Co-schooling: We can help educate our kids

I realized recently I'm rather passionate about supplementing my kid's education by taking what he learns at school and expanding on it, or working on problem areas. We've also had some bumps in the road with behavior so I have made it my mission to try and smooth it out from home.

Also, by keep the learning going in the summer they will be that much farther ahead next year.

In the U.S., our classrooms are full and teachers can only do so much. And I have a teacher friend who pointed out if a parent is involved, she finds herself more invested in that child. That's just human nature, I think.

When you communicate with your child's teacher, they see you're willing to do your part and they also learn a lot more about your child and his or her individual personality and needs. If you talk to the teacher, he or she will most likely be very happy to cooperate with you in your child's education.

As I pondered this idea of working hand-in-hand with the school, I thought to myself, hmmm, there's homeschooling and public schooling, why not "co-schooling."

It turns out I'm not the only one to think of this idea. There is no official site, but I found the following three blog posts about it:

What is Co-schooling?

Just What is Co-schooling?

Co-schooling at Wordpress

I hope to continue to illustrate ways we co-school, whether it's fostering communication with educators, guiding behavior or focusing on a particular learning area. 

Here are some ways we co-schooled during Brady's 1st grade year:

I volunteered to do this craft in his classroom.

We used these letter tiles to drastically improve his spelling.

His teacher made and sent these sight words home for us to practice.

She also sent home an old handwriting workbook when I asked for a handwriting page website.

The Behavior Notebook is a great way to communicate with your child's teacher in a specific area.

We're working really hard on reading over the summer with our Reading Store and have seen success.

Wisdom from my Mom: teach it all by age 15

Some of the best talks happen over ice cream!

My Mom has always told me, and I think it's true, teach a kid everything you want them to know by the time they are 15. It may actually be younger than that now.

By the time they hit the teen years there will be so many influences drawing their focus away from their parents.

I can see it already with Brady and he's only 7. There are things he hears at school I thought wouldn't come up for years. Like, "What's a hickey?" and "What does sexy mean?" ACK!

And bloody violent zombie games.

As parents, we have to be consistent every day in what we teach about our beliefs, what's important and how life should be lived. At age 2 or 4 or 8 or 12, ingrained day after day until it becomes second nature to them.

They may move away from it, but even if they do it will remain inside them, waiting for them to come back.

But wait too long and it will be too late. I believe our kids look to us to give them that foundation, a solid base from which to launch and to which they can return when life knocks them off balance.

Think about everything you want them to learn: about friends, family, God, eating, health, learning, nature, kindness, compassion and caring. What do you want them to know about marriage and relationships, about raising kids, about littering or smoking or drugs.

Tell them. Tell them now. You cannot control their choices in life but you can make darn sure they know where YOU stand on things. If we don't tell them and show them, the world will fill in the gaps with its own ideas.

So thank you, Ma. I'm doing my best.

Bossy or sassy? Let's have a do-over and rephrase

I'm guessing all kids go through a bossy/sassy phase. Ours seems to be lasting for years.

But that's okay. I have a new plan.

When Brady says something in a bossy or sassy way, I try to stay calm, not react too terribly much and just say, "Why don't you rephrase that."

Almost immediately he will say it again in a much nicer way. I feel better too. Instead of getting frustrated, I just don't respond other than to say that same thing every time. And he gets a second chance.

This approach also works with things like running in the house or slamming a door. I tell him, please go back and do that again, this time in the proper/appropriate way. Nobody likes to do stuff over and over, so he starts to get it eventually.

Just a tip from the what-works-our-our-house bin :)

Roasted salmon with smoked paprika

I made this recipe the other night and hubby's exact words were:
"I didn't think I'd like it this much!" My 7-year-old ate it up too.

