flashback friday

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fairy girl made a bed for her barbies!

Chipotle Bean Burritos (a friend's recipe)

1 tablespoon canola oil, 1 garlic clove minced, 1/2 teaspoon chipotle chile powder, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/3 cup water, 1 15oz can of organic black beans drained, 1 15oz can organic kidney beans drained, 3 TBS fresh salsa, flour tortillas, 1 cup mexican cheese, 1 1/2 cups chopped plum tomato, 1 1/2 cups shredded lettuce, 6 TBS thinly sliced green onions, 6 TBS light sour cream

Heat oil over medium heat, add garlic - cook 1 minute, stirring frequently. Stir in chile powder and salt, cook 30 seconds stirring constantly. Stir in 1/3 cup water and beans; bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in salsa. Partially mash bean mixture with a fork.

Warm totillas - spoon 1/3 cup bean mixture on each one - top with cheese, tomato, lettuce, onions, salsa, and sour cream Roll up and Enjoy!

A Peaceful Day at the Park

There's kind of a lot going on in the above photo; and it's kind of funny :D

DIY Healthy Cookies (best darn cookies I've ever had....family agrees!)

http://freerangecookies.com/2013/09/01/diy-healthy-cookies/

DIY Healthy Cookies

25 minutes

15 small cookies

An easy recipe for one-bowl cookies made with almond meal and coconut flour. These gluten free cookies are barely sweetened with maple syrup making them perfect for breakfast. Cookie dough can be stored in fridge to bake during the week as needed. Gluten free, vegan, and DIY friendly.

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups almond meal, packed
• 1 tablespoon coconut flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
• 1/4 cup mashed ripe banana
• 3 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1.5 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• Optional extras (mix and match up to 1 cup total):
• Sliced almonds
• Chocolate chunks
• Chopped dates
• Sunflower seeds
• Pumpkin seeds
• Quinoa flakes
• Shredded coconut
• Gluten free oats
• Sea salt for sprinkling
• Whatever else looks good
• 
  

Instructions

In a medium bowl, combine: almond meal, coconut flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350° if you plan on baking the cookies.

In a measuring cup, whisk together: coconut oil, banana, maple syrup, and vanilla.

Stir wet ingredients into dry and blend thoroughly. Fold in extras of your choice.

Use a #40 disher to scoop dough into balls. Refrigerate dough unless you plan on baking now.

For oven - place dough balls on a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake for about 10 minutes in a 350 degree oven. For the best looking cookies, do not flatten balls prior to baking. Instead, flatten the cookies with a spatula upon removing from oven.

For microwave - place one dough ball on parchment paper and press down slightly to flatten. Cook for about 30 seconds on high (in a 1500 watt oven). Exact time will vary depending on how powerful your microwave is. Let cool before enjoying. (Note: Since microwaved baked goods don't brown on the outside, you'll probably think the cookie isn't done. If overcooked, this cookie will brown (and eventually burn) from the inside out.

For stovetop - heat skillet on medium low, add dough ball and flatten with the back of a spatula. Cook for about 3-4 minutes then flip cookie over. Turn heat down to lowest setting after you flip. Cook for another 3-4 minutes, covering pan with a lid. Watch closely to keep cookie from potentially burning. Remove from heat and let cool before enjoying. Cook more than one cookie at a time if you like.

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girls' day out

it's Friday Funday....and I'm going to miss the day when the girls no longer bring their Barbies to restaurants and stores:(

freeschooling!

Freeschooling is a term I first heard yesterday...I like it...this is what we do!

Left to their own devices,continued....my girls love to play Club Penguin. Little Angel recently discovered that it is available in many languages and has recently decided she wants to learn some Russian. She's been playing Club Penguin in the Russian format...listening to it In Russian, and using a Russian to English translator she found in a google search to further her learning process. I couldn't come up with this stuff for them....eclectic-freeschooling at its best

in the depth of winter i learned lay within me an invincible summer...

these very words are my heart and soul ....
So grateful for my island cowgirl bangle that I wear and cherish daily to remind me of how far I've come....

and on this beautiful winter day, the five year anniversary of Buddy's transition, which was probably the hardest day of my life...and which also represents so much else for me....

