Home Management: Laundry

In all honesty, I'm tired. I'm always tired. We've been living in a stressful situation for ages, and I have some underlying issues that mean I'm exhausted all the time, regardless of how much sleep I am, or am not, getting. What this means is that, in essence, our housekeeping is mediocre at best. Skeeve has the same problem, though instead of having the underlying issues, he has a full-time job outside the house. And so, a lot of the things that are routine for others, tend to fall by the wayside for us. And since I seem to have found a way to keep up with laundry, I figured I'd share.

Review! The Magic School Bus: The Secrets of Space

This post contains affiliate links to materials discussed. Purchases via these links help support our family at no additional cost to you. Thank you for choosing to support my little blog. Read my full disclosure statement here. 

Mad Natter is a big fan of all things science, but he does particularly love space science. As such, one of the things he got for Christmas (and loved!) was the The Magic School Bus: The Secrets of Space kit. I was The Mean Mom, and made him wait until we could put it into our science rotation - there's only so much I can cope with in terms of half-finished projects, and Mad Natter has been notorious in the past for getting partway through anything, and then dropping it in the middle of the living room for everyone to trip over until he decides he's done it and throws it away. But, we've just finished, and I'm super excited to talk about it.

Little Boy Found!

Sometime around when Mad Natter turned two, we started losing him. It was gradual, so we didn't even really realize it as it was happening. He just sort of slipped away. By the time he was three, he was gone. His interests were dominated by electronic flashy things, and no real interest in toys or games unless they were an extreme novelty, or came with inordinate amounts of attention (think one-on-one, no distractions, solely focused on him and his every word for hours at a time). His affinity for cars, Duplo, trains, drawing, storytelling... All gone. Just a little boy lost in a technological wonderland, his only interests videos, videogames, and fast-moving movies.

Progress: Slow and Steady

It seems the adage "slow and steady wins the race" applies to a great many things. This is terrible news for my impatience. However, there is progress, and that is the important part.

Tea Shops and Fun Times

Stepping a bit away from my usual purview, I'm going to talk about one of my favorite places today. See, I see lots of people talking about their local coffee shop and how much they love it, but not many people at all are talking about one of my favorite places - David'sTEA.

The Parenting Conundrum.

To medicate, or not to medicate: that is the question many parents of children with issues that present as ADHD face. You have society screaming at you that ADHD is overdiagnosed, and you'll medicate your child into zombie-hood. Your support systems are leery at best, as they primarily hear the same things society is screaming. You and your spouse are wound tighter than clock springs waiting for the time your child either realizes they are seen as "lesser" or "undesirable" by other children, or the time they dash off into the street after a ball and never come home again. Your child... Sometimes you know what they think, sometimes you don't. In rare moments of lucidity, Mad Natter would say "I like being sick, mama..." while he was fevered and lethargic, continuing on to say, "my brain slows down so I can think..."

A Day In The Life

One of the first things I learned as I grew up was that there are as many different ways to do things as there are people doing them. People stop and wonder "homeschooling? how does that work?" and each person the question is posed to will have a different answer. Even within the same nuclear family. Crazy, right? Well, Gifted Homeschoolers' Forum has come to the rescue on that one! This month, get a look into how many different families homeschool, and how they answer the question of "What's a day in the life of a gifted homeschooler like?"

I spent several years before Mad Natter was born on a forum. We used to do occasional DITL (Day In The Life) posts, and in keeping with how I've always done, below the jump will be an extremely picture heavy look at a day in our lives - lucky you, it happened to be tax return day!

It's a love/hate kinda thing

This post contains affiliate links to materials discussed. Purchases via these links help support our family at no additional cost to you. Thank you for choosing to support my little blog. Read my full disclosure statement here 

Yes, I know I'm posting a little late for me, but I've spent the morning fighting with anti-virus software on Mad Natter's compy - I don't want that specific package there, and it refuses to let me delete, uninstall, modify, or even stop it. So it's been eating up my morning while I'm trying to let Mad Natter play some Terraria - and he can't because this silly program is using up (literally) 98% of his systems available memory.  Nasty business.

Anyway. It's a love/hate thing. I have a long history with pedometers, and a lot of it boils down to the fact that I walk generally softly, or I have a kid. Many moons ago, I had one of those 'clip it on your hip' pedometers. I'd get to the end of a day - even if I'd gone for a run (minimum 2.5K) - and find I'd barely made 5000 steps. That just ain't right. Turns out, the pedometer, because it was on my left hip, was only counting the left half of my steps. Fine. So I'd move it to the middle. That was better, right up until I wanted to check it in the middle of the day, and it was at the small of my back - or worse, I'd put it in front, and pitch it into the toilet the first time I had to pee.  Eventually, I gave up. Imagine my cautious excitement when the Fitbit Flex came onto the market - you wear it like a watch! It's designed for one-sided use, and it won't fall in the toilet!  SWEET! You can even wear it in the shower, or while you're doing dishes!  Awesome!

Labels Without Testing

Everyone has an opinion on labels. Whether pro or anti, both sides have to admit that labels, at their heart, describe a specific set of characteristics, which make them useful in specific settings. The question becomes whether or not one can, or even should, use those labels in their appropriate settings without the testing to back them up.

Volcano Day (with a sensory kiddo)!!

Now, everyone knows one of the classic science experiments you have to do as a little kid - especially a little homeschool kid - is the baking soda volcano. Well, that volcano is included in the Magic School Bus chemistry set as the final experiment. The card was missing a few things on the materials list, so it got set to the side for a while, until I could get all the things in the house.

Book Review: Educating Your Gifted Child: How One Public School Teacher Embraced Homeschooling by Celi Trépanier

This week, I had the pleasure of reading an ARC of the newest book in GHF Press's lineup of Perspectives in Gifted Homeschooling Series: Educating Your Gifted Child: How One Public School Teacher Embraced Homeschooling by Celi Trépanier. I can't tell you how much I love ARCs. I really do. I love having the opportunity to be part of the buildup around new titles, I love having the chance to read books early, and honestly, I love that authors trust me enough to let me review their babies ahead of release day. That said, let's get on to the part we want to talk about: Celi's new book!

Making our Art Portfolio!

With help from Caitie and Leo from My Little Poppies, Mad Natter and I took some time to make him his very own art portfolio!

Since his diagnosis and subsequent treatment, Mad Natter has produced more artwork than he has in the entire YEAR prior to this, which means... I need somewhere to put all these wonderful pictures!  Then I remembered - Leo helped us out with this ages ago! And so, following their directions (and tweaking a little for our use), Mad Natter and I made an art portfolio just for his creations! (Be aware, this is a picture-heavy post!)

On Acceleration

When we first began this whole homeschooling gig, Mad Natter was three. He had asked me earlier that week to teach him how to read, and we kind of took off from there. Naturally, being me, the first thing I did was research all the various and sundry programs across subjects for the things I'd want to use going forward, and all the interesting things there were to do in a homeschool setting. The notion of not teaching him because he was too young didn't even occur to me. Unsurprisingly, that philosophy hasn't changed as Mad Natter has gotten older.