Rant, Rant, Rant, Rant

So I was having this long talk with a friend of mine the other day, she lives a couple cities away from me, so when she visits the city here we always get together for coffee. She didn't have her kids with her this time, they were visiting grandparents..

One of the topics we got on was summer camps, we were discussing the fact that some of our kids are to old for summer camps and some are at the LIT stage, and some like our little guys who are just a year apart still have a few years before they are to old for summer camps. SO we got on the topic of camps and she was explaining that her middle child was supposed to be in a whole summer LIT camp, this was supposed to be a weekly day camp and in this camp they were supposed to learn how to be leaders and to interact and play with the younger kids and be good role models.

 Welllll she ended up after the first week taking her child out of the camp, Seems that what the camp pro-ported to be going on was not what was happening.. all the training these kids were supposed to be getting consisted of spending time playing board games with each other and other games and then basically being half hour babysitter for the younger kids. My friend said it was like the kids were just there and they did not have anything for them to do other than sit and play board games and get to interact with the younger kids for about half an hour a day unless they went on and outing and then they were told they were there to watch the little kids not play with them. Needless to say, my friend was pissed, she was paying for this camp, albeit not a lot but she still payed for it.

I totally do not blame my friend for being pissed.. when you are spending money for a program weather it be 1 dollar or 100 dollars you have spent, you expect that your kids are not just being baby sat or just babysitting littler kids, I mean unless that what the program is..

SO this is the thing, when you have a LIT program (leaders in Training)  you need to teach the kids how to be leaders, how to interact with the little kids in an appropriate way. You need to have some little work shops within your program, workshops on what makes a leader, or how about a basic first aid workshop, maybe if the kids are working with kindergarten kids they are taught how to interact with the little kids and how to handle the melt downs that can happen. Age appropriate interaction, or a basic craft workshop, some kids just dont know how to do crafts for younger children. Maybe the mornings spent learning and the whole afternoon doing..

I could go on and on forever about different workshops to help the LIT's become confident and reliable and responsible Leaders, In the city where I live, we have an amazing organisation that helps neighbourhood groups to train and expand the level of confidence the LIT's have in order to become wonderful Leaders. And in the city where I live there are also groups that have LIT programs that arent worth their weight in salt.. It is my opinion, and ONLY my opinion that when you are going to have camps, specifically an LIT camp that you are prepared to actually do the 'T' part in the LIT. There is no excuse for not being able to do this, no matter if you are a low income community or you are the richest community ever. There are so many ways to get donations for materials, or to have someone  donate their time and expertise to say teach some basic first aid training, or to teach about  the different stages in kids, or to teach the LITers how to get along with each other and to trust each other and their abilities, to nurture the unique and specif gifts that each LIT has..

I suppose my whole point to this is that when you are charged with training kids to be Leaders, you should actually be doing something to train them!.. just dont have them sitting there and playing games, or being glorified babysitters, take time to run a proper camp!.

My friend came away with a large list of things for LIT's to do, last I heard she was going to have a conversation with the organization about the content of the LIT camp her child was supposed to be in all summer, She is hoping a constructive and communicative conversation can open the door to getting any new LITers in the future actually trained.. I also gave my friend some contacts to our ORG here in my city so that she could pass them on, Im sure they can help or have someone come and watch what happened.

This is where I am grateful to live in my community and grateful for the ORG that supports our Neighbourhood Groups..

Fun Schooling!!!

So a few weeks ago I just happened to come across a series of homeschooling booked called FUN-SCHOOLING.. I though oh, lets take a look. IT was the best decision that I have ever made, these books are just wonderful!. My boys LOVE them, they are easy to use and repetitive enough for learning and they don't even mind, they take these books and go off by themselves to do pages..

 

This first book is called the Spelling Time Journal. As you can see it is a wonderful mix of pictures and words, but looks of coloring and imaginative stuff going on, this is one of the books my boys like.

 

 There are so many books from Thinking Tree Book's by Sarah Janisse Brown, so  much!.. I am excited to get the books for adults, especially the Tea Time Devotional Journal. As I collect more books I shall show them on my blog for you.



 

Fairy Gardening

We have started a Fairy Garden this year and so far we have a couple things in this garden; clay fairy house, hand made, fences, fake grass, wishing well and a tent with pillows. Here is a picture

It was really very easy to make the Tent and the wishing well, it takes no time at all and it is very fun and lovely to craft. Here is a list of materials needed for making these little treasures.

Materials:

Hot Glue and Hot glue gun
Twigs
Fake flowers
K-Cup (used and cleaned out)
Material, any kind
Pillow stuffing
Twine
Blue glass stones
Moss

So as you can see it is very easy and cheap, as all these things can be purchased at the Dollarama or Dollar Tree.

 

Unschooling Is What We Do

So this post was going to be about Unschooling and how it is done in our household.. HOWEVER I came across this article in one of my homeschooling groups on Facebook and it explained everything and I mean EVERYTHING that unschooling is and how its done and why its done and well here is the article so that you can take a boo at it...

http://zenhabits.net/unschool/

It is totally a great article, and it emphasizes the Trust you have to put into yourself and your kids to make this work, especially if like myself you were a traditionally schooled kid, or like many others that were traditionally schooled.

Bright Cheery Never Die Flowers

In April my parents have been married 48 years. My Maxi loves doing art and so we embarked on a week long Art project to  make his nana and papa a flower bouquet that would never die and always be cheery (his own words). so here is how he did that...


 First you gather your materials.. lots of cheery colours in paint and paint brushes and lots of egg carton cups cut apart. Ribbon, tape, and scissors as well.


 Second you paint, each egg carton cup a bright cheery  colour.. make sure you concentrate hard on this, just like Max in the picture :D

 Thirdly you need pipe cleaners, all different colours.


 Fourth, poke a hole in the bottom of all your egg carton cups, then thread your pipe cleaner through the bottom.



 Fifth, Once you are done threading all the pipe cleaners cut a toilet paper tube in half and tape all the flowers in the tube.  This may be tricky, but it does work.


 Sixth, cut a length of ribbon to put around your tube, fasten with tape and VALLA!!! you have Bright Cheery Never Die Flowers!


Max was so pleased with his flowers and nana and papa thought they were the best  Anniversary gift!.

 

Some days we do, Some days we dont!

 Some days we 'do school' and some days we don't, but everyday we are learning..

There has been so much happening in the last month or so, I've been so very busy with the kids and our adventures around the city. We have acquired a Museum pass, this is amazing, and the kids LOVE that we can go anytime we want to. We are excited to  see what May at the Museum will bring with the change in the family level.


 


These photos show what the theme of the Family levels at the museum were in April. The boys had such a great time spending a few hours at a time in the museum learning, reading the books and reading the exhibits, the interaction of the fossils and the tank of fish that can be found within out city rivers. On top of the exhibits there are also computers, the boys spent some time writing stories that can be left for others to read, every time we go back they write another small chapter.. Max is especially digging this as he knows that someone other than family will read his story, and he is doing really well with his reading and his writing.

Unschooling is not for everyone, I know this, but it is totally for us. The boys learn so much every day. Math, Science, Social Studies, Language, Spelling, and even some Mapping. and all just from spending a few hours a few times a month at the Museum here in our city.

 

Finally.....

  Getting the hang of this home schools tuff has been less than happy some days on my part.. the kids are fine, its just been trying to find a balance between what they need and what I think they need and when I dropped my part of that equation everything sort of fell into place. That's when we became more UNSCHOOLING.  By this I mean, we are mostly child led in this home, for learning related things..

  One thing I have started doing for my littlest boy is Notebook Lapbooks.  they are very easy to do and my boy loves them, he asks me to make them for him often and then when he completes a Notebook Lapbook he  will go back to it and back to it again and again and read through it.

  I've been asked recently by a few people how to make a Notebook Lapbook so I am going to give a quick tutorial here on my blog, its pretty easy, and its not very fancy at all.

  So first things are first gather your supplies!..  this means that you need to gather your work sheets, all of mine are free from Pinterest.. when my boy asks for a book, I ask him what he wants to learn about and we go to Pinterest, and print off lots of different worksheets to put in the book on that particular subject. Please see pic below of  Materials needed.. I buy the Hilroy 32 pg. Notebooks as they are the best size and they come in packs of 4 or 5 with all different colors. (please note the worksheets are not included in this picture.

 



  Now once you have everything ready... you can start cutting out your worksheets to make the book look more interesting!.. Here is what the front cover looks like. make sure you leave everything uncoloured as that is part of the fun for the kids, letting them color how they see fit. Our Newest notebook is the Life Cycle of a Plant

 

  Once you have the cover finished... you can start on the inside.. make sure your cutting around the edges of the worksheets before glueing in the notebook.. the next set of pictures will show you that how that was done.. Also some of the work sheets are cut and paste.. For these I just made a pocket and glued it on to store the little cut pieces that are to be attached by my boy.. he loves this and it makes for interesting stuff in the book.

  The last page that I have shown... is about what a Living Thing needs.. I putt his in here as I think this Notbook Lapbook could be spun off into another one that my son will love about Living and Non-Living things.. Their will be some pages left over, depending on what you want to do with your child, for us we will be doing some hands on experimenting with what the inside of seeds look like and then planting some seeds and watching them germinate and become plants, so those pages left over will be fore our observations and possibly measurements as my boy loves doing measurements.. as our hands on science progresses I will post all about it!..

  Thanks for having interest and I hope this helps.. and remember this is not the only way to make a Notebook Lapbook, there are lots of beautiful illustrations on Pinterest that you can look up..