A few years ago I bought a Smart Globe for Bonny Annie and Dirty Harry for Christmas. To be honest, they weren’t jumping out of their PJs that morning with excitement. But since then, it has been a fun (and educational!) addition to our home. We have used it. A lot.
Basically, at face value, the Smart Globe is just a globe. You don’t have to turn it on to use it.
We keep ours near our school area. This allows us to quickly reference the globe. We might be reading a story and come across the Canary Islands for instance. The kids can quickly get a visual for where they are in the world, and thus have a better understanding of our lesson that day.
The fun of the Smart Globe begins, however, when you turn it on. It comes with an attached electronic pen…
(…and yes, I know my Smart Globe needs to be dusted. Dont’ judge me.)
Your child uses the pen to point out places of interest on the globe…
…and they can also interact with this little keypad, to learn all sorts of things about a particular country or continent…
One of Dirty Harry’s favorite activities is to listen to the various national anthems. Unfortunately, China’s cracks him up for some reason. He will play it over and over laughing hysterically. I’ve had to ban him from listening to China’s national anthem. He wasn’t allowed to watch the last summer Olympics because of his weird sense of humor. Just kidding.
The Smart Globe also has a pull-out tray for US Geography. The tray also interacts with the pen.
Dirty Harry also likes the games. His favorite is a hunt-and-find timed game. The Smart Globe will name a state or country, depending on which mode you have set, and the child finds and touches it with the pen. They have a certain amount of time to find as many as they can. Here’s a little thirty second demo of that particular game…
Okay, so we need to work on Louisiana a little bit.
I like to know the time. I don’t like to be late for things. I don’t really like for other people to be late for things either, but when I’m late, it does funky things to my blood pressure and my palms start to sweat and I think my left eye might twitch a little. It’s just the way I am. I’m timely.
So, I’ve always worn a watch. Even to bed. I like to know what time it is if I wake up in the middle of the night.
I think I’ve worn a watch like this ever since my birthday, during my senior year of high school. My grandma bought me a really nice one that had little diamond chips on it, and I wore it for years.
When that one went out of style, some time towards the end of my college years, I just bought a cheap $20 or so model from the Wal-Mart jewelry department, and I wore it until the battery went dead. Then I went and picked out a new one for another $20 or so, and I continued in this pattern until just a year or so ago.
My battery on my current watch died, so I went to Target and browsed the cheap watches. Big D was with me, and he encouraged me to buy a nicer watch. I explained my watch-buying habits to him. He thought it was ridiculous. “Just buy a nicer watch and then pay $5 to get the battery replaced,” he says.
I didn’t wanna. I think I whined. But then Big D found the above Timex watch. It was on clearance. It was still a good deal more than my usual $20, but I had some birthday money left over, so I bought the watch.
I wore it for a little over a year, and then the battery died. I took it off and placed it on my dresser, and that’s where it has been for the past few months. I cannot for the life of me remember to replace the battery. And I also cannot justify buying a cheap watch since I own that one.
So I am now watchless. For the first several days I felt positively naked, which was an unpleasant feeling, especially if I happened to be in the grocery store or at a baseball game or just driving down the street. But I’ve now gotten over it. I’m actually learning to use my cell phone…if I can find it…as a time piece.
Why am I sharing this? I have absolutely no idea. It’s just what’s on my mind today, I guess. It was either this or the lyrics to “Every Rose Has a Thorn” because Bret Michaels has been on my mind a lot too, and that hasn’t happened since about 1987.
Maybe someday, I just might remember to get a new battery for my watch.
Some of my readers and I are cooking our way through Ree Drummond’s book, The Pioneer Woman Cooks. Feel free to join in with us at any time. The next cooking assignment is at the end of this post.
Pico and guac…oh my! These two foods make life all the more worth living. Yummy in the highest!
I have a little confession about these recipes though: Big D had made them once before. But I didn’t cheat and just ride on his experience. I bought what I needed. I chopped. I mixed. I ate. Oh, I ate.
Now, I need to tell you, guacamole is my favorite food on earth. So, I already knew going into this, that I would like it. I also already knew that if I didn’t love her recipe that I could tweak it and play with it until it was something I could enjoy.
First, I made the pico. I am not a huge fan of raw onions, so I didn’t follow her exact formula for equal amounts of onion, tomato, and cilantro. I used a whole small onion, and I chopped it pretty finely. The smaller the better for me. I also used a sweet onion, which to me, is less offensive as far as onions go. And then I had a lot more tomato in my ratios. And I loved it! Then I used three avocados and added a generous portion of the pico to it. I really thought I might add some garlic, because I use it in my old stand-by recipe, but it didn’t really need it. It was yummy just the way it was.
