A World without walls
everyday life while homeschooling overseas
We're currently doing a year-long study of Astronomy. Right now, we're studying the sun. We very luckily got to see a tiny partial eclipse...and now we're burning holes through leaves using magnifying glasses and the intense heat of the Middle Eastern sun! We all had a blast making holes in leaves and burning them in half! :) Honestly, I was skeptical, as I'd never done it before--but we had no problems watching our leaves burst into little flames! So COOOL!
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So, it seems we are back in the swing of things...or as much as you can be when you're homeschooling 4 kids! :) Our first official day went really well--in actuality, we've been doing school now for quite awhile, but since it was all during our vacation time, we had to have a 'beginning' at home, too. That makes it feel more like we can be official, and the kids don't get too upset about it. I gave them a few days off when we got home, then on our 'first' day, we all sat down and had a planning meeting together. I had them tell me what our days should comprise of and when those subjects should happen. I was pleasantly surprised at their answers and reactions. They noted all the major and minor subjects, gave them days and time slots, and haven't moaned about it since! As a matter of fact, THEY remind ME sometimes! :) Claire and Josh have decided to take on Peter's preschool education, so they have 'Peter Preschool' every afternoon. Peter LOVES his time with his big brother and sister. They're doing the letter 'A' this week, and today, Josh took it upon himself to help Peter make applesauce because that starts with 'A'! They peeled and cut all the apples. I was impressed! :) It was really yummy, too! :) Yesterday, I took the kids to the pool for the afternoon. It was a glorious sunshiny day! I also got my iPhone up and running! Hooray! It works! I love seeing that little Zain JO up in the corner and knowing that I can use it as an actual phone now! Woohoo! I was SO worried about that the whole time we were in the states, especially after the whole fiasco with the first one. Whew. So, that's happy. In other news, Devin got a haircut today: No, I didn't let him leave the house like that. Sometimes the poor guy gets really desperate for a haircut. There's a decent barber at the embassy and he's pretty cheap, but I think Devin still prefers that I do it. Anyway, he was getting a little annoyed at the hair on his neck, and it looks like he decided to just keep going a little further. Ugh!! I couldn't help it, I laughed like crazy. I was tempted to let him go to his branch presidency meeting and subsequently to work tomorrow like that, but, well, I sort of like the guy, so I had to help him out. Ha! Now it looks a little better: and he's a little happier. So silly. What lengths he won't go to to get me to cut his hair... In Andrew's words, as is his norm, this was the BEST DAY EVER!! Mt Rainier is one heck of a spectacular park. We learned that the roads of the park were specifically engineered to give you the most breath-taking and spectacular views possible. They did a really good job. As you go around switchbacks, around every turn is an amazing view of this huge towering volcano. Wow. We were able to stop at some reflection lakes and got a few nice pictures. I couldn't believe how blessed we were to be at Mt Rainier on a crystal clear day. We saw the summit for two whole days! Many park visitors, we learned, come and go without ever even SEEING the top of the volcano! So beautiful, and made for such wonderful pictures! :) After the lakes stop, we made it up to Paradise. Yep. Aptly named. It was so beautiful! We stopped in to the visitor's center so the kids could do their Jr Ranger. We lucked out and got there just in time to finish the booklet part and have a Ranger-led discussion, so they got their badges in less than an hour. Impressive! Then we ran down to the motorhome (which was parked on an overlook over a huge valley), cooked lunch, then ran back up to go on a hike up some of the mountain! We were planning to hike quickly, then go on our way. It didn't happen that way, though. Instead, as we were hiking up, we saw a whole lot of plants that we recognized: Wild Blueberries!!!! So, we spent 5 hours on the slopes of Mt Rainier picking blueberries!! YUMMY!! We ate and ate and ate, and also managed to fill 2 waterbottles full of them! The kids passed them out to hikers who passed by. We had a GREAT time and there were sure some gorgeous views on the way. Honestly, it really was the best day ever. We had a great time just taking it easy and munching on wild berries in a subalpine forest. You can't ask for more than that! We camped on the