Author: Riss

Summer Solstice (Litha/Midsummer) Celebration Ideas for Families

| Riss

It’s hard to believe that the year is nearly half over! Summer is basically here, at least weather wise, where I live, but it won’t be “officially” here until the summer solstice on June 21st.

I love summer and I am super excited to celebrate Litha this year with my husband and daughter. My son is also in town, but for him it’s just summer solstice. As a blended family, we only get 7 or 8 weeks of summer with E (our son). He’ll be 17 this year and be entering his senior year of high school (and graduating with only 1 semester of college left to do to get his associates). Soon he’ll be working or pursuing other passions and we won’t have the unhindered family summers with him that we have now.

On the other hand, my daughter just turned 5 and so is at the age now where she can really enjoy (and remember) doing special things with the family. So I feel this kind of pressure to make THIS summer memorable for all of us.

We’ve already planned a trip to Niagara falls in a couple weeks – which I am SUPER stoked about – and we made a summer bucket list 🙂

We’ll return from our family vacation just in time for Litha so I’ve already been planning out our celebration activities! Here’s some of the things I came up with:

summer solstice/Litha/Midsummer activities:

  • sunrise / sunset yoga
  • brew sun tea
  • make a sundial
  • make shadow art
  • make bird feeders out of orange peels
  • make energy bags with herbs & crystals
  • make cupcakes / cake pops decorated like suns
  • gather wildflowers and make sun catchers (place between clear contact paper/laminate and cut out shapes)
  • create “time capsule” envelopes. Write down things that are going on, hopes, dreams, resolutions, etc. and put them in envelopes to open next Litha.
  • build a fire and roast marshmallows
  • cookout/grill or make a “summery” meal together

We may not do ALL of these, but I like having at least an idea of what our day could look like. I know that we will for sure do the time capsule envelopes and I’ve planned a dinner of lemon-garlic chicken linguine tossed with summer squash, cherry tomatoes, and fresh basil (yum! Just thinking about it makes me hungry!) Don’t worry I’ll post the recipe after Litha! 😉

I’ll be doing a few other things to celebrate on a personal level and connect spiritually with the abundance of the season, but I don’t require or request that my family do the same.

I hope that no matter how you bring in the new season, that it’s a time of family love and togetherness!

xo,
-M

30 Minute Meals: Saag – A modern take on a classic Indian Favorite!

| Riss

This past Christmas I made my family gift baskets with recipe cards I wrote out, printed, laminated and placed onto a binder ring (so that it can be added to), and the ingredients to one of the recipes. Turns out, they were a hit and every time one of them tries a new recipe of mine, they text me to tell me how much they loved it! Which makes my heart so so happy because I am an “intuitive” cook and I don’t really measure my ingredients. As you can imagine, this makes writing down / sharing my “recipes” difficult. (How much salt? I dunno. Throw in a pinch at a time til it tastes good!)

The recipe my family members have been going ga-ga over recently is my version of saag. I LOVE Indian cuisine and over the years I’ve (systematically) gotten my mom, dad, brother, and husband all addicted as well. (Mwahaha!) But the closest GOOD Indian restaurant is across the river in the city and I just honestly don’t want to always go over there to get it.

So I started experimenting with Indian spices and recipes at home and came up with this gem. It’s quick and super easy! It’d be a one pot meal, but because you have to make the rice separate, it takes two. (Honestly I throw the rice in my instant pot before I even start the rest of the meal).

This recipe calls for some specific Indian spices, which you can order online or if you happen to have a Jungle Jim’s nearby (Hello Cincinnati!) then I know you can find them there (because that’s where I got them).

Also, if you’re expecting traditional “puree” style saag, that’s NOT what this recipe makes. This is a “take” on saag – you might call it faux saag or keema saag or chunky fresh saag… I just call it saag and everyone in my family knows what that means. It has spinach in it so I’m not totally wrong 😉

Make it meat-free by simply omitting the ground beef! I’ve made it this way too and it’s just as tasty and filling!

Enjoy!
-M

Science Explorations: Butterflies & Ants

| Riss

Our last day of co-op was in late April and I’m just NOW starting to feel like we are settling in to our new routine. Probably because as soon as I finished my last day of teaching, I came down with a rotten head cold, followed by K and my husband both falling ill with a flu-like virus.

