Proud Mama Moment!!!

Here's the story. Our children have been involved in this wonderful 10 week program and between the 2 of them they have been taking 3 classes. One of the classes was an acting class. My son LOVES to be seen, thrives off of attention, and has no concept of what it means to be embarrassed. My daughter likes to be seen on her own terms, likes getting attention in familiar settings, and is easily embarrassed. Somehow in this play my son ends up with a non-speaking part and my daughter with a speaking role. He was a munchkin from Munchkin Land and she played the OZ!!! What is the world?! When I found out I went with it. They've seen The Wiz, but never the Wizard of Oz, but they are similar enough that my daughter knew that she had a pretty major role. Last night as we sat in the pews and watched the displays from the other classes my heart began to ache for my daughter. I watched my dichotomous children as one smiled endlessly while the other fought back tears. I wanted to save her. I wanted to sit on the front row and rock her, but I knew that my hug would release a river of tears. Tonight would have to be the night that she learned what kind of women she is birthed from. I, for once, wouldn't be her savior. Well the first time she had to go on stage was for her photography class. To my surprise they had to stand up and read from a card about the various type of photography they'd learned about. Her voice and articulation were AMAZING!!! As of late we have had to ask her to stop mumbling so I was in a state of pure bliss. Not to mention, this child is gorgeous. Beauty AND brains? Um...yea...that's how we grow 'em in our family. Thank ya kindly. Anyway, when she sat down she went back into panic mode and I went back into savior mode. We both fought our respective battles in silence. The play began and when her part came I kept sending her "you-can-do-this-because-you-come-from-strong-women-and-3-of-us-are-here-to-support-you" vibes. Her part began behind a curtain because as you recall The Oz is hidden at first. When her voice boomed through the sanctuary I started to tear up and swell with pride. HONEY!!! That's MY BABY!!! Then in the play when they discovered that The Oz was just a person, I braced myself because now she was in front of the audience. HONEY? She played that part like only a sista could. I thought I was watching The Wiz with a strong female leading role!!! Tears flowing, I look at my husband who is fighting tears too. Y'all don't understand. This child didn't break out of her shell. She melted that that bad boy and was bathed in feminine flyness when she emerged. I was just so amazed my her.

Seedlings and Randomness...

Pics of our seedlings. We (read "I") forgot to label them so we will have to wait until the mature to figure out what's what. LOL Anyway, here are the pics.

Here are a couple of random bonus pictures for your viewing pleasure...

Picture Updates

Planting seeds. The kids planted the first batch, but of course we forgot to take pictures in all the excitement. The first batch was veggies and herbs. The set above is flowers and herbs. I'm so excited. I hope they come up!

 Those big worms are the wrong worms. They are called nightcrawlers. The reason they may not work is because the dig tunnels that are so big that they may cause the dirt in a small bin like our to collapse and kill them. Then you are stuck with a stinky mess, not to mention the poor worms being buried alive. They are in our yard where we have the best soil anyway, making the contribution. We didn't waste our money on the wrong worms, we simply changed the fate of some very helpful creatures. :)

Okay, so here we they are with the correct worms. Red wigglers. They are small and, from what they lady at the Reedy Creek Nature Museum said, very veracious eaters. She had what used to be a bin of newspaper that had been converter into lovely aromatic worm poop--I mean castings. The worms and paper mites have a symbiotic relationship and it helps move the process along a lot faster apparently.

Sunshine looking like sunshine. Beautiful, natural, and free! Gotta love it!

Little update...

Sorry, I've been absent but I am actually been really busy. This homeschool thing is really going well. I am excited that I might actually be doing what works for us. What is that you ask? Depends on the day and what is going on around us. I have stopped stressing every little thing, but I also have not gone completely over to unschooling like I thought I would. My children at this point are not autodidactic enough for me to feel comfortable just turning them loose. I can say, however, that we all seem to be enjoying ourselves. What does our day look like? Well, here is the intention of the day, although it never really happens in the way it's written, but I just use it as a guide.

I try to do all this stuff in the morning when they are fresh. We tried doing work at night when the little ones are gone, but it didn't work out so we decided to do it throughout the day. I don't really care what order they do their work in as long as most of it gets done. If we have been working longer than expected we might decide not to do an assignment like we did today. I will also things off to take advantage of nice weather like today. Imho, vitamin D and fresh air are just as important as education in some regards. It's called balance.

• Morning ritual-Sankofa Learning Academy Pledge, Virtues of Ma'at, Nguzo Saba
• Swahili Cards
• Mama Read
• Assignments
• Black History Cards

Mari
Read
Playing Card Algebra
Swahili-Rosetta Stone
DSI word game
Spelling words

David
Math- 3 worksheets and 25 flash cards
Read- 3 books and 25 flash cards
Time4learning
Penmanship-3 sentences from flashcards
Days of the week and months of the year-English and Swahili


Some random pics, but here is a little explanation on some of them. I can't figure out how to add comments after the pictures have been posted. I learn that later I guess. Enjoy!

Playing in the mirror at the museum. Sunshine did a tattoo on my neck that I thought was really cute. The fireplace is ablaze with candles, because this is what we do for meditation. Spike's birthday treats, thanks to Grandma. Sunshine's new hair, the picture at the end is the same thing. The pics where there are a bunch of women in red (and me in the kitchen chopping) are from Sunshine's red party. She started her moon cycle and to celebrate we did a rite of passage. We received a Flat Stanley or in our case a Flat Isaiah, and Sunshine and Spike decided to make a Flat Family. Cool, right?

Just Pics