Roller Skating

 

When I was a kid, back in the 80's, we went roller skating at Golden Skate sometimes. I have some vague, but fun memories of that place. All my childhood memories are pretty hazy and vague. But I still had a pretty decent visual of what this placed looked like when I was a kid. As I discovered today, it is exactly the same as it was back then. Well, except for the music. The same maroon carpet lined the walls, the same big disco ball sparkled from the same spot on the ceiling and they even had the same roller skates. I would bet money that the skates Esperanza wore were the exact same pair I wore when I was her age and shoe size. They've held up well! Esperanza and I met our homeschooling friends Maddy, Izzie and their mom Amanda for some first time roller skating fun. The girls started off a bit wobbly, stumbled and fell a few time and stayed close to the wall. Towards the end, they were all much braver and better. It took me a little bit to get my skating groove back, but it did, and even I had a ton of fun! We will be back. A lot!

Saturday Night School

This is how we spent our Saturday evening last night. 

We are working our way through a phonics/reading book called The Ordinary Parents Guide To Teaching Reading. I'm no 'ordinary' parent, but who is? Especially when it comes to homeschooling, everyone does things a little differently, as is the whole point to homeschool. Anyways, the book teaches phonics in very simple, easy and quick lessons. Last night, Esperanza wanted to 'do' school, so we did. We don't 'do' school unless she wants to, which is usually at the most unusual time, and that is what works perfect for us. No one is going to learn much when they don't want to learn. Last night we finished 2 phonics lessons, a history lesson (we are using Connect the Thoughts), a few worksheets, browsed an informational picture book about backyard birds (February's theme is birds) and read 3 chapters of The Trumpet of The Swan (which clearly goes very well with this months homeschooling theme). Every night before we turn off the lights, we lie in bed snuggled under the covers together and read 2 or 3 chapters of this book. Just Esperanza and I. She loves it!

Valentine's Crafts

For Valentine's Day, we read a couple of books to learn a little about the history of the holiday and we did a couple of cute and fun crafts to spread the love in honor of Valentine's day. Our ACE group planned a Valentine's card exchange and gathering so we spent one afternoon last week making cards, using lots of glitter, glue and glitter-glue. It was quite the production, and our gathering with our homeschooling friends was fun for all. On another day, when we had Opal over, we made heart shaped sun catchers. Those turned out beautiful! 

Ice Melt Experiment

Last weekend, our beautiful and powdery snow turned to ice. Freezing rain fell from the sky for a couple of days, leaving a treacherous layer of ice on top of the snow everywhere. We don't get snow often, especially the snow storm we just had. When we do though, history seems to have a way of repeating itself and it always ends with an ice storm. We stayed inside for about 48 hours once the freezing rain began to fall (with the exception of me going out to check in on the chickens, bring them bits of food to keep them somewhat happy and break their ice water up) since the walkway, roads, ground and everything was way to dangerous to even attempt. Because we don't get this type of weather often, our cities become pretty immobilized for the duration of it. Other areas of the country are used to snow and ice, so they use de-icer chemicals and/or salt to keep the roads safe for drivers. As an experiment, we decided to test the waters (or ice) to see how well salt really works at thawing out ice. I have a book that had just the experiment in it as well so we used it as a guideline and got to work. As it turns out, the ice with salt on it melted a couple hours faster than the ice with no salt on it. Very interesting!

 The ice on the left has the salt on it. Pictures taken about an hour after each other. 

Fractions With Food

I haven't picked a math curriculum yet. I just can't decide what to use. By fall, I hope to finally have a 'real' math plan. For now, learning about fractions by way of food works quite well for us. On this day, we divided the puffed over pancake in half then in quarters and discussed it over breakfast. Clearly the best way to learn about fractions. 

Snow Keeps Falling From the Sky

We have SNOW!! Yay. It's been YEARS since we've had this much snow. Back in '08 we had that Arctic Blast, as the media referred to it. I think we had more that year, but this year my kids are old enough that they can actually play in it!!! Oh what fun. We had the cousins over, we got the sled out, we played outside for hours, the kids kicked the soccer ball up and down the street in the snow, we walked around the neighborhood playing, came in to warm up, then went back out for more hours of snow play. for 2 whole days, we had a winter wonderland! The snow was too powdery to make snowmen or snow balls, but it was perfect for everything else! Ezra seemed to just want to play solo while he did his snow discovery. Having Kiko and Rafa over 2 nights in a row was wonderful. They had so much fun. 

Towards the end of the second day of snow, Ezra was still going strong, dredging through the snow in the back yard and running all around! He grabbed a garden shovel and a small pot and began using the tools to play in the snow as if it was sand. For at least two hours! Then he wanted to swing!!! In the snow! It was coming down from the sky in bigger flakes, the wind was picking up, the temperature was dropping, yet all Ezra wanted to do was play in the snow. The freezing rain came that evening, which brought our snow play to a screeching halt. I am so thankful that we didn't waste one moment of time available to enjoy the rare opportunity to play in the white powdery snow before it turned to ice.

We made so many cold and snowy memories!