A new friend dropped this book off for me to read along with another unschooling book that I've already posted about. I finally finished this one. It was an excellent book. I understand unschooling much better now. Learning it right from one of the most inspirational and well-known authors in the unschooling movement really sheds some light on what this movement really is. I was particularly interested in the ways to introduce different subjects to kids without teaching. From what I understand our math program (that we follow very relaxed as it is) is directly in-line with how it is suggested to be introduced to children in this book. We follow RightStart Math. It's a very hands-on, self-discovering approach to math, with little to no memorization and very few work pages. 

The more I read the more I see just how much I need to deschool myself and think about my children differently than what is expected in our schooled society. I would like to meet more unschooled families, especially those with older children to get an idea of how differently they go about learning. There are only a few families that I know of in this area and most of them are very young. I recommend this book to anyone who has young children. I find so much truth here and wonder how society has affected my personal actions and beliefs in so many ways without any real logic. This type of learning makes so much sense to me, but I find it hard to stop my compulsion to teach. This would be a nice book to have around for a resource when things don't seem to be going well for my kids. I can figure out what I am doing and what I can change about my actions to help them learn more efficiently.

Thomas Edison Fan - A Simple Electrical Circuit

A friend told me about this incredible book. She knows from this blog that Austyn LOVES Thomas Edison. We have read about him and Austyn  is a huge fan. He is interested in building things all day long this book is perfect for Austyn. So, I ordered it. 

This was his first experiment. He made a circuit with Daddy. I figured who better to do this stuff with? I don't even know where all of the materials needed are, so I'm not the best person. Daddy is perfect! They experimented with different lights and batteries as well.

Here it is! Austyn took it to bed with him that night! He loved it that much! In the dark before he fell asleep he kept reaching over hand hitting the switch to turn the light on in the dark.

Camping out with her Lapbook!

When the kids get a new lapbook from me they are so excited and want to look at all of it. Zoe took her lapbook into her blanket tent to check it out. This one is on the Grocery Store.

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/grocery_store_lapbook.php

Our Little Reader!

Zoe has always loved to hide away with books since she was able to walk. She still does and has become loud about reading aloud to herself. I snuck up on her to catch this picture of her reading a board book to herself. Of course she isn't reading the proper words and she is just making the story up, but that is just one step in the process of discovering words. I think she will be the reader in the family.

Just some of the books we have ordered

Here are just some of the books we've ordered. As said in older posts, it's a Well-Trained Mind/Charlotte Mason mix. We are still very relaxed and the kids do what they like most days. We all love to read so as long as we are learning though reading it works for us. I have had a couple of small orders since this one and have more books coming. I will likely learn just as much as the kids. I love learning right along with them.

Ice Cream Field Trip

Our homeschool group attended a free tour of a homemade ice cream store in our area. We were split into two groups. The first half of our field trip was in the back. We watched ice cream  being made and flavoured. We learned about the special freezers and what the mixer was for. After making the ice cream the machine had to be washed out. 

The second half we learned about the different flavours and how they mix up the ingredients by hand into the ice cream on a frozen block. One of the mom's got involved in mixing. We got to taste any flavour we wanted to. One interesting flavour I remember was Apple Spice. They also had white chocolate and many more. We got to eat a fresh cookie and a milk shake. Each child got their own cup of whatever flavour and mixed in ingredients they wanted.

At the end the kids sat together and ate and some of the parents ordered their own things. Kev got a chocolate malt and I got a blueberry milkshake.

An Organized Space

Over a year ago I had the urge to clear out the basement of storage items and make it into a still unfinished, but useful space. Well, as time goes on it got messier and messier. So, a few weeks ago I decided to start reorganizing the school area. We don't always do educational activities in this room. In fact, Austyn finds the room too distracting at times since the walls are bright pink insulation. It's just nice to have somewhere to put things. When I first started to move the room around the kids were so excited. They said, "Yay! Mommy! Now we have a library!" I take it that means we might just have too many books. Or is there ever too many? I did set up the kids to have their own work spaces on a short table, but they don't ever have to sit there if they don't want to. The table is nice sometimes when we are all working on something together. I labeled all of our containers until I ran out of labels. I would like to get more labels and finish it off by labeling the book shelves as well. I"m at a point with this room where it's much more functional again. There are still a few things to do but as I do little things everyday, we'll get there. I feel very proud of it. 

By the way, no homeschool area is complete without at least one pet. Our cats love this room. For the first little while as I sorted through the bins our one cat kept knocking them off of the shelves for fun. This is also the only room where I allow them to get right up there with us when we are working on things. The kids and the cats love it! When we leave and go back upstairs after spending some time in this room the cats meow for us to come back. They really do add to our experience.

Curiosity Club - Learning about birds

We are learning about birds right now in The Curiosity Club. We have been reading about birds in the book and in other books we've chosen. We've been watching the behaviour of birds in our own backyard. Austyn has a curiosity for humming birds so I downloaded a lap book that I'll post another time. I also downloaded another "My Favourite" lap book, which I'll also share later. For this post I'll focus on The Curiosity Club. I really love this book because it seems to be short interesting reads throughout. The activities include other subjects and are fun. There are many visuals in the book that help to explain what is being learned.

Here we did a mystery drawing. I gave the instructions on the white board. One instruction at a time, waiting for them to finish each step on their drawing pads. Then they guessed what they drew. This also helped to understand the make-up of feathers.

Here are their drawings. Austyn's is on the left and Zoe's is on the right. She restarted a couple of times on the first step so her final feather is at the bottom right of her page. 

We did an experiment with paper to learn how birds fly and after the kids decorated their piece of paper. 

We learned about different kinds of feathers. Feathers that come from different kinds of birds and feathers that are located on different parts of the bird and their special names. Then we looked closely at the feathers we had around the house including our craft feathers and discussed what bird they likely came from and what part of the bird the feathers were from. After that the kids experimented with the sound the feathers made when whooshed through the air. That lead into trying to use them to fly. So here is Austyn trying to fly with only one feather in each hand. Zoe is trying to fly with many feathers.

Picking Strawberries, Honey Farm, and making Jam

Excuse the quality of pictures. I forgot my camera. Last week we went strawberry picking and to a bee farm with friends of ours. 

We had a great time strawberry picking.

We picked up some honey at the honey farm and saw the bees behind the glass. Oh, we got some honey garlic sausages. Yum! We had them for lunch as soon as we got home!

Here the kids are having fun washing, cutting off the tops and eating the strawberries. I have a special tool to do it that Austyn  liked to use. Zoe just picked out the ones that had not leaves on them. She ate many of them. Look at how messy she got!

Then we made jam. It was not cooked. I just prepare much of our meals on our stove. It is easier in our kitchen. We made 7 batches of freezer jam and had strawberries left to eat and some to make freezer pops in the freezer. It was perfect!

Book Sharing Monday

No Trouble at All by Sally Grindley is a cute little tale about a Grandpa who has his grandchildren over to visit. He tucks them into bed and goes on to tell of the trouble he use to get into and how his grandchildren are no trouble at all. 

As you can see by the pictures I've added, the cubs are in much more trouble than their Grandpa knows. He thinks they are asleep in bed like good little cubs. He believes that "They are no trouble at all".