Organic Learning Notes

wonderful autumn!

2009-10-14T15:10:00.000-07:00

So, here's what we've been up to:

Visited Curtis Orchard, picked our own apples, made applesauce.

Visited the Great Pumpkin Patch, picked lots of squash, gourds, and pumpkins, admired the extensive displays and were awed by the variety of squash and pumpkins they grow there! Still eating squash.

FEAST OF THE HUNTER'S MOON!!! Saw cannon demonstration, flintlock reliability contest (musket and rifle demonstration), various fife and drum corps re-enactors, a tactical demonstration between two of the military corps, witnessed colonial methods of food preparation and ate the food (lots of it!), watched blacksmiths at work, turned a giant wheel that spun a lathe on which a craftsman made us a little wooden acorn (cute!), watched traditional Native American dance and song, watched traditional Scottish dance and song, traded for different items at the children's trade blanket, learned some classic games from long ago, and more! Did I mention that we ate a lot of food? Pics to come as soon as I figure out our new camera.

Around the World Wednesday at the Spurlock Museum - first week, we learned about Papa New Guinea and drew pictures of face paintings similar to what they do there, and this week we did some Indonesian-style batik painting. Also, visited the Krannert Art Museum today, where we saw some lovely paintings (and some hideous modern art). Samuel wanted to show us something in one of the paintings, and went to point to it, and it wasn't until the last second that we realized he intended to put his finger right on the painting, causing dh and I to simultaneously shriek, "Don't touch the painting!" (Yes, I said not to touch anything as we walked in, but he was quite absorbed in the statues in the entryway and in retrospect, he probably didn't hear a word I said.) The guard who was about 10 feet away kept his eyes on us the rest of the time, yes sirree!

Games: I mentioned that we learned new games at the Feast - we bought one called Fitch, and Shawn and Samuel have been having fun learning the strategies behind this game. We also got the game that goes with the book The Scrambled States of America, and had a lot of fun playing that one, too. With the colder weather, we've been pulling out the family games: Capt'n Clever, Payday, LOTR Risk, Battleship, Uno, and Ziggity are some we've played recently.

Samuel is still blazing through Math-U-See. At this rate (which we may or may not maintain) we'll need the next level by Christmas. He is almost through his reading primer and has done some more poetry for his copywork. I had him do another apple poem, and then a quote about October that I liked, neither of which are in front of me at the moment for me to record. Oh, well.

This autumn has been quite lovely, but I fear it is slipping away too soon - the temperatures are dropping fast! Well, we will enjoy the color while we can!

fall fever

2009-09-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

We are sooo anxious for fall around here! It's just about all that we can talk about on our daily walks - although our walks have been postponed until further notice lately, due to a huge influx of soybean aphids. They are insanely prolific this year, and, get this: they are born pregnant. They are like tribbles!

I've been having Samuel do some copywork, because I think that will help him in a number of areas - reading, writing, and spelling, obviously, but more particularly, he has some mild dyslexia issues, and I am hoping that some attention to detail and more left-to-right work will help him out with that. The first thing that he copied was the Guardian Angel prayer:

Angel of God,
My guardian dear,
To whom God's love
Commits me here,
Ever this day
Be at my side
To light and guard,
To rule and guide.

Then today, he copied an apple poem that I got from the Real Learning boards, posted by Colleen:

Red Apple
A little red apple
Hung high in a tree.
I looked up at it
And it looked down at me.
"Come down, please" I called,
And what do you suppose?
That little red apple
Dropped right on my nose!

Samuel enjoyed that one, and I think we will do a few more apple poems - several are listed here.

Still working through Math-U-See - he was a bit bored there for a while, and I have to be careful not to go overboard on the worksheets, but he still likes watching the videos and playing with the blocks, and can't wait until it gets harder. :)

Shawn has almost finished reading War of the Worlds to Samuel, and when they are done, they are going to watch the movie. (The old one, not the one with Tom Cruise.)

