Progress

Our seedlings are coming along so nicely. The Serrano peppers are taking off, but the cilantro is taking it's sweet time. Cilantro has always been a bit testy with me so I'm curious if we're going to be able to pull off growing from seed.

Serranos to the left, tomatoes in the middle and cilantro on the right.

Guess what? Lizard butt! Oh, I crack myself up. Actually I think that's a gecko on that palm tree. We went to T and C's house for the monthly gathering of Ladies Who Lunch and their Children Who Must Remain Upstairs. When we were leaving Z spotted this guy taking a stroll. We thought for a brief moment about taking him home with us and then though, um, NO.

He wouldn't turn around to get his face. Sorry. 

Mostly we left Gus (no reason not to name the little darling even if we didn't bring him home) because we already had a sloth at home. And by sloth I mean The World's Laziest Cat. He should really be more ashamed, but he can't be bothered.

Don't let our learning get in your way, Lucky.

Lockhart field trip

Ah, Texas History. A vital part of the education of any youth. So important in fact, that a whole year is dedicated to the history and geography of Texas in the public schools. So as to ensure that MY youth are not left behind we are exploring towns in Central Texas and learning first hand about the history of the area. 

The courthouse in the town square. It just doesn't get any more small town than this picturesque building. 

One cool thing about this courthouse, aside from the architecture and history, is that it was used in the film Where the Heart Is (one of the movies I watch every time I come across it on television). We learned that the building is built out of limestone and red sandstone. 

We also learned that some guy donated a plaque to honor another guy who donated six flags to Lockhart. Sometimes when you're a small town you've got to reach for the history. Good on 'em, I say.

Z, C and J on the steps of the Lockhart courthouse. 

We took in the historical monuments of the area. This one is a tribute to those that served in the armed forces. The bricks that line the pathway up to the door bear the names of significant people (or people who paid to buy the bricks, that part wasn't clear). Do you see C reading all the bricks in the background? These are history-seeking boys I'm telling you.

J's pointing at the Marines emblem for Mac and our cousin Joey.

Are you buying any of this?


So what's the real reason people go to Lockhart? Barbecue of course! This time we went to Kreuz (it's pronounce Crites iffn' you were wondering).  Look there it says 1900 right on the sign. If that isn't history I don't know what is.

Lockhart also boasts Black's and Smitty's, but at Kreuz you eat off butcher paper without forks and sans sauce. We thought that would appeal to the boy's inner caveman. 

Brisket, sausage and ribs with bread and pickles. That's it. That's all you need.

Yes, it really was as delicious as it looks. Just ask the boys.

Oh and after lunch we walked around town square. We went into the town's oldest pharmacy with a curio case that had original prescriptions, bottles and tools of the trade from the store. You know, before all that DEA brouhaha. We ducked into a sewing and quilt shop too, but the boys aren't very happy to recall that part of the trip.


We also visited an antique shop and the owner talked to the boys about the building. The original signage from the turn of two centuries ago (late 1800's) was on the exposed brick in charcoal. The owner told the boys that charcoal was the paint of that time period. Charcoal and whitewash which was used for fences and houses. History and Art, baby!


To cap off the day we headed over to Dairy Queen. There is nothing quite like a treat at a small town Dairy Queen. Another awesome field trip day in the books.

An Unforseen Benefit of Homeschooling

By far my most favorite part of homeschooling is the morning routine. We never had time to sit down and have breakfast or talk about our intentions for the day. Now the boys sleep in until about 9:00 a.m., get started on chores and turn to lessons by 10:00 a.m.

But before they get started on their day first Mommy needs her coffee.

My reusable ceramic coffee cup bought at a garage sale.

How awesome is it that part of the morning routine is J making my coffee? Pretty dang awesome I tell you.

Ladies Who Lunch

It's been a whirlwind of a weekend.


On Thursday we had our monthly "Ladies Who Lunch" gathering. This is a time for several of us moms to get together and Tracy makes lunch for us while we drink wine and the homeschoolers play upstairs. Everyone looks forward to it and very few miss the meeting because if you're not present then you're on the agenda. Which means we get to talk about you. It's in the rules.


J stayed over night because he could. You've got to love a mid-week sleepover. Z and I headed home where he, J and The Banker all played Minecraft. I think there were other homeschoolies sharing Zombie meat (don't ask), but those three I know for sure. Finally everyone went to bed because we took Day 5 as a movie day. J and The Banker went to see Wrath of the Titans. Another homeschooling mom took her kid and Z to the movies. Everyone met up and had fun while I worked. Nice, huh? Still I'm very pleased the we are building our homeschooling village after we left our PTA village behind in public school.


Reasons, seasons and lifetimes. Once again that old friendship adage holds true.

New Set Up

Argh.


I went through my precious darlings work product and did a little scrutiny on the grades. I usually go through each week and take a look at where their grades are landing, but I noticed a trend towards downward marks. Yes, the material does get harder, but these changes looked more like a critical case of Lazy Boy Syndrome.


It might be terminal.


As we get more comfortable with homeschooling the training of public school has waned. They feel much more at ease moving around and taking breaks. Unfortunately they're not terribly experienced with self-regulation. A byproduct of being told what to do every second of their day so it's not surprising we are having issues with the freedom. Time to tighten things up a bit.


At first the boys were at their desks in their rooms and I would check in on them, but their falling grades (I expect at a minimum grade of 85) require me to reassess that plan. Today I have set us all up at the kitchen table (which was my plan in the first place).

