My Home Sweet Home » kid funnies

If no one will take you to the pool…

Dawn — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 04:00:40 +0000

you might just have to improvise!

If no one will take you to the pool… is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

Mother/Son Outing: A Homeschool Success Story

Dawn — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 06:25:03 +0000

As homeschoolers, we can help each other by sharing successful ideas or events. Our group’s mother/son outing is a favorite. This marked our third consecutive year to stay overnight at a mountain 4H camp, and our first without rain.

On Friday night we gathered around a campfire, toasting marshmallows and building s’mores. The moms remained, talking and laughing, while the boys slipped away to the recreation hall, where we later discovered that they’d choreographed a dance for our entertainment.

I didn’t realize that my boys were killer hula-hoopers. They won both the older and younger boys’ competitions. My nine year old is a hula-hooping machine. When I commented that we didn’t even own one, he said, “I learned how at Walmart.” Huh? :-)

We were proud of the older boys and how they mentored the younger ones. This is a great bonding activity for the boys, the moms, and most importantly, the mothers and their sons.

Mother/Son Outing: A Homeschool Success Story is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

We Belong in the Zoo

Dawn — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 05:20:26 +0000

My youngest son celebrated his birthday recently and took our four youngest to the zoo. They were so excited when we arrived at our surprise destination. These quirky pictures just make me happy.

Chronicling these moments is something I don’t want to miss.

We Belong in the Zoo is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

Homeschool Class Pictures 2010: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Dawn — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 03:13:43 +0000

I’m not sure why it took a homeschool meme last year to make me realize the importance of homeschool class pictures, but now my biggest regret is that we don’t have them for the first 16 years of our homeschool. This is the beginning of year 18 for us and our second year of class pics (here’s 2009).

If you homeschool, for goodness’ sakes don’t neglect this like we did for too long!

The Good:

Can you say, “Growing up too fast!”?

The Bad and the Ugly:

Little sister combed out his hair. We cut it short today. The kids say it looks like Saturn in this picture. :-)

Overzealous assistants:

What about you? Do you take your own class pictures?

Homeschool Class Pictures 2010: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

Beware the Underarm Flare

Dawn — Thu, 06 May 2010 18:39:30 +0000

My kids are goofballs.

We were at the ball park recently and I was playing with lens flare (obviously this is not something I practice very often). The kids were looking on the back of the camera and laughing at my attempts to obliterate my son’s face (not that it wasn’t covered with a baseball glove, anyway).

Next he challenged me to take it a step further and this is what we got. I have absolutely no idea what my oldest daughter is doing here.

Do you like lens flare? Do you use it? Have you ever attempted to shoot it from someone’s underarm?

Beware the Underarm Flare is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

the last thing you’ll ever eat…

Dawn — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:37:37 +0000

The “Kid Funnies” category of my blog has been woefully neglected lately, that place where I dump choice nuggets that come from my kids’ mouths and other goodies I don’t want to forget.

My 19-year-old son helped pack lunch for us before our Tuesday classes. Although they were all peanut butter and jelly, I loved the labels on the sandwich bags:

last thing you’ll ever eat… (complete with skull & crossbones)
Hercules in a ziploc bag (macho-power)
chicken salad w/onions & mustard (w/diced banana peels)
pb&j ham & cheese mix
ripstick-grind flavored bread smothered in vanilla lettuce leaves
rat droppings grilled sandwich

Really makes you hungry, doesn’t it? :-)

the last thing you’ll ever eat… is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

Encouraging Your Child’s Creativity: A Writing Exercise

Dawn — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:54:34 +0000

During our Valentine’s date last night, my 10-year-old daughter called to tell me that she was bored and had nothing to do. My mother hated to hear us say we were bored — a sure sign of a lack of imagination — and I share the sentiment.

My husband told her to write a story, a story about a princess and a castle. Honestly, that was the end of it in my mind. I didn’t expect her to write a story, just get the hint that she needed to amuse herself and not interrupt our date night unnecessarily.

