Smorgasbord

 For our 4th week of school, the kids chose their own topics. Hannah chose cooking. We looked at a kids' recipe book and read a couple of fun fiction stories. She helped me make dinner one night and for the first time, we worked well together in the kitchen! (Meaning I was patient and she followed directions). She did quite a bit without my help. She made barbeque chicken and sweet potato/cauliflower soup.
 

                              One morning she made eggs, blueberry pancakes, and sausage.

 

It was a hit. 

 Another important thing we did that week was evaluate a little problem around the house. Clean-up. We got to the point where the kids would clean things up much more willingly, but we had to admit sometimes it was even too much for us adults. We clean out their rooms and take sacks full to Goodwill it seems every month. So one morning they brought every single toy into the living room and were shocked to see how much they had. They agreed it was a little crazy. We talked about how little others have and while we didn't have to give everything away at this point, it might be to their benefit if we tried packing it away. They also laughed at the fact they sometimes whine that "there's nothing to play with."

 So they each chose 4 things. That's it. I was surprised how simple their selections were. I even reminded them- hey, if you pick the castle, then you get to keep all the knights and princesses, etc. But no, they wanted to try just the simple stuff for awhile. It's been almost 3 weeks, and only twice have we needed to look for something in the 7 bags we put in the garage. And 0 of those times did they ask for the toys. Since then, of course, somehow other toys made it into the house and their rooms still need some picking up (we also took out all paper and markers since those were constantly everywhere).  Later this spring we'll go through and put a few things back- such as that awesome castle and some dress up clothes and the rest they have outgrown, we'll hopefully sell.

 Chloe chose watercolor as her topic. We spent most of our time on the how-to and of course a few fiction stories. The butterfly she did on her own with a different paint, and the birdcage I saw online. I think it's pretty cute.

 Hannah and I worked on an abstract flower painting I found. This is mine. Hers went missing!

                                             Colin did his traditional studies in blue.

 We watched a video instruction on landscapes in monotone colors- hmm I can't remember if that's really the term. The girls chose their colors and created lighter and darker shades. This is Hannah's lake and hills. She was determined to add that bit of green : )

                    They also worked on cubes and bowls learning how light and shadows work.
Colin's topic of choice was pizza, so we read a couple of fun books. He manages to eat pizza all the time, and we make it pretty often so we didn't set that aside as something special this time. He also has an entire cd about pizza, so I think he's covered.

 

I usually gather our school materials from the library on Sundays. That Sunday we had some major icy weather and were stuck inside. So I had to quickly replan the week. We could have skipped a day and started Tuesday, but Tuesdays are our major driving around days and it's not the best for starting a new topic. Anyway, I went through the books we owned and settled on a book about baby animals in the rainforest. It turned out to be a great choice and a heck of a lot more fun than the original plan for that week. I was even able to go Monday and get the other books we needed. They learned about Brazil, the Amazon River, and plenty more. Above is their art project. I printed up parrot coloring sheets and they used marker and torn paper to fill out the color. I think they turned out beautifully! 

 Hannah is always very interested in dangerous animals, so I turned her math work into anaconda measuring snakes : )

 

 They learned about the different layers of a rainforest such as the emergent layer, canopy, understory, and ground level. Hannah drew her own version and included the sloth and jaguar in their correct layers. I also found a great online game where she sorted the animals into their levels. That really helped solidify what she had learned. For fun, I also checked out videos of the tv show It's a Big Big World. It's a little young for them, but very cute and loaded with great information about rainforests. And I love the theme song, so there was some rewinding on my part. We also listened to sambas and bossa novas from Brazil.


Hannah filled out  a few worksheets on the Amazon. Then we talked about biomes and she filled out a few sheets from biomes we've already learned about. I love her drawings.

 

Dax was sweet enough to think about us at work and brought home a huge book of beautiful photographs from the rainforest. We set it up next to our world map and found where all the animals and plants were from.

