J's clay creations

Here are J's clay creations made in her pottery class so far this semester. You can't really tell from the picture, but one side of her mug is a slanted. ;) But this is good start as this class is for 3rd-5th graders and I think she's doing just fine. She has been using her own hand made and hand painted mug a lot. I'm sure she'll also find some good use for her heart container as well.



I didn't realize she has been keeping a journal about her pottery class as well. She wrote about how she made the heart clay container and about it's sometimes hard to paint her pottery.

While J is in pottery class, Prime takes a 5 in a row class which is a unit study class. He wishes he can take pottery class too which I plan to let him in the fall. This is the picture he brought back today. Cute, eh? I'm not sure what the cat has to do with Florida, but supposedly that's what they are learning and reading.

Overcoming at Kalahari

We went to Kalahari intending to peek at the 3rd annual Unschooling conference. Well, that never really happened. I think it would have been better had I been there on the day the conference started. I would have liked to hear John Gatto talk. Even the movie, "UP", they had set up in a conference room, we went but did not stay (too crowded). Instead , we went back and were snug in our own room watching "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?" and etc.
J/Prime in the conference area.

But this trip held a special life lesson for J. Let me share it here. J was scared of and refused to go on the "Cheetah race" but after some talking and a night's rest, she was ready to give it a try. The day of the ride, she says she's mostly excited but still had butterflies. I think she was most unsure when it was getting really close to her turn. But after coming down, she excitedly said, "This is fun!"

This is the "Cheetah race" after J tried it out. We are going on it again!

The second one, "Rippling Rhino", it was even more dramatic. J was fine until the tube was pulled up in front of her and as we all were getting in, she started to cry. Not just a little, but really hard and said she doesn't want to go on it. I was quite surprised, so only daddy and Prime went while I walked down with J. After that, we decided to take a snack break. While eating and relaxing a bit, daddy shared some of his own experiences with fear of rides and some of his experiences.

(by Daddy) I told J that fear is not trusting mommy and daddy but most importantly Jesus. We would never hurt you but we will be there with you. As a off topic, J asked me about my experiences with ghosts that I've told her about in the past. I told her it's real but there are many kinds of ghosts. They are all spirits just like the spirit of fear, anger, sadness, and etc. Prime asked me if there were any good spirits. I told him yes, spirit of joy, peace, love, and etc. I told J that if you scared yourself to death, you are opening yourself to attack by spirits. If your fear is out of control, the spirit of fear would come to you and control you. It robs you of many joys. In the Bible, there was a boy that had a legion of evil spirits and they controlled him. You don't want to like that boy right? I told J that she needs to think about the good things and trust mommy, daddy, and Jesus and everything will be fine. I asked her what she was afraid of anyways. She said it was very fast. I asked her "how do you know it's real fast if you've never been on it? You haven't seen it either. I tell you it's very slow and kind of boring. " I dramatized how slow it was to her. Prime agreed. Even Prime was encouraging J, letting her know it was a fun ride. After lunch she thought about it and by the time we finished eating, she told us she wants to try it. When we got up to the ride, I joked about it so that she would kept her eyes/mind off the dark hole of the slide tube. I tried to talk and laugh while we were going down to distract J from her fears. When we got down to the bottom, she liked it. The next time, I let her pick a song she'd like to sing on the way down. I hope she can use this as an experience that she can use to overcome many of her fears in the future.

The kids also loved the wave pool. Prime and J was really brave in there, going against the wave and being splashed again and again by the raging wave.

Now my favorite part was being in the hot tub outside in all the cold/snow. :) It was a nice contrast and something different.

Relaxing weekend

The kids were playing a little ball at home and J discovered her basketball is quite deflated. So that led to a whole bunch of pumping air to the balls which as you can see, the kids quite enjoyed. A good little arm workout, I might add. They found out it was so much easier to pump air when there is no ball attached to the pin.

They also enjoyed watching "Ali Baba and the forty thieves" and learned a little Arabic from daddy. I did too, actually.



Today, we decided to go to the "forest" to take a walk and to my surprise, there was still snow left from about a week or so ago.

Here, the kids enjoy walking nature's balance beam. Prime tried to walk with his eyes closed and found that to be a challenge. I took this just before he fell off the trunk. :)


Prime pretends the sticks are his arrow and bow and writing in snow.

