27 days down!

We just completed day 27 out of 180 last night. It's not always pretty, but we're getting it done! Homeschooling two non-reading children with a busy toddler in the house is hard! While I'm showing the girls some fossils, he's dumping my coffee in the floor. While I'm helping Suzi add, he's gotten into my sewing supplies and is unrolling every piece of elastic I own.

See what I have to put up with?

Jordan captioned this naptime photo: Hmm... What should I do to aggravate them next? I'll sleep on it.

But! We are getting it done! We are settling into a comfortable routine comprised of approximately 75% unschooling. The other 25% is me helping Suzi develop her reading skills and practice writing, do basic hands-on math, and learn social information I consider important. I'd like to keep her somewhat up-to-speed with her group-schooled contemporaries. By law, we are required to homeschool 180 days and cover reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. Science and social studies are just so easy to cover by reading a book and then letting Suzi's interest take flight on its own. She asks questions, we find the answers, and she's happily learning. It's awesome!

For instance, we found this book about the Wright Brothers at Goodwill. We read it a couple of times (at Suzi's request). We got to talk about how airplanes have impacted travel and, therefore, society. Social studies! Then we made paper airplanes--two different kinds. Hey, why is mine diving instead of flying straight like Ivey's? Science! We probably spend a good bit more time on social studies and science than kids in school do, but we don't always "count" it.

John the Spider continues to spark Suzi's interest. She enjoys watching documentaries about different kinds of spiders. We watch videos of spiders spinning webs and catching insects. Suzi draws pictures of spiders. She has also taken a recent interest in bats, although I have no pictures of that at the moment. Both are quite interesting to me, as well. I am learning as much as she is!

She found the other day that she loves Spider-Man. A friend introduced us to the cartoons on Netflix. We added him to her word book so she can write about him later.

After talking about dinosaur fossils and archaeologists, Suzi took an interest in fossils. She thought it would be so cool to find a real one! The other day while we were browsing in a local antique shop, I found this collection of small fossils, complete with information cards and a little magnifying glass. The girls enjoyed holding them and looking at them. I'm sure we'll get them back out for another look soon.

We attend a homeschool co-op, All Things Bright and Beautiful, on Monday mornings. It's lovely to get out, spend time with friends, and learn some new things! This Monday was rainy, but we had a great time playing inside.

I already got our Halloween books out this year! Just couldn't wait any longer. That first one is my favorite from when I was little and my parents read to me. The girls and I read and read and read. Of course it counts for the reading requirement, but books also spark many of our science and social studies lessons. I am always on the lookout for math storybooks, too. I would like to read even more than we do, but Robert makes it hard to get through a book. While we try to read he'll be throwing a fit, or getting into mischief, or climbing on me and trying to rip pages out. In a year or two we'll be all set--Suzi will be reading some on her own, and Robert will be sitting and listening to stories!

Cuisenaire rods are fun! I found some for $3 at Goodwill and looked up an addition worksheet online to try with Suzi. It took her several days to finish this one. Obviously these rods are a handy manipulative, but I love how they add color to math. Color instantly puts me in a happier mood, and I think it does the same for Suzi!

Suzi is still getting some of her numbers backwards, but practicing them with pencil and paper is awfully dull. I found this salt in a pan idea somewhere on the internet--maybe Pinterest? I used a glass casserole dish and put a green piece of paper underneath so her numbers would show up in her favorite color.

That's all for now! Who knows when I'll get to post again--hopefully before the month is out. We are getting things done, though, and that's probably why I'm not posting. So don't worry.

Highlights of our first 15 days

We're still homeschooling, even though I've had trouble finding time to update the blog! There's just so much to do, my computer is slow, and three active little kids don't allow for much computer time. I have been keeping a plan book. It isn't pretty or particularly neat, but it serves as a record of how many days we've done (15 out of 180) and what we're doing in each subject. I also have a notebook full of page protectors to keep samples of Suzi's work. Here's a little of what we've been doing these first few days.

Even though she's still not reading, Suzi likes to practice writing words. Sometimes she asks us to spell them for her. To help her with this, I made a word book out of a small notebook. I write words in it that she might like to use, and then draw or glue in a picture to go with it. I keep adding to it when she asks me how to spell something. Sometimes she draws the pictures herself. The important thing is that she can tell what the word is.

