The Return of Sand and Sun

Week 11 began with four hours outside. We learned how to use a compass and Ethan walked a square according to my directions and his compass findings. It was great to see him realize that he had walked a square.

We're having a great morning. After morning movement- yoga and coordinated song/movementm, we worked with the word families AP and AR and read two great fairy tales that connected into the letters u and v. We practiced writing U and V in our daily books. Avery did a great job and was able to write both letters. Having Avery and Ethan have the same schedule has been very valuable to Avery's learning curve, which is why I think she tested so well, or part of it, and having them be on the same schedule will help me in my organization. We also are doing our part for Earth day and I had them draw an earth, Avery's was pink, yellow and varies other hues, and Ethan's was more Earth like. Ethan at first drew a yin and yang symbol, which fascinated me. It just came out as he drew the outline of land masses. I love the natural intuition of kids. And I love being able to see it every day in our natural state of homeness. We also talked about our favorite part of the earth, Ethan's being water and Avery rainbows.

After drawing we went outside and started cleaning and organizing our yard. Not much garbage thankfully to clean, but a lot of sticks and leaves and decaying vegetation to remove. The kids played outside for over an hour and now we're going outside to clean our street and make it look and feel good for earth day. Happy Earth Day!

Week 10

After a week of illness, we're back on track and starting week 10. Today we worked on the letter T, introduced word families starting with -ad, reviwed numbers 51-60 and filled the days in a calendar for April, counted in 2's, completed unit 2.1 of our Spanish Muzzy program, reviewed last night's bedtime stories, which Ethan could recall quite clearly, and will do more art and games this afternoon. It's a good start to a good week. We have to get a better desk for computer usage, as ours has a poor layout and doesn't accommodate our large screen nor keyboard.

Next week we're hosting a spring party for our homeschool cooperative. I am also looking at going down to the twin cities overnight to visit the MN Children's Museum, not open Mondays. We'll also visit the underwater aquarium at the mall, eat at the rain forest cafe, and visit Ikea. I'm thinking we'll go the first week in May as I won't have yoga on Mondays and then we can visit the museum on Tuesday.

We'll see.

So, have a great week!

Week 7

We're in week 7 of our curriculum. We took off the past two weeks for spring break and are ready to get back into our groove. Today we started with yoga, which Ethan did so well with me. Avery went upstairs and laid down. Then we drew pictures of our Texas trip and wrote a thank you note to Gramma Ruth and Grandpa Nathan. The kids loved the beach and Ruth and Nathan's house. We also drew a big picture of what we loved about TX, mostly the beach with big waves. We used tangrams to create a beach scene, which Ethan just made some sort of battle landscape out of and Avery used the tangrams layouts. No free form efforts from them today. We then did our muzzy language program and learned about tengo (I have), un mapa (a map), un bolsa (a bag), and una hamburgesa (a hamburger). Then we finished with reading a story from the curriculum which we'll draw tomorrow when we practice writing the letter M. This afternoon we might go into Brainerd or we'll paint.

Me Likey

There's something to be said about buying formatted curriculum. It is easy to structure my day and entire week with just a short read of material. I really appreciate all the time and effort that went into creating this curriculum. It makes schooling a joy.

We took 2 days off this week, Monday and Tuesday. We needed down days for the flu. Wednesday was simply an art day and we decorated our magic boxes. Lots of paint, glitter, glue and magic.
Thursday and today were full or mostly full with lots of fun learning and growing. We've a little guest staying overnight, 2 actually, and one spent the entire day with us. It's been a good month.

OM

I must say, I am deeply pleased with Oak Meadow. It's organized, it had more material making for a fuller educational experience (mind you compared to kindergarten), and it's easy to follow and make modifications. We received the "box" yesterday, and I'm already able to jump in and go forward with minimal reading. I feel quite prepped for OM from my Enki experience. What I like how it simply flows, with no struggle. I don't miss Enki at all.

Today we began the OM First Grade curriculum. We worked with capital and lower case A, long and short vowel sounds for letter A through rhyming, letter recognition (a lot more for Avery), greater or less than with use of <> symbols, recalling last night's bedtime story about the magic spindle, learned a poem about a dame's tame lame crane, built a horse stable out of blocks that would provide safety, warmth for horses (ethan's problem solving task for his building project)(ethan included heaters for the horses and elaborate arches for decoration), watched the angel bear yoga dvd that really is rather lousy but Ethan mostly liked it (i can do a better job but it's nice to have visuals and not always be the teacher). We also learned about lunar cycles and how the moon affects the tides. We created a lunar calendar but I will do another one tomorrow with a complete month's images. Tonight is the full moon and I hope we have good visibility to help him see the clear starry moonless sky.

It's been a good full day. Ethan has Tae Kwon Do tonight and he is looking forward to wearing his uniform.

Tomorrow we start our Happy Feet Yoga class, and depending upon the flow of the class we'll decide in three weeks if we want to keep running it.

Yesterday we started our Muzzy Spanish curriculum and we all know Yo Soy....