I made a simple version of nachos for dinner (pictured above). Just tortilla chips, melted cheese, taco-seasoned ground beef, pico, guac, and sour cream. It was soooooooo good. We’ve had it one other time since then, with chicken instead of the beef. Just as good.
Trust me….if you like this type of food, you will like these recipes. Go ahead and try them. You know you want to.
Did you make these condiments? How did it go for you? Let’s dish (pun intended) in the comment section!
For our next assignment, we’re back to the breakfast section. Alright…let’s get it over with. Let’s try the Cinnamon Rolls, pp. 36-39. I’ve been both dreading and looking forward to this recipe. Dreading because they look difficult and time-consuming and messy. Anticipating because I want one.
I’ve got a busy, busy, busy few weeks coming up, so I’m going to give you until Tuesday, May 18 to make these. So go ahead and start looking for your rolling pin.
(Oh, and these are on her website here, so you can make them even if you don’t have the book. No excuses. Make the cinnamon rolls.)
I always intend to blog five days a week, Monday through Friday. But it never happens. I usually squeak in three or four posts, but that’s about it. Fridays, in particular, have alluded me. Today, however, I have a few extra minutes, so I sat down at the computer but found myself stumped as to subject matter. So, I started browsing our vast on-line library of pictures…
On the rare occasion that I actually blog on a Friday, I usually like to post something for my “Flashback Friday” feature where I delve into my legwarmered, teal eyeshadowed, BonJovied past and write about something ridiculously old-school. I have something I could post about today that is extremely timely and interesting and bittersweet that would definitely count as a flashback, but I can’t post about it. And I can’t tell you why. I probably won’t be able to post about it for at least five years. Don’t ask…I can’t tell. Yet.
Soooooooooooooo…I’m going to post a little vignette about my three children eating breakfast. Yes, eating. Yes, breakfast. Because these are the photos that inspired me today as I browse Big D’s site.
Big D took this series of photos in February when we were visiting his parents. I don’t know why he took them, but I’m glad he did. Big D and I have very different photo-taking approaches. Usually, I use my point-and-shoot to try to record bits of our history. I take pictures during holidays. I take pictures at events. I take pictures so that we will remember.
Big D takes pictures of emotions. He captures feelings. He records personality. It is art. I love that we have both kinds of pictures of our family. Someday my kids can look back and remember what we did and where we went and what they achieved. But they’ll also be able to look at these photos and know who they were.
They are just eating cereal, for crying out loud. But one can look at these photos and know something about each of them. We don’t just know that we went to Ma and Pa’s house and ate their cereal. We know a little bit about them. We see a little of their souls. Some how, some way Big D clicked and captured a moment and captured their characters at the same time.
Yesterday I was searching through the fridge to see if any of the guacamole from the night before (which I’m blogging about on Monday) was left and fit for consumption. When I closed the door, I saw this…
I knew immediately that Dirty Harry was the culprit. I knew this for several reasons.
Big D wasn’t home and would never put something like that on the fridge.
Clara doesn’t have thumbs, so grasping and placing magnets would be difficult.
Bonny Annie is generally nice and encouraging of her littlest brother and just wouldn’t say things like that. Plus she was on facebook.
I didn’t do it.
Jack Henry, while certainly not dumb, is only 17 months old and doesn’t have a good grasp on the English language yet. Plus he was taking a nap.
Dirty Harry does things like this when he is supposed to be doing his math lesson at the kitchen table. Plus he’s known to randomly insult people…even babies. I think it’s an almost-ten-year-old boy thing.
So, you can just call me Sherlock from now on. I knew it was him.
I called him to explain himself.
Me: Harrison, why did you put this on the refrigerator?
DH: Because I was just playing around with them when I was getting a drink.
Me: And the letters just magically spelled that your brother….your BABY brother…is dumb???
DH: No. It’s just that it’s hard to spell things with only one magnet of each letter. I was going to spell ‘JESUS ROCKS’, but you need three S’s for that.
I was still clueless as to why he still felt the need to spell something insulting about Jack Henry, even if he was lacking needed letters, but the whole JESUS ROCKS comment momentarily threw me. I told him he should not spell things like that, even to be funny. And I also told him that he could stand at the fridge and spell four more non-insulting sentences about Jack Henry before he could get back to his previous activity. He groaned and complained, but he finally came up with four more.