On top of all that, we are desperately trying to finish up a million house projects so we can list our home on the market! Exciting stuff, but I feel like there is just this never ending list of things to be done… Also, our son (my stepson for technicality purposes) comes home for the summer next week, so we’ve been re-organizing his room.

Due to all the sickness and house-work we haven’t taken a lot of time to do any “on purpose” educating. I mean, as unschoolers, we don’t really do this on a day to day basis anyway, but we are usually more intentional about at least presenting learning opportunities.

We have done a couple cool things recently though, like raise butterflies from caterpillars and keep an ant farm!

K got both of these kits as gifts (one for Christmas and one for her birthday) this past year and we’ve been waiting for the weather to be warm enough to order the live bugs. Did you KNOW you can buy ants on Amazon?!?! There is something so weird about getting tubes of ants in the mail… and FYI, the ant farm K got is sold separately from the actual ants, which is nice if you’re gifting the set or the weather isn’t quite cool/warm enough yet to ship live ants and set up your farm right away.

The butterfly kit and caterpillars came from Insect Lore and I HIGHLY recommend this product/website for anyone who has kiddos interested in bugs/butterflies. The kit came with a info booklet, a “garden” (mesh enclosure), and a voucher for the live caterpillars. When we redeemed our voucher, we also purchased a couple plastic models of the butterfly life cycle to go with the whole experience. The models helped reinforce butterfly life cycle vocabulary and helped K visualize what would happen to the caterpillars next.

We successfully raised 4 beautiful butterflies – although one had crumpled wings when it emerged (sad face) – and it was really cool to watch the whole process of metamorphosis! I’m NOT an insect lover, but I would definitely recommend doing this with your kiddo – and we’ll likely do it again because K loved it so much (she’s a butterfly girl!). I’m thinking that next year we’ll couple the project with the planting of some butterfly friendly plants too (hopefully at our new house).

All in all, these were both cool science explorations that were easy to do at home and required very minimal effort/active time.

If you wanted to take these projects a step further, here are some ideas!

-check out books about ants/butterflies at your local library

-browse YouTube and create an educational playlist of videos about ants/butterflies (or check out our curated playlist!)

-do some butterfly crafts

-do some ant activities

-make butterfly food for your newly emerged butterflies (9 parts water to 1 part sugar. Boil until dissolved then let cool completely and add to a sponge. Place sponge in the mesh butterfly garden enclosure)

-Make an OUTDOOR butterfly feeder

-have a picnic. Use a magnifying glass to look for worker ants (just be careful not to scorch them!)

I hope you all have as much fun with this as we did!

TTFN,
-Marissa








A Kid Friendly Ostara / Spring Equinox Celebration

| Riss

Kid Friendly Ostara

It’s officially SPRING!!! I have been feeling so over all the cold weather and grey skies! It’s SO nice to finally feel the air warming up and see the SUN!

This was our first year of celebrating Ostara and I had been SOO looking forward to it! Never heard of Ostara? Then before we get to our family celebration, it’s time for a history lesson!

Ostara is one of the 8 seasonal holidays that make up the “wheel of the year” (but you may know it as the Spring or Vernal Equinox).

The word Ostara is an English evolution of the word Eostre; Eostre was a Germanic goddess of Spring. One myth claims that Eostre once found an injured bird on the ground in late winter. To save it’s life, she changed the bird into a hare but the transformation wasn’t perfect. It looked like a hare, but kept it’s ability to lay eggs! The creature would decorate these eggs and leave them as gifts to Eostre as thanks for saving it’s life.

Other myths associate rabbits and eggs with Ostara as symbols of fertility and re-birth, which is a common theme of Spring: baby animals are being born, trees and flowers begin to bloom, crops/gardens are being planted, etc.

Celebrations of Eostre were held during Eosturmononath, the fourth lunar month (mid-March to Mid-April). Often these celebrations involved the decorating of eggs, egg hunts, and gifts. As Christianity began to spread, many customs that were previously associated with Ostara were combined with and adopted into the Christian holiday “Easter” and it’s easy to see the resemblance and symbolism here (celebrating the rebirth of the Christ seems fitting during the time of year when re-birth is thematic).

