5 Year Itch

This last week Squidward and the Princess attended summer camp at a local Japanese International school. They loved it! They loved getting up in the morning, riding the bus, eating special lunches, spending the day in organized fun and learning and coming home to a scheduled evening. They asked to go for real school. I cannot afford to send both to the international school at a price tag of $1120 a month in tuition costs but we are considering the DOD school on base.

I do not like to direction that US public schools are going but DOD schools are a league of their own, usually scoring better and having having a larger budget to provide services to their students. I have to be honest that I am getting a little burnt out with homeschooling and neither the kids and I are having fun like we did before. I have also been a little unhappy being out of work and really wish to reenter the workforce to help our family financially. We have also had some issues finding a great elementary homeschool curriculum that was complete and I certainly do not want to be doing a disservice to my children. We love a lot of the online options we have, especially learning  games offered like fill in the blank, but I just don't feel like any of our hearts are in it anymore.

We are five, going on six years of homeschooling and I wonder if we are in a slump or if it really is time for my family to consider something else.

Summer Camp

It is time for summer camp in our family's house! Zombie Boy has gone to summer camp the past few years in Washington State while we were stationed in Canada. He really enjoyed it but it was just a normal where the kids did normal summer camp stuff. This year he had the amazing experience of attending Camp Woodward  BMX Action sports camp. He LOVED it! He saved all of his money from his paper route and ought a BMX bike all by himself too. The staff was very accommodating and helpful with the fact that he was coming from overseas rather than nearby like many of the children.

Zombie also made the trek from Tokyo to Pennsylvania on his own too. I trusted that he would do ok and he did! It was a little difficult getting him on the flight in Tokyo due to so much being lost in translation but it all worked out. That was the most stressful part for everyone!

Each day Zombie had instruction in BMX bike riding and learned quite a few tricks and beginner skills. His favourte thing was being able to do stunts in the foam pit so that he wouldn't get hurt. He said the food was good, the activities were fun and he loved getting to watch the many BMX pros come out and provide shows and instruction to the kids. He also went paintballing, horse back riding, swimming, and many other fun activities.  Zombie wants to go back next year and is already saving him money to do so! I am hoping the camp will publish the pictures of his week soon so that I can share some of the BMX tricks that he learned.

Squidward and The Princess are in summer camp this week. They are attending Hayama International School- many Military kids attend this school during the normal school year and they speak English. They also LOVE it and we are looking into the possibility of sending them there for school- it is very expensive for our budget so I am not sure if we can pull it off. I also do not think that they have a full elementary school and would hate to send one kid and not the other. Each day they do fun activities like water play, go to the beach, arts and crafts and the week they are attending they are learning about firemen and policeman. Each morning the little Japanese school bus picks them up here on base and takes them to school. They even eat traditional bento box for lunch. I honestly think they like the bus and lunch the best! Both are doing well being away from home. Neither have ever been in day care and only Aidan spent a part of a semester in kindergarten. Mia has never stepped foot in any type of school and both are doing wonderful!!!!

Momma has done well these two weeks as well. I have kept myself busy without kids (such a weird feeling) by running errands, volunteering at the shelter and starting to focus on some homeschool stuff for next year.  I am designing writing lesson plans for the kids' journals and looking into curriculum that will provide creative writing help.

Ueno Zoo

It is back to school for my little ones while Zombie is at summer camp this week. We had taken a very well deserved break after schooling through a PCS move and the holidays last year. All of us were a little burnt out so the last two months have been just relaxing time while focusing more on fun unit studies.

Squidward and Princess at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, Japan 2012

We began our "school" with a visit to Ueno Zoo in Tokyo after we dropped Zombie Boy off at the airport. We had a lot of fun and ended up spending 5 hours in the huge park. There were many animals and the kids loved learning in such a relaxed state. We rented little transponders that held an electronic map of the park and showed  educational videos of the exhibits we were passing. I loved that they had one on English that we could rent because it really did make our experience worth it as an educational field trip.

Those sure are some cute monkeys!

The maned wolf, the huge brown bear and the mouse holding station were favourites for us. The big bear even came to the window and Squidward was scared because he didn't realize how big they really were. In BC, our black bears were tiny compared to the huge Japanese brown bear!

Japanese Brown Bear

Maned Wolf

Holding the cutest little mice!!!

We also loved seeing the panda bear but it was very crowded and we could only see them behind glass. Ueno Zoo recently lost a six day old panda that was born in early July so it was very sad to see the memorials set up in honor of him. It was a great loss to the not only Ueno but zoos and sanctuaries worldwide. The kids wrote a special message to the baby panda and we hung it at the memorial site.

Great Panda

RIP Baby Panda

I even took a small lesson in origami! This man was so nice (and patient!) and the end result was the cutest little panda bear!

I have skillz, one of which would be the ability to look absolutely horrible on hot humid summer days in Japan :)

Brave

Last week we had the pleasure of seeing the new Disney movie, Brave. Here in Japan we don't have real TV channels that shows commercials so none of us had seen the trailers. I saw a little about it online but not much and just told my daughter it was a movie about the new Disney princess. I told her she was a tomboy princess who rode horses that had messy hair because that was all that I really knew about the movie.

I have to say that we LOVED the movie- even the boys! In the beginning of the movie, I thought it would be like all of the other movies about the girl needing her prince charming, I was pleasantly surprised when I realized it was about NOT needing a prince. I loved that the relationship that was focused on was that of child and parent, a relationship that is often ignored or not focused on as important. This is a welcome change for the "Disney Princess" and I hope future princesses follow suit :)

It is full swing summer at our home now. Zombie is getting ready to go back to the States for BMX camp for a week. He is super excited! Squidward and Princess are both going to be going for a week of summer camp at a local Japanese International school. They are excited to ride the little school buis and get traditional bento box for lunch. After that, they have a week of VBS and then Grandparents come for a visit! We have kept up with our unit studies of caves and Buddhism. The Princess is still learning to read and all of the kids are enrolled in the summer reading program at the library. All three kids are looking forward to reading books by homeschoolers. We are enjoying the summer and spend lots of time at the pool enjoying the sunshine. After three years in Canada, it is lovely to be somewhere with heat and sunshine :)

Kurihama Flower World

This past week we came face to face with GODZILLA!!!!!

The kids and I took a little field trip to Kurihama Flower World. The kids were excited because they heard there was an awsome long rolly slide and I was excited to see the flowers after seeing so many beatiful pictures. The flowers were a bust.. instead of seeing feilds of gorgeous flowers, we saw this:

I guess we will need to come back in spring. There were many hydrangeas, which I did enjoy because they always remind me of the ones that were planted at my Grandfasther's home when I was a little girl. I was also p[retty disappointed because the herb foot bath was closed- after all of the walking we did, I only wanted to soak my feet in healing waters. At least the park was free... I would have been very upset if we had o pay admission.

The park was definitely the highlight! There were two huge rollie slides after climbing up and down ladders, bouncy bridges and rope bridges. We first encountered rollie slides at Showa Park when of vacation and love them! Instead of being a solid slide, there is just little rollers that roll you down, causing your speed to go very fast. It is painful to sit so we just squat and go down on our feet :) 

 

You can't miss the huge Godzilla at the park either... I wonder how many kids can say they ate a picnic with the huge dinosaur?

The kids have just been working on our unit studies and playing educational games for school. Their new favourites are hangman for kids and animal games. We are knee deep in our study of caves and hope to visit some very soon.