Trying to fly!

Alice In Wonderland with Lego!

Austyn created this great Alice in Wonderland themed Lego. There is the tiny door with a key hole and then the table with the little glass bottle and the key. 

After making it and setting it up in the living room Zoe acted out the character of Alice and pretended to shrink and grow until she finally figured out how to open the door and enter a new world. When she entered the new world she ran outside of our house pretending that was the new world.

Fun a the Park!

Sand Angel!

Rolling down a hill!

I Guess This Is Unschooling... activity 2

The other day when I was busy with the gardening and my hubby was busy working on the race car the kids decided to do an experiment all on their own. Austyn set up the pool noodles along the back door of the car trailer and was testing natural filters found around our house. 

We use these noodles on the wires of the back door so nobody walks into the wires so they have slits on one side. You can see above that Austyn has both of them butt together and the slit is at the top so that the water runs all the way down without seeping out the cut. 

Zoe is inspecting the filter. This time it's a pine cone.

Her other job was to watch the water coming out the other end to see if it was clean.

Here Austyn is trying gravel on top of the pine cone. 

Here he is using muddy water.

His findings were that when he put the stones and the pine cone with mud no water got through. So here he is taking the stones out.

They went on like this for a while and I'm sure they learned a great deal. All I did was listen and take pictures once and a while. We found it amazing that they would just go ahead and do this with no help at all. It's amazing!

I Guess This Is Unschooling... activity 1

I thought I'd start a series of posts about unschooling. Sometimes when we do something that is child lead I'll post it. I Guess This Is Unschooling seemed like a good title for now since I'm still deschooling myself and getting use to this type of homeschooling. Here is my first I Guess This Is Unschooling post. 

Austyn was telling me, after he had baseball practice last week, that there were some boys on his team who wanted to make a boy's club. We said that it wouldn't be fair to the girls and he agreed to call the club Baseball Club instead. He wanted to make badges for the members so we got busy on the computer. I showed him how to make them and we printed them out on card stock together. Then he cut them out and him and I made little wallets for the badges. They are to look like a police badge. Once finished he paper clipped them all to the wallets.

This week he gave them to his team mates. They seemed to like them. 

And we couldn't forget Zoe.

Looking Forward!

This is our wonderful boy! He is very self-motivated. When he wants to do something he does it. If he needs something from me he is persistent even if I'm busy. He wants to do it NOW! He talks ALL DAY LONG about EVERYTHING unless he is busy building with Lego. He is observant and descriptive in his speech. He's great at communicating and isn't afraid to tell us when we are doing something that he doesn't like. We do our best to treat him like a person. That is what he is! Basically... when following his "flow" harmony can be felt all around. He is a great kid, and honestly I could never see him fitting into a school setting. I hope that day never has to come for him unless he chooses it. He needs to be home and in the world learning. He needs to follow his "flow" and have others take that trip with him.

Trying to follow his interests and his learning style, I wondered if maybe I don't even need to purchase any books for grade 2. After all, some people homeschool on very little money. They use free online resources, used books, the library, things in life, and everyday experiences to homeschool. We are not religious so we aren't open to purchasing much of the used curriculum available in our area. Finding the used books that we really want is not always easy.  We purchase other things that are much less important than the education of our children. So on that last note, I researched again to help me decide what we were going to purchase.

I attended homeschool meetings. I talked to other moms. I only researched curriculum from literature based styles because we love to read. I researched Charlotte Mason again and looked at what was available from Sunlight that could be used for a secular kid. But I just did a big circle and ended up right back where we started. We have just ordered the books for The Well-Trained Mind for Grade 2. The main reason is because his interests just so happen to be exactly what we would be learning. He wants to know more about Space, Earth, Vikings, and Medieval times. Also it's a more secular education compared to the others. I did love some of the books on Ambleside Online so I did order a few of those as well. We will be incorporating some nature study since both, Zoe and Austyn love it.

My plan is to be very flexible and try and deschool myself more. I also need to follow more of my interests to be a better role model. We homeschool relaxed all year round but I think we could really follow interests even more and see where our learning takes us. The books coming are great resources to have around. Our Public Library is great but limiting and having books in our home library is even more wonderful and convenient.

We all now wait anxiously for these exciting, new books to arrive.  Grade 2 here WE come!

Looking back!

We started Grade 1 with a whole plan and with everything necessary to follow The Well-Trained Mind which is a Classical/Trivium (Literature Based) style of homeschooling. There were aspects of it that worked and some aspects that didn't work, AT ALL. First, I have to say that one of the main reasons I homeschool is to keep the enthusiasm of learning that kids naturally have. I wanted my kids to be life long learners.

So, I sat down just about everyday (still flexible, or so I thought) and worked through some of our subjects, but very quickly I started to notice a change in Austyn. He started to say things like, "I feel like I have to sit here". He would get distracted easily because he lost interest in what we were learning even when he seemed one minute to be excited about what we were doing. I decided that it just wasn't working for us. I didn't want to feel like I was fighting him. In fact I actually felt like I was interfering in his learning or insulting his intelligence. To some that might seem strange, but that is how I felt. I could see that he really wasn't getting anything out of it if he wanted to be building a road on the floor or assembling a robot with his Lego. I wanted to see him excited about what he was doing and knew from all of my years of homeschool research that his lack of enthusiasm was a warning sign that something wasn't working. I just needed to step back and see what it was. That is exactly what I did.