I wear these words on my wrist and in my heart and soul with absolute Love and Gratitude

we love you Buddy.....

I can't believe it's been five years....and you STILL should be with us...we feel your Loving Presence every day!

I confess....I do NOT give my children spelling "tests."

Period. 

 I personally despised spelling tests in my school days (even though I did well on them). I never understood the point, for the very reasons mentioned in this article. This is how my children are learning to spell...they read....and they read a LOT! And guess what books are comprised of? words...even "spelling" words. I would venture to say that my 10 year old is an extraordinarily strong speller....possibly even stronger than her mom (who is an English Major:), and I sincerely mean that. Spelling words correctly may not come quite as naturally for my 8 year old (yet), but guess what? She recognizes when something doesn't look right, and she asks questions or looks it up herself, to verify the spelling.

So, there you have it folks, I do not, and have no intentions of ever giving my children "spelling tests" (or vocabulary tests, and again, as my girls are reading or as we are conversing, or if they hear a word on tv, (you get my point, words are always available to learn and grow from in a very natural setting;), if they don't know the meaning of something....they ask...and then they remember, because it holds meaning for them).

Now, this may change as they get older, and we get into more science, etc....."scientific" words may not come quite as naturally.....but we'll certainly make it as natural and interesting and fun as possible!)

The End:) 

here's a homeschool article that triggered my post (in addition to a parent's recent post about how his son is struggling with spelling in school): 

http://theconversation.com/why-some-kids-cant-spell-and-why-spelling-tests-wont-help-20497

three years ago today, we moved into our South Carolina Home:)

barbie in the kitchen

when you leave kiddos to their own devices (we homeschoolers lovingly refer to this as an "unschooling" day;) This is the kind of mischief they will get themselves into: girls came up with their own big
project today. It involved creating/
crafting food and plates, etc for
their Barbies. They researched the
internet to find the project they were envisioning; read the instructions,
found the materials, and are working
together to create the items.
This involves kitchen work, measuring,
and baking….and team play.
Great Project!
(note, they are making paper mache'….
I've never made paper mache' before; they completely came up with this on their own). If you give the kids enough freedom and time, they sure know how to get into "mischief." BTW, this all followed after they took photos and vidoes of their Barbies and continued work on their ongoing script for the Barbie Movie they are writing.

my little hoodlums

p.s. "hey mommy, we can make our own playdough out of flour and water and salt!" 

ok, please don't be a hater here....I paid my WI dues for 41 years :D

but I am so excited for boating season...hoping  for early March!!! 

Sunday night Sunset

we didn't get out early enough to make it to the beach for the sunset...we would have arrived just as the sun was going below the horizon, and that's a wee bit late for the photo opps, so I suggested that we stop at the Pinkney Island area, just over the bridge to HHI....besides....unlike the Atlantic Ocean, where you generally have to face in the eastward direction,  (you know, sun rise visits probably make more sense....but we're just not exactly early folk:D ....anyway, on the river you can catch amazing sunsets...oh and during the warm
months, you can see dolphins, and whales!   

Art and Flowers

The girls snuck out of bed at 3am  to create and hang heart art all over the house (there's a lot more where this came from;)

 


these are the beautiful flowers I received from my wonderful hubby!  (unfortunately the Lindt chocolates didn't last long enough to make it to the photo session :D )

and this is the cool giant "piper" card that the girls were excited to receive in the mail...from Grandma and Grandpa (unfortunately Piper got excited too, and proceeded to chew up their Princess Elsa doll, from "Frozen" while they  were busy opening the envelope.....naughty puppy

Valentine's Day Fun

Lunch at Mi Tierra with my favorite Valentines....followed by an art walk in our Old Town, playground and palm trees, and a jog over to our favorite little Icecream shop (envisioning meeting grandma and grandpa there on their golf cart....very soon!  The girls are tired today...apparently they waited until I went to bed to sneak downstairs to decorate the house in hearts...

unfortunately I didn't know that because it's the one night I opted to stay up until 2:30 am :/
Maybe that means they'll go to bed ontime tonight :D

 





(mama, we're blinded by the SUN! )

tough times never last....tough people do (sold) see link below to order your custom

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i blinked....

