Medieval Times Partners In Education Program

~sponsored

Did you know that Medieval Times has an educational program?  I didn't either, until we were invited to attend a matinee show along with other schools.

Medieval Times has an educational area on their website here *Medieval Times Partners In Education where  you can read about different aspects of Medieval life and printout pdfs for classroom use.  Schools and homeschools can plan a Medieval Times field-trip to complement their study on the Medieval Ages.

The Matinee program consisted of time to view the torture museum, the horse stables and the gift shop before the show.  We were then treated to a tournament show, interesting educational information on the role of women in the castle, the training of apprentices, the horses used in the show, and a yummy lunch.

I don't know if Josie or Demi-Sky loved the jousting more.  Josie was definitely a fan of all the sword-play.  She was of the opinion that a great plot-surprise would be a girl as disguised knight.  I have to say that I agree.

We all know which parts were Meg's favorite, right?  Answer:  all the parts with horses in them :)

The show breeds and trains beautiful Andalusian horses.  {sigh}  I used to be a horse-crazy girl like Meg.  These horses captivated me.

**Homeschool-Mom-Nerd-Moment*** raise your hand if you remember a book about this breed used in a Sonlight Core?

Bueller?  Bueller?

These horses are just beautiful, and are trained in the art of dressage and dance.

Art in motion. No hyperbole.

Meg just stood, looked and inhaled.  She has applied for a job as a stable-hand here, but didn't get the call.  Could you imagine the scene in the house if she got the call?  Seriously, she would have mucked out all the stalls for free that day, and missed the show even, just to stand in the stalls and inhale the horsey-scent.  Yes, she is that horse-addled.

all in all, it was a great day!  The show was fantastic, the educational parts went well with the story of the show, the food was great...and we got a chocolate chip cookie!  A great day, indeed  :)

*Disclosure: I was compensated by Medieval Times with entry to the show in order to do my review of the program. My opinions and experiences are entirely my own.

Circle of Moms video series: The Mom that Does it All

Sponsored~ I think that my role of homeschool mom pretty much lines me up as a mom who likes to be in charge of all the little details.  This also lines me up to be a mom that puts pressure on herself to do it all.  This age of social media, which I have embraced, also piles on a lot of expectation and comparison.  I love my pinterest boards; in one way, they make my life much easier by being a place I can bookmark ideas and recipes- but I fear that pinterest also sets up a lot unrealistic expectations on moms.

This Circle of Moms video series in partnership with Kia deals with this high pressure we moms seem to place on ourselves. I liked that this  latest video segment with Tia Mowry and other mom friends was upbeat and helpful.  I liked that Tia said that she reminds herself to "take an hour at a time" and that "not everything is going to be perfect, and that's okay".  The moms touched on the role of social media and the pressure to compare.

Okay, I had two spots that jumped out at me during the latest video from Circle of Moms by POPSUGAR -the first high-spot was the discussion on teaching a child to ride a bike>>filmed in the all New 2014 Kia Sorento -this caught my interest because my last van was a Kia Sorento but was several years old, I was interested to see how it has changed...and I could not tear my eyes away from the double sun roofs in the segment.  I heart sunroofs!  My current ride- which is used, has a sunroof and I really believe it has helped with my depression- having that natural sunlight on me daily as I do errands.   So...sunroofs (plural) ~I was mesmerized.  I also liked the ending segment on showing other moms gratitude.  The moms offered several ideas on how to simply show another mom how much you appreciate them.  We could all use a little appreciation these days, yes?

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Kia through their partnership with Circle of Moms. While I was compensated to review the Kia Motors video and write a review, all opinions are my own

7 Quick Takes -Flies and other homeschool relics edition

~1~

Meg's homeschool chemistry experiment went a little south and several large blue-bottle flies escaped. But wait, it gets even better!  Meg then went away for highschool girl's church camp and left me home alone with the two youngest kids and her escaped flies for company. Yes, I live the glamor life!!  Early on in our fly campaign, we discovered  this jumping spider on the outside of the glass, spending time stalking a few flies on the inside of the glass. It was fascinating to watch.  Eventually, I opened the window on top (double hung old-fashioned windows) and a few flies flew over and ended up between the glass and screen, which is where the spider happened to be.  I have to report that the spider did catch one of the flies, with Amie and Demi watching, mezmerized.  More homeschool science, yay...

~2~

Amie's Hogwarts for Muggles class last week was a potions class.  The kids had containers of  interesting things like "dragons breath", "mandrake tears" etc.  They conducted several experiments with their concoctions and made a lap book filled with chemistry facts.  So much fun!

~3~

extra bonus photo of my cute doggie.  I {heart} her.

I was lamenting that Oliver (a.k.a. Evil Kitty)  is a favorite photo subject because he is so much more easier to photograph, even though my dog is my big love. So, I thought I'd try to spend more time capturing her on camera.  She is a hard subject because she is so dark, she tends to show up as one big blob.

