Tag Archives: NaBloPoMo2015

I have no NaBloPoMo mojo

NaBloPoMo November 2015I’ve been trying to put together a post for today for about two hours. Poppy and Pete each have a friend over for a sleepover, though, and my house is chaos:

“I’m in the magic laundry basket!”

“As king, my first decree is that you don’t have to push yourself in the laundry basket.”

“Pretend the signal for calling them is ‘WAAARGGGHOOOOOOooooooOOOOOarrrrGGHHHH.”

“So are you dead?”

“That fart was foul.”

“That wasn’t mine.”

“Don’t steal my magical laundry basket!”

So instead of whatever it was I was trying to say, let’s look at November 21 posts from years past.

This time last year found Rockford recovering from having his gallbladder removed in The Convalescing.

In 2013, I wrote A Very Terrible Villanelle.

In 2012, my youngest brother rapped incomprehensibly.

The post from 2011 appears to be a black rectangle.

In 2010, I shared with you the contents of a Post-It note.

I lied to you in 2009.

The 2008 post was just a bunch of links.

We laughed at baby Pete’s tiny head in 2007.

I made a CD of cheesy love songs in 2006. A compact disc! Not just a playlist! Ah, the olden days.

And I didn’t post anything on November 21, 2005, because National Blog Posting Month didn’t exist yet.

It has become evident that I traditionally lose my NaBloPoMo mojo on or around November 21. Perhaps I’ll get my act together on November 22.

This week in homeschooling: A lot of unexpected free time

When I sat down to write this week’s homeschooling wrap-up, I initially thought that we hadn’t done much at all. Looking back at our daily to-do lists, though, the kids did get a lot of their work done. They were just so expeditious the first four days of the week that it was all easy and breezy. They finished their schoolwork before lunchtime almost every day, and a lot of our regularly scheduled activities were canceled due to weather (tennis) or sickness (piano & guitar). The rain was dreary and I felt bad for the ailing music teachers, but it was nice to have a lot of free time.

Today has been … less breezy. We’re getting there, though. Here’s a bit of what the kids worked on this week:


SOCIAL STUDIES

History

This week in history we learned about opium! More specifically, how the opium trade led to China being forced to open up to the Western world. I was going to make poppyseed muffins to go along with the theme, but Pete spent most of the morning rolling around in his chair and whining about math, so it hasn’t happened yet.

Geography

I have once again given up on the grand plans I made at the beginning of the year regarding geography. Maybe someday we’ll complete a 50 States study, but this is not the year. I was being too inconsistent in actually working on that project, so I bought a long geography workbook and we started on it this week.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Reading

Pete finished the “Star Wars” book he’d been reading, and we haven’t been to the library to find him something new. Do you have any book suggestions for the energetic 8-year-old boy?

Poppy’s current literature study book is “Black Beauty.” She’s been enjoying it, and she’s gotten to ride a horse twice since she started the book. That was pretty much coincidental. The first time was at her friend’s birthday party, and the second was when her aunt took her while we were on vacation.

Writing

Poppy is nearly at the end of her “Writing Strands” book, and she actually asked me to order the next level. She has a wonderful imagination, and I love that she’s starting to put her ideas to paper. She’s currently working on a story that involves a great gust of wind, a cupcake and a lion.

STEM

Math

This morning Poppy told me that the work she’s been doing with fractions “is starting to make sense.” Yay! Less than “yay,” however: Pete started his math test this morning at 11, and he still hasn’t finished it. He’s currently at his make-up guitar lesson. Hopefully he’ll have a bit more focus after he jams for awhile.

Science

This week we studied mirrors, using a Young Scientists kit. The mirror we tried to make out of foil and cardboard didn’t work so well, but the kids really enjoyed the symmetry drawing exercise.


How was your week?

Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!

NaBloPoMo November 2015

Pley is a great way to feed your LEGO habit

LEGO is a pretty big deal in our house, mostly because of Rockford and Pete. Pete’s floor is always strewn with LEGOs, and he always warns me not to move them because there’s a battle underway. Poppy, though, builds the set and then it sits on her shelf forever. She enjoys the initial construction, but she isn’t really into deconstructing and building anything new. (She may have Lord Business tendencies, just like her father.) Perhaps I bought into the “Toy Story” lore a little too much, but I find it a little disheartening to see the toys just sitting around, unplayed with. So I was pretty interested in learning more about Pley. It’s a toy subscription service, and they have a ton of LEGO sets. You sign up, and Pley delivers a toy to your house. When your kids are finished playing with it, you box it up and swap it out for a new toy.

The first question I had was “What happens when we lose the steering wheel from the LEGO Friends Adventure Camper or a tiny blaster from Jabba’s Sail Barge? Not to worry, says Pley. They won’t charge you for missing pieces.

That wasn’t enough to sell me on the plan, though. So I made a list of Reasons to Give Pley a Try to convince myself.

photo courtesy Pley.com
photo courtesy Pley.com

Five Reasons to Give Pley a Try

  1. Your child can quickly tire of his new toy without you worrying that you’re raising an over-privileged, under-appreciative human. Or maybe you will still worry about that, but at least you can just mail the most recent cast-off back to Pley instead of stumbling across its remains when you go to kiss your offspring’s angelic brow goodnight. So even if you aren’t saving yourself any psychic burden, at least you’re saving your soles. It’s better for the environment this way, too. The toys from Pley aren’t going to go to the landfill when your kids have had their fill of them. They’re going to go back to Pley headquarters, where they’ll be sanitized, repackaged and shipped off to another family to enjoy.
  2. pleylogo

  3. Don’t the children in those photos look happy and contented? That’s largely because their off-camera mothers and fathers, with their tidy and organized home, are also happy and contented. I’m not saying I’d deaccession every toy my children own in favor of a monthly box from Pley, but that living room is so clean. Maybe that is what I’m saying. With a Pley subscription, you can have a rotating cast of toys in your home rather than a never-ending need for more storage.
  4. You’ll save money. If your kids know they’ll get to play with a new toy every month, they’ll be less likely to ask for everything they see at Target. OK, maybe that’s not entirely accurate, but when they do ask for things, you can deflect them with “Hey, your Pley box should be here soon!”
  5. Pley can expand your child’s horizons. When I go to the bookstore, I tend to look for authors I’m already familiar with or books for which I’ve read glowing reviews, because I don’t want to spend my money on something that could be a bust. At the library, though, I’ll pick up just about anything. Knowing I can read it and return it frees me up to explore genres and authors I normally wouldn’t check out. Likewise, exploring Pley’s toy library will give your child the chance to try out toys he or she might otherwise have skipped over.
  6. It could be the perfect gift for your spouse. Rockford has always wanted to build one of the Architecture LEGO sets, but he doesn’t want to spend $200 on one of them. A Pley subscription would allow him to build Falling Water and bask in its glory for awhile without feeling like he needed to kragle it and store it under glass.

Lest you think it’s all LEGO, Pley also toys from Knex and other companies. They even have the new “Star Wars” droid! Pley’s pricing plans run between $20 and $25 a month, depending on whether you want to make a months-long commitment or just take it month to month.

I probably won’t decimate the kids’ toy holdings anytime soon — even though you can trade your old LEGOs in for credit — but we may give Pley a shot anyway. I’m pretty sure Rockford would jump for joy if the Death Star showed up on our doorstep, and I always enjoy it when Rockford jumps for joy.

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post for Pley, which means Nichole was compensated for this post.