He also played tag with J but fell hard. He lay there on the ground still for a bit while we ran to his side to see if he is alright. He said, "If this happen to J, she would cry because it really hurt." Ha-ha. And of course, J retorted, "I would not!" Prime, ever since he was a baby, rarely cries when he has a fall or gets a shot at the doctors so there is some truth in what he said.

Soon, it will be time to go watch Super Bowl with some friends. I enjoyed our weekend and hope you did too.

Spelling Bee and more

J competed in the region's spelling bee contest today and won 2nd place. J and this other girl was going back and forth for a long time until they got all the way to difficulty level 3 of the spelling list which we didn't got around to going over. Next year, we'll make sure to go over all the words. Great job, J!








Her favorite part of the contest - getting her prize bag which is filled with goodies along with bowling passes. All participants get a goodies bag.




This is apparently her favorite as she came home and started working on this right away.









Some other pictures from this week.  I had wanted to get a large floor puzzle of USA and I found it this week at a used book sale. The kids had a good time working on this puzzle. And I realize I still don't know all my fifty states. ;-P








This was from our trip to the science museum for members at night.  Prime and his partner did really well working together to build the block tower. They used rubber band to grab the block and stack them.


The kids had a lot of fun with this gymnast! There is flat screws in the back of his hand. They had fun experimenting with him by putting all over the house and testing him out. 


We had a fabulous week and I didn't have any migraines. So here is praying and hoping for a repeat for next week.

A glimpse at our day (lots of links)

This is a glimpse of our day when we have nothing in the morning...(prepare yourself, this is really long.)

After breakfast, we usually listen to a story (lately it has always been an Enki 1st grade fairy tale while other times we read books in Chinese or library books). Today it was "Old Man Winter"- a science story from Enki education. These stories are good to repeat on a yearly basis. Then we often gather for Enki movement at the kids' request. They are usually filled with seasonal songs/verses. We also do some copper rod/jump rope/bean bag exercises. Ideas for all these come from Enki education (Learning through Movement). Our circle usually last around 30-35minutes. They also normally go outside to play after our circle.

Then it is time to start our lessons for our day. I think we normally are done in about 2 hours.

1. Math
J and I start on our math. For both children, we mainly use MEP but do supplement with Enki stories. MEP was first recommended to us by Lisa. For J, math usually takes anywhere between 25-45minutes. I like how MEP is very deep and look at a math problem from many angles. They also have a lot of mental math practice which is sometimes a challenge for J. Prime usually plays while J is doing math. He also does MEP math but he is usually done with his math in about 5-10 minutes.

2. Grammar
I teach both children grammar at the same time. We use First Language Lesson. I like that the lessons are very short and has a lot of variety (poetry, story, etc) but at the same time, much needed repetition. At the end of the lesson, there is usually a 1-3 sentence of copy work depending on how much your child can write. They are both doing 2nd grade but I don't think it is too hard for Prime. This usually takes about 5-10 minutes. Some other days, we copy bible verses.



3. Spelling
This is another super short/easy task. Today, I tested J on her spelling bee words for about 10 minutes as she is participating in the Spelling Bee this Saturday. Sometimes, she works 1 page off of Word Ladder (which is vocabulary/spelling/ puzzle ladder) while Prime does 1 page from Spelling workout. This also takes about 5-10 minutes. I'm lucky that spelling comes easy for my kids. I should mention Word Ladder was also recommended by Lisa.

4. Science or history
We alternate between science/history.

For science, we use this lovely book called "Christian Liberty Nature Reader". I like how the stories are short but opens the children to see the wonder of God's creations. We usually read 2 stories which takes us about 20 minutes since we have a little discussion about what we read and we usually go look up on the computer for an actual picture of the animal we learned. Then both children writes and draws about it.
J did this today. Sometimes, she'll color it in.
*I recently got Exploring Creation: Zoology I and its science kit. So hopefully, we'll incorporate more science experiments later.

For history, we just started using "The Mystery of history". This is also written by a Christian author and she incorporates many Bible events in it as well. The best thing I like about this book is that the crafts associated with each lesson is simple and even I can do it! For creation, Prime and J both made a little simple book and for Adam/Eve, they both made Adam/Eve with play-dough. Now for Eve, they had to take play-dough from Adam. For every 3 lessons, we make time line cards. This provides opportunity for the children to also write about what they have learned about each lesson.
Play dough of Adam/Eve by Prime/J.
5. Phonics
Even though Prime pretty much picked up reading on his own, I'm still going through a phonics book with him. We also went through Enki 1st grade readers but needed more. So I got a book called "Ordinary Parent's Guide to Phonics" to work with Prime. It is pretty much all review for him but I don't want to leave any holes. This also works on his reading fluency. It takes us about 5- 10 minutes to do 2- 3 lessons.