Here's one of her word book drawings. In case you are wondering what the fairy is doing, she is putting "lost things" on that table. Fairies occasionally visit our house through our little fairy door and leave fairy dust and lost things on the nature table for the girls.

I love Suzi's drawings. This Rainbow Snail is one of many colorful creations Suzi has made so far this school year. Her ability to spend most of her time pursuing her interests might be my favorite thing about homeschooling.

The girls took an interest in dinosaurs after I brought some books and toys home from the homeschool conference. One of the books suggested making your own fossil out of clay with your hand, so we did! While we were at it, we decided to make a time capsule. We put these handprints and a few other things into a bucket and buried it in the backyard. We'll probably dig it up when Suzi graduates homeschool.

Then we made a stepping stone to put on top of it so we can remember where it's buried.

Another picture Suzi drew recently--she copied the name. This one is really special to me because it's a portrait of my dog Shorty who died a couple of weeks ago.

Suzi has been having trouble getting her numbers to face the right way, so I've been trying to think of some fun, different ways for her to experience forming them. Here she is using finger paint to trace the numbers I had already drawn in pencil. Then I let her paint them herself on the next row. As you can see, Ivey really wanted to get in on this! Don't worry, I let both of them paint for about an hour after Suzi finished her numbers.

Another day we made the numbers together with play doh. This went over much better than asking her to write them out with a pencil, and she could pick them up and feel them rather than just see them. We picked up the 7 and flipped it over the way it was supposed to be.

As for actually doing math, we have been working on adding using our abacus. Suzi currently prefers it to the counting bears.

We have been talking about life cycles lately--birds, frogs, flies, spiders, whatever Suzi is interested in exploring. I helped Suzi with this little project depicting the life cycle of a fruit fly. There was an unfortunate incident here recently during which we came upon some fruit fly larvae in a surprise fashion. I was horrified, but just couldn't pass up the teachable moment before I disposed of them. I bet the fly life cycle lesson is one the girls won't be forgetting anytime soon!

I will close with this photo of the little guy who has been living on our front porch. He spins huge, beautiful webs and because he is so big, it's easy to see what he's doing. If we turn the porch light on, flies come and we get to watch him catch them. I didn't see him out there in his favorite spot tonight, so I hope he's okay!

June 4 - 8

Boy have we been lazy this week! There was just so much cleaning and party prep going on last week that it felt like a good week to rest a little. I don't think we did a single premeditated lesson on anything.

Well, I take that back. First of all, I spent a significant amount of time homeschooling myself in geography. I was tired of my astounding lack of knowledge in that department, so I went here and spent lots of my free time (and by that I mostly mean nursing-at-keyboard) playing their absolutely wonderful free games. Seriously, go try them! I am now familiar with almost all the countries, some of the capitals, and all of the states and capitals in the United States. Why couldn't I have had this website in seventh grade? I would've aced world geography! As for Suzi, that is all a bit over her head at the moment. She is learning to identify our state on a map of the US, and we let her play around with her Daddy's tablet on Google Earth. Seeing the Earth this way and then zooming in to our country, our state, our house (yes, it's amazing) helps connect bits of knowledge to form a working understanding of both local and world geography.

As usual, we read books and played a lot. Suzi worked at her desk, drawing pictures and making things like this outfit for Puff the Magic Dragon. I think he looks awesome in it. We went to story time at one of our local libraries. The girls love listening to "that fun librarian" read books, and it's even better because she has a big velcro storyboard to go along with most of them. We spent some time with Grandma and Grandpa Wednesday and Thursday. The week flew by!

Today we had a playdate at our local botanical gardens. I feel so lucky to live near it. It's the perfect place to spend a morning with friends! We didn't have any planned lessons here either, but we did see some interesting things that will make nice leads for nature learning in the next few days. We found some tiny frogs (perhaps toads?) as we played, and when we walked down to the pond there were tadpoles. We discussed the life cycle of a frog a few weeks ago. Mostly the kids just explored and played, and we had a great time with our friends!

