Our first day field trip

Our Children's Museum of the Upstate is really cool. It's a three-level building full of fun, educational activities and exhibits for kids. Some of it is over my kids' heads at the moment, but they at least enjoy looking at pretty much everything. This is where we spent our first official day of kindergarten. Maybe we'll make the first-day field trip a tradition!

The 5-and-under area is called Grandma Betty's Farm. It's Robert's favorite.

Milking the cow

Daddy likes to play, too

The Kaleidoscope Climber is probably our favorite. Moms and dads can fit, too!

Suzi waited a long time to try this.

There's a lot more than this at the museum. Downstairs they have a water area and a TV production studio where you can dress up and make a video of yourself singing karaoke or reporting the news. The girls love to sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." We only go once a month or so because it's almost an hour away and I can't take all three kids by myself, but we love it. I'm so glad it's there!

Look what came in the mail!

We are officially members of a South Carolina legal option 3 homeschool accountability association! We chose Palmetto Homeschool Association (PHA). From the information on their website, I thought it might take over a month to get our membership finalized, but they got the papers out to us within a week! This means we can get started. Actually, we started Friday with a field trip to the children's museum for Ivey's birthday. Today was day #2 toward our required 180 days.

We are officially, legally doing kindergarten and getting credit for it! Yes, it's still sinking in. I'm just so, so, so glad I went to that awesome homeschool conference, because thanks to the levelheaded ladies I spoke to there, I am not freaking out right now. Two down, 178 to go!

We joined an option 3 association!

We finally decided on a homeschool accountability association to join (for South Carolina legal option #3). After much thought, we signed up and sent our paperwork off to Palmetto Homeschool Association. We should be all set to start counting days soon! We are signing up a bit late--could have started counting days in mid-June or July. But if my calculations are correct, doing only weekdays and not taking breaks, we'd have the opportunity to count about 210 days before the cutoff in the middle of June. We only need 180. Field trips--anytime we go to the children's museum, zoo, theatrical/musical performances, botanical gardens, and similar places, even on the weekends--count. There's a Saturday science lab that Suzi is now old enough to attend! Anyway, it made me feel good to see that we have plenty of days to get this done!

I found a planner book at Goodwill for cheap. It's really for a schoolteacher and not a homeschool mom, so it has lots of places for info I will never fill in--like contact information for 30 students and directions for a substitute teacher. But it'll work great for writing down a loose idea of what we're doing each day and keeping track of how many days we've completed. As long as it works, I'll use it! More detailed descriptions of our days and samples of Suzi's work will be kept on this blog and also in a binder.

I strew their paths and then they strew mine

I can't remember where I first read about "strewing," but there's a good explanation of it here. It involves providing materials to our children that we think may spark an interest. Then you can sit back and see where they go with it. I am especially fond of this concept right now, because Robert is teething and miserable. The time we manage to find for actual instruction, book reading, or mom-led projects is hard-won. When I practice strewing, they have an activity they can enjoy while I nurse Robert for the 30th time in a day!

Last night I was going through my craft room and found a bunch of wooden beads that I'd picked up at various at yard sales. I didn't have a plan for them; they probably came in a box with something else I really wanted. I also had an old silverware organizer, and I knew we had a new pair of shoelaces laid aside in a dresser drawer. So I put together this little work station for Suzi. First you sort the beads (by size or color), then you can decide on a pattern, and then you string the beads on the shoelaces! I placed it on her desk for her to find in the morning.

Of course, if I make something for Suzi, I have to do something for Ivey too! It couldn't be more beads, because Ivey drops things in the floor all the time and Robert could find one and put it in his mouth. But I had a little container and a bunch of small clothespins. Kids love these clothespins, because they aren't clothespins to them. They're little people. So I painted the little people red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple and left them out for Ivey to find. I didn't get a chance to take a picture of them.

They both liked what I made them. Suzi played with her beads for a while, and Ivey shared her "rainbow guys" with Robert. The rainbow guys are now all over the floor, naturally.

I had a bunch of extra clothespins that I didn't find time to put away, and Suzi picked them up. She took them to her desk, asked to borrow a pen, and started making them into unique characters. That was a little accidental strewing!

This is Little Sunshine. He has a black eye because his little sister, Alice, punched him.

We had to have a talk with Alice. She claims she did it because he was being aggravating.