other side of the park at a cute little spot with a playground. the kids were so happy and played while we did some laundry. Hooray for modern conveniences. And just for fun, here's a lovely panoramic view: What a beautiful thing to wake up inside a National Park, surrounded by super cool things!! :) We all got up, ate breakfast, and headed over to the visitor's center in order to get the kids their Lunar Rangers booklets and see what they had there. I found some super cool volcano books for school, and a headlamp which I've always wanted and has become invaluable to me. We headed into orbit (the Craters of the Moon loop). We climbed the Inferno Cone--a super cool small dome that had NO growth on it except for one big tree at the top. The whole thing was covered in black cinder rocks that were SO pretty! The glittered with gold and silver! Who knew cinders were so beautiful? We all really enjoyed climbing up and seeing such a beautiful panoramic view! We climbed to the top of a couple of 'spatter cones'. These are little volcanoes that just 'spatter' cinders out of them and make these cute little volcanoes that look like 'real' volcanoes as we are shown them. Our next fun adventure was a Ranger led hike through this HUGE lava flow to these lava tube caves! We learned all about the flow and the caves and how they formed. It was so fascinating! The kids LOVED climbing through the caves. Some parts were some serious spelunking... We decided to drive at night to Salmon--almost died! SO SCARY! The whole town was out of power due to some storm that had thrown most of the area into darkness. We were following the GPS to this RV park, but since there were no street lights, it was rather hard to see. We missed a turn off, so Devin was turning around. He thought he was turning into the parking lot of a filling station, but just in the nick of time, I looked up and forward and saw that we were NOT driving into a parking lot, but straight into a river off the side of a bridge with no guard rail!!! OH MY GOSH!!! I screamed until Devin finally stopped and thought I was going to have a heart attack as I imagined us continuing that last foot into a gorge. I still panic just thinking about it. More terrifying than climbing a volcano. At least the kids were all sleeping at this point. I would hate to have had them all freak out. We managed to find the park, and lucked out that not only had the power come on just a moment previous, but the owner of the park was standing outside, which was good because we had no idea where we were! The owner was really nice and helped us hook everything up so we could have a nice sleep. Thank goodness. What a day. And not really in a good way. Yet, it ended well, so what can I say? Huh. That sounded like a Dr. Seuss story. In a nutshell, we were slated to leave Rexburg right after breakfast. We were ready to go by 9am! Record time! I should have known something would happen to kill that one off... We took off, and stopped by Radio Shack in order to set up my phone number/data plan on my new iPhone that I got for my birthday. Actually, AT&T was first. They said no, go see Radio Shack. Radio Shack said no, go see Best Buy in I.F. We went to Walmart instead. Walmart said yes, here you go. I popped the SIM card in, and my phone said no. We spent the next 4 hours trying to figure out why. In the end, between Mike, Daniel, and Devin, we found that the phone just belongs to Sprint and can't be unlocked unless you have a long-standing account with them and have, in essence, 'paid for' your phone. We tried calling the guy we bought it from to see if he would be kind enough to help us unlock the phone, but when we finally got through to him, we lost the connection and he never called us back. Daniel figured out a 'loophole', where he would sign his sprint contract on our phone, then go unlock it....except they're making him keep it for 30 days before he can do that. So, to fix the problem, we looked on Craigslist and saw that someone listed an iPhone 4S--UNlocked already--so we ran down to I.F., met the guy, bought the phone, popped in the SIM, and off we went! We only left 7 hours late. And now I am a proud owner of two iPhone 4S's. So silly. *sigh* One day lost. But not really. We got to Craters of the Moon at 7pm, just in time for the evening Ranger programs!!! And it was perfect! We went on an 'evening stroll' with a Ranger and discovered all about the volcano ring and cinders surrounding us. We learned about A'a and Pa'hoe'hoe lava flows and climbed on them. These kids will NEVER forget the name of the lava flows! Best way to learn something to hear it, see it, touch it... :) At 8pm was the Jr. Ranger program, where the kids got to learn things and earn their badges in one fell blow! At 8:30 was