Chickafinty ~ A Life in the Laundry

You can tell it has been a big week

The harder we work on school, the more out of control the house gets.

Just saying.

Photographic Evidence

The brand new bike riders showing off their skills on the joint birthday picnic.

Everything you ever wanted to know about...SPACE

• the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune Chickabid
• Pluto is a dwarf planet Chickabid
• Mercury is the second hottest planet even though Mercury is closer to the sun than Venus Chickabid
• Venus is hotter because its atmosphere is very thick.  The thick atmosphere makes Venus hotter because it stops the heat escaping Chickabid
• the sun is much bigger than our planet, Earth The Duchess
• Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are rock planetsChickabid
• Jupiter and Saturn are gas planets Chickabid
• Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are ice planets Chickabid
• all the planets are very far away from each other Chickabid
• Saturn and Uranus and Neptune have ice rings that go around them Chickabid
• there was a man who walked on the moon and his name was Neil Armstrong The Duchess
• the moon is smaller than the earth The Duchess
• the orange fuel tank on the space shuttle wasn't always orange The Duchess
• the first two space shuttles had a white fuel tank The Duchess
• they stopped painting it white because it was less heavy when it was orange The Duchess
• Neptune is closer to Pluto than all the other planets The Duchess
• the Moon is a very cold place at night, and really hot during the day Chickabid
• twelve people have walked on the moon...Chickabid
• there were seven moon missions, but only six of them got to land on the moon's surface Chickabid

more information coming soon along with some videos that we have found and pictures of our lapbooks about Space.

 

 

Unintentionally crynchy

No, crunchy is not exactly the right word for it, but it will do for the time being.
This week has been a watershed in the House of Bear. I made a second batch if liquid soap. I ran out of dishwasher tablets and decided a) not to buy any more and use the liquid soap instead, and more shockingly b) we made the decision not to replace the dishwasher when it gives up the ghost.
I decided to stop buying bread and have begun making my own from scratch ... no, not with the breadmaker, by hand the old fashioned way.
We decided to stop buying breakfast cereal and to start cooking oatmeal for the kids every day.
I'm not sure whether it was looking up where to buy wholegrains in bulk in Sydney (Enmore in case you're interested), or when it was buying laundry blue at the supermarket to make my whites whiter, or when I was STARCHING Mister Bear's SHIRTS, that I realised I've become a crunchy mum.

Progress report

Well.

It's the end of Semester One and the traditional reporting season has arrived.  Our homeschooling experience is 6 months old and it would seem appropriate to look back on the last six months and look at how far we've all come.

DESCHOOLING

At school, everything fits neatly into a box.  We've only got five hours of classroom time a day, so there has to be a definable purpose in everything that we do.  It has to fall under one of the key learning areas, it has to be outcomes based, it has to be assessable, preferably immediately or at least by the end of the week or the end of the unit.  Literacy takes first place and absorbs the first two hours of the day.  Maths takes up another hour and the remaining two hours are divvied up amongst the other four KLAs, or those two hours are devoted to the lastest thought bubble from the Board of Studies...the COGs unit.

Homeschooling is NOT like that.  Homeschooling is more about home than school.  It's about learning through life.  A large percentage of learning doesn't fit neatly into a box and it's really hard to quantify and record. 

The academic part of the day is relatively easy to report on.  We spend the morning doing maths, phonics, spelling, grammar, reading, copywork and writing.  We watch For the Juniors and write reports.  We draw, sing, use the computer, write narrations, cook, garden (or just dig!), and we talk.  We talk lots.  I answer questions all day long.  Easy questions like how do you draw a map of Tasmania freehand, to difficult questions like how does the space shuttle get into space...questions that stretch my (considerable) general knowledge to its fullest extent...questions that require a "I don't know.  Lets' find out!" answer.  A lot - and a mean a LOT - of learning is incidental and culmulative.  It's jolly difficult to record this kind of learning.  At school we're constrained by timetables, by delivering curricula to a large number of children with hugely differing abilities.

Where homeschooling is concerned, deschooling has been my biggest difficulty.

(more coming)

Dot Point

• school going well, especially in the reading department

• have too many books on my "must read aloud to the kids" list...at this rate I'll still be reading out loud when they're grown-ups.

• the laundry is (partly) under control

• the ironing is not

• neither is the folding

• I don't want to be 40 and fat.  I've got 13 months to do something about it.

• am supposed to be getting a new outfit for a wedding in 9 days time...am not feeling strong enough at the moment to cope with changeroom mirrors

• can't work out when I began the slide from slightly untidy to Stage One in three rooms and stage 2 in one room (yes, it's cryptic, no, I'm not going to explain)

• have come to a sudden realisation that this is NOT normal.  So how come it's acceptable.

• I need to stop whining and do something about it.

• The computer needs to go off for a season

Worth celebrating anyway

Homemade lunches 5/5

Homemade dinners 4/5

Homemade desserts 4/5

Take away dinners 1/5 (due to grocery shopping taking forever and it was too late to cook anything)

Take away desserts 0/5

Bills paid 5/5

*other* spending since payday $0...ok, so it's only been 48 hours, but that's still huge for us!!

So, it's not much and at face value hardly worth celebrating, but man alive, in the context of the way things have been for months, it's HUGE.

You have to start somewhere.  Embracing the inner sloth has been costly in more ways than one.  I'm not feeding or cherishing him anymore and one day life migth become so uncomfortable that he'll just push off for good.

Yeah.  Right.

Today the kitchen - Tomorrow...the world!!

I'm starting over everywhere.

Last night I planned a full week of menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Today I'll do some baking for snacks, morning and afternoons teas etc.

I'm cleaning out the fridge and starting anew there and in the pantry.  Anything that we're not going to eat can go in the Anglicare bin at church.

I cleaned out the cutlery drawer in the kitchen as it was getting a bit grotty.  Have been putting it off for months and months.  It took (I kid you not) less than 10 minutes, start to finish, including washing up and drying the cutlery tray.

The saucepan and tupperware cupboards had better watch out...they are next in my sights.  The wobbly handled saucepan is for the chop for starters.

Am feeling renewed and re-energised.

Preparing the schoolroom I

1. clean bathroom

2. clean toilet

3. ironing

4. folding

5. laundry

6. ironing

7. folding

8. laundry

9. lather, rinse, repeat

10. bins

11. vacuuming

12. mop floors

13. deChristmas

14. plan for Preparing the school room II

A fabulous new find!

Long time readers will know that I have long sought after the Holy Grail of home management.  I have tried many of the online organising helps, I've bought e-books on decluttering, joined homemaking forums and yahoogroups, but to no avail.  They all lacked *something* and as I couldn't define what the *something* was, I couldn't find what I wanted.

Last week at Works for me Wednesday hosted by Shannon, one of the Mr Linky's pointed me to Motivated Moms.  There, on my computer screen, was what I have been searching for.  The PERFECT home organiser.

I have bought the week to a page printable chore list and it looks fantastic.  It's downloadable and printable and cost $USD8...worked out to be about $11AUD.