Cieslak's Homeschool-journey
It's all about the fun, the craziness, the things we learn and our thoughts!!!
Just a few weeks ago I was informed, by my hubby, that the Ritter Sport factory is based here in Stuttgart. We didn't know how close it really is, but today we decided to go there as a family/ school field trip. :) It took us about 15 minutes from our house to get there and so that's pretty darn cool (even though that might be slightly dangerous, too). ;) It was really interesting, and we haven't even checked out the museum yet. This company is family owned and they are now on their 4th generation running this company. I have to say that's pretty impressive. I would assume, that they are doing very well financially. ;) Here are a few pictures of our fun adventure: It was really interesting to see so many different pictures and chocolates from different times. The next few pictures are just that, chocolates from different years all the way to today. They also had some fun pictures of their advertisements. The first one below was on the stairs of the train station in Cologne. I don't know if the stairs still look like that, but it is pretty cool and creative. The second picture is another creative ad from the 90ths. ;) In 2012, they celebrated their 100th anniversary. I had no idea how long Ritter Sport chocolate existed. Last but not least, we stopped in the Ritter Sport shop. They have so many different kinds and you could definitely leave a fortune there, even though a lot of the stuff there was cooler of course, not to mention some of the things they have at their shop are probably not available in normal stores. It is also a bit cheaper than it is at the normal store. It was a fun visit, and we went home with lots of chocolate of course. ;) We also bought a paper craft kit (the Ritter Sport museum/ shop and exhibition building) and we will make that in one of our lessons next week. Our boys got a small little Ritter Sport truck and, as you can see on their faces, our chocolate loving hearts were made happy. :D It is definitely a must-see if you ever come and visit us, and or are in the area for other reasons. The funniest text we saw on one of their walls was the following: 9 out of 10 people love chocolate. The 10th person is lying! :D
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Last week we had the chance of hanging out with friends who are also homeschooling. The fun part about homeschooling is that we are on our own schedule and can just go to the library, in the middle of the day, for example. ;) I love when my kids pick up a book and read... and in this case also play a nice board game with a friend. :) Our topic in Geography this year is Asia and so we speak about many different things with regards to Asia. It is interesting and fun. This week, while talking about the different languages they have in Asia, the boys got to sing and learn a song in Japanese. :) It sure made all of us think of the karate lessons we took in San Diego, the many Japanese commands and words we had to know and how much we are missing it. :) One of my personal favorite subjects is definitely music. I love every lesson. We've been learning about so many great musicians and composers. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and today it was Brahms. I don't know what it is but classical music is definitely a favorite of mine. I love listening to orchestra and the different musical instruments playing together. We get to listen to so many great things during our lessons and sometimes we get a funny visual one alongside a great song. :D
viewpure.com/monaXOpmH1U Over many months we had this room mostly finished, but my desk was still not put together and we had moving boxes in here, too. Now my desk is all set up and I love coming in this room. It surely makes me happy. :) Here are the before pictures: And here are the after pictures, or how it looks now. :D
I haven't been really faithful with regards to journaling our home school journey, but that doesn't mean we aren't faithful in doing it. Homeschooling is something I absolutely love, despite the stress and tight schedule that comes with it. I am still amazed how much I enjoy it, but it is what it is. One of the fantastic things I love about this adventure is the fact that I myself learn so much about many different things. I love the many activities we get to do in our lessons and the fun we have while doing it. Of course we get on each others nerves, and our boys wouldn't be normal boys if they wouldn't complain and whine about different things, but the overall experience for all of us is pretty cool. Our school room is constantly changing and our walls are getting fuller. Here are a few pictures of the things we did during the last few months. In the picture below we spoke about Egypt, and as a fun activity the boys were able to make their own little paper pyramids. :) In Science we talked about birds and that there are all sorts of birds with so many different beaks. To make it more visual, the activity for this lesson was to use different food items and different tools to learn what it is like for birds to pick up food. So we used a teaspoon, tweezers, clothes pins and scissors as different "beaks", and elbow pasta, wild rice, corn and almonds as foods. The boys each got a small paper plate in front of them and a cup in one hand and then they had to use the different tools (one after another) to pick up as much food as they could. They had 10 seconds and then we counted how many food pieces were in their cups. In our next Science lesson we talked about what type of feathers birds have and why certain feathers don't get soaked when the birds enter the water. To show our boys why the water just glides off, the activity of the lesson was to use a crayon and color the paper as hard as they could in one spot. We then dropped some water on that spot and the results can be seen below. What a fun way to visualize the lesson. :) In Literature we listened to the audio book "Little house in the big woods" over the course of several weeks and when we finished the book, we had a little celebration in which we baked horseshoe cookies (pioneer recipe) and started making lantern out of tin cans. The cookies tasted really good and I followed the recipe perfectly, except adding chocolate chips. ;) We gave up on the tin cans eventually because that would have taken forever. First we had to fill the empty tin cans with water and then freeze it until it was completely solid. After that we used a nail and hammer to make little holes in the can. We got tired of it pretty quickly, but the cookies were a success for sure. This week we started listening to the audio book "Bambi" in Literature, not the Disney version, but the original version written by Felix Salten. The activity was being creative again, and so the boys made a little paper deer. As you can see, we are having a blast learning and being creative. I am just so grateful the lessons have such wonderful activity suggestions since I am not the most creative crafty person, but I too had fun doing the above with my kids. :)
Since our boys have their reading time every day, they received a bunch of books for Christmas last year. And our wonderful friends from San Diego send them a huge box full of books as a present. We sure feel loved and blessed. It is hard to believe, that we have almost finished our 5th week of homeschooling. I still have to admit, it is the craziest thing I have ever done. It is stressful, especially when they get whiny and start to complain (they wouldn't be doing it that way if I was a teacher in school), but I absolutely love it. There is something about us working together, learning from each other, and learning about educational things as well as the gospel and the scriptures. I feel like this is a very special opportunity for us all and something we are supposed to be doing at this time.
