Preparing for Disney 2009

We took a break from our usual annual trip to Disney World while my husband was completing his MBA.  It’s been 2 years since our last trip….

AND WE’RE SUFFERING TERRIBLE WITHDRAWAL!!!

Not a moment too soon, we’ve got a trip on the horizon.  Thank goodness!

We don’t take our Disney vacations lightly.  Each trip has it’s own theme.  In years past we’ve done Nemo, Lilo & Stitch, Fantasia and the Incredibles.  This trip we’re going with Toy Story. Much time and effort goes into the planning and preparation.  Here’s a list of what we’ve completed so far:

The Plan  -  This single piece of paper contains all the important information about where we’ll go, what we’ll do and eat.  It has the park hours, the restaurant reservations and information about the dates of special events. 

The Ultimate Disney Guide Book – ‘The Plan’ occupies the first page of this homemade collection of helpful information.  This book holds the park maps, the restaurant menus, special certificates, coupons and discount cards and codes.  It also holds all our reservation information and park tickets.

Van Decorations – Florida is a sea of white vehicles.  It’s our solemn belief that ‘normal’ is overrated.  So we set ourselves apart with homemade ’stickers’.   A roll of sheet magnet, a few self laminating sheets and a couple of cool Toy Story pictures and our plain white van becomes the Toy Story Van … complete with a slinky dog antenna topper.

Cart Decorations – The girls were given the option of doing a birthday cruise or getting a golf cart for the week to use around Ft. Wilderness.  They choose the cart and hubby has reserved a six person cart in our name.  We’ve got a bunch of little green army men interspersed with a few other Toy Story characters to hang around the top of the cart and a ‘claw’ holding a Toy Story alien to hang off the back.  Did I mention ‘normal’ is overrated?

T-Shirts – Everyone gets to help design their T-shirt for the trip with their favorite picture and quote from the movie.  The kids shirts include a list of all their Disney trips on the back.  For the 12 year old and 10 year olds this is trip number #9.   The five year old will be enjoying his 6th trip.   We wear our shirts on the same day.  Last trip we caught the eye of a few Disney folks and ended up with a coupon for free ice cream

There’s still quite a bit left to be done.  Not the least of which is catching up the laundry so that our all our clothing is all clean all at that same time  :O

Sign of Things to Come?

Yesterday was the first day of school for Adrian.  I had four kids up and dressed and ready to go by 8 am and was feeling pretty good about it.

Then Bee left her boxed chocolate milk sitting on the ottoman.

Adrian sat down to put his socks and shoes on and BOOM!

Yes, the box exploded and the poor guy sat there in a pool of chocolate milk looking at me with a stunned expression.

Please tell me this is not a sign of things to come this school year….

Success…. Before the End

When we started our unit on Germany I filled the table with library books on various aspects.  As I expected, Bee was drawn to the story of Anne Frank.  Gee was interested in learning more about WWII.

I asked them both for a report on the topic of their choice.  Gee tends to be stronger in writing factual reports, persuasive pieces and speeches.  Bee is our creative writer and tends to struggle with the organization of reports.

So I was shocked when her rough draft was the first to cross my desk.  Then I read it.  Wow.  Just WOW! It was the best first draft ever.  She did an awesome job.  She still is.  As her revisions go on I’m just astounded by the thought and effort she’s putting into it.  It seems just yesterday she was writing like a little girl.  Today a young woman emerges without warning.  How’d that happen?!

And then there’s Gee.  The one who normal spits out well organized reports faster than I can assign them has yet to give me a rough draft.  No, she’s not slacking.  She’s been so engrossed in all the information she just can’t seem to narrow herself down to one topic.  She started with all the wars Germany fought in.  She read several books about Germany’s history, took notes and made a go at an outline.  The topic was simply too big.  She would have had a book if she’d tried to cover everything she wanted to. 

