Helping in the library

Where Do I Start?

I can't believe how long it's been since I wrote here. Does time slip through your fingers, too? It does mine. We have done so many fun things in the last 2 months. I wish I had remembered to chronicle them, because I seem to be forgetting. Luckily I have pictures of many of them, that I will upload when my camera battery is charged. Some of the things I remember:

-sliding down a hallway, on the polished wooden floor, in socks... at our librarian's house (and Cora falling and banging her chin!)

-taking the visiting "Flat Stanley" (which we renamed Flat Hamish) and Prince the Sock Monkey to several cool places, including the ancient Deer Abbey

-saying goodbye to a dear friend who has now moved to New Zealand

-taking a special shopping trip out to buy hats, scarves, and gloves after a very cold spell!

-a wonderful week long family vacation. I should make a whole new post about that, we had a fantastic time.

The School Room

Ever since we started home schooling, I've lusted after a school room. I just thought it would be nice to have an area where the school stuff can be contained, and somewhere for them to have a quiet place to concentrate.

A month or so ago Cora announced that she wanted to move into Calvin's room so we could have a school room. So we gave it a trial and it seems to be working out so far. The school room is still a work in progress - there's only so much we can do because we can't decorate. But I've got a couch to go in there, that's currently in the conservatory, and once that's in we can put things in their final place and I'll share some pictures. We made a family tree to go up on the wall, and there are posters that can be used with whiteboard markers. I want to collect more of those because the kids love them! They each have a desk as well. It feels all a bit cluttered and messy at the moment but I want to spend a day just organising and sorting it out. Then the couch can go into it.

If you have a school room, what's your favourite feature about it? If you could change something, what would it be?

The library

We use our local library a lot. Our cards are often full. We've made friends with the librarian too. She's lovely and the kids will miss her when she leaves later in the year.

Maia begs to go to this place... she always asks to colour and loves to sit and doodle. Her favourite shape is a triangle and she draws them a lot.

Cora loves to sit and read books there. I honestly think she would spend all day there if I let her.

Calvin likes to draw or go on the computer there. He's always drawing pictures for them to put on the walls.

This is what happened when I talked to the librarian for a minute as we were leaving. I love how happy they are here. If they ever cut our library we will have three devastated kids.

Planes and Helicopters

Earlier this week Calvin and I discovered a little road behind Aberdeen airport. It's a dead end, separated from the runway by only a fence. We parked and got out and watched for a while. We saw several helicopters land and take off, and several planes take off too. He was enthralled! He now says he wants to be a pilot when he grows up. But he hopes he doesn't get travel sick like he does now. :)

Monthly Shopping

I know this isn't strictly home ed related, but what the heck. Aaron's company just switched his pay from weekly to monthly. It's a difficult transition, but I'm glad in the long run. All the bills go out on payday and what's left is left! Coincidentally, this happened last week:

And it was met with much rejoicing.

Most of you probably know, I'm an ex-expat. I lived in the States for a total of about 7 years. My husband is from St. Louis, and Cora and Calvin were born there. We were always Costco members and loved it. So I had been meaning to get membership at Costco here for a long time, but never got around to it. It's quite a drive from our house, close to an hour, but oh so worth it. When you walk in, it's exactly the same as an American Costco. It's amazing! And sells so much American stuff, even produce! And the best bit? This:

Yep, that's right, American hot dogs. British ones don't even come close. And they're only £1.50 with a refillable soda. Yum!

And just because she's cute and there's no other pics, here's Maia:

So now that we have the Costco card, and Aaron is getting paid monthly, I had a brainwave. Why not do a monthly grocery shop? We have a freezer in the garage sitting mostly unused. Why not stock up on everything, freeze the meat in individual portions, et cetera et cetera? Sounds like a plan. So I made a menu plan for the month, and tediously made a monthly shopping list. Even more tediously, I entered all the groceries into www.mysupermarket.com so I could print out the list with prices from Tesco.com - that's where we would normally do our shop - and see if we're really getting a good deal on stuff.

I've discovered Addicted to Costco which is an amazing blog, and should come in very handy. If we decide this plan of monthly shopping works, then we'll switch to Executive membership so we can get the cashback. I'll update with how it goes, we should be doing our first monthly shop on Tuesday!

My New Home Ed Blog

I had been blogging at http://childrenshallbetaught.wordpress.com but I can never get onto the Wordpress dashboard from my computer. I know it's my computer/router, not the site, but it's been happening for months now! So I've finally given up. I look forward to blogging much more frequently about our home school adventures. :)