!
Saturday was gorgeous and we were able to be outside ALL DAY LONG.
Jack had a nerf war with neighborhood friends, built a fort in the woods
with neighborhood boys, set up hammocks at the park, AND got to ride
dirt bikes with a friend. It was a pretty sweet day.
On the school front, we are halfway through the books, The Wild Robot.
Which we are all enjoying. The kids particularly like my
rendition of a robot voice (and different voices for all the animals). We
finished listening to Peter Pan and watched the Disney version of the movie for our family movie night last week. Jack is working through reading the book The Secret Chicken Society aloud to me – a chapter every day. And while reading this little chapter book is great for his reading skills, he is also learning a ton about raising chickens.
Jack
has started learning how to multiply by 2s and 3s and he is loving
this. Math continues to be his favorite. His writing skills are
continuing to improve and those lessons take less time than they used
to. He still complains a lot, but we no longer have stand offs over it.
Jack
has been participating in a Robotics class each week after school on
Tuesdays. They are learning some basic programming skills with an Edison
Robot and he is really enjoying this extracurricular activity (though
he whines about having to go each week).
So that
wraps up the last couple of weeks of our homeschool. I'm finally feeling
like a human again and hope to get back to hiking and sharing on a
weekly basis. Thanks for reading along to see what our homeschool looks
like each week.
What Our Homeschool Looked Like in January: Week 18 (Jan. 7-13) Week 19 (Jan. 14-20) Week 20 (Jan. 21-27)