Still reading about the earliest humans - I read Samuel one of the stories from Yesterday's Classics yesterday - the book is Early Civilizations, in the Streams of History series. The story we read was Arya and His Seven Sons, but Arya was a boy in the story and barely mentioned, and none of his future sons were either. It was mostly about how the people lived - they had herds of cattle in the story, but had not yet begun to cultivate grain, and it talked a lot about how the men got to eat first, while the women did all the hard work. I tend to be somewhat suspicious of the "women have always been horribly oppressed" view of history, so I don't know if it was entirely accurate, but then perhaps it was. Something I'd like to learn more about, but honestly, I doubt that anyone really knows. Anyway, Samuel liked learning about how they ate and made pots and clothing and such.

Samuel is also working his way through the reading primer from Yesterday's Classics and seems to be enjoying it. He actually picked up a book and started to read it with zero encouragement from me, which was a wonderful thing. Don't get me wrong, I am not worried about his reading level - although I know that certain other people are ;) - but, it is still something that he doesn't have a lot of confidence about, so it was nice to see that he's feeling better about his abilities.

Well, I'm off to play some Lord of the Rings Risk with Samuel!

we love Math-U-See

2009-09-15T14:19:00.000-07:00

We started with Math-U-See yesterday, and continued today. Samuel really enjoys watching the videos and using the blocks, and he even likes doing the worksheets in moderation, but he is a little bored. When trying to decide what level to put him in, I realized that we have not been as systematic in our approach as MUS is. Well, of course not, we unschool! Anyway, we decided to put him in Beta, even though he already know a lot of it, and some of Gamma, too, because he doesn't know everything in Beta, and I wanted him to get some more practice with those concepts and to get used to the way Steve Demme teaches before we get into new material. I think that was a good call, but we will be flying through most of Beta, I think.

Let's see, in other news, we had our big science/history/math lesson that I mentioned before. Since it was a fun project that I thought others might enjoy, I posted it on my main blog, since I am pretty sure that no one reads this one. (Which is totally fine - I need this for ME.)

Shawn read to Samuel from his DK Mesopotamia book last night, and another one on the Ancient World. Oh, and they read some more War of the Worlds, also.

Samuel and I are working on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He isn't quite as into it as I'd hoped, and I blame the movie. He already knows what is going to happen, and it just isn't the same without CGI effects. Well, we didn't watch Prince Caspian, so I am hoping his interest will pick up with that one. I hope so, because I really want to read him The Dawn Treader (one of my favorites) and I hope that they don't screw up the movie of that one too much so that we can watch it!

I had Samuel do some copywork today, which he seemed to enjoy. I decided to start with the Guardian Angel Prayer, since we say that one all the time. He just did a few lines, but enjoyed it enough that he wants to copy all the prayers we say and make his own prayer book. I think he has his mother's tendency to immediately jump from a small, do-able project to, "Ooh, and we could do this and THIS, and then it would be even better," and then get overwhelmed and not do anything. I'm working on it!!!

We recently got some new bookshelves and actually mostly reorganized all of our books. I am taking the opportunity to enter them all into my GoodReads site, and when I'm done, I'll start adding the ones that Samuel has read/is reading into his GoodReads site. Seems like a good way to keep track of what he's read. The widget for the sidebar does not seem to work to well, though. Whenever you enter new books, you also have to re-do the code or it doesn't update. So, I probably won't be keeping the widget very up-to-date. Anyway, as I am entering all our books, it is getting progressively more embarassing as I see how many books I have in the "to-read" category versus the "read" category. I need to get to work!

Let's see, anything else educational going on here? Samuel has been progressing in his reading rather well, using simple books like the Frog and Toad series. I also pull out the Little Stories for Little Folks from time to time. We just got a reading primer from Yesterday's Classics (I seriously want pretty much every single book they sell) and I think that will be our next step. It looks perfect for his level, and has stories I know he will love.

Well, that's it for now!

a new start!