The Spring Equinox or Vernal Equinox, when both the northern and southern hemisphere receive equal sunlight (as the earth tilts and the sun begins to bring more daylight to the northern hemisphere), occurs around March 21st each year (in 2019 it is March 20th, in 2020 it will be March 19th). Some earth / nature centric religions (wiccans, neopagans, etc.) observe the equinox as a holiday, others observe the Sabbat Ostara. JudeoChristians observe Passover and Easter around the same time (usually between Ostara and Beltane aka May Day). Regardless, this is a a time of spiritual significance!

Okay, enough history. Back to our celebration!

We started the day with a trip to our local dollar tree. (We go there a lot because it’s like a treasure hunt each time!) I don’t mind getting my seasonal flowers from there and we like to peruse the craft supplies and seasonal decor – which is exactly what we did! We always leave there with waaay too much stuff, because it’s really hard to say no to something that only costs a dollar…

Anyway, I got some things for our seasonal / holiday table (it’s really my personal altar, but I like keeping it decorated for the season or current / recent holiday). K got some sparkly eggs, bunny ears, and a balloon that said Happy Birthday (haha). It made her happy because it was rainbow colored – and it was actually semi-appropriate because my sister in law’s birthday is on the 21st and my mom’s birthday is on the 22nd – even though K wanted to keep it for herself!

We also made a stop at our local herb shop, because K wanted to make a potion to help the plants grow and bring out Spring. I picked up a few things to add to my apothecary closet and K picked out rosebuds and passion flower for her potion.

Once we got home and unloaded everything, we dove right in to potion making!

Potion making is super fun! I love seeing what K will pick out to blend together. She usually picks out really good blends! For her Spring Potion we used: Pink Rosebuds, Passion Flower, Lavender, Chamomile, and Calendula. She ground up each ingredient with our little mortar and pestle and combined it all in a glass bowl that we use specifically for herb blending / potions. Then we added some Rosewater that I’d made from the red roses hubby brought me for Valentine’s Day.

Because I’m a modern gal, we used the microwave to heat up the concoction. 2-3 minutes was plenty! We poured the liquid through a mesh strainer into a clean bowl and then funneled it into a small 2oz. spray bottle and voila! Our Spring Growing Potion was ready!

K wanted to put it to the test immediately so we went outside and sprayed all of our landscape bushes and the beginning shoots of our daylilies with the potion. Of course we had to chant our intentions too – so we firmly, but lovingly, told each plant to “Grow, Plant, Grow”!

After our successful potion mixing time, we spent some time doing new flower arrangements for the fireplace mantle and foyer table. I keep ALL the flowers I ever buy in a giant bag so I let K go through and pick whichever ones she wanted to use to make the arrangement for the table, while I placed white and peach colored lilies in the vase for the mantle.

After that we re-decorated the table and had an indoor egg hunt! We also went to the library and got some Spring themed books, which we are still reading through and likely will renew at least once!

I was also able to take some me-time to be outside and just give thanks for all of the abundance of the season, the gift of life, new opportunities, fresh starts, and everything Spring represents to me personally.

There’s not a lot of information out there for families who want to celebrate and create Ostara traditions together, but I think we managed well enough on our own! If you celebrate Ostara with kids I’d love to hear what you planned!

xo and happy Spring!
–Marissa

Our Super Simple System for Making Sight Words Easy and Fun!

| Riss

I don’t know about other homeschooling / unschooling families out there but I’ve always been overwhelmed with the idea of trying to teach reading. Letter recognition, letter sounds, those seem easy but piecing that together into reading just seems hard! Especially because the English language has so many weird exceptions, silent letters, words that sound the same but are spelled different, etc.

Luckily for me, my daughter is a SPONGE and soaks up all knowledge. She WANTS to learn and has been starting to ask how things are spelled.

Being an unschooler, I haven’t wanted to push reading before she is ready – but since she’s showing interest in the subject, I’ve taken the opportunity to introduce sight words and work reading into our everyday lives.

I personally think that memorizing sight words can be really really really boring and is a bit too much like public school learning for my liking. Here’s how we use the concept of sight words, but make it fun, and easy too!

First, I looked up a list of sight words that are typically learned at ages 5 – 6. I copied words from the Dolch Sight Words Kindergarten and 1st grade lists (you can also download these as pdfs) onto colored index cards.