When we came home, all three kids took a nice long nap and I set things up to make recycled paper. Earlier this week I bought a children's paper making kit at one of my favorite consignment shops for only 50 cents! The kids loved using it and it seemed to work great. The paper is outside drying right now. This is a great activity to do while discussing recycling. The kids get to see how much effort can be required to recycle an item, and how much more effective it would be, in this case, to use less paper in the first place. I think our shredded EOBs and bank statements are going to make some pretty interesting paper, though. Maybe you can see how there are whole letters sprinkled here and there. Alphabet paper!

I've been contemplating unschooling quite seriously this week. Last night I bought a new book to read on the subject. Just seeing how excited and self-motivated Suzi can get when an idea is hers makes me feel called to unschool at least part-time. Even though it is scary and the complete opposite of how I was educated. My own education also serves as inspiration to unschool, though, because of all the times it didn't work. I'll post more on this later. Daddy is home and we're starting our weekend!

May 28 - June 2

This is how my kids spent most of their time. Playing, dreaming, creating, being silly. I love that they have tons of time and energy to do this stuff. It is the heart of why we homeschool.

We didn't do a lot of formal stuff this week, because Wednesday was Suzi's birthday and she wanted to take the day off, and I had a party to prepare for as well. I've noticed lately that even when we "take the day off," so much learning still takes place spontaneously, and Suzi initiates educational activities on her own. It's hard for me to embrace an unschooling approach because of my own very structured educational background, but I am starting to see how it works, and I'm thinking of making an effort to incorporate the philosophy more and more.

Math - We worked a little on adding and counting up from a given number rather than starting at one. This time we used the counting bears. I wrote the problems out ("2+1=") and helped Suzi write the answers so she could have a visual of what we were learning. The rest of our math for the week was unschooling. Suzi got birthday cards with money in them--several $5 bills, so we decided to try counting by fives. I'll post a little later about how we are learning that. Suzi did some chores to earn a little extra money, and Saturday we went shopping at yard sales. Suzi brought her own money and paid all by herself. She was so proud. I also made up some Iveybucks to pay Ivey so I don't have to give her possibly hazardous coins. 10 Iveybucks=$1, which I can give her safely. I love helping the kids learn about money. I think money management is probably the most important math lesson a child can be taught. There are lots of math lessons that most people will never really use, but everyone will always need to understand money!

Science - We read our Oak Meadow story, "The Maple Tree." It was about how maple syrup comes from trees. We looked at our little potted maple tree that we brought home from a trip to the mountains, and Suzi and Ivey did leaf rubbings from Treebo, our tree friend in the front yard who is an October Glory maple. Daddy made french toast so we could eat maple syrup on it, but then we realized we were all out! Darn!

Our prisms came in the mail this week. We hung them up, admired the rainbows and connected this back to our science story from last week. We taped little pieces of paper under the rainbows, and I invited the girls to copy them.

For Suzi's birthday, Jordan's mom and dad gave her a bug-catching vacuum, a bug observation jar, and a butterfly raising kit. (My in-laws are really great.) Suzi spent some time at her party searching the backyard for bugs to catch. By the end of the day she had gotten a couple, looked at them through the magnifying glass and then let them go. I went shopping for a little while at Goodwill and happened to find "Bug Safari" by Bob Barner--a fun little read about ants, and at the end there are some fun facts about insects. Suzi liked it a lot and it only cost me a few cents! Right now the girls are on their way out to the backyard, equipped with bug jars and Suzi's "super duper sucker-upper," to have a bug safari of their own.

Reading/Writing - Still reading our easy readers and doing some new sight word flash cards, but mostly taking it easy. Want to guess when Suzi gets most interested in reading and writing? When I stop nagging and leave her alone. I'll probably let her play a while on starfall.com later today.