2009-09-09T18:32:00.000-07:00

Yep, I'm giving this blog another try. Again. Maybe it'll work out better this year, maybe not. If you know me at all, your money is probably on "not". ;) Anyway, we are being a bit more structured this year, which hopefully means that I'll remember to make a note of what we're doing - I'm hoping that our whole life will be a bit more structured, and that this will become part of the routine. I'm still totally on board with unschooling, but dh and I have decided that Samuel would probably do better if we offer some structure. He likes routines and I think he would actually really enjoy some curriculum. So, we are doing Math-U-See this year and also starting a history Book of the Ages. More on all that later.

Right now, Samuel and Shawn are reading about the ancient world - Sumaria, Mesopotamia, and all that. Before, they were reading a book about Old Testament women that has beautiful artwork. They have also been reading "War of the Worlds", which Samuel is really enjoying. Before that, they read "White Fang". We'll have to do "Call of the Wild" sometime soon.

Well, our big Amazon order and Math-U-See order should be here soon, and then we'll really be rolling! I'll try to get up a post about our history plans, and today's big history/science/math lesson tomorrow.

where does the time go?

2008-08-28T20:12:00.001-07:00

Okay, so maybe me posting every day was a bit unrealistic. Oh, well. Here's what I remember from the blur that was the last week:

We discovered two caterpillars had turned into chrysalises and got to watch one go through the transformation.

Lots of arts and crafts, as always.

Spent time with my nieces. Yesterday I took all three kids to play at the park until they got too hot, then to the nature center, then on a walk through the woods. They had fun looking at flowers and squirrels and cool fungi and stuff like that.

Worked our way through more of our pile from the library. Samuel really likes Tomie dePaola's "Pancakes for Breakfast". I think he likes that there are no words, so he can narrate it however he likes. We've noticed more little details in the pictures than I normally would. We also got every book the library had on both guinea pigs and caterpillars/butterflies.

I am probably forgetting something momentous, but that's the way things go around here.

and the caterpillar count is...

2008-08-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

... four.

I think I posted on my main blog but not here that one of the five we had before wandered off or something, because we couldn't find it and then another died. So then we were down to three. Well then dh went out in the dark last night to get more leaves and discovered this morning that another tiny hatchling hitchhiked in, so now we have four.

Samuel has been making spaceships out of K'Nex all morning. Yesterday we did some copywork also. He likes to make his letters all fancy - he draws them, rather than writes them, if that makes any sense? Many of them, he does the strokes in the wrong order/direction, so his handwriting doesn't really flow, although it looks nice. We'll have to work on that. I wonder if I should just teach him cursive - he'd like it, and he'd get used to doing the strokes in order.

Stinkin' squirrels won't leave my garden alone. I have lots of big green tomatoes with squirrel bites in them. I just opened the window to yell at one. It is wonderfully cool today, and just started to rain. A nice gentle sweet-smelling rain.

We went to the store, and I had Samuel mark off the items on the list, so he had to at least sort-of read them (although for many he was able to cheat and just look at the first letter). Had an awesome dinner of parmesan chicken with bruchetta that I made from tomatoes that a friend gave us, because did I mention mine are ALL GREEN? (Not that I am bitter.) Went out to Baskin Robbins for ice cream because a good dinner deserves a good dessert. :) I should make fancy dinners more often.

Samuel is determined to create a board game - he has tried this numerous times - but he can't quite get it to work. It's always too easy or impossible, or just makes no sense at all (except to him). He is very passionate about this, though, and I think one of these days he'll finally work it out and make a good one!

and this is why i need to post every day...

2008-08-20T17:46:00.000-07:00

... because when I miss a few days, I can't remember a darned thing! Let's see, Samuel spent pretty much all day Monday cleaning up the living room. Yes, all day. No, it's not really clean yet. He still has stuff all over the end table, but I let it go since he cleaned up everything else. We've been watching more Olympics, and Samuel really liked the men's gymnastics and the pole vault. Oh, and the hurdles - he made his own hurdle course through the living room today using pillows. Other than that, he's been drawing, making stuff with K'Nex, playing outside, riding his bike. We had a tea party a couple of days ago, and he was very excited that I let him use real tea and real cream (with cinnamon and vanilla!) and sugar. Now he and Shawn are reading A Million Dots - awesome book.

