a hippie with a minivan

trimming down users…

The last few weeks I have been getting more spam registrations… so I finally installed a plugin to help deter them and I am about to go through the list of registered users and delete all the ones that I know are spam… however… if an error occurs and I delete someone who is not spam but just has a weird username (like 1bdsfvbkn2352) or weird e-mail address then sorry in advance….

and if you are not a registered user and would like to then you can do so at the bottom of the page 😉 There are sometimes extra posts and you can subscribe to my blog and get e-mail notifications when I post if you choose…

a few things I love about life learning…

No schedules…

I love not having a schedule… I love that the boys can have their own rythms and be either early or late sleepers/risers depending on their own biological rhythms… I love not having to get up in the morning at a set time and having to get all the kids ready to bring one to school… I love eating when we are hungry instead of because it is just “time to eat” and doing whatever we want whenever we want…I also love that when we do activities we can do it in the week when things are often cheaper and a lot less busy…

Less stress…

Not having schedules and deadlines, homework or pressure to perform among many other things makes our lives a lot less stressful… there is no expectation to know things because they “have to know them” and then know failure if they are not ready… nor are they held back from learning things because “they are not at that level yet”…

we live… we learn… we play and we take everyday as it comes..

“Socialization”

Not having kids in school means that they are not coming home with bad habits picked up from other kids… they are not in eternal competition with other kids wanting to have more or better stuff… There is less peer pressure… and again less pressure to perform… also… age is not a seen as a barrier… friendships can be sparked with younger kids or older kids and even adults…

In the end they will know more…

I trully believe that in the end my children, and those able to learn at their own pace will know a lot more than most public school kids… and I am saying this because having gone through the public system myself and talking to others over the last years… and as recently as a few days ago, the trend is to get the best test scores and “get things over with” only to be able to forget it the next day because often you will never see the material again… I learned a lot more when I persued my own interests then when I was in class… and I believe that in the end my kids will do the same…

Great list…

Amanda shared this link on her blog…and I thought it would be great to share here also…

How to screw up Unschooling

I had seen it before but had forgotten about it… and like Amanda said she will do, it is going up on my wall also…

I condensed the list slightly because there are some things that come naturally, some things that don’t pertain to us at the moment and even a few things that I might not 100% agree with…

but overall it will be a good visual reminder at times that I might need it…

New theme…

I have really wanted to change my theme again for a while…

I didn’t want as much to change the colours or general look but I did want to change a few things…

centre it instead of having it all on one side… make the text smaller so that it is easier to read and also make it look less like the bluebird theme that it was based on and has since become very popular…

So this is actually a whole new theme and not an edited version of the other one… I did a lot of editing to make it my own and I am pretty happy with the way it looks…

now the test… how does it look to you? any problems? things not lining up?

mmmm….cranberries and lemon…

I made some cranberry-lemon cake/bars yesterday…

and… they were so good that there is not enough left to get a good pic…

Of course, It did help that I got a call at the last minute yesterday reminding me that there was a homeschooling meeting last night so I packed them up and brought them to share…

I will make them again though and share the pic but for now I will share the recipe…

2 eggs (beaten)
1/2 cup butter (softened)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
zest of one lemon
juice of one lemon
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 cups cranberries (or less if you don’t like them as tart as I do)

1. Beat together eggs, butter, sugar and vanilla.
2. Mix in Lemon zest and juice
3. Add flour and baking powder and mix well.
4. Fold in cranberries.
5. Pour into 9 x 9 cake pan.
6. Bake@ 350 degrees 40-45 minutes .