So I suggested she try to write about only one war and choose one aspect of that war to write on.  Making the choice wasn’t easy.  She really did want to write about it all. LOL  Finally she narrowed it down to World War II.  But her outline for that alone was still too much.  I asked her to narrow it down again.  So now she’s writing about Hitler. She’s only written notes about his childhood so far ….. and she’s already got 3 pages of notes – typed!

I am encouraging her to move along and get that rough draft done.  But I’m also watching her read a biography of Hitler with interest and trying to remind myself that she’s learning… and you know, that’s really the point, isn’t it.

So here we are, a week or two before the end of our unit on Germany…. but as far as I’m concerned, it’s already been a success.

Advertising Savvy

So as we explore the cost of living the girls are seeing a lot of ads.  They’re decoding the help wanted ads in the newspaper, the apartment ads in the renter’s guide, ads for cars and car insurance, ads for various utilities packages, etc.

It’s a perfect time to do a little tangent study about advertising.  The Federal Trade Commission has a site directed at kids on this very topic.  You Are Here is cute and has some good activities and information.  But I wonder if the kids will pick up on the fact that the site is, in some ways, just an ad for the FTC.

The Publication Motivation

One aspect of homeschooling I’ve found more difficult with my girls is motivating them to put maximum effort into their writing.  It usually starts out well.  In general, they enjoy writing and start out quite enthusiastically.  However, as the revisions go on, they loose steam and interest in putting that polish on their final product.

I can’t say I blame them.  Once they’ve satisfied their desire to write about whatever, there’s little reason to continue to perfect it.  All that work is just going to end up in the file box, right?  Why bother with perfection?

Until now.  I started a private family webpage/blog so we could share news with our family and friends.  It’s also a great place to share some of the girls’ writing pieces.  With the promise that someone besides Mom and Dad would be reading their work, the girls suddenly had a reason to put that extra effort forth.

I’ve asked the girls to contribute to the site on a weekly basis.  Sometimes I assign them a topic and other times they can write whatever they’d like.  So far they’ve written personal recounts, poems, short stories and essays.

The girls were already hard at work on their second post before I’d  gotten the first one up on the site.  Bee stopped working and begged to see her first work online.  She was so excited to see her words there on the web where everyone could see them she giggled with glee…  Then she jumped back into her second post with renewed enthusiasm.    The promise of publication goes a long way towards increasing that motivation!

Vacation Week

We all enjoy the flexibility of homeschooling.  Since we school year round, we can take days off here and there as we wish.  We’ve done a lot of that this summer.  The girls have taken whole days off to run errands with Grandma or go on field trips.  They’ve take a few half days so we can all play games together or help take Dad to the oral surgeon.  They’ve also occasionally volunteered to do double work one day so they could have the next day off.

But what they really want is a whole week off.  Last year I made a big deal out of the week long break between the end of one school year and the beginning of the other.  Turns out, that was a key thing to do.  Even though they had that same week off this year.  It seems that they didn’t ‘feel’ it so much.  We had visitors and things were busy.  I didn’t make a big announcement that there was no school and they didn’t wake everyday thinking, “No school!”  So in the end, they felt like they really didn’t get a vacation.

I could just give them another week off….but then I’d be throwing away perfectly good motivation! So we struck a deal.  They’d do next week’s work this week and earn a week of vacation next week.  So we’re doing all the boring stuff….a couple of language arts worksheets that target skills they needed some extra practice with, practice with doing basic arithmetic with mixed numbers and fractions and some spelling and vocabulary. 

For the most part, they’re eager to do it all looking forward to that vacation next week.  They’re working hard and long to finish it all before tomorrow.  It will work out for all of us nicely.  Dad will be gone next week so it’s the perfect time for all of us to kick back and relax and enjoy the last days of summer.

Yes, I guarantee they’ll enjoy their week of vacation…. so much so, that they won’t even notice it if I pop in a video on Egypt or suggest some Egyptian crafts or point them toward some cool websites that showcase Egyptian tourist attractions.  Chances are pretty good we’ll make significant progress on our Egypt unit study… all while they enjoy the vacation from ’school work.’ 

Boom-De-Ya-Da!