Okay, I was still not pleased with this effort. If you are telling someone to fix Jack Henry, then obviously you’re implying that something is wrong with him in the first place. But I let it slide. I guess it might imply that Jack Henry needed a Band-Aid or something.
Another imperative sentence…but a nicer one. If Jack Henry can be quizzed, then one is perhaps a little more confident in his cognitive abilities.
This was probably the nicest of all of Dirty Harry’s statements. While Jack Henry does not literally glow, one sometimes feels he does when he flashes you one of his big grins. I suppose Dirty Harry could have plans of coloring him with a neon highlighter as well. I wouldn’t put it past him. Just last week he colored on Clara with blue permanent ink.
Since this sentence lacks a direct object, it’s open to interpretation. Jack Henry does indeed dump whenever he gets a chance…food on the floor, baskets of books, boxes of toys…you name it, and he dumps it. And then, if you go the crude route, which I’m sure was Dirty Harry’s intention, Jack Henry does dump in his diaper…usually twice a day.
When I was done with all my picture-taking, I asked Dirty Harry what the “She”, written in dry erase marker, with an arrow meant in one of the pictures above.
DH: Oh, I wrote that when it still said, ‘JACK HENRY IS DUMB’. The arrow was pointing at Sis, since I couldn’t spell her name. I’d need two A’s and 2 N’s for that.
Something tells me he hasn’t exactly learned his lesson yet.
She is small, clean, calm and well-behaved. The only problem we’ve consistently had is floor accidents. She’s been the hardest dog to potty-train, but even that is not a large problem anymore. Her accidents are fewer and farther between and are now truly accidents…and not just confusion.
But I’m growing concerned about her appearance…
I’m also a little concerned about how Bonny Annie is curling up her toes, but that is a topic for another blog post.
Is it just me, or does she ever so slightly resemble a Gremlin?
Maybe a little like this Gremlin…
But, unfortunately, a little more like this one…
I think it’s the ears…and the eyes.
I don’t know, but just in case, I better remember those rules about the Gremlins. What were they again???
History is one of our favorite subjects to study together. One of the reasons for this is because the personalities that pop up in the pages of our history books are so darn fascinating. People are curious creations, which makes the study of them an engaging pastime.
While we study history chronologically, I am a great advocate of the biography, and I try to include many great ones as readers for the kids. By studying a significant person of a particular time period, I think the child learns a lot about history in general.
Earlier this year, when we were studying early American history, Harrison read several biographies about Benjamin Franklin, as well as several short stories and little vignettes from other history books. By studying such a large personality of that day, I felt my son had a better understanding of the making of our nation…better than if we had stuck solely to our history reader that just had a mere one chapter dedicated to the life of Franklin.
Then, as your children read these biographies, it is a good idea to collect the information they’ve gleaned. Sure, you could just have them write a book report, but we, more and more often, are doing our reports via lapbooks.
To make a lapbook, you simply refold a file folder, and then have your child fill it with little learning activities that you make for them or print from on-line or workbooks.
Lapbooks are especially good if you have a reluctant writer on your hands. They are still getting good practice at gathering, collecting and reporting on information they have learned….just in smaller, more manageable chunks.
Lapbooks are good to use for subjects in which you don’t give tests. For us, that happens to be history and science for the most part. In addition to biographies, they make for good culminating activities for large units like the Civil War or the Industrial Revolution.
You can find a healthy amount of printable activities that can be adapted for lapbooking by simply googling the subject that you are studying. I’ve found that the site www.homeschoolshare.com has many lapbook activities, already grouped together by subject, that you can print for free. Most of our Benjamin Franklin activities came from this site.
In my opinion, the best grades to use lapbooks is somewhere between about 3rd and 8th grades. You can use them for younger kids, but you will end up doing a lot more of the work with them. As Bonny Annie gets older (she’ll start high school this coming school year!), I am finding it hard to find lapbook materials that are challenging enough for her.
I think you’ll find that after reading several biographies and completing a lapbook on an interesting person, your child will be able to impress innocent bystanders with their amazing knowledge…or they should at the very least be able to answer some Jeopardy questions correctly.
This is generally a hot topic among homeschoolers, especially newbies. A large percentage of the time, people begin home schooling when their oldest child is early elementary age. They either know they are going to try home schooling from the start and begin formal education in kindergarten, or they went the public or private school route for a year or two and then pulled them out and brought them home. Sometimes there are other, younger kids at home already and them sometimes they might come a bit later. Either way, at some point, most home schooling moms (and dads) will wonder how to continue to educate their school-age child(ren) with a dependent baby/toddler/pre-schooler needing their diaper changed or nose wiped or sippy cup refilled every five minutes.