I blame the Olympics for my lack of memory - been staying up WAY too late and my head is all fuzzy the next day.

pray for Jacob!

2008-08-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

Jacob is a man at our parish who will be leaving for the seminary next week! Hooray for young men who follow God's call!

After Mass today, we went to the library and found a big book on turtles, lots of books on caterpillars and butterflies, and even more on guinea pigs! (Because you can never have too many books on guinea pigs, right?) Also picked up some Tomie de Paola books, because you can never have too many of those either.

After the library, we went to a reception for Jacob to wish him well. Then came home, and tried to clean the place up a bit. Samuel has spread his projects and play areas all over the house lately, and while we try to be tolerant and encourage his creativity, it has gotten to the point where we have to reign him in a bit. Specifically, it is to the point where we are having trouble walking!

Samuel made some more arts and crafts in the evening... more for him to clean up tomorrow! then we watched some more Olympics: women's 100m dash, women's gymnastics (vault and floor), and men's gymnastics (floor and pommel horse). Now Samuel wants to be a gymnast. He'll probably be short enough!

more caterpillars

2008-08-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

Yep, we now have five. :) Spent much of the morning examining them and getting them food.

In the afternoon, we went to a homeschool fair at the local library while dh worked. Samuel spent the fair coloring pictures under the TORCH table with his friends. Then we went to Grandma and Grandpa's for dinner. Finally watched some of the Olympics, including Michael Phelps winning his record-breaking eighth gold medal - yay! Samuel was very interested in the countries, their flags, and the competition. We'll have to catch some more before it's over.

Feast of the Assumption

2008-08-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

Samuel has spent a lot of time outside today. I found a grasshopper when I was hanging up clothes on the line, and showed it to him. He proceeded to "play" with it (i.e. harass it) for quite some time. I had no pity for it, I hate grasshoppers!

Our caterpillars are growing and growing - they look so much bigger every day!

Samuel decided that he was STARVING right when we had to start fasting for Mass. Poor kid. I talked to him about how we could offer up our sufferings for others, and how he could offer his for other children in the world who were even hungrier than he was, and who would not be getting a nice dinner that night. He did his best and was a real trooper. We went out for pizza afterward, and he ate a ton!

I keep forgetting to post these until the next day, and then I have to go in and edit the date because I want the dates to all be correct, and then I have to add tags, so I guess that whole emailing thing wasn't so fabulous after all.

Happy Anniversary to us!

2008-08-14T21:46:00.000-07:00

Today is our 9th wedding anniversary! Yay! It is also the feast of St. Maximillian Kolbe, a truly amazing man. We didn't know that when we were married, but we are so very glad to celebrate his life along with our marriage.

Samuel is still drawing today. And pretending that he is on a space ship.

We went out to a local Greek restaurant, Papa George's, for an early dinner. It was wonderful, as always. They make the best hummus! We also had gigantes, dolmades, and spanikopitakia, among other things. And of course we had baklava! Yum!

Afterward, we went to a local nursery to browse, and of course had to buy a few things. Just can't resist flowers. :) Samuel had fun observing a young rabbit that was hopping through the plants and was able to get pretty close to it. I spied a killdeer - the first we've seen around here.

Then Shawn and Samuel read about some of the Saints before bed: St. Maximillian Kolbe, St. Louis, and a few others.

lazy day

2008-08-13T19:05:00.001-07:00

I have a feeling that I will have a lot of posts with that title. ;) We ARE unschoolers, after all! The weather is so nice today that I just want to lie down and feel the breeze. Samuel has been drawing all day. He finished his big sea turtle and cut it out, but hasn't finished coloring the underside yet. It took him a long time just to color the top!