Overachiever Confession: I really wanted to color code the parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) but didn’t have enough index cards / colors to do this. I figured I’ll update our system once we’re actually ready to cover those concepts. She’s only 5 after all!

I found and purchased a photo album and organized the index cards alphabetically into the pockets. This helps me be able to easily see what words we have to work with and find specific words as needed.

Our Super Simple System for Making Sight Words Easy & FUN! #unschooling #homeschool #kindergarten #myunschoollife
Our Super Simple System for Making Sight Words Easy & FUN! #unschooling #homeschool #kindergarten #myunschoollife
Our Super Simple System for Making Sight Words Easy & FUN! #unschooling #homeschool #kindergarten #myunschoollife

I also bought a few colored magnets at the dollar tree and voila! our sight word system was complete!

We choose 8 words to work with at a time. K likes to be involved and pick out her words, so I let her choose 4 words and I choose the other 4. Typically I choose words that can be used to make  multiple short sentences or phrases.

Using sight words with actual context seems to really help K learn them! Plus she likes to rearrange the words to see what sentences she can come up with. This provides us with opportunities to discuss sentence structure and verb tense too!

Our Super Simple System for Making Sight Words Easy & FUN! #unschooling #homeschool #kindergarten #myunschoollife

While the concept of “sight words” is generally to know the word “on sight”, we initially work on sounding out the words, rather than straight memorization. The “on sight” part comes when I ask her to point to specific words – which I don’t really do daily… it’s pretty random, because well…unschooling. 😉

I plan to start writing the date next to each sight word as we learn/ review them so I can see and remember the last time we worked with a specific word. I’ll likely do this in pencil so I can erase / re-write as we add new words in.

So there you have it! Our super simple system for making sight words easy and fun! How do you approach reading / sight words at home? Tell me in a comment!

xo,
Marissa

Our Current Amazon Crushes: ASD/SPD Friendly Products, Unschooling Resources, and Home Organization

| Riss


We are an Amazon Prime loving family. I mean you just can’t beat free 2 day delivery, basically anything you could ever want to buy, and bargain hunting! As an unschooling family, we find lots of educational goodies on Amazon. As a mom, I’m also always looking for things that make my life easier. Aaaaand I buy myself the occasional “treat” or two as well.

We tend to batch buy things about once a month, after “crushing on” it for a while. Here are some of our favorite purchases so far this year

THINGS FOR K:

Kids Bluetooth Wireless Headband / Sleep Mask
K’s SPD often amps up at bedtime, when every little noise is heightened. She’s consistently bothered by small house noises, the threat of thunderstorms, trucks going by on the road, the threat of smoke detectors going off (which they recently randomly did for no reason at all. Checked the batteries, they were fine.), etc. etc. She tried using her hardshell noise blocking ear muffs but those are, as you can imagine, incredibly uncomfortable to sleep in. So off to Amazon I went and found this gem! It’s a soft headband that covers the ears and can cover the eyes too – that has bluetooth wireless capability! SCORE! We linked this to her “music box” tablet (old tablet repurposed to just play music in her bedroom) and she loves it! The addition of the music helps block more noise, it’s soft and comfy, AND it helps block out unwanted lights. This has really helped her settle down and get to sleep faster!

Assorted Tumbled Rocks
This product is a GREAT price for the amount of rock chips you get. These are NOT large tumbled stones, but rather small 1cm ish chips. They would be good for decorating projects, art projects, math manipulatives, etc. We use them to represent the things we are thankful for each night and collect them in our “Thankful Jar”. This also gives us a daily opportunity to work on identification of each rock. While they are small, you should still be able to easily identify each of them, as the assortment seems to contain several of the most popular stones. I.E clear quartz, amethyst, lapis lazuli, citrine, carnelian, etc.

Rock on! Geology Game
Since we have been using the assorted rock chips for our thankful jar, K has wanted to know what each one is and has been getting very interested in various gems/stones. And like I said above, we’ve been working on identifying the ones in the assorted batch we purchased. But sometimes we find one that I don’t know what it is – or can’t remember. We’ll look it up of course, but I bought this game so that we can work on even more rock identification in an even more fun way! I’m hoping it will help me finally recall the name of that weird light pastel green rock K loves (haha).