For me, this dilemma came a little later in my home schooling adventure. When I first began home schooling Bonny Annie, Dirty Harry was two, but I don’t remember ever having many problems. I did strap him into a spare highchair for an hour everyday to watch Sesame Street. This allowed me to do some math and language arts activities with my first grader, but he pretty much was right there with us for everything else, and by the time he was three, I was doing a little preschool program with him.
But Cap’n Jack Henry has been a different story. Continuing our educational pursuits with him around has been interesting to say the least.
But we are doing it. And so to that end, I though I’d share whatever wisdom and insight I have on the subject, hoping that it might help a newbie homeschooler to hang in there while their little monkey scribbles on their worksheets and eats their glue sticks. Or, after reading this, some of you may log off your computers and head straight to your nearest school’s office to enroll your youngsters immediately. Either way I feel I will have done my part to be informative and honest.
1. Use the littles’ naptimes wisely.
This is probably the single most important piece of advice I can give. Sure, you may think you need a little nap yourself or perhaps you have your eye on the five loads of laundry that need to be folded. STOP! Step away from those ideas! Use the baby’s nap for the subjects that are hard to do when he/she is awake. For us this is usually our history and literature read-alouds, science experiments, spelling tests, and language arts lessons. I try to cram us much into that hour and half as possible and then usually I can still find a few minutes to work on my blog or, yes, as much as I hate it, fold laundry.
2. Train your school-age children to work independently.
My kids know that when Jack Henry is up and needing some attention that they will need to work by themselves. For us, this might be silent reading, handwriting, or math. You might want to have a folder or a plastic tray set up for them to place their completed work, so that when you get a chance, you can check it later. Establish specific assignments that they are capable of before hand, so that when the baby is fussy or is being fed, that the older ones can just fall into their independent routine without any drama.
3. Provide the baby/toddler with age appropriate activities in your school area.
Our school area is the kitchen table. This area opens right up into our living room. I’ve pretty much made this area baby-safe so that Jack Henry can roam around while I read a history lesson. You have to just allow the kid to wreck the place during this time though, or you’ll never get anything done. Jack Henry usually has floor time for about an hour in the later mornings, and this is usually what my living room looks like at the end of that hour…
Nice, huh?
When he’s done pillaging and ransacking, I usually read him a story or two and then put him down for a nap. The big kids then will pick up the room for me. They are usually ready to stretch their legs a bit, and it really doesn’t take as long as it looks. Everything has a place, so it’s a pretty simple clean-up. Magazines and books in the basket, blocks in the wagon, Fun-Dips back in the box and put away in the cabinets, etc. Yes, Fun-dips. We have a box leftover from Valentine’s Day, and they are one of his favorite toys at the moment. He just likes to take all of them out and put them back in, over and over again.
Since the weather has been so nice, I’ve opened up the windows, and this has bought us even more precious time as he loves standing there watching the birds in our yard or the cars pass by.
3. Use your highchair.
Our highchair is right at the table where the kids school, so it’s very convenient to pop Jack Henry in and give him something to do. But if you do most of your home schooling away from the dining room, I’d suggest investing in another one or a travel booster or something like that. There’s simply nothing like containment! I’ve just discovered that Jack Henry enjoys watching old “Blue’s Clues” episodes on our laptop from his highchair. Or if I just need about ten minutes for a lesson, I might just give him a snack that he can feed to himself.
Okay, strawberry applesauce is probably not the best example.
No, definitely not the best example. Give him Cherrios.
You could also make your age 1+ child some of these crayons for highchair time.
4. Use a pack-and-play.
Begin putting your baby in a playpen when they first start sitting up, so that they will be used to it and not feel like they’re in jail. Also try to never use the playpen for a punishment. You may also want to switch the toys that you keep in there regularly so that they don’t get bored. We’ve followed these principals, and we get about an hour or so of playpen time from him everyday before he starts throwing things at us. See….he loves it…
Ha, ha. I just threw that one if for visual interest. Here’s a short video to show you how content Jack Henry is in his pack-and-play…
He’s got some moves, doesn’t he? And, yes, you will just have to learn to tune out whatever musical toys they may have in there.
