Halloween Pics

As requested

Things are Going Swimmingly

Our first year of homeschooling came to an end last week with shouts of joy and raucous celebrating. OK, so we gave each other high fives and went to America’s Incredible Pizza Company. But it was all good. Actually, it really was all good. I am still surprised at how well this inaugural year went. And, despite my lack of attention to the blog, I wasn’t buried in books and work like I thought I would be. Things were manageable. The kids were cooperative. That wasn’t to say there weren’t complaints. There are always complaints. But we were never “behind on work” as I have often heard other homeschooling families say. Maybe I wasn’t giving them enough to do. Hmmmmmm.

Immediately after we finished school, we took a “Staycation” for a few days. On Thursday night we went to a Rascals Game. They won!! We spent the bulk of Friday at the City Museum, and we stayed at a hotel downtown where the kids could swim. We had dessert at Ted Drewes that evening, and ordered a midnight snack from Imo’s before turning in at the hotel. On Saturday morning we went up in the Arch, we visited the Brewery, and had a snack at Gus’s Pretzels before heading to the country house for a quick stay. We finished up our staycation on Monday with lunch from White Castles. It was a fun trip!

This is the only week of June where there is not something planned for every single day of the week. Next week Big D will attend Cub Scout day camp and Miss M will go to vocal camp. The following week is Girl Scout day camp and the big boys will go to basketball camp. The two weeks following will be VBS for the three oldest. Banana is also starting ballet classes, something she’s wanted to do for a while, but I couldn’t manage it during the school year. And don’t forget that three kids are playing ball and those same three kids are playing instruments with lessons once a week. We’ll be taking a road trip to visit my grandma the first week in July, and the hopefully it will start to feel like summer vacation after all that. My calendar barely has any more room on it, but I’m trying not to freak out. I take it one day (sometimes one hour) at a time. As Dory says in Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…”

Happy Homeschooling

I realize that my kids’ Halloween pictures were the last thing I posted. On the one hand I feel badly about that. But on the other hand I accept that homeschooling comes with certain sacrifices. This blog happens to be one of those sacrifices – along with afternoon naps.

But the sacrifices are well worth it. I am very happy homeschooling.

Today is an ugly, soggy day. I am extremely thankful that my children and I are warm and dry inside our house. Most of us are still in our pajamas. My morning coffee is perfectly complemented by the Ludwig Van Beethoven Station we created on Pandora. I feel happy.

Banana is in the other room trying to build a house for her dollies out of dominos. She lets out a frustrated shriek every time they fall down. David takes a break from his schoolwork to help her, announcing, “I am a domino expert!” Any other time I would probably ask David to get back to his work, but he was actually being helpful to his sister. I am happy about that and wouldn’t want to interfere with it.

Miss M is working on spelling. Today’s lesson calls for dictionary work – NOT her favorite. She has the dictionary and her papers spread out in front of her, writing each word in a different shade using her 4-color pen. She is doing all of this with a feverish toddler on her lap. I am happy to see him smiling at his big sister, even though he’s not feeling so well this morning.

C.B. and I are sounding out long U words to fill in a story about Sue and her pet mule that eats fruit. We are enjoying the story and it’s making us laugh. I am happy about this because only moments ago he was complaining about having to work on this story.

Today is definitely a good day. My days aren’t all like this one, believe me. That’s why it’s important for me to record days like this one. I tend to focus on the negative instead of on the positive. Writing this post will highlight this day in my memory. I can also go back and read about it when I’m having a different sort of day.

Have a happy day!

BOO!!

Homeschooling + Blogging = No Blogging

You may have noticed that since I started homeschooling I haven’t really been posting anything here. I guess you could say I have been busy. You could also say that I have never been busier in my entire life. Something is always happening around here, and it’s making time go by much faster than usual. Every day I seem to run out of time for all the things on my To-do List. This phenomenon has made for an incredibly long To-do List. And, yes, writing posts for this blog is definitely on it.

