week 26 of homeschooling

getting back on track with our schooling and posting!
mon, feb 22:
· homeschool field trip to the garbry museum at willowbrook environmental education center in piqua. run by jvs students. i couldn't believe we've not seen this before, it's very cool! we toured an early 1900s town square with a bank, one-room schoolhouse, a blacksmith, dentist, creamery, etc. we also saw how they make maple syrup. and the kids of course loved the covered wagon, after reading so much about them this year. great field trip! pics below.
· gym class was moving allen's weights and bench from the basement to the garage (because he sold it). great workout! :)
· music class was setting up the electronic drum set he found on ebay. why yes, yes we are supposed to be purging. but apparently families *need* a drum set on the road, or i'd have nothing to complain about.

tues, feb 23:
· math and spelling tests
· math workbooks
· music class, the children of God singing taylor swift, interesting (and really, pretty good!)
· then appt day in dayton for lizzy and me, and a bit of shopping.
· for gym class, allen jumped on the trampoline with the boys. it must have been pretty serious because all three of them took a nap afterward! and at least two of them have bumps on their heads. :)

wed, feb 24:
· the usual with allen (he sticks to his schedule!)
· in honor of presidents day (that we kinda skipped), the kids went on a george washington webquest. so fun! i love that they can do it themselves, working together (fairly well).
· awana night

thurs, feb 25:
· the usual with allen
· they didn't love my plan, but it was a good plan. instead of watching little house, we acted it out. so we cleaned the house, with good attitudes just like laura and mary. well, maybe not *just* like them. :) (right after that we got a showing on our house. how cool is that?!)

fri, feb 26:
· it was a snow day for the local schools (and i had a few big deadlines looming), so we went easy. the kids cleaned out their toys and started deciding what to take in the RV.
· we watched a few episodes of little house, always educational and they still love every minute of it!

obligatory cute kid in the snow pics

though i'm tired of it, they love the snow! and they spend hours on the trampoline EVERY day, no matter the temperature or how much snow or ice it's collected.

week 25 of homeschooling

another non-normal week, which is becoming normal...
monday was presidents day, so the local schools were off, but we did school since we've missed so much. math, spelling, social studies, the usual.
tuesday we studied snow removal, and strength training, and winter survival skills. yeah, we (mostly) cleared the parking lot and driveway of snow and ice so we could get the camper in the next day. took all of us, the entire day, and you could hardly tell!
wednesday we brought home our new home!
thursday it was hard to do anything besides check out the camper. future planning skills? organization skills? housekeeping for the next school year? whatever, we had fun!
friday the kids had a field trip at charleston falls. they love it there and had a ball. this time they dug bones of birds out of owl vomit. good times, glad i missed it!

happy birthday to josh!

our second oldest is now 10 too! josh had an early birthday party and invited 2 buddies over to play. there was much violence, war, and destruction, so they loved it!
we had to get him an RV. looks pretty close to ours eh?!

Welcome home to our new home, with wheels!

It's here! Our Sierra Treehouse is now in the driveway (although it took 30 minutes to maneuver it in there)! It's a tad bigger than our travel trailer. Okay, a lot bigger, it's ginormous, but it fits.
We spent the day at All American Coach trading the trailer in, getting the hitch installed, learning about the Treehouse, and then we brought it home. The new truck pulls like a dream too.
Here's a peek at where we'll be living as soon as our house sells. Or until we can stand it no longer and pull out early!
We love the separate rooms and how it feels more like a house than a wide open camper. And we'll have separate areas for work, school, and play. Now we can focus on getting it packed and ready. People kept asking the kids today where they were going to camp first. They said we won't be camping, we'll be living. Love it!

Yeah, it's kinda big.

My new kitchen. There's room for my breadmaker and crockpot too, yay. :)

We had pizza and took a nap while they installed the hitch. The table can seat 7, so you're welcome to dinner!

The kids love love love their loft.

And they love the ladder entrance to the loft in the back too. This will be another family room with a couch and another TV. Cause for whatever reason, we need 3 TVs?

FYI, the truck passed the comfort test. All three slept comfortably on the way there!

scrapthemap

week 24 of homeschooling

yeah okay, another lost week. there was school work, i just can't remember much of it. of course allen always sticks to the spreadsheet. but this was another week of preparing to move, or unmove. we bought (and traded much for) our truck and camper and worked on those details. we're still trying to work out how to get the camper home with all this snow. we've tried staring at it, but that's not helping.
most everything was canceled this week, appointments, awana, a field trip, so there was lots of playing. we watched some little house episodes, which totally count. we also watched the olympics opening ceremony, which also counts! we'll look up all the countries we saw represented. the kids were fascinated by the countries with few athletes because they didn't have winter sports. josh still thinks it's cool he could compete for ukraine (he has dual citizenship), although he wanted to compete in football, so we should also study the sports in the winter games. :) and as an added bonus, we saw parts of canada represented during the ceremony that are in the call of the wild (which we're also reading right now).
today they did play a great matching game, that helps with logic, reasoning, and hand-eye coordination - yeah, they totally just did the laundry. gotta love that! :)

a peek into our new home!

