Cindy's Life as She Knows It

My family has been having a lot of fun with the winter Olympics.  We are using a unit study by Amanda Bennett and it has day by day activities that let us include language arts, vocabulary, research, history and more.  Today we watched a video from the viewpoint of a train passenger going through Siberia then learned about Freestyle Skiing and some of the competitors in that sport.  We found out that this was first introduced in 1988.  After watching the videos and answering some questions, we looked up the four daily vocabulary words in the dictionary and my son also wrote down the quote of the day.  We found some more articles and pictures in magazines and newspapers and cut them out and put them in our Winter Games 2014 notebook too.  Then for art, my son made a huge wall chart with 8 different countries, drawing and coloring their flags, and making columns for gold, silver and bronze medals.  We added the tally marks for how many medals those countries have won so far and will add

Today my alarm did not go off, but thankfully I woke up on my own at 7:15.  I got in the shower and made coffee, put in the laundry and welcomed my daycare baby.  From 8-9:30 I proofread my work for my company and made corrections, did more laundry and then my son, daycare baby and I met my daughter and granddaughter for a morning at Disney on Ice in the city.  We rode the train and got there in plenty of time to get the girls a fun light and find our seats, which were fantastic and only two rows off the ice. The kids all enjoyed the show, which I agree was good, but not their best.  The fall productions are always better.  We got to see my niece and great nephew there and a few friends.  When the program was over, the little ones even got to go close to the ice and see the characters, wave and high five. We cut it close getting home and heading right back out to our class at Chelonia Ecoadventures.  We were ten minutes late, but they hadn't started yet, so Dakota didn't mi

Yesterday was so crazy busy, right up until the time that I closed my eyes at 10pm, that I could only get through today by looking ahead to 5pm when I would have a few blessed hours of down time.  I had to get up very early to get my daycare baby in at 6:30, then drank my coffee, stripped my bed, saw my son off to college, took a shower, got things ready for the day in the girls' room, made chocolate chip muffins then took my M/T daycare child to school, drop off my younger daughter at work, come back and meet my older daughter with my granddaughters, feed everyone then get school work started!  All before 9:30!! The girls were playing very well today and Dakota and I started our day watching Olympic short videos on Comcast about some of the athletes and sports.  He is getting very interested in the upcoming events!  Then he went into the diningroom and pulled up the writings he is working on at his computer and when he was finished two of them and ready to save the third, we pro

Being an at home mom and home educator, not to mention a grandmom/daycare provider, doesn't leave you much time during the day to relax.....and I also hold a "real" job that I do at home for a psychology company.  Family and friends, especially family, don't seem to remember that being "at home" is not synonymous for "doing nothing".  My phone rings off the hook and I hesitate to turn it on silent with a college age son driving his commute and two daughters and my husband out in the world who may need help.  My younger daughter stops in during the morning some time for coffee.  That's fine.  I have a daycare child before and after school on Monday/Tuesday and she is hoping for a ride to work on those days so she doesn't have to take the bus.  It's not the best way to start a productive school week, but I can live with it.  My 2 year old daycare baby usually arrives around 8.  Mom is good about dropping her off quickly and being on her w