Remembering

I've misplaced my daily teacher's log so I'm making my entries here for this week.

Monday 10-15-07
Movement- new cd
Round and Round, Winds of October, My Little Pony, The Mill, Sailor Boy, Recorder Song Autumn, Wild Goose Flight, Trip Trip Trap, My Little Pony, The Cool of Autumn

Story Time- On The Farm by Kathryn Smith, The Wild Little Horse by Rita Gray, The Farm Book by Jan Pfloog

Many Paths Home School outing to Meadow Farms to learn about natural horsemanship. Ethan rode but Avery didn't. Ethan liked the horses and the ride but wasn't as interested in what the trainer was saying. Avery wants a baby horse and liked the horses but grew tired quickly. I would recommend a trail ride next summer for Ethan and I if possible. I enjoyed everything.

Art- Puff Ponies- We came home and settled in before making puff ponies- a 3-d stuffed horse out of paper. Ethan and Avery decorated, stuffed and Ethan stapled his while I did Avery's. They were very keen on the idea of a puff-person and played with their puff ponies that evening.

ECFE- Avery and Ethan attended and made faces with hats as well as painted and had daddy time.

Tuesday 10-16-07

Movement- Adaptation of The Wild Little Horse into an adventure using the puff ponies as visuals and recalling the movement patterns of the trot and gallop from Monday's field trip. A trot has 4 beats and gallop 3. Ethan trotted and galloped around the sofa and participated in the entire adventure of Little Horse with his puff pony. It took a while to get into our groove.

Storytime- A book about farm animals playing and I don't have it anymore because it was an ECFE book and Winter on the Farm adapted from the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Ethan and Avery both want to take care of animals and would like to have a farm.

Art- We took out our big drawing tablets and Ethan drew a big barn and horses. Avery drew a cat. We then created a barn on drawing paper using glue and craft sticks. Before Ethan created the barn he made a landscape for the barn, grass, corn and a blue sky. He then made his own barn after I demonstrated two styles of barns with the sticks. He wanted to make his own style. At first he put the glue on the sticks and then he put the glue on the paper and the stick on the glue. He drew the outline of the stick with glue before placing it. Following the completion of the barn he colored and cut out a horse. He colored the horse blue. The horse was pasted on the paper next to the barn. I only guided the overall project steps but not any of the placing of items nor color choices. Once the barn dried Ethan colored it red and blue.

Letters- While I made lunch Ethan made words using the word whammer. He found the letters for LOG, TAX, DOG, CAT, ARM, and his own word- DIE, which thrilled him. He sorted the vowels from the consonants.

Avery went to ECFE from 1-4pm.

During her absence, Ethan sorted three decks of flash cards into four categories-colors, shapes, objects (with the object word rather than the object color or shape), and numbers. From there we made our own sorting game using colors, letters, and purpose. He also learned about pent-hex-oct shapes, cones, cylinders, and cubes.

Ethan also took out the addition flash cards and worked on that while I started the stick ponies project.

The stick ponies were made out of one of my dad's sweatshirts with yard for hair. After picking up Avery from ECFE we ran our errands to the bakery, the hardware store for the dowel, and silbaugh's for the fluffing (stuffing). After we came home we stuffed the ponies and added the dowel. While Ethan was at Tae Kwon Do I glued the dowels in and tied them shut. We'll add ears and eyes tomorrow using felt and glue.

Ethan attended Tae Kwon Do and learned round house kicks. He will get a white belt in November. He likes the class and does well. Ryan says the class is a good class overall, ages 4-6.

We didn't go to the library but we ran errands. Tomorrow is storytelling day and tea time with Marcia. We'll add features to our horses, bake and create stories about our horses using farm and landscape pictures.

Still Here, Still Having FUN

We are having very good days and learning is fun. This week and possibly the next one or two we are weaving our days around the concept of midieval times. On Monday we learned about catapults, knights, castles and the organization of land surround castles. Yesterday we learned about dragons and caves. Today we're still working with Dragons and will make handpuppets and because it's story day we'll make story books by drawing the story about a dragon, whatever comes to their minds. We'll also make caves again and play with popcorn and make a popcorn dragon, on paper. (but a 3-d one would be cool)

I keep a daily log that I enter all of our progress in, what songs we do (which all have moment patterns), workbook pages, story books, and all activities.

