A New Journey

Yeah, it's been a while.  And I've been missing this blog and all my blog buddies terribly! 

Do you even want to hear my excuses or shall we just move on to the new plans?  :-)

Oh, OK, here's the first excuse.  I lost my camera.  Happily it has been found, but for several weeks I wasn't able to take pictures of our daily work.  And without loading the photos every evening, I wasn't prompted to post about our activities.

The second excuse is that our adoption did not go as smoothly as we'd hoped.  I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here; I'll just say that November and December were hard months for our family.

Third and final excuse: I have recently become a working mom.  Well, sort of.  I'm spending several days each week helping out at our family business, and it has thrown our entire schedule out of whack.

Not that I wasn't sympathetic to working moms before, because I was.  But now I really get it.  My hat is off to those of you who work full-time, because just going in part-time has been overwhelming for me!

My kids are old enough to do a lot of their schoolwork independently, but I still feel like academics have suffered here at the Super-Awesome School this winter.  Besides, I really miss doing school with them every day.

And we are all eating way too many frozen dinners and dinners out.  (The waitress at our favorite local Mexican restaurant doesn't even take our order anymore, she just smiles, waves, and tells the cook we're there.)

So why all the upheaval in the Sparklee family?

Because it will be worth it!

In the coming months, we are transforming our family business (a small hotel) into a natural history-themed resort, complete with art galleries, science exhibits, classes for kids and adults, a spa, the coolest pool you've ever seen, and a restaurant that serves fresh, local food.  It's an exciting project that has captured the imagination of our entire family.

Researching and developing our business plan has been an amazing opportunity for our kids!  They are now on a first-name basis with some of the leading scientists in the country.  They've enjoyed behind-the-scenes tours of multiple museums.  They have sifted through style boards, choosing their favorites from among the carpet and wallpaper samples.  They have worked with professional artists, brainstorming ideas for everything from logos to pool design.  

They have sat through some very, very boring meetings as well.  Because any big idea worth pursuing takes a lot of planning and coordinating, budgeting and compromising.  

So even as I say academics are suffering, I'm not too broken up about it.  We're perpetually behind in math, just barely keeping up with history and science, and grammar and German went out the window some time ago.  But they are getting an amazing education as they watch an idea go from "wouldn't it be cool" to "let's make it happen."

I still plan to dedicate this blog to our daily homeschool activities, especially our unit studies and hands-on projects.  But I'll be starting a new blog as well, so I can journal about the new business.

Can't wait to share our new journey with you all!

Happy New Year!

Getting caught up here at the Super-Awesome School. Or at least as "caught-up" as we will ever be! We've got lots of projects going on, including rearranging furniture, cleaning out kids' rooms and closets, and putting away the Christmas tree and decorations.

What's new? Well, both kiddos are starting 2012 as purple belts! Yup, they passed their karate exams and got bright, shiny purple belts along with new black gis. Good thing, too, because they were outgrowing their white ones.

We are trying something new in math and I like it a lot. The books are called Verbal Fractions and Verbal Percents by Michael Levin and Charan Langton ($2.99 on Kindle!) We are supposed to be tackling percents this month, but it was clear that we needed a teeny bit of fraction review so we're working our way through Verbal Fractions first. We just sit down somewhere comfortable with a cup of tea, I give the kids some scratch paper (which they barely use) and they take turns answering the questions. Couldn't be simpler and they enjoy it.

We usually follow up with some Daily Puzzlers from Laura Candler. I made a Daily Puzzler box, and the kids each draw 3 or 4 to solve. We're almost through Book B, which was a little easy for them, but I'm glad they got their feet wet before moving on to Book C. My philosophy: a little review never hurts!

Over the break I read a book by Robin Padron called How to Homeschool Math--Even if you Hate Fractions! Well, I don't actually hate fractions, but I did find the book extremely helpful. (I actually read it on my Kindle while walking on the treadmill--New Year's resolutions, you know!)

We are officially a month "behind" according the plans I made last summer, but I kind of expected that. Our world religions unit study was supposed to begin in November and culminate just before the holiday break. We started it January 2. So what? We are all enjoying it. Lots of good reading, and as many hands-on projects as I can find, including this Yin and Yang pony bead keychain from MakingFriends.com.

We're reading The Story of Religion by Betsy and Giulio Maestro, with frequent pauses as we supplement with various library books about the different religions and philosophies. So far the kids have really enjoyed The Legend of Lao Tzu and the Tao te Ching by Demi and Confucius: The Golden Rule by Russell Freedman and Frederic Clement.

As you may already know, we have a particular interest in how Asian philosophies have influenced history! We hope to start a fun unit study on South Korea soon, probably next month. This year I'm still working on those perfectionist tendencies that keep me from starting a project until it is perfectly planned and perfectly ready. I'm learning to just jump in! :-)

Let's see...what else? Oh, I did let Dude take a "piano break" and join his sister's guitar class. I was afraid he would start hating music altogether if I forced him to stay in piano. So far he has been extremely motivated, partly because he wants to catch up with the class, and partly because he wants to show me that changing instruments was a good decision!

And the coolest part: I'm taking piano now! Since Dude changed instruments, the piano teacher had an empty time slot and I asked if I could take it! I remembered more than I thought I would (it's been, what, 25 years?) and I'm having a blast!

Hope your new year is off to a great start!
Wishing you health and happiness in 2012!

Enjoying some family time

We're still here! Got lots going on, most of it good: homeschooling, karate, piano and guitar lessons, Cub Scouts, working out and keeping the bills paid. Not to mention keeping everyone fed and in clean clothes.

In addition to the usual, we're working on a new project. Actually, we've been working on it for months, but I haven't mentioned it here because I was kind of superstitious, I guess.

But National Adoption Awareness Month seems like a good time to announce: we're adopting a little boy from South Korea!

We're finishing up the homestudy process now, and hoping to get a referral for our Little Guy early next year.

So...there's lots of paperwork, meetings, training, reading books, and shopping, not to mention dreaming about Little Guy and wondering how on earth we're going to do it all with a toddler in the family!

We're trying to do lots of fun stuff with Super and Dude now since it's hard to predict the initial impact that Little Guy will have on our daily lives.

We hope to be focusing on the bonding/attachment process by this time next year. Which probably means a little less freedom to spontaneously decide to take in a movie, go out to lunch, or toss school out the window and go for a hike.

Still, life with a toddler will bring its own joys. I can not wait to sit on the floor and do puzzles again! And build block towers, just to knock them down! And finger paint! And play Candy Land!

And laugh hysterically over nothing!

Oh, wait...we already do that!

Hope you're having a beautiful fall!