It is really such an interesting dish, sweet but smoky, easy but with an upscale taste :)

It's a McCormick seasoning recipe I cut out of a magazine. Here goes:

McCormick Gourmet Collection Smoked Paprika Roasted Salmon

1/4 cup orange juice (I did not have this so I used lemon juice mixed with canned mandarin orange juice, LOL)
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 tsp thyme leaves (I did not use these)
2 lb salmon fillets
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp smoked paprika
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp grated orange peel (I didn't have this either)
1/2 tsp salt

Mix juice, olive oil and thyme in a glass dish. Add salmon; turn to coat. Cover and refrigerate 30 minutes. (I poked holes in the salmon with a fork so the marinade would penetrate). Mix sugar, remaining spices and orange peel. Remove salmon from marinade. Place in foil lined baking pan. Discard marinade. Rub top of salmon evenly with spice mixture.

Roast in preheated oven at 400 degrees for 10 minutes or until fish flakes easily with a fork.

The rub on this tastes SO good and it makes kind of a crust on the salmon. You could probably even add a little chili powder in there and that'd be good too.

Harvest excitement: where your bread comes from!

In our little town of less than 1,000, no time is more exciting than Wheat Harvest. There's a sense of movement all through town as grain dust floats from the fresh-cut fields and combines are on the move.

Not only that, the 150-foot-tall grain elevator is directly across from my house. We watch truck after truck after truck line up, waiting their turn to drop off their load of grain.

According to the Kansas Department of Agriculture:

On average, Kansas produces more wheat than any other state. Nearly one-fifth of all wheat grown in the United States is grown in Kansas. And, Kansas ranks first in the nation in flour milling, wheat gluten production and wheat stored. Roughly one-third of Kansas' 63,000 farmers grow wheat.  Normally, Kansas farmers produce about 400 million bushels of wheat a year, with a production value that hovers around $1 billion.

Here are some of the sights we see here during harvest:

Our local grocery store offers lunches for hungry farmers.

It's common to see several combines in one field. This is at the edge of town.

Trucks waiting their turn to drop off grain and then go get another load.

Truck full of grain heading down Main Street to the elevator.

Trail of grain that leaked from a truck down Main Street.

Grains of wheat on Main Street.

Pretty golden stalks near our house the day before they were cut.

Food allergies: be diligent! He almost had egg!

We are so careful about what Brady eats but on the road to Colorado we saw huge bins of wonderful-looking colorful saltwater taffy.

I scooped up some for me and Brady picked out a few. As we went to pay, he said, "There's no egg?" (Just like the cream-of-chicken-soup incident).

I said, "I forgot to check." We walked back and sure enough. Egg whites.

Here is the base ingredients for Halfmoon Bay saltwater taffy: 

"Base Ingredients for all taffy - corn syrup, sugar,palm oil, egg whites, evaporated milk, malic acid, sea salt, soy lecithin, natural and artificial flavor, and artificial color."

I am so grateful Brady is even more vigilant than I am. I guess it's because he's the one who throws up if we make a mistake. What a close one that would have made our travels much less pleasant. 

If you live with food allergies, you have to keep it in your mind at all times. But as evidenced by me, that's really really hard.

Zombie games and the TV show Full House

We were at the movies a couple weeks ago waiting to watch Epic. I was up buying a soda and Brady wanted to look at the arcade games. Okay, I said.

He returned after 5 minutes with wide eyes saying, "There's a game over there where a zombie's head exploded and blood flew everywhere!"

WHAT!

Turn away! Don't look!

So he stood by me staring straight ahead. Boy we were shocked. I had no idea they had games like that at a theater with kids shows. It never even occurred to me to check and see what games were there. Usually it's car driving games or claw machines or maybe a buck hunter game at the wildest.

But head-exploding blood-soaked zombies?

Now, all parents make different choices for their kids and it's no one's business to judge. But I know for my kid, games like that are NOT okay. Not ever, at least in my house. He has a very vivid imagination and holds on to details tightly. Those games would wake him up in the night. Those games would affect his mood.

Luckily he seems to realize this and doesn't seek them out (of course he's only 7, this may change in say, another 7 years). But sheesh, there it was at the movie theater!