6. Memory Work
While I'm preparing for lunch, the kids play while listening to CC memory work for the week. We also play the CD often when we are in the car. Each week at CC, they memorize 8 time line cards which has American Sign Language movement to go along with it to facilitate memorization, history sentence (to the tune of songs), science facts, math facts (to the tune of songs) and geography. They also do an art project/science experiment/make a presentation while they are at CC. One thing that the kids are amazingly good at (much better than me) is retention. J even says she wants to try to be "memory master". Sometimes, we also do some interest based/seasonal learning from Enchanted Learning and expand a little on the memory work from CC.

And that's pretty much about it for our school work. We are usually done at noon.

After we eat lunch, the kids choose to do whatever they like. I don't have set days for certain activities since I find that too constricting. Most of the the time, my kids are perfectly happy just playing. Other times, they'll choose to paint, or make stuff. They have access to all the paints, craft materials and such so it's just whatever strikes their fancy. Other times, I take them to swim, library, introduce them to a project or have play dates, etc. I like that our afternoons are free.

Oh, one thing they do normally choose to do in the afternoon is watch some Chinese cartoon for about 1/2 hour. I consider that as part of learning Chinese, getting their ears used to hearing the language. I speak Chinese to them periodically throughout the day. One thing the kids do know that if they have a request, they'll need to say it in Chinese. J also takes Chinese class once a week. The class puts a heavy emphasis on writing Chinese characters which I'm not crazy about but J likes it so we decided to let her continue while Prime chose not to continue his Kindy Chinese class. I'm also considering adding Spanish to the mix. J also normally practices piano just before daddy comes back. She loves her piano class. She has also been really into experimenting and making her own music.
Sometimes the kids will ask for a led drawing after they listen to Enki stories. This is an example of J and Prime's drawing they did one recent afternoon. Do you see the mystery letter "F" for fire bird there? The kids love to guess at the letters. J has often been requesting to hear the fairy tales recently.

I also find them doing a lot of art all throughout the day. Prime is always coloring, doodling while J works on completing her own book. One book I have been loving and highly recommend is The Child of Wonder. Lots and lots of resources and ideas for developing creativity for the whole family. A favorite book of mine on Waldorf education is Understanding Waldorf education Teaching from the inside out by Petrash. This book is easy to read and gives many great examples and really helped me to understand the heart of Waldorf education better.

Since they are learning geography at CC, J loves to practice this map game. Normally, I do try to limit their computer time.

In the evening, they usually play with daddy and have a lot of fun. One game they are loving right now is while holding to daddy with their back to his chest, the children tells daddy which directions to go: forward, backward, left, right. Oh, they do have lots of fun with daddy!

The kids finally got a chance to see daddy's work place one day. They were super happy. All those big smiles. :)

We also do our reading and reading aloud in the evening. One place I like to go for book recommendation is at Classical Scholars. I also go to Christopherous (Waldorf) for book recommendations. Soul Mama also have wonderful book/game recommendations. One of my children's favorite game Rat-a-Tat-Tat came from her recommendation. We read our bible stories and I try to pray with them right before they go to bed. I think that is very soothing for them and they really enjoy it. We also share our prayer requests for each other at this time.

tinfoil art projects

Here are few art projects the kids has been doing at CC.


This one involves decorating parts of your pictures with shinny tin foil to represent shiny, silvery objects. The possibilities are endless.


This one you take a card board and tack on foam pictures. Then you wrap tin foil over the card board and spray with black paint. Then use steel wool to remove the black paint and it reveals your objects. Pretty cool, huh? J was working and concentrating super hard on removing the black paint.

Few of J's favorite books

1. Secret Garden

2. Rascal

3. Sarah, Plain and Tall series

4. Princess of the world ( I love the drawings in this book)

5. Harry Kitten and Tucker Mouse

6. Call of Courage ( This book deserves another reading; fantastic descriptions, very rich vocabulary. It is advanced for 7 year-old but an 8 or 9 year old would appreciate this)