what's new in 2010...

Samuel is almost done with the Beta level of Math-U-See and is looking forward to getting into new material. He gets bored when we do too much review, so I have to make sure not to assign him busy work - just what's needed to get the concept.

Other than that, we haven't done much structure until now. Dh wanted to be involved in our history plans, and his work schedule really did not allow that during the fall, but we are hoping to restart things now. So far, so good! We have gotten back into ancient cultures, and Samuel drew some pictures of early technologies:

Irrigation (I like the guy in the background sowing seeds)



Smelting ore (yes, I know it looks like 2 guys camping, but they are smelting ore, I promise!)

I also put craft paper on the wall in the hallway so that he could make his own cave drawings. He actually does this all the time on the side of our house with the leftover charcoal from the grill in the summertime, but that's not really an option right now!

There's still lots of space, and he plans to add to it throughout the week.

Here's a caveman bringing home the bacon, er, venison.

An eagle on a mountaintop.

And, my favorite, the mammoth hunt in the snow.


He also made a ziggurat from his bathtub shapes:

He made some other stuff with the bath clings, too, but you probably won't appreciate it unless you're a Stargate fan. :)

Well, those are the main highlights! I am also working on getting our Goodreads lists updated, but that could take a while...

wonderful autumn!

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

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

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!

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?

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...

... 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!