Social Studies - We are spending a little time each week learning about different careers and important people in our society. This week we read "Mr. Griggs' Work" and talked about how the post office works. We found a short PBS video on YouTube about the post office, too. Then Suzi wanted to wait for our mail carrier to come, so we sat outside on the front porch for about half an hour. It started to rain, so the girls danced in the rain. Eventually we had to go in because Robert was upset, and I told the girls they could watch through the window. Suzi went upstairs to change her shirt, which was wet, and in that minute the mail came! She was so upset that she missed it, but she still got to go get it from the mailbox with me and waved at the mail lady as she drove back up from the cul de sac. Maybe we will wait on the mail another day. This week it was extra important to Suzi because people had mailed her birthday cards.

Health - We read "Mortimer Mooner Stopped Taking a Bath" and talked about personal hygiene. We went over why we need to brush teeth, wash hands, take baths, etc.

Clock - Suzi was getting tired of clock drill, so instead I found this Paddington clock book from my childhood and read it to her. She enjoyed setting the little clock to the time given in the story.

Arts and Crafts - The craft from our Oak Meadow curriculum was to make a "love collage" by cutting out pictures of things we love from magazines. Cutting and gluing--my girls' favorite! They ran out of steam pretty quickly and only ended up getting a few things on their papers, but at least they had fun for a while. The girls always prefer the projects they think of themselves, anyway, and they made things this week just like they always do. For example, Suzi took the box our large prism came in and decorated it to be a gift box for her Green Lantern doll's tenth birthday gift.

What's up next: At a yard sale Saturday, I was excited to find a foam map puzzle of the continents. I'd love to get one of the United States too. Maybe next paycheck. Geography is a huge educational weak spot of mine, and I'd like to make sure Suzi gets a firm grasp on it while simultaneously improving my own body of knowledge. There, um, might be a few states I am unsure of (*blush*). Might have to make a trip to the Learning Safari store sometime soon!

Also, this week Jordan and I registered to attend our very first homeschooling conference! It's the Love to Learn conference in Charlotte, NC. A bit of a drive for us, but I wanted to go to this one because it's inclusive and I felt many of the sessions would be especially helpful to me. There are a few on unschooling, which I desperately want to learn about. I will probably take my netbook with me so I can furiously type notes. I can't believe I have to wait until August to go to this!

May 21 - 25

It's been a rough week. Last weekend didn't offer us much of a break to get organized, and the kids have been wild and uncooperative. I've had a cold all week. And, we are heading right into a busy Saturday tomorrow! I'm looking forward to a relaxing Sunday. We did get some stuff done this week, though.

Math - We used our Melissa & Doug abacus to work on addition up to ten. I'm trying to help Suzi learn to start counting from a number other than zero. For instance, if she is adding 3+3, she can slide three beads over, say "3," and then count "4, 5, 6." She is getting it, but with a lot of guidance from me. Needs practice. We are also still working on counting past 20, which needs more work, but during the last part of each month we practice it fairly often on the calendar. Her birthday is coming up on the 30th and she loves counting the days that have passed and figuring out how many she has to wait until her special day! We are also still counting by 10's. She can do it pretty well looking at the sheet, and I'm trying to help her learn to do it without looking at anything. Today we tried counting by 10's on our fingers.

Science - We talked about taking care of the environment by picking up our garbage and recycling. Also for science, we read our Oak Meadow story, which this week was about the journey of Rainbow Raindrop. We only just got around to reading the story today, so we'll have to do the suggested activities (watching rain puddles for evaporation, looking for a rainbow) next time it rains. Speaking of rainbows, I have been wanting a set of prisms for our windows for years, and today I finally ordered some on Amazon! Can't wait for them to get here. Lastly, Suzi is still interested in termites! I'm having a hard time finding any more videos or interesting material about them to show her!

Reading - She can now easily get through those first eight flash cards. We'll start a few more next week. As usual, we read some easy readers and I read some longer, just-for-fun books to the girls. Today we read "The Art Lesson" by Tomie DePaola because it went along with the rest of what we discussed.