~4~

My sister and I spent an afternoon packing up mom's china.  This set of china has some history; her eldest brother brought it home from Hong Kong, during the Vietnam war- on the aircraft carrier he was stationed on...tucked away in boxes in the freezer. He was the cook. It's a special story, we wanted to make sure that her china ended up safe and loved.  I was lucky enough to take it home with me.  My sister took home another all white set.

~5~

my man-cub just moved up from a boy's size 6 shoe, to a man's size 8 shoe.  I was kind of sad.  Sky traveled up North for a family wedding, I stayed home with the two youngest, while Meg and Josie went to church camp.  Demi needed some up-keep done, such as a haircut (he wailed to me after it was done that he was now almost bald...I said, "good" in my best grumpy cat imitation) and then he needed new shoes and socks. Mission accomplished...it's sad though, how quick they grow up.

~6~

The new Dr. Who season starts this coming Saturday!!! We are so excited!  We are planning special food for the viewing, kind of like superbowl, but instead with time travel and mad men with a box  :)

Dr. Who Series 7 part 2 prequel

~7~

Just found out last night, that a new Miss Julia book will be out on Tuesday!  It has been a few years since the last one.  If you don't know Miss Julia, she is definitely worth a read- she is a very Southern older lady with moxie and a nose for mystery.  Outside her hard, proper shell is a heart of mush.  She is one of those characters that makes you wish that book characters were real and lived in your neighborhood :)

Miss Julia to the rescue

7 quick takes Friday is hosted at Conversion diary, hop on over!

Wordless Wednesday -Cat squared

Happy Wordless Wednesday!

Pinterest cake -nailed it! sort of

Our Amie had a birthday recently.  She is now Eleven-teen (ha!) and when I asked her for a cake request, she said, "not chocolate" which gave me a lot of creative leeway.  I let pinterest have its way with me....and decided to try out this recipe:

Vanilla cake with strawberry cream cheese frosting from Baby Gizmo

I make a truly from-scratch-cake about as often as the locust swarm...I'm usually a boxed-mix girl.  This cake was very, very tasty.  It was very, very gooey though.  I'm thinking next time around, I will try making little mini cakes or muffins and put the filling and frosting on top.

I realized, about half-way through trying to frost it, that I shouldn't have frosted the sides... My first thought was "Nailed it!!"   The un-frosted side is very pretty, though.

It was a very yummy cake, though very big!

The verdict?  A keeper recipe.  -I need to add a board on pinterest for pins I've actually done.

what about you, do you just pin things, or do you actually try many of them?

7 Quick Takes -missing in action edition

Howdy, howdy, howdy bloggy friends!  Whew, blog-break!!  Life has been crazy-busy here at {Home} -a girl can't catch her thoughts, much less blog...!  Here's all the crazy that I live:

~1~

Josie went in this week for her audition for the performing arts high school she'd like to attend next year.  I swear, this whole process has taken a year off my life, at least.  I admitted earlier that I think I have A.D.D. -at the least, I am scattered, Bridget-Jones -homeschool-mom and so imagine me trying to navigate a months-long process of detailed applications, different deadlines for different things, requesting transcripts, remembering deadlines, organizing/labeling/displaying artwork tastefully.... etc.  I had one midnight panic attack (I woke up Sky, sobbing my heart out because I thought I had messed up a transcript thingy- and it was either wake him up or call my E.S. in the middle of the night) and a dozen mini-panic attacks where my heart would jump and I'd ask myself "have I missed a deadline?"  and "the audition is on this date, right?" and then I'd have to go online and re-check.  And re-check.

Once we had everything packed-up, labeled, displayed in a beautiful manner...my mad scrapbook skills came into handy at 1 a.m. as Josie and I cropped digital art and used double-sided tape to put things into place.. who knew that particular skill would come into such important play?!...once it was all ready, Josie was dressed up, hair curled, subtle make-up in place....I delivered her to the door of the school and walked away.

The rest was up to her.  Poor thing then had to draw for 90 minutes.  She survived, and I did too.  We have to wait several weeks now to see if she got in.  I try not to think about it.  She really wants to go.

~2~

Standardized State Testing season has begun.  Demi and Amie had p.e. testing, and then Josie had to take the Math portion of the California High School Exit Exam the morning of her audition for the arts school.  Yeah, fun times.  Poor thing.

We also ended a round of key assignments for the charter school (my high school students) * I really hate these, stuff for a future post.  I contemplated pulling Meg out three months before graduation to avoid these.  I asked Meg how she would feel to get a diploma from St. Jennifer's Academy and she was a bit ambiguous about it.  I decided to try to wait it out.  We also had portfolio samples due.  This month has been really, really crazy!

~3~

Amie loves her Hogwarts for Muggles class.  They had a class all about owls and dissected owl pellets, measured out different owl species wing spans, studied their diets and did a craft.  This week, they studied frogs and made chocolate frog candy.  She has such a blast with this class.  I love the lapbooks she brings home.

