October 22 2012

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.  ~Logan Pearsall Smith

This morning after devotions I discovered that my camera batteries were dead.

Sadness.

Onwards and Upward.

So the day began with:

Animae drawing

Diego matching board game

Kreo building

Foil art

Piano playing

Beethhoven listening

Recorder playing

Much discussion about the history and lives of the different characters in these short stories

African stew eating

Counting by 5's and 10's with the game Boom-O!

Human Body puzzle and study

This book was a fantastic book to spur on learning.

This book has mammals from all around the world. We built our Geopuzzle of the World Continents

Then as we read the book, we looked for the continent and country the animal came from.

This book also include fun facts like how long the tongue is or nose. Out came the tape measure and we spent a great deal of the time giggling over the length of an anteater's tongue.

Exploding toads and other nature videos

Scratch art

Shooting star explanations

Spanish playaway book. I try it. I cannot talk like Jose.

Bible character 

 

This book inspired all sorts of learning today.

We grabbed a funnel shaped pop bottle and made a tornado

Attempted creating waterspouts

Then visited this site and made a tornado in a jar

Followed by making rain, and creating lightning.

The lightning experiment didn't work so well for us, but it was fun trying

Then some rousing discussion about the tales and wisdom of Aesop

Here fishy, fishy

The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow. Jim Hightower 

We read the Rainbow Fish. I asked if anyone wanted to make a rainbow fish and two of my three said, "Yes!"

I love ASKING QUESTIONS. It leads to all sorts of creativity. I asked my children, "What should we use to make the shiny scales on the fish?"  Originally, I was going to put out aluminum foil and say, "Look what we can use for the scales!" Instead, I wanted to see what they came up with.

And, of  course, pure brilliance: Corn flakes!

My daughter decided that they looked like scales. And I agree!

I love asking my kids, "Can you think of anything to do with this...or should I just recycle it?"

There was an immediate need for this box which was promptly turned into a space helmet and then they were off to explore other galaxies

These fish were wrapping paper cut outs. I had my son group them into schools. Later we cut them out, attached paper clips and went fishing for them with a magnet.

We had a discussion about volcanoes, anger and self-regulation...more on that in the future.

The ever-popular fishing game

Still life drawing- step 1

Step 2

A few rounds of Mancala

Scrape art-more fish love

Dinosaur drawings

Tuesday October 16 2012

My Lord loves me and Oh a wonder I see

A rainbow shines through my window, My Lord loves me

The morning started with this glorious sight

And then there was much singing of this song:

I cry every time I sing this song. I still hear my Dad singing this to me when I sing it.

It's World Dictionary Day! Show the Dictionary some love!

Games of Apples to Apples amidst reading, chores, math and copywork

We're listening to the Judy Blume audiobook called "Double Fudge". The book's main character is obsessed with money. So we make our own money and play several games

And then spend a gazillion hours playing Monopoly

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark too read. -Groucho Marx

Books are our main source of learning and inspiration today.

Picture Study from Children's Prayer in Art

Beethoven's life story, followed by his music

inspired by another book, we get out our Qwirkle blocks and make tricky patterns

Then we read and read and read

We eat the last watermelon from our garden and save all the seeds for next year

And then we read Dr. Suess's Many Coloured Days

We are inspired to create

My son grabs the water markers and colours in Dora ...

meanwhile eldest daughter pulls her nose from a book long enough to write a poem about her Colored Day.

Yellow is the kind of day

That makes me feel just like a monkey

Swinging all around

Peeling bananas, feeling jumpy

I added my Colored Day poem and drawing:

Some days I feel rushed 

like a siren blaring red

Like a rabbit busy hopping

Or a chicken with no head

The last line was a big hit with my son!

My six year old proudly displayed her Colored Day and poem

Sometimes I feel blue

Like a ram who lives in a shoe

I feel sad like a blushing blueberry

Time to jar the last of the drying hot peppers

And a quick walk before dinner

We needed a place to cool down from the heat

I just love these stripey pants

Rush home to make dinner and feed our new neighbours. We spend 5 hours listening to stories of tremendous travel--our new friends have travelled to 25 different countries and are only 25 and 27.

I am now wiser about toilet customs in the Far East.

A glorious day.

September 26

"I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than to be crowded on a velvet cushion." -Henry David Thoreau

We made plans

Pumpkins won prizes

Walks by the river

Followed by walks in the river

And a walk home

Autumn Walk

Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.   -Elizabeth Lawrence

                                            

September 18

Oh, what I wouldnt give for a plate of fried green tomatoes like we used to have at the cafe. Ooh! -Ninny Threadgoode, Fried Green Tomatoes

Some days call for a silly start to breakfast...

...followed by good news that just had to be shared with one of my most favourite people in the world: my bro...also known as Uncle Babaganoush

 (thank you Apple for the ipad and face time features!)