Social Studies - I wasn't quite sure where to start with this, but I knew from questions Suzi has asked in the past that the subject would interest her. I decided we'd begin discussing different jobs in our community. Suzi's Busy Town drama class was an excellent start for this. They talked about different roles in our community, and in the play there was a teacher, a doctor, and a police officer. This week I talked to her briefly about police officers and EMTs, and taught her to dial 911. I'm sure I'll have to refresh her memory on that later. I'd also like to teach her her phone number soon. She already knows her address. Then we talked about teachers and read "The Art Lesson," which is one of her favorite books. Suzi says she does not want to be a teacher--not even an art teacher. She just wants to be an artist! I told her that one thing artists can do is draw the illustrations for someone who has written a book, or, like Tomie DePaola, write the book themselves and do their own illustrations. She says I can write the book and she will do the illustrations. I told her I thought that was a great idea! Write a book illustrated by my daughter - it's on my bucket list!

Clock - We are taking a little break from this. Suzi is sick of doing it and it turns her goofy whenever I pull it out. Do you know what I mean?

Money - She hasn't had a desire to do chores for money lately, but she is still learning the coins and keeping up with her own money. We practice naming the coins and telling how much each is worth at least a couple times a week and whenever it comes up in day-to-day life.

Health - We talked a little about different kinds of exercise, but I'd like Suzi to see/experience some new things. I want to take the girls rollerskating, but that's going to be hard with Robert--if Jordan or I fell while carrying him in the Ergo, it could be bad. I think sometime soon I might ask my parents to keep Robert while Jordan and I take the girls skating. Or maybe Grandma can come to the skating rink with us and we can take turns holding Robert, since Grandma loves to skate too. Also, I need to remember to keep my eye out for that children's yoga class! Maybe in the meantime I will try to find a yoga program online or on DVD and invite Suzi to do it with me.

Other activities this week included a friend's birthday party at the water park (my mom kept Robert so I could enjoy some time with the girls, hooray!), and on Wednesday my mom came over to help me and a friend make these for our kids.

Know what it is? Stay tuned for my next post!

May 14 - 18

Our Oak Meadow curriculum recommended finding a tree friend to visit frequently and to watch for changes across the seasons. This is ours. Suzi named him Treebo last fall.

We didn't get a ton of actual "work" done this week. We had some fellow homeschooling friends over Wednesday, went to the gym Thursday, and went berry picking Friday. I think, at least in my case, the number of outside activities a family can handle goes down as the number of children goes up. Especially when they are little children. I am trying to simplify--cut back on what costs lots of money, time, and energy, and keep the most worthwhile activities. After some consideration, I'm planning to cancel our gym membership. I can join the rec center that is local to my mom for a fraction of the cost, and she can help me take the kids swimming. There is a children's yoga class starting soon that I might sign the kids up for, too. Anyway, here is what we did...

Math - I made a number chart for Suzi sort of like this one from schoolsparks.com. I can't print in color right now, so I printed one I made myself and colored it. I started Suzi out counting by tens, just counting down the column on the right. This is most of what we accomplished in math. It needs practice.

Science - We read our Oak Meadow curriculum story about clouds, and looked at the different kinds of clouds while we were out. It was a good week for this because some days the clouds were white and fluffy, and some days the whole sky was covered. Suzi looked at clouds and tried to predict whether or not they were rain clouds.

Reading - We continued our easy readers and flash cards. Suzi can now identify the sight words we started her on (it, is, I, pie, Daddy, we, did) except for one--who. These are all words from the first couple of books she started reading. We are reading more new books now, because I don't want her to get bored and tired of doing the same ones over and over.

Clock - We are still doing well with full and half hours, and are slowly working on :15.

Health - We talked about ways of protecting our sight and hearing, and discussed how some people do not have use of all five senses.

Drama - The girls finished their drama class and we attended their short performance at the end. It was a Busy Town unit. Ivey played Sally Cat and Suzi was Miss Honey the Schoolteacher. They did a good job and were so cute! I was especially proud of Suzi, because she really didn't want to play that part. I explained to her that when you're an actor you don't usually get to pick what you want to play; that is the director's job. She played the part and did it well.

Physical activity - We went swimming at the gym one day, but that is mostly a mommy workout! The kids also played in the yard with friends and ran around at the berry farm.

Art - My parents had the girls at their house Saturday and took them to a local arts festival. I had been so excited to go, but ended up spending the entire day sick on the couch. I'm glad the girls got to go, at least.

Here they are on stage singing "You Are My Sunshine." Looks like they had a great time!