the evening program, which was SUPER cool, because as the program went on, first there were bats flying over us as dusk left and as the darkness fell, a huge storm blew in (that was all bark and no bite)! The winds picked up and there was lightning all around! It was so cool! Claire cried the whole time! Ha! We got back to our lovely campsite, put the kids to bed, and by that time, the storm had blown itself out, so Devin, Devika and I sat outside at our picnic table and looked at the most AMAZING stars we've ever seen! The Milky Way was crystal clear! It was so beautiful! Honestly, it was the perfect way to end such a tough and frustrating day. Our homemade aquarium in its infancy... ...after a few days of fun fishy projects... ...and the finished product was very cool...but it's too bad I didn't get a picture of it!!!! :( Oh well. It's time to dance about and burst into song:
"It's lovely bobbing along... bobbing along on the bottom of the beautiful briny sea!" I've been given a Premium Membership to VocabularySpellingCity.com for a candid, personal, online review. I was sent an email asking if I would take the time to review VocabularySpellingCity. I've used their free version in the past a bit, and the kids seemed to enjoy that. I haven't used it for awhile, though, so maybe this will give us more incentive to use it and will keep track of my kids' spelling progress! So, stay tuned to hear all about my more indepth experience with this website.
Today was Review Day, so we went to a place for review: Mini Israel! We watched a 3D movie about Israel and all yelled when we saw places we'd seen (we were all alone in the theater, so it was ok). Then, we went out to the 'park' to see all the model buildings. These people took all the important landmarks of Israel and reconstructed them (1:25) in smaller size so we could look at them. The kids were totally enthralled! In some of them, the cars drove on the freeways, planes taxied on the runways, people prayed, dances, marched, and played football (aka soccer)! We saw Jerusalem's Old City and pointed out all the places we'd been. They really enjoyed it, and it was fun to see how much they recognized without any prompting from me! :) The only downside to the outing? It was HOT HOT HOT!! The sun was blazing down on us. I'm sure glad we went early when it was only 33C!! Sheesh. Movie in Hebrew with Arabic subtitles... :/ Today turned out MUCH differently than I had intended. I got up intending to take the kids to Herodium--King Herods winter palace/tomb. We got to go to a big exhibition of it at the Israel museum a few weeks back, and thought it would be really cool to see the thing in real life. I popped in the place in the GPS, and noticed it was acting really funky. First off, it took a few MINUTES to calculate. That doesn't bode well. THEN, when it finally came up, the directions went directly south, with a perpendicular line east to the site. That didn't seem quite right. I started to follow anyway. The 'road' that it told me to go on kept shifting and I just couldn't seem to find it. I finally stumbled on the road that takes you to Bethlehem, and as I zoomed out on the GPS, I saw that Herodium was further away than Bethlehem and smack dab in the middle of the West Bank (Palestine). Now, if I were with Devin, I may have still tried it out. But there were a few things against me. First off, the GPS doesn't work in that area, which is why it wasn't giving me any specific directions. Second off, while we CAN drive in the West Bank, there are many places we're not allowed to go, and I don't know where they are. Third, if ANYTHING were to happen and the checkpoints were closed, I'd be stuck, and it could potentially be dangerous. Maybe not, but it's always better to be safe than sorry. As I was meandering around the city, trying to find my way, some guy jumped in the middle of the street and flagged me down. He told me that Herodium (aka Herodion, Herodyon...they're very loose with their spelling here) was over an hour from here, but he could take me if I just jumped in his taxi! He could take me there and to Bethlehem and to Masada... Now, these ARE places I'd like to see, but not by myself with the kids in some strange guys' taxi. No, thank you. So, we changed our plans. I had planned to go to some Stalactite Caves, so I entered that into the GPS, and off we went! It didn't take more than a few seconds to get the directions up, so I knew it was safe. :) It still took 45 minutes to get there, but the drive was GORGEOUS!! We wound our way through mountains covered with evergreen trees. There was hardly anyone on the road. It was lovely! The caves were interesting... We got there right in the middle of about 45 school groups. Sheesh. The lady at the ticket counter