My eldest proudly displays the pumpkin she grew

These are just some of the MANY tomatoes we have at our house. Math and tomatoes are going hand in hand this week. Counting, multiplying, measuring, etc.

And...when you have tomatoes coming out of your ears, you must eat them.

Fried Green Tomatoes to keep this girl's soul happy to the brim.

Starting with a Bang: The Orchard Year

Remember when I wrote about creating Power Moments for your kids? Here's how it went down at our house this year to kick off the new school year.

I like beginnings to be marked. I love the anticipation of events just about to begin. I love the feelings evoked from the moments just before a race or a game. Beginnings are important. They mark the start of change.

Even though we unschool our kids and most of our learning just feels like life unfolding naturally, I still like to mark the beginning of a new season.

This year is The Orchard Year at my house. An orchard is a piece of land set aside for the purpose of growing fruit. We have decided, as a family, to be set aside for God to allow Him to develop the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives.

This was a theme that needed to be introduced with panache. It needed a celebratory tone as my husband and I were introducing some goals, disciplines and new changes to our lives. It seems a spoonful of sugar would help our new "medicine" (change) go down well.

All we needed to start was a ball of string.

The string was unwound all over our yard, creating a maze that travelled through haphazard obstacles, wound its way through garden paths and weaved around the entire yard.

I sat the kids down and told them to observe the string in the midst of our huge yard. What did they see?

The yard was big. The string was relatively small compared to the yard. You couldn't really see where the string was going because it was small.

I talked about how following God and growing in God is very similar. Life can be a huge place and you could go all over, venturing into places unknown or even places forbidden. Learning to follow God and His voice for your life was like the string. It required focus, attention and a fair amount of holding on tight. I asked them to start following the string.

The string led them on a bit of a wild chase. Shortly into their walk, I asked them to stop and look around them. Hanging off a plant, I had a paper cherry with the word LOVE written on it. I asked them to pick the fruit.

We talked about how as we follow God ( the string) we will grow in His character. I told them to be on the look out for all the 9 ways we could grow in the Fruit of the Spirit. The adventure was on as they began to climb over obstacles and crawl under chairs following the string and hunting for the different fruit.

Finally, they arrived at the end. They managed to find: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, goodness, gentleness and self-control. They brought all of the fruit with them to the end of the string.

At the end of the string, I had a poster board of a tree. The tree had fruit candy taped to it. I gave each of them a candy and asked them to describe it. It was the strawberry candies that have the wrappers that look like strawberries. My children said that the candy was sweet and tasted great. They also noted that it lasted a long time.

We discussed how following God and allowing Him to develop our character will produce good things in our lives and that it will last a long time. We talked about whether or not following the string was easy or difficult.

"It wasn't too hard if you paid attention to where it was going. Sometimes you could run ahead of the string and then have to go back to where the string was actually taking you."

More discussion on following God and how the path He leads us down is straight, narrow and sometimes seems to be filled with obstacles. Even the parts that had lots of obstacles were easy to get around if you followed the string.

When the candies were done, I talked about how it was a gift to others to be a fruitful person. Then I told them they better look on our kitchen table and see if there were any gifts for our new season of schooling.

They bolted into the house. I see that our "patience" tree is going to require some growing this year!

Unwrapping new art supplies, books, and science gadgets was filled with fun and mayhem.

Then we prayed as a family and dedicated this new growing season to God.

I'm excited to see where this new year leads.

Monday August 29 2011

Drawing

Building Towers

Making Jell-o

Playing with Neighbors

Reading the Diggingest Dog

Listening to the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. F???? something or other

Playing store complete with money and bags

Collage art

wounded memory card that can't take pictures

Harvesting herbs

Gathering tomatoes

Getting ready for next week's start of the new learning year

Thursday August 25 2011

Today began lamenting the fact that the pool was closing today. So we made a plan to spend as much time as possible at the pool.

We wanted to thank our lifeguards for the amazing job they did this summer. And because it is National Banana Split Day we decided to make up "Banana Split To Go" Bags. We packed candies, nuts, and coconut into their bags. They just needed to add ice cream.(If you do this idea, we wrapped up nuts seperately and checked with each life guard for allergies first before we added them to their Banana Split bags)

Gotta love our tag line: Thanks a bunch...written on the bananas!

Then off to the pool where every feat imaginable was performed

and every goofy trick

And then it was time to go home and eat dinner so that we could...

Come back for more swimming!

Five hours of pool time today and the hope that we've saved up enough of it to last us until next year.

Sniff! Weep! Goodbye pool!

And now that the pool is closed my official mourning over Summer's End has begun.

When summer ends it puts one more year between me and my childhood. And that makes me grieve the passing of the season.

But I'm easily cured when I see edible things...

It was time to celebrate National Banana Split Day!

Yum-OHHHHHHH!

Ahhhh! A really fun way to end August 25th