Suzi wants to make these for people for Christmas. Some of them are happy, some sad, some angry. That one on the bottom right is a Suzi self-portrait of sorts, in a bowtie and suspenders. I love that girl.

It's so neat to see what I get back when I give them little things like this to use--aside from the mess in the floor, which is a given. I get to see Suzi's creativity. Ivey shares with her little brother and includes him in her play. I am gifted a little clothespin person to keep me company on my end table. Most of all, I get feedback about what I can do next! I may see if I have some magnet strips to glue on the back of these guys so they can congregate on the fridge. I wonder what other things I have stashed in my craft room that I can use. You probably have some good stuff at your house, too!

Love to Learn Homeschool Conference

Jordan and I signed up in May to attend the Love to Learn Homeschool Conference August 4th. My sweet, wonderful parents agreed to keep Ivey and Robert all day, while Suzi was out of town visiting her Nana and Papa (Jordan's parents). So, that's right, Jordan and I drove over two hours to Charlotte and attended this event all by ourselves! It was amazing--both the conference and our ability to concentrate sans kids.

This homeschool conference is much, much smaller than some. I know there was a big one in Atlanta recently--lots and lots of vendors and curricula to see and buy, probably tons of tempting manipulatives. And that would've been great. But we really didn't have much money to spend and are pretty happy with what we've got curriculum-wise, so maybe it was better that I wasn't tempted. We chose this conference because of its focus on unschooling and relaxed homeschooling, which I wanted to learn more about.

There were a few neat vendors at this conference, but we only shopped at one. I approached a table overflowing with gently used books, toys, games, and manipulatives for awesome prices. It prompted me to ask the lady supervising it if she ran a shop. She said no, that she had children aged 6-22 and these were all things they'd outgrown or that they had extra of. Wow. We bought a few books and several dinosaurs for the kids, among a few other things--a volcano kit, a water science set, a peg board pattern set, and some puzzles.

Then we moved on to the sessions. Several times we ran into a conflict--two sessions we wanted to attend at the same time--so Jordan and I went to separate sessions. The first one I attended was "Always Unschooled." The lady who taught this said that she--like me--started researching and trying to plan when her firstborn was a baby. Then she realized that 99% of the information and skills you use everyday are learned outside of school. (Think about it--what information have you used recently that you learned in a classroom?) Children--and adults--absorb and retain what is relevant and interesting to them. It was especially comforting to hear how her son learned to read much later than is thought to be normal, but eventually did it in a way that worked for him and went on to be very successful as an adult in college. Suzi is not reading yet, and it's easy for me to freak out over this since I began reading at four and loved it.

Next I went to "Organize Your Homeschool," which was a useful session for its practical suggestions even though I thought the presenter's teaching style was too strict for our family. She discussed the best ways to use bookshelves, binders, baskets/boxes, small containers, letter stacking trays, calendars, lesson planners, timers, and... the trash can! There is something about organizing that gets me excited. Unfortunately, my teething baby boy probably isn't going to let me get much done for a while!

After lunch I attended a file folder game make-and-take workshop. The lady brought her laminator and a binding machine and helped us make games for our kids. It was fun! Here's the one I made for Suzi. You find the missing letter in the words and velcro the oval onto the right cup. I'd like to make some more games sometime soon, but I want to figure out a way to use different materials that are durable and yet do not require lamination.

Jordan and I went to a unit studies session that was a lot of fun. The mom who presented it had photos of her kids, right down to the baby with a pacifier in his mouth, dressing up and reenacting the Boston Tea Party off their bunk bed. Hilarious! I bet Suzi would be all over that! This mom also cooked food from each region of the United States for a unit, and sometimes they'd invite grandparents or friends over to see the kids perform and share what they'd learned. What better way to prove to skeptics that the kids truly are learning?

My favorite session took place the last two hours of the conference. I'd already absorbed about all I could take in one day, and my brain was fried. But Jordan and I went together to this one because I knew we needed it--an unschooling Q&A/role playing. Two amazing ladies (the one who sold us all the great stuff and the teacher of the first unschooling session) sat on a desk in the front of the room and answered all our questions. Some of it was deep. Finally I asked my burning questions, the things that held me back and sometimes took the joy out of our learning. The things that scared me and made me double-guess myself. I think I may have to save that whole discussion for another post. But, long story short, I left feeling much more relaxed and hopeful about our upcoming kindergarten year!

Stay tuned for a second and probably third post on this subject. It's just too much for one!