5th Grade left side and 7th Grade right side

Already I see improvement. All of us sitting at the table allows for immediate answers to questions. I can look up their grades on the spot and review trouble areas. They ask each other questions about whatever subject they're working on and the discussion ranges from the provocative (global warming) to the hilarious (Gilligan's Island attempts at rescue).


We take a break to share YouTube videos just to keep it fun.


I can log in to a server or my local network to do my work which helps me stay on task. The other day J asked if I could teach him accounting. He wants to take over my business so I don't have to work so hard. So. Darn. Cute.

Miniature Greenhouse

Spring has sprung!

Well, okay we didn't really get a winter here in Texas. At all. Usually we get at least 1 day of "Deep Freeze 2012" or some other equally apocalyptic title assigned by the media. We Texans can stretch this one cold day out for a weeks worth of news. How we'll prepare for it (buy all the canned goods and bottled water on store shelves), the actual day when the meteorologists give a play by play of the storm's path and the wrecks on the ice-covered roads.  Then the news follow up of insurance claims from the fools that actually took to the road (we Texans do NOT know how to drive in inclement weather and should not even attempt it). 

But I digress...my point was Spring is here!

This year we are going to further our urban homesteading by planting a garden. They boys and I picked out seeds and, given our lack of experience, purchased a mini greenhouse. Just to be safe we also bough a few plants in case our seeds don't sprout. 

My suburban farmers

We have seeds for serrano peppers, tomatoes (forgot which kind) and cilantro. I plan on giving away some of the cilantro to one of my girlfriends whose husband wants to start a garden too.

Do your seed thing!

We still have some space for more tomatoes since the package with all of 10 seeds. I think it will be fine to stagger out the seed production so that we'll have a tomato harvest throughout the summer. We'll have a container garden this year. I wanted to have a stair-step raised garden bed made, but time got away from me. Again.

This year Tracy is excited because it means we can swap herbs, plants and veggies for our life selectively off the grid. I can't wait for our monthly Hippie Moms lunch to share what we've grown, made or created!

Setting Goals

One of the reasons we decided to homeschool is because we thought project management and planning in the public schools didn't give our students enough practice. Yes, our kids had a spiral agenda, and if we're talking ways to make things easier for a teacher with 25 or more students, then paper planners are the way. However, in this day and age, most kids, or more importantly to me, my kids think digitally. I wanted my middle school students to be able to use his smartphone for information management, but that wasn't an option in public school.


I am a small business owner. I work with other small business owners. In order to communicate and collaborate it's necessary to have the tools that bring us together. I have not met one small business owner that uses a paper planner. Most independent contractors, self-employed individuals and small businesses use Google products. E-mail, calendar, tasks, documents and several industry specific applications that make it easier for people in remote (read not in the same building) able to work with one another. Pretty snazzy, huh? So to my way of thinking, the students should use a system from the onset so that their learning curve is limited when they become gainfully employed someday (please, God).


The first thing I did when we brought the boys home to school is get them on Google calendar, docs and they had been using email. Already we've seen improvement with their ability to manage short to medium range projects. Public schools create an artificial deadline for projects such as Science Fair or an Essay contest, but there is nothing like a real-world application to bring a goal into focus.


We've created a spreadsheet to manage our week. I input the lessons they are responsible for during the day as well as the household tasks they are required to complete. When they get off track they check the spreadsheet, refocus and get busy. It also helps that we have a work first, play later policy. This weekend we chatted about how the lessons are worked and both agreed they'd like to do several lessons of one subject a day rather than a lesson on each subject every school day. Pretty exciting that they were able to make the connection that something didn't feel quite as productive as it could be and offered an idea for renegotiation. I'm pretty excited about the change because it makes lesson planning easier for me and I think they'll actually finish their assignments quicker because they don't have to spend time mentally moving from one subject to another.


So now we are stretching this goal-setting skill a bit further with a middle range goal. I consider a mid-range goal to be in the 90 days or 3 months range. Over the weekend while chatting with my sister-in-law she brought up loving holding a garage sale. Ew. There is nothing I hate more that having a yard sale, but I think it's a valuable skill and she's darned good at it. So I agreed to provide the "stuff" and she agreed to hold the sale and split the proceeds. This sounds like a fine set of tasks for the boys (since most of the "stuff" is theirs). They have a plan for a June or July sale and will split the spoils of war 50-50. They're already deciding what to do with their haul. Good on 'em.


For a larger, longer project we are tackling the back yard as an outdoor living space. After our decision to homeschool we considered moving out of the county to lower our property taxes. We trolled the internet to see what was available in a the surrounding counties and ultimately decided to stay put. Looking at our options was great exercise because now we know we're in the right place to maintain our quality of life and keep our financial obligations in check.


Over the past week we talked about what we wanted the back yard living area to look like, rendered our own drawing and made a list of supplies that we would need to collect. This served as the outline of our project. We also talked about when we'd like to have our Backyard Oasis complete and listed the tasks that we could complete without additional resources. So towards that end we built a compost bin (more about that in another post), primed the chicken coop knowing we would get at least 2 chickens in the near future and trimmed several bushes (several of which croaked in the summer drought). This weekend provided immediate results and really gave us all the motivation to continue our work on this two-year project.


I love that I can see the "buy in" from the guys on these projects. Isn't that how it is in real life? In real life you either open on time or land the client or get the product to the consumer. Public school does it's best to simulate these experiences, but really when comes down to it the brass ring isn't the grade it's the result.