5. Don’t take everything so seriously.
Some days are just going to be bad. Your baby may scream through your child’s recitation of the first sixteen Presidents. The toddler might color on your entryway floor while you’re giving a spelling test. He might only nap for thirty minutes. It’s okay. It really is. These days do not mean that you can’t be successful at home schooling. Your baby’s antics will not keep your other children out of college. As a matter of fact, the baby will only be a baby for a little while, so just allow your family to slow down and enjoy this season. They may even learn a more valuable lesson from this experience than what is within the pages of their textbooks.
A few of my readers and I are cooking our way through Ree Drummond’s book, The Pioneer Woman Cooks, one recipe at a time. Feel free to join in this culinary adventure any time. The next assignment will be at the end of this post.
Mmmmmmm….Mac and cheese! Is there any more perfect food? I am a big fan of a mac and cheese, from Kraft to Cracker Barrel to my own crock pot concoctions, so this recipe was an easy sell for me.
I loved this recipe! I was a little skeptical when I saw all the steps and all that whisking you had to do to make the sauce, but it really turned out to be much easier than it seemed at first. It was flavorful and had a good texture and was just plain delicious. I only made one slight variation. I was out of ground mustard, so I made the substitution of just using regular French’s mustard from the bottle. I even looked it up on-line to make sure I had the correct measurements. I’m glad I went to the trouble because I thought the mustard flavor was distinct and made this dish a little unique. One thing I might like to experiment with in the future is the cheese. I used sharp cheddar, but I think a combo of two or three different kinds might make it a tad more gourmet and interesting.
Everyone here liked it, including Big D, who is not all that into macaroni and cheese. Thankfully, it has not been a point of contention in our marriage. He said if he had to have mac and cheese that it might as well be this dish. Good enough for me!
So, what did you all think? Special? So-so? Make any changes? Would you make it again or go back to your old stand-by? Talk to me about your mac and cheese!
For our next assignment we’re going back to the beginning, to the starter section of the book. Let’s make the Pico de Gallo on pps. 16-17, and then, if you want to, go ahead and try the Guacamole on pps. 20-21, since all you do for that one is add the pico to mashed avocados. Fresh produce is very plentiful around here right now, so I thought this was as good a time as any to go ahead make this tasty treat! Let’s get this on our tables by Monday, April 26.
(Both of these recipes are found on PW’s site here, so feel free to join in even if you don’t have the book!)
Yes, baseball means a lot of different things to me and my crew.
First of all, it means (and I’ve covered this one before) red dirt and grass stains on white pants because guess what a baseball diamond consists of? Red dirt and grass. And guess where your son (or daughter) will be most of the time? Yes, in the dirt and grass.
It means that Big D is the assistant coach this year. It means that you will see him less and less, that he will hibernate on baseball coaching sites, and that packages from UPS will be delivered almost daily to your doorstep containing practice tees and other coaching paraphernalia. It means that you can’t call his cell phone while he’s at a practice because he won’t answer you, of if he does, he will have no idea what you’re saying to him. It means that Dirty Harry is thrilled to have his dad as a coach. It means that I’m extremely proud of him for sacrificing his time and energy to fill the gap…but that I still wish he’d pick up that darn phone!
It will mean that your teenage daughter just got a lot more bored. She will need endless change and dollar bills for infinite trips to the concession stand. She will need to have her cell phone charged so she can make lots of phone calls to her friends. She will ask you about ten times in an hour and half if the game is almost over. She will be flirted with by her brother’s teammates and friends, which will make you sick to your stomach and willing to comply with her requests to stay home.
It means that your child might pitch. And subsequently that will mean that I, as a nervous wreck, will bite off all my nails (and I don’t bite my nails). It means that I will drink a shot of whiskey (and I don’t drink whiskey). It means that I will go to the parking lot to smoke a cigarette (and I don’t smoke). It means that I will retreat to my van and eat a whole box of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls (okay…I’ve been known to eat a few of those).
It means that I have to carry a twenty pound sack of taters on my back. It means that he will cry and fuss a lot. It means he will appeal to total strangers in the stands to free him. It means that he will want ice water and Cheerios on demand. It means he can’t have it because I’m not made of rubber, and I can’t reach him. It means he’ll throw a tantrum, banging his head against my back. It means I take him out of the carrier and hand him over to the bored teenager, killing two birds with one stone.
And speaking of birds, I never would have guessed that baseball would mean that we would have dirty birds. But it does. Because Big D and Dirty Harry…those stinkers!…broke my birdbath while playing catch in the backyard. Dirty Harry threw the ball. Big D missed it. And my birdbath, which used to belong to my grandmother, was smashed in the process.
I’m proud of him and his strong arm, but that is ridiculous.
Don’t you just love baseball season? I do. I really do.