The caterpillars just keep on growing. We can see the little antenna-like feelers on the bigger one now. They are so tiny! I am so glad that we were able to start from an egg this year.

Shawn and Samuel have been reading a book on the human body. I can hear them in the next room talking about the kidneys. Next up is geography. They have been looking at globes and atlases and making our puzzle of the states. Samuel knows all the oceans and continents, as well as several countries and smaller bodies of water. Tonight they are going to read The Scrambled States of America along with their map study.

gotta start somewhere

2008-08-12T22:04:00.000-07:00

So, I totally quit keeping up with this blog - obviously. THAT didn't last long. I have a hard time keeping consistent when daily life gets in the way - especially because we have dial-up, and I just often do NOT have the patience to wait for everything to load. But I really really want to start making notes of what we do everyday. People often want to know what we do all day, and half the time, I can't remember! (But we do lots, I promise!) So, I finally figured out how to email my posts in - that'll make life a lot easier. I can add to the post throughout the day, and then just hit send before I go to bed. Why didn't I do this before???

This morning was the Perseid meteor shower. So, I got up at 4:30am and went to stand in the backyard to see what I could see. I saw one meteor in about 10 minutes. It was getting a bit cloudy, and there was a lot of glare from city lights. I knew that dh did not want to drive out to the fields, and the backyard was not a good enough view to wake Samuel. Maybe next year.

Got up and had breakfast with dh for once: smoked salmon, avocado, and neufchatel cheese on a toasted English muffin. Mmmmm. Dh skipped the avocado and the toasting part. Doesn't know what he's missing. Samuel got up just before dh left for work, but wanted to snuggle in bed, so we went back there and talked and were silly until he got hungry around 9. He has been wanting to play Uno today, and he keeps trying to stack the deck!

On Friday, we found a monarch egg on a leaf of milkweed vine in our yard, so we brought it in. Last year, we found a monarch caterpillar, but he was nearly full grown when we started taking care of him. Our egg hatched on Sunday morning!

Then on Monday, Samuel found first another egg and then a new hatchling. The egg didn't hatch, and it accidentally got smushed so I think it's a lost cause. But we have two baby caterpillars now. You can see how much they grow in one day - the smaller one is only a day behind the bigger one!

Samuel has been getting them fresh leaves every day, but I had to caution him to check first to make sure that he doesn't bring in anymore eggs or caterpillars - two is enough!

He just ran in, VERY excited that he saw a female cardinal. I guess it has been a while since he saw one! We see sparrows and goldfinches at the thistle feeder mostly. I can hear a woodpecker out the window, too.

This afternoon: more Uno games (and deck-stacking attempts - does he really think I'll let him have all the Wild Draw 4's in one hand???), cleaning up around the house, and Samuel worked on his giant sea turtle. He's making it out of poster board, and I think it's probably close to life-size. He has a bunch of babies, so I guess this will be the mama.

Went to dinner at dh's work - they ordered pizza for the staff and some returning students. Came home, had ice cream with Grandma's homemade fudge sauce (heavenly!) and crashed!

Now we'll see how this whole emailing thing works!

sick day

2007-10-24T09:16:00.001-07:00

Apparently encouraging Samuel to lounge about yesterday was a bit premature, as today he is REALLY sick. As in, woke up in a panic, barely able to breathe, barking like a seal sick. So, he's watching Charlotte's Web at the moment. BUT he is also finger knitting something or other for his yarn doll, and he made a connection between the finger weaving and Charlotte's weaving, so does that count for entomology? LOL

yarn doll

2007-10-23T21:26:00.000-07:00

Samuel had a fever last night and was still recovering today, so I pretty much let him lounge in front of the TV all day. He did watch several episodes of vintage Reading Rainbow, so that counts as educational, right? Can't go wrong with LeVar! We also made a yarn doll, which was last week's Craft of the Week over at 4Real. Samuel had the idea to make it into a puppet, and I think that would work really well with 2 sticks in an X, and five strings - one from each end to a hand or foot, and one from the middle to the head. He then decided that he didn't want to do that to this one, though, so maybe we'll try it with another. It was a fun little project, and one that I think would work well in a group. We made ours with legs, but you could leave the bottom undone and it would be like a dress. Maybe we'll do some like that in white to be Christmas angels. Ooh, that would go great with Pascal and the Kitchen Angels! I'll have to remember that. :)