....and just like that, my little girls have suddenly outgrown their dolls.

(At least they are still big time into Barbies and stuffed animals; heck, I don't think I ever outgrew them: ) 

I'm such a sucker for Shutterfly:)

Magnet

View the entire collection of cards.

Collage Poster

View the entire collection of cards.

puppy love

(this is the very first picture I took of baby piper, just moments after he first came to his forever family)

article about kindergarteners from the Washington Post

(**please note: I'm posting this article for my own personal reference...this in no way indicates that I am against public/traditional schooling....homeschooling is a choice we make for our family, and I greatly respect everybody's rights to make the choices that are right for their families**)   That said, it's an interesting read:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/06/a-really-scary-headline-about-kindergarteners/  

(By Matt McClain / FOR THE WASHINGTON POST)

Rob Saxton is Oregon’s deputy superintendent of public instruction. Jada Rupley is the early learning system director within the state Department of Education. Together they wrote an op-ed in The Oregonian that was published online with this headline: 

Kindergarten test results a ‘sobering snapshot’

What could possibly be sobering about test results from kindergarteners?  What kind of tests are they giving to kindergarteners anyway?

It turns out that every public school kindergartener in Oregon was given a kindergarten readiness test last September to see how many numbers, letters and sounds they knew. The Oregonian reported that kids on average entered kindergarten knowing 19 capital and lower-case letters and seven letter sounds of at least 100 possible correct answers.

Kindergarten readiness tests are nothing new. What is in the ever-increasing focus on turning kindergarten, and now preschool, into academic environments with the aim of ensuring that children can read by the time they are in first grade. In fact, kindergarten is the new first grade when it comes to academics.

Saxton and Rupley wrote in their piece that the results of the testing of the kindergarteners in Oregon “provide a sobering snapshot of the skills our children possess as they enter kindergarten.”
A working paper called “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade? The Changing Nature of Kindergarten in the Age of Accountability,” by Daphna Bassok and Anna Rorem of the University of Virginia’s EdPolicyWorks, a center on education policy and competitiveness, notes that kindergarten has been transformed over the last decade, with academic skill-being taking center stage.

For some kids, learning to read in kindergarten is just fine. For many others, it isn’t. They just aren’t ready. In years gone by, kids were given time to develop and learn to read in the early grades without being seen as failures. Even kids who took time learning how to read were able to excel. 

Today kids aren’t given time and space to learn at their own speed.

Writer Alfie Kohn wrote in this post about concerns he has about the new calls for universal early childhood education. Why? Because when people talk about “high-quality programs,” they often mean academic programs, meaning the academic focus is being pushed down to younger and younger kids.

Very few people are talking about the kind of education that would be offered — other than declaring it should be “high quality.” And that phrase is often interpreted to mean “high intensity”: an accelerated version of skills-based teaching that most early-childhood experts regard as terrible. Poor children, as usual, tend to get the worst of this….

… The top-down, test-driven regimen of Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” and Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiatives in K-12 education is now in the process of being nationalized with those Common Core standards championed by the Times — an enterprise largely funded, and relentlessly promoted, by corporate groups. That same version of school reform, driven by an emphasis on global competitiveness and a determination to teach future workers as much as possible as soon as possible, would now be expanded to children who are barely out of diapers.
That doesn’t leave much time for play. But even to the extent we want to promote meaningful learning in young children, the methods are likely to be counterproductive, featuring an emphasis on the direct instruction of skills and rote rehearsal of facts. This is the legacy of behaviorism: Children are treated as passive receptacles of knowledge, with few opportunities to investigate topics and pose questions that they find intriguing. In place of discovery and exploration, tots are trained to sit still and listen, to memorize lists of letters, numbers, and colors. Their success or failure is relentlessly monitored and quantified, and they’re “reinforced” with stickers or praise for producing right answers and being compliant.
This dreary version of early-childhood education isn’t just disrespectful of children; decades of research show it simply doesn’t work well — and may even be damaging.