It's been a good week so far. Mahalo

An Interesting Beginning

I can honestly say that I have learned a tremendous amount in the past four months of homeschooling, mostly on what works for us, or what doesn't. I stopped writing in a daily log in December to see what it felt like just to allow for flow, and I prefer the journal because I like the sense of accomplishment that comes upon reflection. I decided that the Enki curriculum isn't working for us, and will keep it to use should Avery want to home school. We're now going with Oak Meadow's first grade curriculum. Before Christmas break Ethan took reading and math placement tests and tested well unto first grade (and then some) and I feel he is ready for more than what the kindergarten curriculum offers. He knows his letters, can read, and does addition beautifully. He is also ready for more science and math than the Enki curriculum offers. I also need a daily/weekly format to the lessons, giving us more time to play than to create some sort of curriculum based off of Enki's open format, and then I can weave in my creative touches here and there to make it even more fun. This morning I ordered the first grade curriculum from Oak Meadow. It should come next week. I look forward to learning with him through this new curriculum and feel it fits our family lifestyle better, and personal needs. I need some structure that I don't have to provide. I like being able to flow and embellish.

To Ethan, I feel we did the best we could, or the best I could this first semester. I feel ready to take our homeschooling to a new level of learning, filled with fun, excitement, and challenge, because we're ready and we like to grow. I am so glad we're homeschooling and I look forward to starting the new year with a new grade and a new flow, in joy!

I feel quite good releasing the Enki curriculum. It just didn't work for us. It was too much material, too little organization, and just not my style of learning. I feel really good! And the great thing is that I can use the stories, songs, and fingerplays in addition to the OM curriculum.

A Beautiful Day

We've had a good week so far. Monday was an adjustment day, letting the kids settle back into flow after a busy weekend abroad. I always find it best to begin a week with gentleness rather than force.

Tuesday we did three simple activities- Morning movement focusing on feeling the music and letting our bodies respond. We used three different music selections, classical, beatles, and sean paul. Quite different. Then we read a beautiful book written by a native american chief about thankfulness to the earth and all sources of abundance, and then we created an abundance basket on paper and filled with with fruit representing what we were thankful for. We don't do turkeys around here as the turkeys are really irritated by this holiday and are asking us to shift towards other foods, grains and legumes they say. That was it for the day, and the rest we played and sang and created whatever came to mind but nothing structured.

And today was beautiful. We did our morning yoga and flowed into storytime with our hand puppets and theater. We all took turns making up stories with our favorite hand puppets. The kids love eating their friend puppet and Ethan is dearly fond of the alligator puppet. I love the sheep. It's really silly looking. From there we played cagola, a balance game where you have a boat deck and with the roll of the die you place one or two items on the deck to keep it level, or in my case to shake it up! From there we went into re-reading the blessings book we read on Tuesday and painted pictures of abundance using tempera paints (lovely colors). Then we shifted into making words and I am quite impressed with Ethan. He's now able to hear what I'm asking him to spell and can make the letter sounds beautifully and he is reading, small words and in limited amounts of time. There is no rush to read for it seems to come naturally if the opportunity is there. We worked on _ot and _at word series. (hot pot cot dot....) I love watching him figure it out and get it and it's usually the first time now. Lunch happened with daddy and then we went back in and played with some of our new toys- I got avery a veggie set for her kitchen and these veggies can be cut in half (velcro attachments), so we made soup and smoothies and had a great time working with colors and ASL. Then we painted again, as I wanted to paint a picture to use up more paint (I was a little generous with the pouring). And we all are wearing silk capes because they came today too and somewhere in there we played with carded wool and yarn and talked about where wool comes from (I'm going to get a drop spindle to make our yarn). Now they are taking quiet time while I rest at the computer getting my emails and online stuff completed. I should be doing laundry but Nahni's asleep and computer time is better when she's napping.

From my favorite online store I got 6 play silks for creative play, luscious colors of greens, yellow, purple, and blue and all 100% silk. I can't get 100% silk anywhere in town so I went online and found a lovely store. I also got lots of other goodies there, like beeswax crayons that are so yummy smelling you want to eat them. Imagine crayons smelling that good! We also got watercolor paints for wet on wet watercolor painting, which we'll do tomorrow or Friday. (I won't take breaks like public school does because we don't school from 8-3). We also got the most beautiful unsealed (meaning yummy smelling) pine art caddy to hold our scissors, markers, pencils, pens, and glue sticks. I can smell it five feet away so I had to mention it. I've made some well-thought out purchases in the past few weeks for our homeschool supplies. I've looked at hundreds of items and made some careful selections for art supplies, dramatic play, games, and other tools. I got Ethan a marvelous tanagram set with magnetic shapes and pictures to inspire layouts and structure (Ethan does quite well without them).

We have such an abundance of books that I don't need to get much when it comes to most subjects. I did get a movie and book about faerie houses for the kids for Christmas. I have everything I want to really do a damned good job of educating my children combining modern and ancient wisdoms. I finally feel really settled into what was my vision for this year. I don't feel I could've done it without the accessories that I carefully selected. I have a vision for my children, for our lifestyle, and we are getting so much more into the flow of that vision, every day. It's thrilling! Truly, to live the way you want to live, to be the person you want to be. I am thankful to all the universe for the abundance of my life and for the gifts to make this possible.

So, this is my homeschool thanksgiving post. I am so thankful and honored to be homeschooling. I love working and playing with my children as we learn and grow together. They are awesome little ones, big ones, and I am so blessed to do this dance we do, every day. Namaste