Mythology

2007-10-23T12:35:00.000-07:00

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll say that Samuel's current interest in mythology started mostly because we have been watching Stargate: SG1 on DVD. If you are not familiar with this sci-fi series, it delves heavily into Egyptian mythology, and other mythologies to a lesser degree as well. So, Shawn has been reading mythology books to Samuel. So far, they are all the way through the ones on Greek mythology and Norse mythology and are now working on the Egyptian mythology one. Samuel likes to make masks for himself of the different Egyptian gods. And we started going to a cultural program at a local museum, and the first week was on Egypt! We got to see the Egyptian exhibit, make a sarcophagus mask, and write with hieroglyphics.

Pumpkins, squash, and gourds, oh my!

2007-10-23T12:10:00.001-07:00

Also on Saturday, we went to a local pumpkin patch. Calling it a pumpkin patch hardly does it justice, though, as they grow over 200 varieties of pumpkins, squash, and gourds. Amazing! It was so fascinating to see the varieties, learn what they are used for, what countries they come from, and select our own to try. We got a nice jack-o-lantern pumpkin, but also a big pie pumpkin, a Japanese squash that is supposed to taste similar to hash browns when fried, a butternut, some sweet potato squash (Samuel's favorite last year), and some spaghetti squash, which I've been wanting to try for some time now. I'll post how they turn out as we cook them!

Stargazing

2007-10-23T12:04:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a friend who took it upon herself to organize this, we were able to participate in a 2-part astronomy field trip last week. On Wednesday, we went to the local planetarium and saw the Fall Prairie Skies show, detailing the stars, planets, and galaxies that are currently visible in the night sky. Then on Saturday night, we joined the local Astronomical Society for their weekly viewing and got to see the moon up close, as well as the Andromeda galaxy, twin star clusters, the ring nebula, and all the constellations that we had learned about earlier in the week. We had a great time, and learned a lot. We will definitely have to do more stargazing - we were surprised at how much you can see with a simple pair of binoculars - not to mention your own eyes, when you leave the city lights behind!

a record....

2007-10-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

My original blog was intended to be in part a record of what we do for homeschooling, but I don't really like cluttering it up with mundane details. So, I am going to keep those here. :) I don't expect that anyone will want to read this, but if you happen across it, you're welcome to follow our mostly-unschooling lifestyle! I hope to update this blog pretty regularlyas we go along, but I wanted to write down some of our past endeavors as well, so I'll add them to this post as I think of them.

Places visited up to October 2007:
Saint Louis zoo
Saint Louis Science Center
Missouri Botanical Gardens
Magic House
Grant's Farm
Indianapolis Children's Museum
Indianapolis Zoo
Bloomington Children's Museum
Bloomington Zoo
Decatur Zoo
camping: Turkey Run SP, IN; Geneva SP, OH; Salt Fork SP, OH
hiking at Turkey Run
Curtis Orchard
Great Pumpkin Patch
Rockome Gardens
a local Amish farm

Academic endeavors:
Working through the Little Stories for Little Folks phonics program
Math concepts: counting, addition and subtraction, simple multiplication and division, fractions

Books read:
too many to name! I will have to come up with a system for keeping track

Creative exercises:
Building with Legos, wooden blocks, Kugelbahn, Thomas trains
Puzzles
Creating countless costumes and accessories from paper, pipe cleaners, and other household objects
Painting with watercolors, acrylics, and poster paints
Modelling with clay and beeswax

Nature walks:
Spotted deer, rabbits, squirrels, lizards, spiders, insects, and lots of birds
Collected variety of leaves for study, crafts

more to be added...