We are having a successful fall. I look forward to every day and what might come by letting my heart and my kids guide the process.

Today's Adventure

We began later in the morning because of the great storm that rolled through about 3am and woke up all up.

Our day always begins with song and movement. I burned a new cd and our songs we did today were Round and Round, Sailor Boy, My Little Pony, Trip Trip Trap, Wild Goose, Autumn Recorder Song, The Mill (new), The Apple (new/fingerplay) and Come Celebrate and The Cool of Autumn. (celebrating the equinox)

We read about the loons migration and breeding and will hopefully go to Sand Lake tomorrow to see the loons close up.

We set up three new bird feeders, two window ones and one for thistle. The birds took two days to find the seeds in the old feeders. We filled them on Wednesday. We took a lot of pictures of the leaves and the birds with our digital camera. I'll post some later tomorrow or next week.

We watched an Eyewitness video about birds. For our afternoon we played outside, drew birds in our daily journals, and played more. We've all got colds and took it easier today. Ethan didn't feel he could concentrate on his workbooks so we left that for another day.

And now I'm off to teach yoga.

Today's Efforts

If I do what feels right for the day, we have such fun days. If I do what thinks right, I break down quite early on and nothing flows well. Go with feeling.

And today was a feeling day. I woke up feeling good. We started our day when it felt good. We moved in a way that felt good. We danced to songs, tramped around the couch and played ponies and sang our fingerplay songs. We read about geese flying south for story time and drew a picture in our daily journals. We took a break outside before lunch. After lunch we went outside and put birdseed in the feeders to attract the birds for our bird themed week and came in for afternoon focus. We did five pages in Ethan's math workbook, made a chain garland out of five fall colors and made a color tapestry by weaving strips of paper together. We hung the garland in our livingroom. We cleaned up and ate a snack and are back outside watching for birds.

Avery and Ethan want to catch one.

I think we had a really good day. It felt good. It felt like flow. I can do these kinds of days. Do what feels right and things go really well.

And tonight we go into brainerd to run errands.

Making Choices

I've come to realize that we're already living an enki lifestyle and a lot of the material in the guides are for families coming from very disconnected lifestyles, or with special needs children. If I just let the guides sit unused I feel that we will have a successful school year regardless of their use. The material is at the heart of why I chose enki, the activities, stories, and crafts. I love the songs, movement, projects, stories and the spirit and heart behind everything. I love being able to weave what I want into our days and weeks and months and feel very flexible and confident in my approach.

But yesterday was another matter. Every now and then I need to have someone listen to my concerns and help me see my path. I needed help yesterday. And help came. Friends are such treasures.

And So We Begin

Our Enki daily schedule will follow this outline-

10am- Movement
10:30- Story time
11:00- Story Work and Creative Play
12-noon Lunch
12:30pm- Rest
1:30- Afternoon Adventure

In there I have 11 books worth of curriculum and material to weave. The titles are- Folk and Faerie Tales, Nature Stories, Community and Festival Songs, Learning through Movement- Seasons and Skills, Learning through Movement II, Seasonal Crafts, and five guides.

I will go through the materials tonight, again, and choose what I want to focus on for Harvest for September's theme. We're coming into harvest season and tomorrow and Tuesday we'll begin to decorate our house with Fall Colors. We'll also have a starting ceremony tomorrow to begin our homeschooling adventure. I have offered my home to a guest from out of state to do some private sessions and we'll be gone on an afternoon adventure when she's here. I think we'll go to a fun park and play and talk about the colors we're starting to see in the trees and flowers. Maybe we'll go on a nature walk. The poison ivy is less. :)

Lots to choose from. I'll post my choices in this week's reading, craft, and movement activities when I have my list.

A Week Off

We took last week off from anything homeschooling. Labor Day weekend we visited the MN Zoo and learned about all kinds of animals. Ethan's favorite animal at the zoo was everything. He got a stuffed Raccoon that he calls Cutie Pah or Cannon Boat. (yes) Avery got a wolf that she called an otter. (yes)