A Day in the Life of a Home Schooler

We stared home school again this week. My younger son Ty still attends public school, but is home with us this week due to the chickenpox. It's been kind of challenging staring Korbin's first week of home school with his brother here. I asked Ty's teacher to send home missed work so that it would give him something to do for school time as well, it worked out real nicely today. I often wondered if I could school the both of them at the same time, which is why we currently only home school one, but today I was able to divide my time between them and get a good amount accomplished.


With home schooling, especially with multiple children, you have to be a good multi tasker. For anyone who has ever been interested in the possibility of home schooling their child, this might help a little to see how a day in the life of a home schooler goes.

This morning I started Korbin off with his Scantron test ( a test taken online at the beginning and the end of the school year to measure you child's progress and determine their strengths and weaknesses in math and reading.) While Korbin worked on that, I took Ty in the kitchen and tried something new I just learned. We held math class at the kitchen table and used the sliding glass door there as a black board. Using dry erase markers we learned about number families and did a work sheet. After that it was time for a "get to know your teacher" conference online for Korbin to attend. I logged him into a program called Elluminate were his new teacher and about 30 other of her students could all listen as she introduced her self, played games, and told her a little about them selves. Now normally when they log in with a teacher the are in much smaller groups of about 4 kids or less, but today was a big get to know you meeting. So while Korbin was busy with that, Tyler and I did his study words in alphabetical and backwards order on the back door with markers.

After a 15min break, they both attended science class and learned about ecosystems, biomes and climate as I read the lesson from the computer screen, then they watch for about 20 min a series of of kid friendly videos on the subject right from the computer. After their big break for the day, 1 hour, we continued with History and learned the names of the wolds 7 continents and 4 oceans. We also learned about maps, their keys and how to read them. They each had a laminated state and world map that they each doodled on during the lesson. I would ask them to circle Europe or number 1-7 the continents and label a-d the oceans. For fun they started dividing up the world into their conquered territories and drawing their base camps and cities on the parts of the world that they owned. We have this great world map, that I bought from a local fabric outlet for $2, we use it every day. It's made of fabric and is just as accurate as those large expensive school maps you can buy from an educational store. We keep it pinned up on the wall in front of our work table and is great because at any time I can have them find the countries, continents, hemispheres, biomes, etc.

In between all this, mind you I still had to feed the bird every half hour, let our 3 dogs out to go, and keep tabs on our business. On busy school days like this, my sister Stacey mostly runs things downstairs in our shop. She'll let me know if we got any convos, or messages, that require both of us to discuss something and make a decision. For example we are hoping to start advertising our business on several other blogs through the holiday season and so we need to come up with a button design to be posted on their site. Stacey will work up a few button designs, then run them buy me on a break, I'll ask her to tweak them a little and then she'll get back to me, she's so great. If there's an email that needs to go out, but she wants to run by me first, she can send it to me, I'll read it while the kids are working, edit it, then email it out to whomever it was meant for.

I think we have a pretty good system, and we work very well together. I'm looking forward to this year, growing our business and making progress every day with home school until I get it down to a science.
There's always allot going on here in a full house, but some how it always seems to come together.

Thanks for reading,

Nicole

Baby Bird Update Day 3

Our little wild bird, affectionately named Squeaky by our kids, is thriving and doing well.  He makes allot of  little squeaks and chirps, through out the day, and when you open his cage door to feed him he sings, it's so cute.

He has become quite the little escape artist. He has been hopping around his cage flapping is wings yesterday and today. When we open the lid to feed him he some times jumps out. Yesterday I was in the living room and could hear his normal chirping for food, when my sister went into the kitchen she saw Squeaky standing on top of his cage chirping away waiting to be fed.

We've been taking him out every evening to see if he's ready to fly away yet. We set his cage on the ground and take the lid off and wait. Yesterday he hopped on his nest, then onto the cage rim, then onto my shoe and looked at me, then he hopped onto my leg and sat there for a second. I though this was so cute until he crapped on my leg, then hopped away across the porch. I guess that's the thanks I get for around the clock care over the past 3 days, lol.

Mostly when he's outside he likes to hop around the yard and explore or let us hold him in our hands. The boys were so excited when they hold him in their hands, they never though they would ever be able to do that with a wild bird. I took lots of photos of this experience because I hope it's one they will have fond memories of when they are older.

Thanks for reading,

Nicole

Caring for a Baby Bird Day 2 Update

I wanted to post an update to the Weekend of Nature and Babies post I did earlier this week. If you read it then you know we are now caring for a stranded baby bird. He is starting to grow on me I think. I never was a bird person, I know friends who own birds as pets.  Their hands or arms are always covered in scratch or bite marks, some very deep and I often wondered what kind of person would put up with that? Why would you go through all that to keep birds? It must take a truly special personality to keep and care for a pet bird and love them as much as we love our cats and dogs.

This little bundle of fluff is very cute, and surprisingly trusting. He doesn't try to bite or peck at us at all. He is very calm around us and not afraid like I would have thought he would be. He is very gentle and, I'm starting to notice, smart. He knows what he wants and doesn't want, for instance today when offered the choice between bird seed or a dropper of baby food, he has been choosing the seed. Today is the first time I've introduced seeds to his diet, when he opens his mouth I would drop one in by hand, then offer the dropper of baby food or water to wash it down. He got the hang of it and then started refusing the dropper, but when I hovered by hand above his head he would open wide. Show him the dropper and he would close his mouth tight, show him my hand and again he opened wide. I'm completely amazed by this, I wouldn't have thought birds, especially baby ones, would be that intelligent.

Every day he eats a variety of baby food, apple & blueberry, pears & raspberries, apple & cherry, turkey & rice, a vegetable mix, oatmeal and more. We offer him a different flavor every feeding, which right now is every half hour to 45 min. I tell you it's like having a baby all over again. Round the clock feedings, little jars of baby food all throughout the fridge. We even have to heat the jars in a shallow pot of water on the stove to make it room temperature before feeding, reminds me of warming glass baby bottles when my kids were small. This experience has certainly been nostalgic if nothing else.

He is also hopping out of his nest and getting around the pen. Yesterday we took the lid off and had his pen sitting on the picnic table on the back porch so he could hear other birds and get some fresh air and sun. He sat up in his nest and started grooming himself and stretching his wings. It was so cute, I took a dozen photos, but posted some of the best. He was very active at that moment, and this morning was standing on the edge of his nest to make him self taller, so that the food would reach his mouth faster I guess. Hopefully he should be able to go it on his own soon. I'm waiting to see more signs of wing flapping and try to get him to take the seed from a small dish in his pen first.

I also have an update on the baby chipmunks found at the baby shower last weekend. They did go home with a family at the party. They have named them Alvin and Theodore and are feeding them milk formula by bottle. My husband works with the mom of the family that took them home so I will try to get more updates from time to time if I can.

Thank you all for stopping by.

Nicole