We love freebies!

A site I love is teacherpayteachers.com!

I signed up for their emails and this was a freebie this week! It is AB patterning and great for Ellie's 3 y. o. Preschool. Even better, we are on "S is for Snowman" this week, so it was perfect timing!

Goals for 2015

This is my first "whole year goals" blog post. I have done them for the homeschooling school year, my to do lists, and summer, but I was inspired after reading a friend's to try to make one for the whole year. She used the format from Money Saving Mom's 2015 goals - see that here, and I also am going to use that as a format guide. I think it helps structure a little bit. The other reason I decided to do this was because we are very intentional about doing one-on-one things with the kids and fun events during the summer, but forget to be as intentional about planning things during the school year. The past two days we took the oldest 3 to see a movie. As a big family, we almost never go to the movies- it's expensive and we can buy the DVD once it comes out for less than the trip to the movie! However, we decided to take them and they had SO much fun. Grace, Zoe, my mom and I saw Annie yesterday and Brian took Cian to the Night at the Museum 3 today.

My 2015 Goals

Myself

I really liked this article from buzzfeed on 19 Resolutions that are So Much Better than Going on a Diet. The instagram pictures on the beginning are hysterical and sorta sum up for me how I feel about making New Year's resolutions, especially dieting ones, but this was a good article and I am going to try and do 5, 6, and 9.  

GOAL 1- Get healthier through following the previously mentioned small life changes. I picked eat less sugar, walk at least 30 minutes a day, and stop drinking soda. Well, as a Mt. Dew addict, the first one is done by the 3rd one, lol! My only brother is getting married in 8 months, so I really would like to loose some "baby weight" before that too.

GOAL 2- Take 30 minutes of "me time." For better or worse, many days it will be my walking time, but at least I can knock out both goals with one thing, right?? Most school days, I am like a one-armed pinball (one arm with baby and bouncing from kid to kid doing school subjects), so this will be a good thing for me.

Marriage

This is a great area to make a goal. My breastfed baby has had 3 bottles of pumped milk her entire almost 9 months. I think she rejected them all too. So basically, where I go, she goes. As she is now eating some baby food and will hopefully learn to use a sippy for juice soon. Sooooo....

GOAL 3- It would be really nice to have a monthly date with my husband without any kids!

Motherhood

GOAL 4- Both a summer and non-summer on-on-one outing with each kid.

GOAL 5- Play Clue with Grace and Cian and Paw Patrol board game with Zoe and Ellie. They have asked me to since receiving them at Christmas and I still haven't done either.

GOAL 6- Get up-to-date on Fionn's baby book and get her photos hung. The poor child is almost 9 months and I hung her photo finally today. I have 3 more of milestone months that need hung downstairs with the other kids' milestone pictures.

GOAL 7- Find and implement some better laundry system. It is the only thing I procrastinate on and then I shoot myself in the foot spending a whole day trying to catch up.

Professionally

All great teachers try and better themselves, so I included professionally. My job is homeschooling the kids, so I wanted to make goals there too.

GOAL 8-  Make art and music with Ellie a priority. Those seem to be the only things that get skipped regularly.

GOAL 9- Do more of the optional science experiments in Cian and Grace's science curriculum. I love when they have optional ones because I see it as a pass, but they would love to do all of them, so find some middle ground on the ones that are "optional."

Life in General

GOAL 10- Have fun! The kids are only little once. The house work can wait or a lesson could be done the next day. If they have an opportunity to go somewhere, see something, do something, take it. We have a great freedom in the flexibility of homeschooling- continue to be grateful for it and utilize it. Continue to
enjoy the blessing my children are and cherish each day with them.

Cian's Lego Movie birthday party

Cian LOVES legos! For his birthday, he wanted the theme Lego Movie with Emmet. Since he was having a bowling party, the only decoration I really had to find was.... the cake!

At first, I thought I was being "punked" or it was one of those horrible bakery stories where they write the words "underneath that" etc... I had printed a photo of Emmet on quick print so the bakery would know who I wanted on the cake. I also quickly wrote out the wording to avoid Cian's name being misspelled. When I ordered the cake, I had specifically said, don't use this rough draft, but this will give you an idea. Anyhow, long story short, they scanned and used my chicken scratch handwriting one.

Pinterest helps save the day, as I had seen this idea on there and the cake looked SO much better with these little lego people on it. The candles they are holding were from Walmart.

I asked the bakery to at least trace the letters with the frosting and then my added lego figurines and the candles.

Here's what we ended up with:

My 8 year old!

ready for cake!

Cian and his friends

ready to blow out the candles

Cian and 3/4ths of his sisters

Marshmallow builders

Here is another part of the S.T.E.A.M. Girl Scout patch that I photographed. My oldest two girls are Girl Scout Juliettes and my son was just doing it for fun. Ellie just joined us so she could eat marshmallows.
The mini marshmallows proved to be a bit of a challenge to work with!

Marshmallow toothpick building:

It was harder than in sounded!

testing different shapes

what we ended up with

the marshmallow stealer

Zoe proud of her design

Sink or Float

My oldest two girls are doing Girl Scouts as Juliettes. One of their patch activities towards the S.T.E.A.M. patch was the foil boats with pennies. It worked out great because my K and Pre-K girls were going to do a sink or float activity for science - so we filled the tub and did both!

SINK OR FLOAT:

FOIL BOATS:

The oldest 3 kids all made one

go time!

Ellie was in charge of passing out pennies

adding pennies

unofficial judge

the final result

We are Thankful for:

I found this cute little turkey idea on Pinterest!

Here is what each of my little turkeys said for "I am thankful for:"
(Fionn and Ellie dictated theirs to me.)

P week

We have been covering Letter P last week and this week for PUMPKIN.
Here was Ellie's favorite part: