Learning adventures

 Ezra at Classical Conversations dissecting a crayfish. The little ones participated too!  

Learning opportunities like this keep me motivated when I'm feeling crazy the night before prepping our bags and making snacks and lunches till I'm about to fall over.  Don't forget their tin whistles!

Classical Conversations is a private home school group that meets for a half day each week to introduce new material that families take home and practice throughout the week as well as do science, art/music and public speaking in a group setting. And Ezra's favorite, RECESS!!  The majority of the information is presented and learned throughout the week in song format.

We do our own reading, writing and arithmetic curricula at home and utilize Classical Conversations as our foundation curriculum for all other subjects at this time: History, Geography, Science, Math (fact memorization, like conversion tables and multiplication tables), Latin, and English Grammar.  I'm taking this one year at a time and have not decided yet if we will participate in Classical Conversations (CC) again next year (it's a bit pricey).  I'm very impressed, however, at the junior high and high school levels of academics that CC offers. I find it reminiscent of my British high school experience.  I'm still a big fan of Charlotte Mason methods and find it complementary in its gentle/nature based approach.

Ezra, my future refrigerator sales man (his choice), is doing well with it and loves the weekly presentations he gets to give.  Juni (who wants to save babies and be a mermaid) likes the music and can skip count her sixes and sing Latin noun endings with the best of them, even though her participation is not compulsory.  I wrestle with the need to memorize so much so young, at times, and make sure they are having lots of opportunities to just be kids outside of the once a week meeting.

If anyone was interested in doing the foundations level Classical Conversations curriculum cheaply, they could simply buy the CDs and play them when they were in the car.  But, for us, right now, that would take all the fun out of it.  Someday, we too may be this cool:

One can dream, right?

I might be a little excited

I'm leaving in the morning for Omaha.  I'm being picked up by my best friend who I haven't seen for over six years.  We haven't met each other's kids and we have six between us!  She will meet Phoebe and I will get to meet all three of hers.  I am SO excited!  She's taking me to a family get together in Iowa to celebrate my Great Grandma's 100th birthday!  I'm going to see so many family members this weekend, I can't believe it!  I took the picture above this morning and printed off 25 of them to pass out at the birthday party.  My sweet husband is keeping the older two for my long weekend away.  I left them envelopes with messages from Mommy to open every day so I don't feel bad.  I've never been away from any of them for four days.  I'm still really excited.  :-)

Truly flourless muffins!

I'm of the mindset that if one doesn't go on a gluten free diet one will never notice the "gluten haze" or how they feel bad when they do eat gluten.  So, I've avoided the trend up till a couple of months ago when I decided it was worth a try if it helped my eczema which seems to worsen with the birth of each child.

This recipe, from my mother, has been my favorite treat since the new diet (which I'm giving three months to see if it helps.  So far it's not).   GFers enjoy!!!

Flourless Nut Butter Muffins

preheat oven to 350 degrees

1 c. natural organic peanut butter or almond butter or sun butter
2 ripe bananas
1 t. baking soda
1 t. vanilla
3 eggs
1/2 t. sea salt
1/4 c. honey (or stevia to taste)
1 t. cinnamon

Optional: Add 1/2 c. mini choc. chips (a must in our house), or 1 c. fresh raspberries, or 1 sliced bananas, or 1/2 c. dried cherries or craisins or raisins.  In med. bowl combine all ingredients until smooth. Spoon 1/4 c. into muffin liners.  Bake 15 min.