Piano for Kids
As I mentioned in our recent Unschool Life Update, K has been working on learning basic piano. She got a keyboard for her birthday in February. I did a LOT of research on various kids piano books and this one really seemed to take the cake! I’ve been really happy with it so far! It’s easy to understand and progresses nicely. It teaches correct finger position and two-handed play from the very beginning. But above all, it makes practicing FUN!

Spanish/English Storybooks
My husband and I both speak Spanish as a second language. I actually currently teach Spanish for our homeschool co-op – it was my minor in college. Hubby has family that are native Hispanic. So one of the things we really have wanted to teach K is Spanish, from a young age. Language learning is much much easier for young kids than it is for older teens and adults, unless they just have an affinity for languages. K LOVES learning new Spanish words and actually uses them appropriately. One of the ways we include Spanish in our unschooling life is to read bilingual books together. The below books are some that we LOVE! Notice that The Story of Ferdinand has a separate book for the English version and a separate book for the Spanish version. We actually like having two copies of books like this because then one of us can read the Spanish version and the other can read the English version – so both parents can be involved in storytime!

CONFESSION: Hubby and I often battle over who gets to read the Spanish version, because we BOTH want to!

Goldilocks and the 3 bears (Spanish / English)

The Story of Ferdinand (Spanish)

The Story of Ferdinand (English)

Goodnight Moon (Spanish / English) 

Things for me:

The Complete Medicinal Herbal 
One of my 5 year goals is to obtain an herbalist certification. I’m looking into and planning to participate in a reputable course as soon as I can work it into the budget. But since we’re also trying to finish up a million home improvement projects to get our home ready to sell, enrolling in an herbalism course is going to have to wait awhile. So in the meantime, I’m self-studying and working with herbs on my own.  This book is one of my favorites so far! I’ve bought a couple others from half-price books but they haven’t arrived yet….

Adjustable Book / Tablet Stand
I really bought this for K to use as a music stand when she’s practicing keyboard, but I’m definitely going to be using it too. No more flat tablet on the countertop when looking up a recipe. No more flat textbooks when I’m studying! The stand easily folds flat and has several adjustments for various viewing angles. It’s made of a study thick plastic that doesn’t feel cheap!

Leaf Shaped Ceramic Mini-Dishes
As I’ve mentioned, I’m getting into herbalism and as part of that I’ve been making our own incense recently. I actually prefer to use loose incense on these Starlight Charcoal Rounds, so I had to search for little bowls or plates for burning the incense. I wanted something with a depth so we could layer sand, charcoal, incense. These cute little dishes, which are technically appetizer or sauce dishes, caught my eye! I love that they are leaf shaped and so kind of go with the whole herbal vibe and they come in 4 lovely colors! Great price and quality.

Dymo Label Maker
Since I am a serial craft supplies collector… I mean you never know when you’re going to need 50 buttons for some art project and as unschoolers our supply of cardstock, stickers, white paper, paint, crayons, etc. must be stocked at all times! So much art and crafting happens in our house – SO. MUCH.

The problem is that my house has very little storage space. And craft supplies have traditionally been stored all over the house. Some in my closet, some in K’s closet, some in the office, etc. They haven’t had one collective “home” since we’ve lived here. Part of that is the lack of storage space and part of that has been my lack of organization because it’s really really daunting to organize as much art/craft stuff as I have.

However, since we’re preparing to move and since I’ve grown more and more fond of a minimalist-ish lifestyle – I’ve been facing the organizational problem head on. The first thing I did was to purchase a bunch of plastic food containers from the dollar tree. The second thing I did was to purchase this label maker form Amazon. BEST PURCHASE OF MY LIFE.

I’m nowhere near done with my craft supply organization project, but we now have stickers, crayons, colored pencils, glues/tapes, watercolor paints, paintbrushes and sponges, etc. all in their own labelled storage containers. The containers make it super easy to pull out the desired supplies and put back all nice and neat with the lid secured so things don’t get spilled or mixed up. The labels make it super easy to quickly visualize what is in each container.

Since doing this, hubby can now get K set up with paint supplies quickly and easily -because he can actually FIND them now. Whereas before I was the only one who knew where x,y, z supplies were hidden.

