Call me a Lame-O because I am. Twelve days of no blogging. My reason? I don't know. I guess you could say the homeschooling truck came and ran me over. For some reason this year seems more difficult, most likely because I have five official students now and it's a constant juggling act. Just as I sit down to read with Jason I hear someone in a sing-songy voice yell, "Mommy!! I need help with my math!"
So I've been spending the past two weeks trying to figure out the balancing act. It's slowly coming together. Legally I'm supposed to record our progress daily or weekly. To be honest this has not been my strong point over the past five years. Every year I vow to do a better job. This year was no exception. So, to keep with my vow I started a homeschooling blog. It's very boring, but it logs our activities of the day. It's helpful for me to remember that we actually spend time learning because there are moments when I feel like information goes in one ear and out the other. It took me awhile to get the blog set up the way I want it. I'm a Blogger traitor and I use Wordpress for it. Wordpress is a little more versatile. I can just "copy" a post and then change the differences for that day. Anyway, I will be adding to it little by little. It's at www.excellenteducation.wordpress.com. At least I say I will be adding to it. Statistics show that I will abandon the homeschooling blog in the coming weeks and return full-time to this one. We'll see how it goes this year....
Other news: We almost burned our kitchen down on Friday. I was so excited to do an art project with my kids that I found on Pinterest. It involved melting crayons over tea light candles and making a pointillism sort of piece of art. I was a little hesitant to do it with a three and four year old hanging out with us, but I decided to give it a try. Well, it turns out that three and four year olds have a natural fear of fire and weren't interested in doing much with the crayons and flame. They were content to simply color the traditional way. However, the eight and ten year olds were the curious ones. Our flames had a tendency to get extinguished if a drop of crayon wax fell onto the candle. So to enlarge their flames, Emily and Bradley added a few pieces of crayon wrapper. The flames were a manageable size so I allowed it. However, I don't know if Bradley added more pieces while I was working intensely on my project or what, but his piece of artwork caught on fire. It wasn't a big deal and the flame was small. I got up from my seat to assess the situation. I decided to show the kids a little lesson on how to extinguish a small flame by depriving it of oxygen. So I grabbed a cup off the kitchen counter and proceeded to turn it upside down to put over the small flame. Well, it didn't quite go how I expected it to, because there were a couple of drops of water in the cup. When the drops of water hit the flame......WHOOOOSH!!!....the flame shot up about two feet in the air with a bunch of smoke. We all screamed. I totally wasn't expecting that to happen. My plan to deprive the flame of oxygen totally backfired on me (pun intended.)
I thought I was dealing with a paper fire, but apparently this was classified as a grease fire because of the chemicals in the crayon. I don't know for sure, but water was not our friend in this situation. The flame got smaller, but in the meantime it spread to the newspapers that we were using to protect the kitchen table. As the kids ran screaming away, I mostly kept my calm and went to the the kitchen cabinet under my sink where I have a fire extinguisher attached to the inside of my kitchen cabinet door. I ripped it off the door and fumbled trying to pull the pin from it. Finally it came out and I aimed at the fire. Swoooosh! It was out in a matter of seconds. Disappointed that I now had to purchase a new extinguisher and that my piece of art was ruined, I was happy to have the situation under control. I also decided that I will purchase two new extinguishers and put one in the laundry room upstairs. When I said that, Bradley affirmed that it was a good decision. He said that dryers can start on fire if you dry something with grease on it, and it can possibly cause an explosion. I asked him if he read that in a book and he said, "No, I read it on the label of the dryer door." That kid reads everything!
Bradley's reaction was one of awe and fear. He thought the fire extinguisher was pretty awesome, but he began crying because he was a little shook up about the incident. He said, "I am NEVER doing that again!" I feel confident that he will never play with matches. Hopefully Jason was old enough to be affected by the incident as well.
Thankfully there was no major damage. There are a couple of burn marks on the kitchen table, but they blend nicely with the natural dark knots in the wood. I smell a little smoked wood when I sit at the table. The smoke alarms are working in the house, which is good to know. Poor little George slept through the whole ordeal, smoke alarms and all. My ears were ringing the rest of the night.
I have no pictures of the incident. Unfortunately there's not much time to take pictures when there is a fire. I'm just very grateful that nobody was hurt. We pray for safety daily and I believe our prayer request was granted that day. There was definite potential for burns, especially when the flame shot up when the water hit it. There were a faces about a foot away from the big flame.
From now on I am going to stick to Pinterest inspiration that does not involve fire.
I leave you now with pictures. This shows the developmental difference between 15 months. Both Jason and Rachel made crowns:
Rachel was not quite able to embellish her crown like Jason did with his cutting. Now the question is: Will Rachel catch up in speech in the next 15 months? She's still a mumbler with a language of her own, but I do hear improvement. One of these days she'll be able to say all of her consonants, hopefully by January 2013. It will be good New Year Resolution for her.
