School of Daddy!!

Well, once upon a time... Daddy went downstairs to play with the kids and they were so loud that Mommy had to investigate. To my surprise they had found some piping from the vacuum installed the week before. They were fitting parts together and zooming cars through the tubes sending them flying across the room. Seriously!!! We really want Daddy to stay home with us. He is way too much fun! And he is very good at doing educational things in ways that nobody can forget! If anything is unschooling this surely is it!

"Living is learning and when kids are living fully and energetically and happily they are learning a lot, even if we don't always know what it is. ", John Holt

The end of Insect Season.

We had many caterpillars this Summer. Not all of them were successful, but that is the interesting part of taking care of them and learning about them. This was a cocoon found on a tomato that we saved in a jar. The moth had some beautiful gold markings on it. While we were letting it go Zoe found a worm to hold. I love the picture of the worm. The body is transparent and shows the internal organs well.

Every year we collect potato bugs to watch over winter. We need to do that soon.

“Between our birth and death we touch understanding, As a moth brushes a window with its wing. ”, Christopher Fry

Off to the park after the Apple Trip.

After going to the apple farm it was a merging of two homeschool groups in one park. It was a great day and the kids made forts. The girls really learned how to weave the branches together to make the fort more sturdy.  The man on the lawnmower, who I must add was bewildered by all of the children at the park when he expected it to be dead for him to cut the lawn when it was safe, came to us to warn us about a hive hanging in a tree nearby. It was HUGE!! I added a picture of it here.

"There are two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings", Hodding Carter

Apple Farm Trip!

We went to an Apple Farm for a tour. We didn't pick apples, but saw were the apples and other fruit grow that end up in our grocery store. We saw how they are washed, sorted, and stored.  it was a nice cool Autumn day with friends.

"Anyone can count the seeds in an apple; no one can count the apples in a seed.", Anonymous

Keeping little hand busy.

There are many ways to keep younger people busy while working on something with an older child. In the area where we sit most of the time to work on something there are many things around to keep her busy.  To Zoe, this is school. It's like art class.

"What makes people smart, curious, alert, observant, competent, confident, resourceful, persistent - in the broadest and best sense, intelligent- is not having access to more and more learning places, resources, and specialists, but being able in their lives to do a wide variety of interesting things that matter, things that challenge their ingenuity, skill, and judgement, and that make an obvious difference in their lives and the lives of people around them.", John Holt

RightStart Math and Snacks

This is Austyn's crazy smile. This is one of his math lessons. One of the areas of our curriculum that seemed to work for us most of the time is our math program. As you can see we snack when we want to... even during a lesson. Zoe likes to play with the other math manipulative while Austyn and I work together.

“Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever. ”, Albert Einstein

I got this from another homeschool family blog. It made Austyn and I laugh so hard. He was imitating the Social woman after. LOL!!