A simple but fun activity I made for Owen(3) this morning.  I drew flowers (1-10) on separate sheets then made little number cards.  He had to count the flowers and then find the correct corresponding number and place it in the square at the top of the card.  Then for more practice he would count out the same number of math blocks and put those on the card too.  He enjoyed 1-5 and as I was making 6-10 he moved on to something else.   

Mental illness…there are many types and I’m no expert on any of them.   My blog series will focus mainly on depression because it is so common and so misunderstood.  We seem to be having a bit of an epidemic.  More and more young people are taking their lives, more middle aged people are retreating into their homes, blocking off the chance to get help and continue enjoying their lives.  If you are lucky enough to not suffer from depression, please take this opportunity to learn more so you can help someone else, or be prepared in case it hits you someday too.

Recent (and not so recent, but practically ignored until now) research suggests that depression is caused by inflammation.  Wow!  That’s exciting right?  Not some crazy combo of chemicals messed up in our brains?  Don’t get too excited just yet. This inflammation can be caused by all sorts of different things some of which seem like a chicken and egg scenario to me.  I won’t try to explain the science but I’ll offer you these links:  http://chriskresser.com/is-depression-a-disease-or-a-symptom-of-inflammation and http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/04/depression-allergic-reaction-inflammation-immune-system and http://www.feelguide.com/2015/01/06/new-research-discovers-tha-depression-is-an-allergic-reaction-to-inflammation/

The question posed in one of the articles brings up a good point.  If depression is really caused by something in our body more so than in our brain can the stigma be lifted?  It wasn’t lifted when the cause was thought to be a chemical imbalance instead of demons or whatever they must have believed before that.  I believe the stigma can only be lifted when we realize it could be any of us.  When we realize that it’s not just a “mood”, a “slump”, a “rough patch”.  For some, sure this may be true, it may be just a bit of a rough patch where you experience some symptoms of depression and can get back on track.  For many though it is not that at all.

Whatever causes it, depression is real, there is no denying that.  One cannot simply “snap out of it.” When those of us afflicted by depression are given the impression that you think we can “snap out of it”, it makes it even worse.  Because we start to believe that too and then that adds more stress (inflammation) and more depression follows.

Another really unhelpful argument we often get offered:  You shouldn’t be sad…look how much worse “person/group X” has it…be grateful you aren’t them.  Saying this is like telling someone they shouldn’t be happy about something because there is someone who is happier.  If you think we haven’t already felt guilty about feeling shitty when there are sooooo many people who are worse off than us, think again.  We’ve thought it, it has brought on guilt and stress which then adds…yep you guessed it…more depression.

I think I’ll stop there for today.  If you would like to share your story with the public, please let me know.  I would love to feature some real life stories to help educate those who have not suffered or been close to someone who has suffered from depression before.

Simon really enjoys math and games.  I’ve found if I casually bring up a “game” that involves some math and we do it together I can get him to practice a concept for a while.  I found this post on Pinterest and thought I could make some of the materials easily myself.  We rolled a die with numbers 0-12 on it.  Each number he rolled was one number in a 4 or 5 digit number he was creating.  When all the blanks were filled he would read off the number.  Next he would take the 1,000, 100, 10 and 1 cards and put the correct amount underneath.  We took turns to see who could roll a bigger number.  Then at the end I put some of the place cards under the blanks and asked him to fill in the actual number.  It worked well both ways.  ps. see if you can catch the photo bomber fresh from his bath 🙂

Nothing makes my heart smile quite as much as when my boys find themselves immersed in nature and figuring things out for themselves.  We took a hike at Stringer’s Ridge on Monday morning after the boys got back from their big camping trip with Rick and Oma (Kathy, Rick’s mom) in Ga.  We were attempting to find a geocache site along the trail and walked all the way up to the overlook checking out wildflowers and such along the way.  We got to the top and found this patch of mushrooms.  Simon asked if I had my mushroom field guide, which I did (it was rainy the past few days and that often leads to good mushrooms).  They each looked at the mushrooms and book for a while, thinking they knew which ones they must be.  Admittedly mushroom identification is not one of my strong suits and I brought the least helpful field guide for it because it was the lightest weight one.  But as we were packing up to walk back down the hill I turned around and saw this shot!  Priceless!

We’ve had some crazy weather patterns down here the past week.  I took advantage of it and showed Simon how to graph the temperatures.  He loves setting the alarm/timer on the iPhone so he kept track hour by hour and plotted then temps for two days in a row.   Pretty wild stuff!



This was a very neat and simple activity.  Ice cream salt and liquid water colors.  Sparkly rainbow salt crystals recipe from two-daloo.  We plan to use them to make Sparkly rainbow gems.  Color mixing is one of the boys’ favorite activities!  They also both love gems and minerals so I thought this was perfect.  I am loving my liquid water colors from discount school supply.  So much easier to use than good coloring.



We had been waiting all winter for “real” snow and it finally came on Feb 25/26.  The boys enjoyed rolling the snow into very large blobs then carving into them or jumping into them.  We got to use our snow markers grandma and grandpa gave them for Christmas.  We had a few snowball fights of course.  It wasn’t very good sledding snow unfortunately but we still had fun.



Perfect for a snowy day…I saw this on Teachers Pay Teachers and figured I could just draw one myself.  Simon hasn’t done a lot of seat work lately so I figured this was a fun way to get him doing some “work” without working too hard.  He seemed to like it, had a little trouble figuring out that each pair was supposed to be a different color to start with.  I think I will use the concept for other things.  Endless possibilities of matching things I think.

Monday while we waited for the weather to do whatever it was supposed to do we had some fun with soap foam and goop.  We made dino goop in the morning with cornstarch and shampoo, about equal parts, but you really just stir til it looks like you want it to.  We stuck dinosaurs in the goop and squished it around.  Our shampoo was a nice lavender mint scent so that made it a multi sensory experience.

While searching for more uses for our new liquid watercolors I got the recipe for the soap foam from here: http://www.funathomewithkids.com/2013/08/rainbow-soap-foam-bubbles-sensory-play.html

It’s not like it’s rocket science to blend up soap and water but I never thought of it before. I was using my Kitchen Aid mixer and I would say you do not need to use full speed if using a big stand mixer. I used Seventh Generation soap for one batch and Target brand green Dawn knockoff for another batch.  I added the cornstarch, but I would add less next time as I think it made it a little too thick.  We put it in a big bin and added some sea animals to play with.  They both thought it was really neat to start with but soon lost interest.  I then gave Owen some scoops and containers and he started “cooking” up a storm.  I overheard him talking about all the ingredients we normally use to bake with.

I will say it was surprisingly hard to wash off all the things that were covered with the soap foam…after all what exactly does one use to wash off dishwashing soap??  We ended up putting the box in the tub and letting Owen take a bubble bath with the leftovers that wouldn’t go down the drain.

I spilled a bunch of chia seeds trying to get them from the bag to a jar.  Instead of throw them away (gasp!) I had the boys fill some clear cups with dirt, put some fun face stickers on them and we “planted” the seeds.  I put that in quotes because we threw the seeds onto the dirt, shuffled them around a bit, added some water and put them on the window sill.  A few days later, voila…chia hair!

On a related note, if you are not aware of the wonder of chia seeds as food, please check them out…so nutritious and they add a fun texture to things.  http://wellnessmama.com/4981/uses-for-chia-seeds/