Morning Smoothies, Bubble Wrap, Singing and Video Games, Does It Get Any Better?

 
On Monday myself and the kids made our usual morning smoothies. The kids really like to be a part of making them. We practice counting out the ice cubes and fruit and throw them in the Vitamix blender. It is an activity that improves their gross and fine motor skills. They learn how to measure and have a little lesson in nutrition! I love how Sheamus asks,

"Am I going to grow bigger and bigger and bigger from drinking this?"

Haha, love it! I love how they take turns and share without a fuss because they love what they are doing. Of course at the end, we cleaned and talked about the importance of sanitation and caring for our blender and home by keeping it clean. The smoothies were good, recipe below:

Strawberry Canary Melon Kefir Smoothie

I don't measure my smoothies much so make it to your taste
Organic Strawberries-about 1 cup
Canary Melon-about 1/4 cup
One Banana
Flax Seeds-Couple tablespoons
Blend up and enjoy!
lots of ice
1 cup Kefir
 

After smoothies I continued on with my packing, one room down the whole house to go... Sheamus and Jocelyn had fun jumping on the bubble wrap having their own cause and effect experience! I remember popping bubble wrap as a kid! That was one of the funnest things in the world back then, Ahhh to enjoy the little things in life. After they burned up all there energy popping bubble wrap we had a little cracker snack and took the opportunity to count the crackers and learn about adding Shea's crackers to Jocelyn's to see how many there were total. They love these little butter crackers and I think they are pretty good myself but I noticed they had refined white salt in them :( so of course I had to give myself a kick in the butt for not reading the label thoroughly! Oh well what do ya do after you have already eaten half the box? While we munched away we had some time together singing our ABC sounds song, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Im a Little Tea Pot and whatever else came to Miss Jocelyn's head. She is getting good, almost knows all the words. Of course this lead us into dancing around the house and then I realized I need to start working out again! Later they took turns sharing Shea's DS Sonic game. Shea is absolutely loving Sonic The Hedgehog. He has given me specific instructions to have a Sonic cake made for his next b-day, his just passed a month ago! He is going to be waiting a long time! It was a fun day :)
What did you do today?

Discovering Mama Havens

Well here we go, first post! Follow along if you are interested in discovering the Havens family as we discover ourselves and the world around us. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Christina Havens and I am the mother of 3 beautiful children. This may not be the best time to start this blog since we have to be moved in oh, 5 days and so far I only have my kitchen packed. One of my main motivators in writing this blog is to keep a record of my kids learning progress since we are choosing to home-school. I am particularly resonating with life-learning, interest based, un-schooling type of teachings. I really disliked school as a child. I actually have no memory of enjoying any part of school. Oh wait, yes there was a time! That time was when I was 16 and chose to home-school myself. I had two or three jobs at the time, paid for it my self and was super excited to finally learn something. I flew through the textbooks the correspondence school sent to me. I did all the work eagerly and felt so in line with what I chose to do. I learned more during that time than my last 3 years of school. I LOVED it! Then I got to my MATH book, yuk! I was horrible at math and still suck pretty bad I might add (no pun intended). I needed some guidance and had none. I had no one I could really go to for help. Sooo yeah, that was the end to that. Eventually I got my GED and I am not ashamed to say it. Graduating from the high school I attended would have really been no achievement in terms of learning. In fact, I probably learned more just taking the GED test. Okay, I'm just joking about that last part BUT I know I learned a heck of a lot NOT being in school. A lot of valuable life learning went on. My experience is to some degree influencing my home-schooling decision for my children, but not much probably about about 10%. I have many more valuable reasons but I wont get too much into that on this post otherwise my blog post will turn into a book and then I would have to charge you ;) So if you want to know more I recommend clicking the follow button.

Just for fun here is a picture of me when I was 16 years old!