I’ve also been able to use my handy dandy label maker to organize all my new herbs into my apothecary closet! What was once a ragtag assortment of bagged/jarred herbs is now nicely and neatly arranged and labelled so I don’t have to go digging through a box to find what I need!

i know I know, this all sounds like basic organization 101, and it is. But for me, someone who is busy and just hasn’t made the time (up til now) to organize, this has been life changing!

Clothing Organizer Bags
One of my other organizational projects has been to clean out and tidy up our walk-in closet. Which isn’t exactly the most well designed closet in the world. While it’s technically a “walk-in”, it has weird angles and hard to reach places. And there’s shelving that was added that just doesn’t make sense… it’s been kind of a trainwreck.

I finally decided enough was enough and ordered these clothing organizer bags, which stack up nicely once they’ve been filled with folded clothes. I’m using them to store our out of season clothes and some of my husband’s more formal button up shirts, that he doesn’t wear very often but still needs to keep in case he has a face to face work meeting or has to travel for a business thing.

These have freed up a lot of space in the closet and keep clothes from being shoved to the back of the closet where they just get forgotten about. When not in use, they fold flat and take up very little space.

Makeup Train Case
Still on the topic of organization… I have been struggling with my makeup storage for years! At first I simply tossed everything into a makeup bag, but caps and lids would come off and everything would get coated in sticky eyeliner goo or silver eyeshadow powder, etc. So then I bought a countertop organizer that’s clear and has various compartments/holders for brushes etc. But even though I’ve drastically reduced the number of eyeshadows and lipsticks I own, I still have too many makeup items to store neatly in even two organizers.

So I finally gave in and purchased a dedicated makeup case, with dividers and shelves and a brush holder, and a mirror too! I haven’t actually gotten this in the mail yet – it should be here this week, but I’m super excited to 1) get all the makeup off the bathroom counter and clear up some visual space and 2) not have to lump everything together into one catch-all bag. Plus the case I bought is super stylish 😉

So there you have it! Our family’s favorite Amazon finds from February/March!
Affiliate Disclosure: If you see something you like from our list, we do receive a small commission from Amazon if you purchase from our links – but this is at no cost to you!!

xo,
Marissa

Our Unschool Life Update

| Riss

It’s been a good while since I’ve written anything – we’ve been really busy! I personally can’t wait for the homeschool co-op year to be over so we can gain back two of our weekdays! It’s been a great experience for both of us, to get out of the house, for socialization, and for K to learn important values like listening, independence, sharing, taking turns, etc along with the weekly explorations in science, art, reading, etc that they do. But it’s also been a drain on our time and has impeded the flexible lifestyle we are used to.

Since it’s been a while, here’s what we’ve been working on / up to!

1) Music

K got a keyboard for her 5th birthday and we’ve been using this color coded system to help her learn the basics. This book teaches two handed method from the beginning, with correct finger-key placement. It uses color to identify notes and longer/shorter boxes to identify longer/shorter note duration. Each song gets a little harder, introducing more notes, more movement, and more variation. K loves it. It’s a little challenging for her since she doesn’t have good fine motor skills – but that’s just another reason I love it and she needs it!

2) Geography

Our local dollar tree has a small section of educational books and teaching resources. On our last trip for craft supplies, I found a US map and a globe ball. We started out just talking about the hierarchy of country, state, city/town, which the maps really helped visually enforce. K wanted to know where we live, so we located our state on the US map. We’ve also since identified some of her “favorite” states – like Florida and Missouri – that we visit often.

We’ve used the globe ball to discuss continents but identifying them is still a hard task for her. We’ve gotten Antarctica down, so 6 more to go! We like to toss the globe ball and try to figure out what continent we see when we catch it. We’ve also watched a few youtube videos and tried to match the continent shown to us with the correct one on the ball.

3) Science

Also at the dollar tree was a Solar System mobile project, which my husband and K worked on one Saturday together. I’m pretty sure A did most of it, but K was at least seeing the planets and colored a couple herself. They didn’t finish it all, and she actually asked me the other day if we could finish it, so hopefully when we put it all together she’ll get a little more interested. She knows several of the planets names at least, so I think that’s a good start for being only 5!

