Half-hearted school

I sometimes see stuff in Facebook about people doing all sorts of fun creative schoolie stuff with their kids. My kids like schoolie stuff, and I have been wanting to be more productive lately. So after a brief nap and about 1/3 cup of coffee this afternoon I was like "hey, I think I will sit down and prepare some activities for the kids to do to learn numbers and stuff!" So I did.

After the kids were all awake and done with snack I told them I had some school for them to do and they were all excited. I had each kid practice tracing some letters and numbers, which was ok. But I was more excited about fruit loop math- for Jane it was simple addition problems for her to model with fruit loops, and for zeki it was addition problems with larger numbers, followed by some subtraction problems. The kids actually seemed to enjoy this. This was one of the first times I have really worked with Jane on this, and she got really excited when she was able to successfully complete them on her own. 

Ezra did not want to be left out of the action. He is also now developing the skill of pulling up on stuff, and found the little work table where the big kids were playing with fruit loops to be a worthy object of pulling-up practice. Jane was all like "moooommm! Ezzy is trying to grab it! NOOO Ezzy!"

I wonder if I would have been more motivated to continue the school stuff is Ezra had not been so disruptive. I feel like that's kid of the story of my life these days though. How do parents with babies homeschool the older ones? This mini schooling experience validates my plan to not homeschool our children. But we may continue to periodically do half-assed schoolie activities, which can be fun at this stage when there is no real need to actually learn anything.

 

 

 

Today we went to the Midland County Fair! Sadly it was just the kids and me- Justin wasn't feeling well.

In the first area we. He led out there was a bunch of stuff (junk) for sale, but we did see this awesome stuffed armadillo (sadly not for sale).

Next we saw this nice tiny home! It occurred to me that this would be a super fun play house for the kids.

Then we headed to the petting zoo, which turned out to be the best part of the county fair.

There were llamas.

There were adorable baby chicks!

There was a kangaroo!

There was a porcupine (shown with quills out)!

There was a camel.

There was a snake.

We fed the llama.

Then we left the petting zoo to check out the food trucks. Annoyingly, yet not surprisingly, it was the same stock of unoriginal food trucks that appear at all midland- are fairs and stuff. I am always hoping we will find fun, down-home food trucks with unique fare prepared by quirky but enthusiastic cooks. But instead we find a bunch of bored-seeming vendors selling the same funnel cakes, turkey legs, corn dogs, popcorn, etc. we have encountered the same troupe of food trucks at the airshow, 4th of July celebration, mall parking lot carnival, and now the county fair. The kids didn't seem very hungry or enthusiastic about any of the food, so I was just as happy to just get the sno cones, which they loved. 

Then we headed over to the carnival rides. We had planned to do the Ferris wheel, but it was $5 per person, and I would need to ride with the kids, making it cost a total of $15, assuming they did not make me pay for Ezra. So instead I opted to pay $3 each for the big kids to ride the "car merry-go-round" (as Jane called it). They had fun.

Ezzy and I watched.

Then we went home, since everyone was hot, tired and hungry.