we have a new home! we bought a sierra tree house 35loft and can't wait to get it here, hopefully next week. it has plenty of room for our family of 5: 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, king bed, huge dinette, lots of hidden storage. and of course all the necessities like fridge, oven, microwave (and room for my breadmaker and crockpot). :)
the kids have a super fun treehouse area with peep holes, mail slots, ladders, under-floor toy box, huge skylight to sleep under the stars. even for a camper, it has a rustic feel that really fits us. i think i'll even take some of our antique decorations.
so truck - check. camper - check. sell possessions - in progress. sell home - anyone?! :)
take a tour of the sierra treehouse here.

kitchen table/homeschool desk/couches/living room:
looking down from the loft:
looking toward the loft. bedroom upstairs and another bedroom/family room with tv on the left:
the kids' loft. the skylight sticks up above the roof for a view of the campground/mountains/beach/wherever we are:
here's the floorplan: take a tour of the sierra treehouse here.

scrapthemap

we have the truck to tow our home!

we traded in our beloved scarlet and gray hondas (why yes, those are ohio state buckeyes colors!) for a chevy silverado to pull our new home. our first new cars ever, and we just traded both for a used truck. so uncool, unjust, unfair, but ahhh such is life.
no more getting 30 miles to the gallon, but no more car payments either. most importantly, now we have a big truck to pull our big camper. just gotta get that camper! we're still working on that and can't wait to get it. we have the model picked out and it's so fun.
with all this snow, we're itching to drive south! just gotta sell the house. (anyone want to buy a house?!) :)
fyi, if you ask me, the truck is white with 4 doors. if you ask allen, he says this: silverado 2500HD 6.6L duramax turbocharged diesel 4WD crew cab. yeah, whatever, but it is sweet! :)

week 23 of homeschooling

mon, feb 1:
· math & spelling tests
· math worksheets
· bible class
every other minute of their day was taken up with reading or staring into space "dying of boredom". they're all being educated by a severe grounding this week (i'd rather not say why, to protect the innocent and guilty little...), so they're in separate rooms with only books from morning til night. it's been quite peaceful here, and no i didn't devise that plan either. they earned it all on their own.

tues, feb 2:
· math tests
· phonics worksheets
· reading, lots of reading, lots and lots of reading...
· music class was skipped because allen traded his drums for a sweet guitar!
· i had an appointment so we skipped the prairie primer.
· for a different adventure, i took the boys to the local college for haircuts by cosmetology students. they were both way too shaggy, and very sad to get their mops cut, but they look SO much better! they sure cheered up when she suggested they get fauxhawks! (mental note to use that next time...)

wed, feb 3:
· spelling word stories
· bible lesson
· math workbooks
· from the prairie primer (yes, finally back into the groove!): reading, history, bible, science, economics
· awana tonight. they each finished a section, a [word i can't remember], or a book!
· and again, every other minute was reading or starting into space due (hopefully thinking man, i'll never do that again!) to the grounding...

thurs, feb 4 - fri, feb 5:
· okay, it's just too hard to remember. every day's been like a snow day it seems. we're buried! some days we have school and some days we let them off. between that and planning for the RV move, we're just having fun. don't worry, there's always a learning opportunity around here and we don't miss them! we just tweak them. :)

can i handle a mobile office?

i'm beginning to ponder my transition from digital-gadget-collector-with-plenty-of-room to recovering-digital-gadget-collector-who-has-little-room-but-still-needs-to-work. a mobile office will be challenging i'm sure. i'm used to working on a laptop, but i always had a docking station and a nifty armoire with everything i need within reach (not to mention a warehouse full of gadgets!). multiple printers, external drives, phones, fax, cameras, chargers, mouse, tablet, keyboard, usb cables for everything, thumb drives, sd cards, card readers, drawers, files, pull-out counters, etc. even extra computers, desktops, laptops, mac, and pc!
now i need to condense all that into a shoebox.
hmm, this could get interesting. i'm looking at desks that fold up into file-cabinet-sized, well, file cabinets, for storing as we travel. fortunately we'll be parked more than we'll be driving, but still, it's a bit perplexing how this will work. precious few RVs with bunks for the kids have desks. apparently it's not so common for families of 5 to live and work on the road. whatever, i need a desk! but alas, my desk may be small and on wheels. i just hope i can sneak most of my gadgets past allen!