~4~

Demi is taking an eight-week creative writing class through Biola Star.  This is his first class with Biola, his older sisters have been taking high school classes with them for years now.  It is a great class to get his feet wet with them.  Next year in 8th grade, I am hoping to have him take an intro to composition class and Latin with them.  It is very strange to think that next year I might only have one student taking classes with Biola Star.

~5~

Monday I said goodbye to our very last hen.  Our flock has slowly diminished to one lone hen, and she was very, very lonely.  Ironically, Annabelle was the ornery hen.  Once she was alone, her personality changed and she became timid and tried to hang out with us when we were outside.  She was pretty misanthropic before, this change was pretty big.  We found a friend who has hens, to adopt her, so she left for hopefully a happy retirement with new friends.  It's a bit strange, I keep catching myself saving my morning blueberries for her, or checking outside to see if she has water, or just looking outside to see what she is doing.  I am no longer Hen-Jen.

~6~

The Bible College boys are back for Sunday Night dinners (we miss them when they are on break), the weather here has swung from cloudy/cold to hail and rain, to sunlight on the same day as hail, back to foggy and then today it was really warm.  I am hoping the warm weather is back.  The hail was pretty exciting, since we really don't get wild weather here.

~7~

Gas prices here in So. Ca are painful!  I am hoping they go down soon.  I drive about 60 miles each way to take Amie to her Hogwarts class once a week, Demi's writing class is 20 miles away, and Josie's fencing class is 45 miles away. We are about to yell "uncle!" with the gas prices!

Well, bloggy friends, I am really looking forward to getting back to a normal, quiet homeschool week after this week of chaos/stress.

Hope your week is wonderful!

**7  Quick Takes happens every Friday over at Conversion Diary

The week in progress- Oak Meadow History

Our homeschool is much more productive when I type up weekly assignment sheets for the high school students.  Not that I always do, ahem...but I should.  Here is what they look like, not high-tech at all...

I type them up on google docs (it's in the cloud so I can move around on different computers) and I don't mess with tables or charts, just type them in and add big, bolded o's for the kids to put a check-mark in when completed.

This is Josie's sheet.  She is on week 16 of Oak Meadow World History.  I simply look through the OM syllabus and through the textbook and decide what she should do for the week.  There is a lot of reading and information to cover in the textbook and we have to keep moving, so I try to keep the work not too-involved most weeks.  Her Biola classes also keep her very busy.  This week, I pulled the bolded words out of the text and asked her to make a definition page, this is not in the OM syllabus.  The OM syllabus has a list of great essay questions after the reading, so I did assign one of them, and then asked her to think about another (because I know she has a lot of writing to do with Biola already)  As I was looking through the chapter in the textbook, my mind keeps wanting to go down rabbit-trails...so I did add in two documentaries from Netflix, and some extra reading and short 2 minute videos from history.com  -because I just have to do the rabbit trails... {help me}  I made an effort to keep it simple so we could move on to the next chapter next week, but it was an effort...

She has gotten behind in her Math, so I am assigning two pages most days.  Her Biola class syllabus are pretty involved, so I just ask her to check and follow them, and then check mark that she did so.

My younger students just do what I tell them to, though some weeks, I do sheet for them, too...but not often, it's just a bit too much for A.D.D. mom

I am really enjoying Oak Meadow, I like that it keeps me moving, and that everything is in the textbook...as long as I don't get distracted!

how's your week?

Farmhouse bed {love}

We've had the same bed-set since we were married.  Yeah, we are a little sentimental about it, it was the first nice set of furniture we owned. {However} the bed had a foot-board, that was sort of like a min-bench.  About thigh-high, picturesque and great for sitting on to put on your shoes..but it was also the perfect level to jam yourself in the thigh, in the middle of the night. Or the middle of the day.  Emma-the-wonder-labradoodle even walked face-first into it one night.  (Which began her tradition of not moving through our room if it is dark, she will stand still and groan until I come get her or turn on a light.)  We've had many a bruise and scrape from this bed.

It finally occurred to us a while ago, or so, that maybe we should do something about this night-time terror.

And then we'd forget, until dark time and danger came lurking and then we'd say, "you know, we should get a new bed!"

But we didn't, then once in a while we'd agree that we should, specially after another midnight bruising incident.... and then it occurred to me that I do have a husband who builds things...

Sky used the plans from Ana White.  And then, Mr. Woodworker/ Civil Engineer/ Building Inspector / former contractor...didn't read the plans, or at least very quickly scanned the plans and built the headboard two-times too big!!  After I questioned the scale, he had to take it apart and build it again.  His favorite quote is "measure twice build once"  {ahem}

Here it is!  {love it}

We were going to distress it,  but decided we liked a simple white-wash look.

And we skipped the foot-board.

Amen.