Also: I'm not pregnant which doesn't surprise me because of my funky cycle last month. Just thought I'd update you.
So I've been spending the past two weeks trying to figure out the balancing act. It's slowly coming together. Legally I'm supposed to record our progress daily or weekly. To be honest this has not been my strong point over the past five years. Every year I vow to do a better job. This year was no exception. So, to keep with my vow I started a homeschooling blog. It's very boring, but it logs our activities of the day. It's helpful for me to remember that we actually spend time learning because there are moments when I feel like information goes in one ear and out the other. It took me awhile to get the blog set up the way I want it. I'm a Blogger traitor and I use Wordpress for it. Wordpress is a little more versatile. I can just "copy" a post and then change the differences for that day. Anyway, I will be adding to it little by little. It's at www.excellenteducation.wordpress.com. At least I say I will be adding to it. Statistics show that I will abandon the homeschooling blog in the coming weeks and return full-time to this one. We'll see how it goes this year....
Other news: We almost burned our kitchen down on Friday. I was so excited to do an art project with my kids that I found on Pinterest. It involved melting crayons over tea light candles and making a pointillism sort of piece of art. I was a little hesitant to do it with a three and four year old hanging out with us, but I decided to give it a try. Well, it turns out that three and four year olds have a natural fear of fire and weren't interested in doing much with the crayons and flame. They were content to simply color the traditional way. However, the eight and ten year olds were the curious ones. Our flames had a tendency to get extinguished if a drop of crayon wax fell onto the candle. So to enlarge their flames, Emily and Bradley added a few pieces of crayon wrapper. The flames were a manageable size so I allowed it. However, I don't know if Bradley added more pieces while I was working intensely on my project or what, but his piece of artwork caught on fire. It wasn't a big deal and the flame was small. I got up from my seat to assess the situation. I decided to show the kids a little lesson on how to extinguish a small flame by depriving it of oxygen. So I grabbed a cup off the kitchen counter and proceeded to turn it upside down to put over the small flame. Well, it didn't quite go how I expected it to, because there were a couple of drops of water in the cup. When the drops of water hit the flame......WHOOOOSH!!!....the flame shot up about two feet in the air with a bunch of smoke. We all screamed. I totally wasn't expecting that to happen. My plan to deprive the flame of oxygen totally backfired on me (pun intended.)
I thought I was dealing with a paper fire, but apparently this was classified as a grease fire because of the chemicals in the crayon. I don't know for sure, but water was not our friend in this situation. The flame got smaller, but in the meantime it spread to the newspapers that we were using to protect the kitchen table. As the kids ran screaming away, I mostly kept my calm and went to the the kitchen cabinet under my sink where I have a fire extinguisher attached to the inside of my kitchen cabinet door. I ripped it off the door and fumbled trying to pull the pin from it. Finally it came out and I aimed at the fire. Swoooosh! It was out in a matter of seconds. Disappointed that I now had to purchase a new extinguisher and that my piece of art was ruined, I was happy to have the situation under control. I also decided that I will purchase two new extinguishers and put one in the laundry room upstairs. When I said that, Bradley affirmed that it was a good decision. He said that dryers can start on fire if you dry something with grease on it, and it can possibly cause an explosion. I asked him if he read that in a book and he said, "No, I read it on the label of the dryer door." That kid reads everything!
Bradley's reaction was one of awe and fear. He thought the fire extinguisher was pretty awesome, but he began crying because he was a little shook up about the incident. He said, "I am NEVER doing that again!" I feel confident that he will never play with matches. Hopefully Jason was old enough to be affected by the incident as well.
Thankfully there was no major damage. There are a couple of burn marks on the kitchen table, but they blend nicely with the natural dark knots in the wood. I smell a little smoked wood when I sit at the table. The smoke alarms are working in the house, which is good to know. Poor little George slept through the whole ordeal, smoke alarms and all. My ears were ringing the rest of the night.
I have no pictures of the incident. Unfortunately there's not much time to take pictures when there is a fire. I'm just very grateful that nobody was hurt. We pray for safety daily and I believe our prayer request was granted that day. There was definite potential for burns, especially when the flame shot up when the water hit it. There were a faces about a foot away from the big flame.
From now on I am going to stick to Pinterest inspiration that does not involve fire.
I leave you now with pictures. This shows the developmental difference between 15 months. Both Jason and Rachel made crowns:
A 59 month old
A 44 month old
Also: I'm not pregnant which doesn't surprise me because of my funky cycle last month. Just thought I'd update you.
Oh man, I need to get a fire extinguisher, that is scary!! I like your homeschool blog, I'm glad you put links up. I'm sure i'll use some of that info in the future. PS gotta love Pinterest : )
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