Later, she met us at the door, beaming, two small sheets of paper in her hand. This is what I read:

Once upon a time their was a girl named Grace. She was a princess. She was glorius. But she lived in a far away castel shaped as a pinguin. There was a yellow and purple Dragon. The dragon was for keeping the princess safe but thats not what he did. One day the dragon ate the princess and the dragon lived happally ever after… But then the dragon relized he didn’t eat the princess he ate the maid so the princess lived and killed the dragon and got married to a lush prince named Mullisk and they lived happaly ever after.

My husband and I were delighted!

Yes, there are spelling and punctuation mistakes, and misuse of vocabulary words (although maybe the world would be a happier place with a few more lush princes in it). It’s best to save those for another day and not squelch the creativity. Make a mental note of future spelling words, but don’t take the joy out of the act of writing a story by initially over-correcting it.

Our daughter was glowing with the laughter and high praise she received, and my husband asked her to please write more stories if she ever found herself with nothing to do. For a girl whose love language is “words of affirmation,” this was grand reward for her creative venture.

How do you encourage creativity in your children?

{Visit Love Notes at The Homeschool Post for another idea for encouraging your child to write while strengthening the bonds of communication between you.}

iHeartFaces Week 3 (2nd year): We Are Family

Dawn — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:00:49 +0000

This week’s themes at iHeartFaces is “We Are Family” and the guest judge is Audrey Woulard.

It is really difficult for us to get a family photo. Our oldest is away at college, and there’s no one to take a picture when he’s here.

This one was (obviously) very impromptu. I realized I had everyone in the same place at the same time, so I put the camera on my tripod and used the remote. It’s not a “perfect” picture, but there’s a whole lot of real.

I’m a Guest Fan Judge for this Week’s iHeartFaces: Hilarious Outtakes!

Dawn — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 02:33:14 +0000

As a participant in the iHeartFaces weekly photo contests since the beginning, I am honored and thrilled to be a Guest Fan Judge for this year’s final contest, week 51: Hilarious Outtakes!

The photos should be really crazy this week; I imagine my kids and I will spend lots of time laughing and going through them. The “LOL factor” is key this week. Here is the theme description:

Have you ever gone through your photos and found some that were just too funny for words? Either the person has a weird look on their face, the child was picking their nose, the body was in an awkward angle, or… the possibilities are endless! This is your week to feature not one…but FIVE of those photos in your iHeartFaces entry!

Here are my five:

If you’re looking for a vibrant and creative photography community and resources to take your skills to the next level, check out NAPP, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. I’m their “Evangelist” for my demographic: stay-at-home moms, bloggers, designers, digital scrappers, and homeschoolers. Join NAPP using promo code DAWN to get $10 off of your membership and the Adobe Photoshop CS4 Design Effects DVD with Corey Barker for free. This would be a great use of your Christmas money and a way to help fulfill those photography-related new year’s resolutions!

A Child’s Brain is Like a Sponge: Don’t Discount the Memory Work

Dawn — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:51:59 +0000

If asked, I can quote the exact dictionary definition of hypothesis; a conversational dialogue from the first week of high school French; and the most difficult to pronounce sentence assigned to me in college Russian. Why? I had to memorize them. Young children have fresh and powerful memories; they are capable of progressing from crying newborns to speaking their native language in such a relatively short period of time.

Sometimes rote memorization gets a bad name in the realm of homeschooling (or schooling in general). We’ve taken a different approach this year as we participate for the first time in Classical Conversations, a one-day per week classical model homeschool program designed to complement your studies at home. My four-, six-, eight-, and nine-year-old children are learning lots of memory work, often through song.

My four-year-old daughter has a habit of waking in the middle of the night and coming downstairs to crawl in bed with us. One morning last week when I was trying to wake her, she kept mumbling something. Finally I understood: Colossus of Rhodes—she was naming the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World in her sleep! Her next words were, “Artemis, Diana,” the Greek and Roman names for the goddess of the hunt in Greek mythology.

Just in case you think I’m raising a little genius, honesty compels me to admit that her first words this morning were Krabby Patty. :-)