Bassok, one of the authors of the research paper mentioned above, noted that while there are fun and engaging ways to teach young kids academic material, she worries that so much emphasis will be put on learning to read that other things, like play and social interactions, will be lost.

It’s already been happening for years, and it appears to be getting worse. The end result will be kids who hate school even earlier than they do now.

Kids like to play. Kids learn from play. Why it doesn’t make sense to just let them play is beyond me.

–

Here’s a position paper on the testing of young children by Defending the Early Years, a non – profit project of the Survival Education Fund, a 501(c)(3) tax – exempt educational organization based in Watertown, Massachusetts. (Find more information at deyproject.org or write to geralynbywater@gmail.com.)

What is the problem?
Today, the majority of classrooms for preschool, kindergarten and primary age children are required to address content standards that prescribe what children are expected to learn. These standards are intended to insure that worthwhile subject matter is taught. Performance standards have been developed to find out if children have learned the prescribed content.
While standards are helpful for identifying valuable content, they can also have a negative impact on children and programs. Some of the problems with standards are that they are not always based on knowledge of how children grow and learn, and often do not take into account children’s needs, capacities, cultures, and unique characteristics. Standards can lead to teaching of skills in ways that are not effective or meaningful, to the narrowing of the curriculum, and to less time for play and hands-on learning experiences that are important foundations for later school success.
It is useful to find out if children have learned the prescribed content, but the way this is most often done is through testing – which also can have a negative impact on children and programs. One of the major problems with the tests is that they are often not based on knowledge of child development and are therefore not suited to the developmental abilities of young children. Another problem is that tests can only measure a narrow range of knowledge and skills, so they often miss important objectives of early childhood education like creativity, problem-solving, and social and emotional development. Teachers who want children to do well on tests may eliminate worthwhile learning experiences, introduce skills too early, or narrow the curriculum in order to “teach to the test”.
Research shows that children learn best when they have hands-on learning experiences, engage in structured play, experience facts within meaningful contexts, invent their own problems to explore and solve, and share their own solutions. The current emphasis on standards and testing has led many schools to over-focus on assessment at the expense of meeting children’s developmental needs and teaching meaningful content. Play and activity-based learning have been disappearing from many early childhood classrooms, and – along with them – children’s natural motivation and love of learning.
What could be done to address this problem?
Program practices:
1. Promote programs that are based on current research on how young children learn best.
2. Promote meaningful, hands-on learning experiences in classrooms for young children.
3. Work to ensure that teachers provide well-thought out educational experiences that demonstrate knowledge and respect for each child.
4. Work to ensure that children have literacy experiences that include storytelling, quality children’s literature, and acting out stories rather than activities that isolate and drill discrete skills.
5. Help teachers skillfully build curriculum from what children can do and understand instead of direct teaching skills that are disconnected from children’s understanding.
6. Encourage schools to respect the language and culture of children and their families, to encourage families to take ownership and to make sure that their history and experiences are included and valued.
7. Encourage schools to design schedules that provide ample time for families and school personnel to meet and work together.
8. Work to ensure that teachers who have specialized training in early childhood education are placed in classrooms for young children.

Assessment practices:
1. Encourage policies that protect children from undue pressure and stress and from judgments that will have a negative impact on their lives in the present and in the future.
2. Promote the use of assessments that are based on observations of children, their development and learning.
3. Work to ensure that classroom assessments are used for the purpose of improving instruction.
4. Support efforts to eliminate testing of young children that is not intended to improve classroom practice.
5. Eliminate labeling and ranking of children based on standardized tests.

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