I know I can't protect him from the violence portrayed in the world, but at least we can have a little sanctuary in our home. I told him, "Kid, I can't keep you from seeing that stuff in the world or maybe at a friend's house sometime, but we will not ever have those games in our house." I just can't do it.

And you know what his absolute, favorite, MUST-HAVE-TV-ON-AT-8 P.M. show is? Full House. That adorable little show that ran from 1987 to 1995 according to IMDB with baby twins Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen and John Stamos as the funny uncle. 

I love his innocence and joy when he watches that cute show. It's so refreshing in our Sponge Bob (which he does watch sometimes), zombie, special-effects world. I hope it's his favorite for a long time to come.

Food and kids as individuals

To the left is Brady's dinner the night we had fajitas. Ours of course were rolled up in tortillas with chicken, melted cheese, diced avocado and hot sauce.

The thing is, Brady can't stand melted cheese and he really doesn't like stuff all mixed together.

I know a lot of people follow the eat-what-you're-given principle and I get that. The world won't change things up for you just because you want it too.

But on the other hand, I know that I hate having to eat things I don't like or having very little on my plate I want to eat.

Also, Brady's long-undiagnosed egg allergy has made him VERY particular about food mixed up together. Until he was 4, he never knew what would make him nauseous or cause him to throw up.

So... I don't mind giving him something prepared just a little different than what we have. If I'm making shepherd's pie, he gets separate meat, veggies or fruit, and mashed potatoes, just not all mixed up. Grilled cheese? Bread with peanut butter, sliced cheese, veggies and tomato soup.

To open him up to new foods, we do Try Something New Thursdays and he helps with gardening, then loves to try what he's helped to grow. He's seen Jason hunt and is open to trying all the things he brings home: dove, deer, wild turkey, wild hog, even bull frog if Jase gets one this year!

These activities have really paid off. In recent weeks he has tried cajun sausage, pepper jack cheese, blueberries and smores. None stuck, but he'll be likely to try them again and get used to them over time.

Like I said recently, in the U.S. we have such a funny relationship with food, I hate to make it a forceful unpleasant experience. And I want him to know he is an individual with different tastes than mine and I am willing to respect that. I won't prepare a whole different dinner for him, but I can change up what I'm making to fit him.

And who doesn't want to be treated just a little bit special sometimes?

Joy when a child's prayer is answered

I saw Brady on Sunday, for the first time ever, spontaneously fold his little 7-year-old hands and pray for something out loud. Wow!

At first, I was just so touched and grateful to see that, but then shortly afterward wondered what I would tell him if it didn't happen.

We were in Colorado and had met some kids just up the road from our mountain campsite two days before but weren't certain if they would be able to play again before we left. So Brady prayed, "Dear God, please let the kids come out."

I quickly told him that God answers our prayers if He can and if it's best for us and for others, that maybe they had to go somewhere or maybe we needed to spend alone time as a family. We don't always know all the things that God has to consider.

It's another one of those difficult things to teach: Disappointment is a fact of life, but if you can still have hope you will be so much better off.

As he stood looking up the road longingly, I hoped so much for him. He finally went off and played, content in his prayer, thank goodness.

About 30 minutes later one of the kids came down and we were so joyous! And shortly after that, his grandmother came down to invite us up for a play-date that night. His prayer was answered! We thanked God and reveled in the joy of it.

Not all his prayers in life may be answered, but we'll never forget this time that they were.

Jenni & Jody blog: For parents, 3 question correction

Awhile back, I read this post on 3 question to ask when your child misbehaves from Jenni & Jody's blog and have been using it with Brady. It is working so great I had to share!

The best part is not leaving room open for "why" they did what they did. I have been asking that and, yes, they are right, the child immediately gives excuses. Asking "what did you do that was wrong" instead of "why did you do that" has made a big difference.

And making it a given that there was a different choice to be made is great too.

Check out the post and see if it might work for your kids too!