4) Reading

K has been expressing more interest in spelling/reading so I looked up a big list of sight words that kids would normally learn in Kindergarten/1st grade, there’s about 70-100 words, I don’t remember exactly. I wrote each word on an index card and then organized them alphabetically into a photo album. Every week or two we pick 8 words out and put them on the fridge with their own special magnet, so that each word can be moved around independent of the other words. I usually try to pick words that  can be interchanged to make up several short sentences. For example, this week we have “I” “have” “a” blue” “bird” “he” “is” and “good” hanging up. From these words we get the sentences:

I have a blue bird
He is good.
I have a good bird.
He is blue.
He is a blue bird.
He is a good bird.
etc.

K is learning really well using this method! She loves pointing out words she knows in books and other places!

5) Writing

K has begun to ask to trace letters and numbers. I have a big activity book I got from Walgreen’s and a couple we got from the dollar tree. She picks pages at random and traces the letters, words, and numbers. She’s done a few color by number pages and dot to dot’s too. Other activities we work together on, when she can’t easily figure out the instructions/goal.

With this, she’s independently begun to write her own name! She still asks what letter comes next, because her name isn’t the easiest to spell, but given the letters she can correctly write her own name now, which seems like a huge win to me!

6) Math

K still enjoys playing math games on the tablet and is working with numbers up to 20 now, for both addition and subtraction. Some pages in the activity books require counting and filling in the missing numbers in a sequence and she does great with these – math is probably the area in which I supervise her the LEAST. She’s a numbers natural!

7) Character Building

We’ve been working on practicing thankfulness each night before bed. As part of our night time ritual, we each say three things we’re thankful for that day. We use these small tumbled stones to represent each thankful and collect them all in a glass jar so we can see how it all adds up! This is one of my most treasured moments of each day and I think it’s helped all of us be a bit more mindful of how blessed we are.

We also take a couple rocks to symbolize anything we need help with – like getting good sleep, making good choices, etc. We combine our “thankfuls” and “helpfuls” together in place of a common bedtime prayer – and I think it MEANS more than just reciting some words that happen to rhyme.

8) Faith

Speaking of prayer, faith IS an important part of our lives, but we take a very non-traditional approach to it. We do not attend a church as a family, but rather we take time to talk about spiritual matters/morals whenever it comes up. We take a more earth-centered, nature based, approach to spirituality so we talk a lot about taking care of the creation (not wasting water, not littering, recycling, etc.). We don’t like using myths or stories to explain things that science explains (like where rain comes from), but we will use them to explain holidays and why they are celebrated/how different people celebrate different holidays. We honor several seasonal observations, as well as several of the mainstream holidays.

Currently we are preparing for Ostara, or the Spring Equinox! Modern Easter borrowed a lot of the Ostara traditions so we will still color eggs and do an egg hunt, but we will also take time to notice the signs of Spring, to celebrate the changing of the seasons, and to give thanks to the Creator for this season of new life. We will celebrate Ostara as a family with a few symbolic activities such as planning/preparing our herb garden, making birdfeeders, etc.

I didn’t cover EVERYTHING, but that’s basically what we’ve been up to! Of course K still has free art time (and has been covering every surface of our walls with her drawings), and play time. We’ve had days where we’ve visited with family and friends and also days  where we’ve stayed home and done nothing. That’s the beauty of unschool life, you just see where it takes you from one day to the next!

Til next time!

–M

Kids Visual Scheduling Tools

| Riss

Visual schedulers can be a wonderful tool to use with kids to help them learn daily routines and life skills. But they can be especially useful for kids with ADHD, ASD, SPD, or any behavioral/learning disorder that affects attention span or executive planning. Using a visual scheduler for kiddos that need a little extra help focusing can tremendously reduce stress levels on both parents and children, and can even reduce the occurrence of meltdowns!

Here are 3 AWESOME resources to get you started:

1) Timo – Kid’s Routine & Scheduler (App)

Not to be confused with TiMo (a banking app), THIS is a fabulous app that is FREE to download and use, from the Google Play store. Though it says there are some in-app purchases, I have yet to find any that need to bought for app functionality. In fact I haven’t seen any in-app purchase options at all. Maybe they are for avatar appearance items, as I haven’t really investigated that area of the app too much.

