Still studying the ocean.

There are tons of resources for studying the ocean on the internet. Today, the kids were making a minibook about kelp, looking for products made from seaweed in our kitchen (low fat butter, sour cream and salad dressing)and making a picture of a kelp forest for their notebooks. All of these ideas/printables I got from the internet, free. My high schooler joins in, but I'm not sure if we're going to be able to count it towards his high school diploma. Maybe if he has enough of a science notebook done, it will count as a science credit. Right now, we're not worrying about that too much (maybe not enough). I'm thinking of enrolling him in some kind of accredited high school so he can get an accredited high school diploma and to track his credits in case he wants to go back to public school sometime.

Otherwise, there's not too much going on around here. I'm thankful it's Monday and I don't have to work.

Whoops, I did it again.

Yesterday, I didn't get my list done and the kids got the day off. I hate it when that happens. I begged for mercy because I got a call from my employer and had to type a stat dictation and it took a long time to download, but I got no mercy from my cruel, heartless children. I finished my list at 11:32, instead of 11:00. They thoroughly enjoyed their day off. I've given them a daily 3:00 p.m. deadline and usually I let them go until 3:30 or 4:00 but no more. I'm not giving them any slack. If they're not done by 3:00 they are grounded for the remainder of the day. Every time they look at me today, I say "No slack!" Silly, I know, but hey, they didn't give me a break yesterday! Fair is fair. They need to learn time management anyway.

Of course they know that any days they miss this winter will have to be made up at the end of the school year because Kentucky state law requires 180 days of instruction, but they don't care. I remember when I was a kid, knowing that I'd have to make those snow days up did not take any of the joy out of the snow for me.
I've decided that since I've mostly had success with my morning list, only missing 2 days since November 12, that I'm going to make myself an afternoon list, so I can (hopefully) remember to get the little details done, kind of like the Flylady's morning and evening routines. I've always just winged it, but I forget to do things sometimes and hopefully, this will help. I'm excited about being a little more organized! It's very unusual for me.

Reasons I'm glad we are homeschooling for today: I couldn't do this whole list thingy if the kids were in public school because I couldn't give them a day off.

Reason #2 for today, while I'm thinking of it: We don't have hours of homework at night. When we're done at 3:00, we're totally done.

Another picture from the aquarium trip, just for the fun of it.

More aquarium photos.

We took so many pictures that day, I have to share a few more. These were in the Lorakeet area. I'm not sure why they have Lorakeets at the aquarium, but we had fun feeding them. My husband almost walked out of the room with one on his back, not realizing it was in his jacket hood!

Complete Idiots.

Have you noticed that instead of saying "for Dummies" a lot of books are now saying they are for "complete idiots" My oldest son has recently shown a little bit of interest in playing the guitar. I saw a book at the library called "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Playing the Guitar" which I thought was kind of a strange title. I didn't know whether to bring it home for him or not. I don't want him to think that I think he's a complete idiot. ;-) I came home and asked him if he wanted it, then on my next library trip I got it, along with one for me, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Nutrition". I'd hesitate to give one of these books as a gift though, wouldn't you? LoL.

Field Trip!

We went to the Newport Aquarium today. We really had a good time. If you live within driving distance of Cincinnati, I recommend that you try and make the trip this winter. They are having a special so that kids get in free and they get a free kids meal at Bob Evans. These are some of our most up-close-and-personal pictures from today.

Again.

It snowed a little bit more this morning, giving the kids some fine powder on top of their established sled tracks, so they did some more sledding today. I even went out and joined them for a while. My main problem in sledding is that our outside dog, Lucy, thinks that she is a lap dog and wants to climb in my lap every time I sled. It'd be okay if she wasn't so big, LoL. That's her in the above photo.

My daughter does this thing where she starts out standing up on the sled, then gracefully sits down while going down the hill. It's pretty impressive, not to mention fun. I hate to admit it, but we did break the law today, though, because we do not have any hot chocolate and, as my readers know, hot chocolate is the law! (According to my youngest!)

Finally.

We got the snow we so richly deserved. ;-)
SNOW DAY!

Happy New Month!

One of my kids greeted me this way this morning, so I thought it was a good blog post title today. It snowed a tiny bit today and I toyed with the idea of giving them a snow day but then I figured with the little bit of snow, they'd play in it for 5 minutes and then want to watch TV and play video games all day, so I decided not to go that route. We're doing school today. I'm not sure if the county schools in our area are closed or not. I kind of enjoy not having to check that (especially since I had to get up around 6:15 a.m to find out if there was school and if I needed to wake the kids up!) Anyway, we're doing school and work as usual around here.

Free internet resource for today:
Grammar.

Reason I'm glad we're homeschooling for today: When the dog goes outside and steps in cat poop that the cat has not buried properly because the ground is frozen, my daughter is home and can give the dog a bath. How's that for a reason? Sure, it cost me financially, but I don't have to give the dog his bath. Priceless.