 We did a few other interesting things this past week. It's about time to get our backyard in shape, but the weather keeps flip-flopping. Also, every spring I put quite a bit of work and money into it, but it seems to all need to be redone every year. This year I wanted to involve everyone else a bit more so maybe they'll take a little ownership and help me take care of it! We'll see. So we divided into teams and each group designed their dream backyard and gave a mini-presentation. The boys made sure to include a shed. We found that all groups included a vegetable garden, a water feature, and a play area.

                     Our beautiful Hannah had her 7th birthday. We're do proud of this girl!!

Hannah has been working on understanding pronouns. Here's another idea I found online. Pronoun flower patch!

 

 One morning I gave them a break from the standard math, spelling, and English work that's usually separate from our book of the week. I made a scavenger hunt using things they've learned throughout the year in different subjects. Chloe is learning to read pretty well, so she helped out and found a couple of the clues on her own. Hannah's wearing her detective sunglasses. They had to use knowledge such as measuring, color mixing, nocturnal animals, amphibians, states of matter, materials, and shapes to find the clues. In the end, they found cookies in the freezer for a treat. : )

 Hannah is proud to continue to earn her horse badge. She's read plenty about horses and this was the day she finally interacted with them. We attended Jr. Horsemanship Camp and Camp Tonkawa. She used several grooming tools.

 Two of her pals from church, who told us about the opportunity, were there to join in.

 After some instruction on safety and parts of the saddle, the kids split into groups. Hannah's was the first to get to ride. Several times the employees gave her the reins on her own and she steered the horse quite well. Once they even told her to circle the horse around me, which she found pretty funny.

 Here's the entire group- several home schoolers, and several kids off for spring break.

One of the warnings you hear about home school is the lack of socialization. I'm beginning to think this is more and more a thing of the past. The number of home schooling families is increasing, so the number of group activities have increased as well. I think what a lot of people see is that home school kids are kind of nerdy. Well, yeah maybe, mainly because they aren't exposed to a huge variety of kids so they don't really come across rudeness or bullying or jaded attitudes that pop up when you have several hundred students in one place. Home school kids obviously don't use a lot of the popular slang or act "cool." Mainly because they don't have to worry about fitting in or following the crowd. They already fit in. And I'm beginning not to mind that they will have a more innocent mindset. They're surrounded by kindness the majority of the time and I'm always aware of and mostly choose who they're with. They'll never come home crying that someone told them they are ugly or stupid and I'm left with only part of a story I can't figure out, heartbroken that they would be treated that way. They'll have an entire lifetime to learn to deal with difficult people, (such as the lady today who told me Hannah's legs were so skinny with her cowboy boots, she looked like Woody from Toy Story- I kind of chuckled since I didn't know how to react, but thought poor little Hannah couldn't help it and she had felt she looked cute that day- too many bad memories of my own issues being a string bean as a child)! They have been in some tricky situations, but I'm glad it doesn't have to come up every day or interrupt their love of learning. Most importantly, my shyest kid is Hannah by far. Yet I'm seeing her now go up to kids she doesn't know and introduce herself and become friends right away. She never has to worry she's not wearing the "right" clothes or has to fit into a clique. I'm seeing her raise her hand and ask thoughtful questions to instructors. She doesn't have to worry that someone will snicker or make fun of her. And I'm seeing her learn socially that not everyone wants to do things her way and that's okay. There are constructive ways to deal with it other than name calling, holding a grudge, or gossiping. All of this I experienced in school as do most kids. Lots of kids simply have to go to school, no way around it. And many parents value that their kids will go through hard times and build character. I certainly appreciate those sides as well. Home schooling was a tough decision for us, but watching my kids live and learn makes my heart swell, and when I sometimes long for a bit more glamorous life some days, there's really nothing that can replace all of this for me! And let's face it, these kids are the children of myself and Dax, so I don't they had much chance to be cool anyway- haha 

We are taking Spring Break off and an additional week, so see you soon!