I simply adore the new Discovery Channel commericial.  The first time I saw it I thought, “Yeah!  That’s it!That’s exactly what homeschooling should be about.”

The world is an awesome place and there’s so much to know and learn and explore.  We’ve each got our own particular interests and specialties and unique collection of things we love.  And that’s not only ok, it’s part of what makes this world so awesome.

I love being a mom and homeschooling my kids.  What do you love?

Whirlwind Weeks

It was supposed to be a quiet, easy week.  Adrian was off school and I was really looking forward to a break from the 2 hours I spend in the car daily driving him to and fro.  I’m ending the week feeling anything but refreshed or revitalized.

I guess part of the problem was just recovering from last week.  There was a lot going on last week.  My mother-in-law came to visit. Monday was a meeting for an upcoming presentation I’m participating in.  Tuesday I had the whole mom’s group here for our weekly meeting while the church was being carpeted (all 12 adults and 12 children).  Wednesday I spent running around and then taking the kids swimming.  Thursday Adrian slept in till nearly 10, something very unusual for him so we skipped school that day.  Friday my husband left to take my mother-in-law to the train station and go to school for the day, Zee woke up throwing up and I spent the rest of the day getting ready for the mom’s group to come back for our monthly mom’s night out. 

Then this week started off when my husband left Sunday for a 3 day business trip, leaving me home alone with all the kids for the majority of the week.  By the time he got back Thursday, I was going a little crazy.  It occurred to me that I’d not spoken with another adult for a week.  That might have had something to do with it.  That and the fact that when my husband finally got home he left for another meeting and then spent the entire day away Friday too.  My husband works from home and I’m used to having him around.  I’m spoiled and I just don’t deal well with not seeing him for days on end.

I feel like I could use a week or two vacation.  I’ve got less than 48 hours till Monday morning arrives.  It’s not going to be enough.

Our Favorite Classroom

I know homeschoolers who work at the kitchen table and others that get cozy on the couch.  Us?  We like to take our work on the road.  

There’s no better place to doodle math problems than the back of paper placemat in a family friendly restaurant.  Works well for practicing writing letters too!

Sure, there might be a few old folks in the booths around us who think we’re nuts when Bee anounces that she’s making up long division for herself because she thinks she could use some more practice.  But I think I can live with that.

 

A Mile in Their Shoes

I’ve been trying to learn a programming language this past week.  This is not the first time I’ve attempted it.  I gave up last time, convinced that giving birth to four children has permanently altered my brain chemistry and that I’m now entirely unable to use it for anything other than sorting whites, lights and darks in the laundry room. 

But my husband has been talking it up lately.  It would be helpful to him if I can learn it and produce some programs for him. Ever eager to please this man I adore, I’m at it again.

It’s been less than a happy experience.  Actually, it’s been down right frustrating.  Fifteen years ago I would have jumped at the chance to learn a new language, to program some useful application.  Of course, back then I didn’t have children constantly interrupting my train of thought.  Now it seems that just wading through a book or tutorial is an exercise in futility. 

I read a paragraph or write a line of code.  “Mom, I need a drink.” I come back and start back at the beginning.  I figure out what I need to do next but then before I get it done…. “Mom!” then “Eat.” Then I sit down again and have to figure out what it was that I’d already figured out before.  Before I can get back to where I was in the process I realize it’s time to serve another meal.  I give up and try again later, starting the whole thing over again.

So you’re probably wondering why I don’t just wait till the kids are in bed to even begin.  Well, Adrian is going to bed at 10pm now.  So I’m hearing ‘eat’ or ‘help’ well into the night.  It wouldn’t be so bad except by the time the kids go to bed, I’m tired.  And my old brain doesn’t work as well when I’m tired. Weird, I know.

So I’m still plugging along.  Hoping that I can manage to get somewhere taking one step forward and two steps back.  My husband is gone for a couple of days for school and I’m hoping I can have something to show him when he gets back.

This whole experience has really reminded me that I need to be understanding and sympathetic when the girls experience frustration in their own studies.