One thing I found funny, when I started looking into homeschooling, was the fact that other homeschool families were convinced that they were closer as a family, had more love for one another and the kids were becoming better friends and were getting along better. I had a very hard time believing that. I mean come on, you are together even more, don't get much of a break and your relationship is supposed to thrive and get better? Well, even though we have only been doing this for 5 weeks, I must say that things do seem a bit different. Of course we still get on each others nerves and our boys still get in their fights and arguments, they are brothers after all, but I feel like our family bond is closer and this learning together is bringing us more together. I feel like my kids are thriving more because they don't feel like they have to compete with other schoolmates, and somehow we are happier. I am starting to understand why I was so inspired to do this because it is definitely a good thing for our family. I feel closer to my kids and it is such a joy to see them learn and grow. I have always enjoyed teaching and loved doing that in church as well, but teaching my boys here at home was a very scary thought when the thought of homeschooling kept hitting me. I thought this can't go well and I am not qualified to do something like this, but I get it now. I think we as parents are more than qualified to teach our children in a way Heavenly Father wants us to teach them. If He inspires us in a certain way, and we listen to Him, He will help us and make everything work out. I have felt His guidance in my life a lot, but I don't think I have ever fought Him over such a long period of time before, like I did when I thought about homeschooling. It was the most frightening thought ever, but no matter how much I tried to push it away from me, I couldn't get rid of it completely and the feeling I should do this, kept coming back. Obviously I did give in because I am homeschooling now, but getting me here took quite a long time. Sometimes God leads and guides us in a way we would have never thought of ourselves nor did we want to do something like that, but when we follow His guidance, He will bless us and we will eventually see why we have to do certain things in a crazy way. I have to say looking back, there have a been a few things in our lives that definitely prepared us for now and helped us make the decisions we needed to make. Today kept us very busy as we were setting up our History timeline as well as continuing our learning about the Solar System. It took a lot of time to get it all done, but we did it and are very happy with the results. We love our little classroom because it is beginning to look more and more like a schoolroom. :)
Life takes some interesting and serious turns sometimes. We don't just walk on a flat line, but go up and down and all over the place. At times it takes us to places we never thought going, nor did we ever wanted to go in such a direction.
I am definitely talking about that last part because if you would have asked me 1 1/2 years ago if I would ever consider homeschooling, I would have declared you insane and mentally disturbed. ;) I can say that because when I first started thinking about it, I thought that way about myself. Over many months I fought with myself, thinking I am absolutely crazy for even considering it, but I just couldn't get rid of that thought. It kept coming back no matter how much I pushed it away from me, and eventually I gave in. I still couldn't believe I was actually going to do something like that, but I felt very strongly about it and figured if Heavenly Father wanted me to homeschool my kids, it had to be for a reason and He would help me somehow through it. It took also a while before my husband was supportive of it because he too didn't think it to be a good idea at first. I didn't even blame him because I was still unsure myself at that time. As I was researching and preparing for such an psycho adventure, I learned really quickly how much help and resources were out there already. It seemed to be a good time to start since my kids had already learned the most time-consuming and challenging things in public school and so now we can learn and grow together. I spend many hours on the Internet, putting together files of links and information with regards to homeschooling. I met and talked with friends who were homeschooling already, and those friends added me to Facebook homeschool groups which is a huge help since I can ask questions, share my fears and joy and everyone there knows exactly what I am going through. It is scary to do something so drastic, yet when you feel it is the right thing, you just have to listen to that feeling and trust that Heavenly Father is guiding you. When I finally made that decision I didn't think it would be right to start right away, but that I would start homeschooling the new school year. I didn't want to pull my kids out of school in the middle of the semester and so we waited and prepared. During those few months, something happened that made the decision so much easier. My husband got a new job, working as a civilian for the Army and we would move to Germany for a few years. As if the thought of starting homeschooling wasn't crazy enough, now we were moving from one continent to another on top of that. ;) I strongly believe that Heavenly Father has a sense of humor. :D Suddenly however, the thought of homeschooling made more sense and I knew this would be a great opportunity to take advantage of this move because it opened teaching to many different possibilities. Europe is amazing for traveling and so our kids can learn about other countries, cultures and history of different things firsthand by experiencing it live. What a great way to make education more fun. And here we are: living in Germany, spending time with family and traveling. We already visited part of Switzerland and drove through Austria and Lichtenstein. Today was our big first day: Homeschooling! It was scary and exciting for me, yet it turned out rather well. We are easing our way into this, but we all had fun learning about the Solar System and the boys used an online math curriculum to continue their math studies. (I am not the biggest fan of that subject, and so it is a good thing, that there are other ways.) ;) Homeschooling will be a journey and adventure for sure, but I trust that this is the right thing to do and I know that I can do anything as long as I rely on the Lord. Day 1 of homeschooling was a success in many ways and I am grateful I get to experience something completely different with my children. |
AuthorI am a sarcastic German-born American citizen who loves life and enjoys writing. I am a mother of two boys and we are now experiencing the freakiest adventure of our lives. Archives
November 2017
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