took our money, and told us to tag along with the school groups. You couldn't get into the caves without a tour guide. So, we tagged along. The group was an Arabic school group. The guide spoke only Hebrew. So, she told them things in Hebrew, then a teacher translated it into Arabic, and the kids and I looked for bugs. They gave a whole schpill outside the caves, then showed a movie, then we FINALLY got to go in. It was really pretty inside--very cool formations and the lights changed colors just for fun. The groups inside were sort of annoying, since they had to stop every once in awhile and talk some more--in Hebrew and Arabic. Luckily, the kids and I were able to slip by a few groups and do our own thing. We were grateful for the education we received when we went to the Timpanogos Caves this past summer, as we knew most of the formations! Peter had never been in a cave like this, so we taught him the names of all the different formations: Stalactites, stalagmites, cave straws, flowstones, cave popcorn. The cave popcorn was Peter's favorite. At one point, there was this 'field' of cave popcorn next to a little pool. Peter looked at the pool and said, "Look! An ancient bath!" Smart kid! I told him that this was where they people anciently had movie nights. They ate a lot of popcorn and made a big mess, then jumped into the bath to clean off. The kids thought that was very funny. :) Claire on the top floor of the fortress! After our cave tour, we found a park off to the side of the road in the mountains! We had a picnic, and the kids played for hours. They found a BIG playhouse. When Andrew told Peter to take a look at that, Peter said, "Oh. A fortress." He's a riot! They played house (I was the grandma. I'm ashamed at my kids and their lack of respect for my youth!) and enjoyed themselves immensely. I did get a chance to sit and just enjoy the peace of the forest. I watched these very pretty birds fly all over...and eat our discarded fruit! :) It was a day well spent! Our cute little trees that we planted!! In honor of Earth Day, we did a super cool activity today: We planted a tree in a National Forest here in Israel! How cool is that?? We drove out about 40 minutes outside of the city into the middle of nowhere (SO pretty!!) into an area that they’re trying to re-forest. A very nice park ranger met us there and told us a little about what we were going to do… Of course, he didn’t get very far, because he made the mistake of passing out pickaxes before giving us his shpill. Ha!! We each got a tree (an Arizona Cypress, actually) and we walked out into this big field full of baby trees and irrigation pipes. There, we dug holes and planted our little baby trees! Then, the kids started hacking away at the rocks and dirt, and started finding ancient pottery. The Ranger said they could keep the pottery they found and they were ecstatic! So, they collected ancient pottery for a museum… We got certificates for participating, and flags that said, “I planted a tree in Israel!” On our way out of the forest, we found an area with picnic tables, so we stopped and ate our picnic lunch. The kids ran around and climbed on the rocks and found an old jeep which of course became TIV 3 (Tornado Intercept Vehicle) and they happily played storm chasers for another hour! We finally headed home when it really started to rain on us Once home, I set up the jaccuzzi bath tub and everyone took turns in the Jacuzzi (or jakuzey, as they spell it on the wall sticker). After Jacuzzi time, we have our ancient pottery museum. You can tell these kids have been to a lot of museums… They even charged me admittance fee! Sheesh. How’s that for gratitude? :D |
Who Am I?
As a Stay At Home Mom of 4 wonderful children, I have the amazing opportunity not only to home school them, but to do so in many different places! I am married to the most amazingly wonderful (and handsome) man in the whole world! Together, we seek out, every day, that Joy in the Journey that makes life exciting! Archives
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Emily's books
by Dan Brown
I like that the plot twists and turns a lot...and it makes you think. However, I don't appreciate Dan Brown's endings in his books. I find the endings incongruent with the rest of his stories--why make it a romance for the last chapter...
by Shannon Hale
I loved this book. I'm a sucker for fairy tales/fantasy. This was so well written! I can't wait to read all the rest of her books!
by Shannon Hale
I'm reading this one again. I liked it the first time I read it. I'm still liking it for the second time around. I like all of Shannon Hales' books.
**Still lots of fun the second time around! I do like this book for a comfortable...
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