This app allows parents to select from various common activities, for morning, afternoon, and nighttime, in order to create a visual sequence of tasks/activities for the child to follow. Each task gets assigned a “time limit” between 5 and 60 minutes, and you can edit the amount of time you’d like to assign to each task. If a child completes the task within the allotted time, they get a star! You can allow the entire sequence to play automatically, but I recommend setting it to manual so that “IF” a child needs more time than you have set for a task, they don’t get behind on the next task(s) in the sequence – which could end up causing MORE frustration/meltdown behavior.

2) OKID Visual Schedule Magnetic Cards

This product is perfect for your kitchen command center! Each card is colorfully illustrated and magnetic, so you and your kiddo can plan out the day by re-arranging/adding/removing cards as needed from your chosen metal surface (fridge, dishwasher, magnetic board). You could set up one side of your surface for “To Do” and one side for “Done”, or simply follow the sequence you’ve laid out.

I like this product because, sometimes routines change. For instance in our house, we don’t always have the same morning routine because two days a week we go to a co-op and those mornings look dramatically different from mornings we don’t go to co-op. There’s lunches and backpacks to grab, coffee to make, and the whole time-table of our morning is more regimented in order to get out the door on time! So being able to customize the daily order of events is a plus!

3) OK to Wake Clock

While this isn’t exactly a “scheduler”, it is a very useful tool for mornings and helps your little one understand the concept of “morning”. Mornings can be dark or super bright, depending on where you live, what season it is, etc. and the changing seasonings/times/level of brightness can be confusing for our littles. This OK to Wake clock helps them understand that “wake up time” is constant, even when the sun is not.

Of course, “constant” is subjective to your individual schedules, but you get the idea. Regardless, this clock changes color when it’s OK for your child to get out of bed – giving you a few more minutes of sleep/quiet!

Disclaimer: Our model also has a physical alarm. So, pro tip, you might want to turn the volume down or turn that feature off, otherwise if your kiddo isn’t awake yet, they certainly will be once the alarm goes off!

Keto NO BAKE Cheesecake

| Riss

I am not a photographer by any means. I WISH I had lovely food pics to go with my recipe posts – especially this one. Maybe one day…

Then again, maybe not, because this cheesecake never sticks around long enough! Super simple to whip up in 10 minutes flat, the hardest part of making this zero carb dessert is waiting for it to set up in the fridge!

You only need 3 simple ingredients, a block of cream cheese, a cup of heavy whipping cream, and a zero calorie sweetener (we use Splenda).

The BEST THING about this cheesecake is that an entire 1/4 of it has only 267 calories. (WHAAAT???!)

KETO NO BAKE CHEESECAKE:

Step 1: Soften the block of cream cheese in the microwave. Poke a few vent holes in it so it won’t splatter everywhere. Microwave for 30 seconds, flip and microwave again for another 30 seconds or so until you can easily spread the cream cheese around the bowl.

Step 2: Add about 6 packets of Splenda (or 1/4 cup of the granulated type) to the cream cheese. With a hand mixer, blend until smooth.

Step 3: Into a separate bowl, pour 1 cup of heavy cream. Beat on med-high speed with a hand mixer until stiff peaks form. (Until it looks like whipped topping).

Step 4: Add the cream cheese mixture to the cream and mix thoroughly. 

Step 5: Transfer mixture to a shallow pie pan or dish and chill until set (approx. 1-2 hours). 

For a fall variation of this, we’ve added pumpkin puree and pumpkin spice, which was pretty good – but I just love the plain version so much!

Another variation we’ve tried is to add a single flavored drink packet (the kind for an 8oz. drink) to the cheesecake mix, instead of the Splenda, to create flavors like lemon or strawberry cheesecake!

If you’d like to add a Keto friendly crust, I recommend using almond flour. Simply mix about 1/2 cup of almond flour with a couple tablespoons of melted butter. I like to add ground cinnamon and a packet of sweetener to the mix too. Then press into the bottom of your pie pan before spreading the cheesecake on top. (I practice “intuitive cooking” so I usually don’t really measure this kind of stuff. Just eyeball it).

Again, this is such a simple recipe you can’t really mess it up! Try different things and if it doesn’t work out, you can always whip up an original!

Next time we make this, I’ll try to snap a pic 😉

xo

Marissa