I stopped our lessons and only did things if he seemed interested. I focused on what was more important but only did that when he wanted to and if he lost interest I cut the lesson short. When something wasn't working I tried another angle or did my best to find opportunities in life to learn instead. I read, read, read and talked to people. I have one friend who is an unschooler and she said that he seems to be that kind of kid. Each child is different, each homeschool is different and every parent is different and every situation is different. So, I sat back, watched and waited for opportunities and documented how much he was learning all on his own and just helping him facilitate what he was interested in. The first few days of documenting I got writers cramps. Literally!  I couldn't believe how much he did that was educational.

I felt like we didn't accomplish much at first when I thought about the books I ordered for him for the year but when I sat down and started to type out what we had accomplished I was impressed. We kept up well in Math and Science. History was a bit slower, but we really learned a great deal about Ancient Egypt. We are more into History now and he is enjoying parts of it. What he seems not interested in I just leave and more on to the next story. Or I just read it at bedtime, which he really enjoys.

We read many books that covered a whole list of subjects. We love to read together. Speaking of reading, he is reading but not much. He hasn't picked up books to read on his own for example and I am not pushing him. He will do it when he is ready. He prints well but not often. It's not his favourite thing to do, but when he is fueled by something he delves right in and can print out a whole booklet or page. I stayed far away from the handwriting lessons and went slow with reading lessons. I want him to enjoy both. I want him to feel like it was his doing to decide to learn both. Just like he enjoys learning math and science. He is slowly coming around.

When we moved away from using our curriculum I downloaded some lap books. We have finished a couple but are still working on a couple more. One is HUGE and will be something that we'll go back to every once and a while. We traveled with the lap books and did a bit of roadschooling. I think that this is a direction we still may want to go in the future. There is so much to learn while traveling around. And learning it in that way can be so much fun, not to mention memorable!

Through our homeschool groups he went to many interesting places and saw many interesting things. We joined a couple of Mini Co-Ops. We got into some online blog challenges, watched more educational DVD's (Spanish, French, Science, History), and spent a great deal of time together just learning in life.

I think we did wonderfully. I hope that by ironing things out this past year we can move forward more enthusiastically. I think that this next year will be for me to deschool myself more. As you'll read on my next post, which will be on looking ahead, I'm still ordering the next year of material from The Well-Trained Mind. This is happening because he is interested in the subjects coming up for Grade 2 and I like the material to have on hand for when he is interested anyway. It is sometimes hard to let go, but I'm getting there. I need to just trust him. He will learn and I'm here to help!

Lego Quest - Wrapped Object

Here is Austyn's recent Lego Quest entry. It's a Mini Mummy. It's wrapped in band aids. 

Here is a link to read about all of the entries and see what was said about each. 

http://legoquestkids.blogspot.com/2010/06/quest-19-wrapped-object-photos.html

Book Sharing Monday

I use a spanish accent when reading this book The kids love that! One time when I read it my hubby walked in the room and started to laugh. I guess he didn't expect all of my dramatic Spanish sounding talk. Ah ha ha!!

Elena's Serenade is a beautifully written book about a little Mexican girl who wants to be a glass blower like her father, but in her time and culture girls couldn't be glassblowers. So she dresses up like a boy and goes to Monterrey, to where the great glassblowers are.

On her long journey to Monterrey she meets many animals and helps them all out by making music with her glass blowing pipe.  When she gets to Monterrey she proves to the men that she can blow glass better than anyone, making beautiful things with her pipe, by making music while blowing glass.

Does she ever become a female glassblower with her father? Read and find out!

Throughout this book Spanish words are introduced in a way that incorporate them into the story which  makes learning the language more fun.

Book Review - Deschooling Our Lives

Thanks to a new friend, who dropped this book off for me to read, I had the opportunity to peek into lives of many people who choose to learn without school as we know it. There are so many interesting views and ways for children to learn. I have been awakened further with the realization of how we (people) tend to follow society and just comply, ignorant to why we do what we do in the first place. In our current school system and our current schooled state we tend to prevent kids from reaching their potential. I can honestly say that in my life I've learned more in my adult life (following my own interests) than I did in school. So why wouldn't I want that kind of enthusiasm and efficiency in my children throughout their lives?  Through reading this book I have learned where the current ways of public schooling came from. I now realize how our parenting decisions sometimes affect how my kids learn. I recommend this book for EVERYONE. I think that we all need to know that there are other ways of learning (even if we don't intend to practice them in our homes) and of looking at our world. We need to evolve instead of being safe and changeless in our current society. 

I absolutely love to see the world in different views. I believe that it pushes my own beliefs and just makes me a better, more open minded person. I will be giving this one five stars when I review it online.