Since the Dinosaur Unit Study, we have spent time studying cheese, one of our favorite things here at the Reddy Zoo. Hey…if I get to create my own curriculum, it should be fun. Not to mention delicious. We learned about how cheese is made, various kinds of cheese, and some of the ways cheese is used in making other food products. We invited grandparents over for a cheese tasting and the kids were spouting off cheese facts for them at lighting speed.

They also used this occasion to show their grandparents all the work they had done so far, which had been hole-punched and put into binders. They were all so proud of their binders, and they enjoyed sharing the details of some of the more complicated things they had done. It was very good for them to have that opportunity to “show-off”, as it were.

We also spent a good deal of time studying Columbus, just in time for Columbus Day. The kids really got into this more than I expected them to. They enjoyed hearing about the long voyage across the ocean. They were surprised that people didn’t know that North and South America existed in 1492. They were even more surprised to learn that Columbus still didn’t know he had reached a completely new continent. He truly thought he had found a new route to the Indies, even after making four trips here and back before his death. We were also surprised to find that Columbus didn’t actually discover America. At least not the chunk of land known today as the United States of America. He never came this far north during his travels. But his voyage did pave the way for future explorers to venture into our hemisphere and eventually settle in this great land.

In addition to our daily lessons and our Unit Studies, we have gotten involved in a Homeschool Co-op. On Wednesday mornings we meet with other homeschooling families for Art, Music and P.E. classes. It has been great for the kids not only to be with other children, but also to have those more creative type of lessons that might get skipped at home in lieu of the 3 R’s. We have also been on multiple field trips, keeping things even more fun and interesting.

Powder Valley Nature Center

Kinder Konzert at Powell Hall

Nature Walk at St. Francois State Park

All in all, I have been very pleased with homeschooling so far. In fact, I am thrilled with how well things are going. Believe it or not, I feel less stressed out this year than I did last year when three of the kids were in school. I like that we make our own schedule, we can keep our own pace, and plan our own lessons. I also like that there are no papers to sign, backpacks to pack, or lunch money to send in. Things are going very, very well.

Dino-mania

For teaching Science and Social Studies, I decided to try using Unit Studies. A Unit Study is defined as “an in-depth study of a topic (space, trees, cars, etc.) that takes into account many areas of the topic, such as geography, science, history, art, etc. It is a complete immersion into the topic so that the student will see things as a 'whole' instead of bits and pieces learned throughout their education.” We started out with a simple subject. One I knew we would all find interesting – Dinosaurs.

I found so many fun things related to dinosaurs. I gathered books, puzzles, games, DVD's and other activities. The kids and I work on Unit Studies two afternoons a week while Banana is at preschool and Mr. H takes his naps. So far it has been working very well. We just finished our three-week study of dinosaurs. We have been very busy reading, doing hands-on activities, and we even took a field trip.

I checked out no less than twenty books about dinosaurs from the library. Some were for the kids to read, some were for me to read to them.

We made a terrarium after reading Dinosaur Habitat, a book about two brothers who find themselves inside of the younger brother’s terrarium. Not only did the plants become life sized, but so did the plastic dinosaurs the boy had carefully put in there. And they were no longer plastic!

Thankfully our dinosaurs are still plastic.

I bought a Dinosaur Dig kit from an educational retailer that I thought would be fun for the kids to try. Then I found small kits at the dollar store that I picked up just in case we needed something extra to do. It turned out that those little kits offered much more fun for a dollar than I ever thought!

The kids scraped away layers of clay to reveal tiny dinosaur bones.

Then they used the bones to make their own fossils out of clay.

They took a longer time excavating the Velociraptor bones in the bigger kit.

But the bones they found actually formed two whole dinosaurs.

We were also able to visit “Sue” before she left the St. Louis Science Center.

“Sue” is the most complete set of Tyrannosaurus bones ever found.

Her skull was HUGE!

There were bones to dig up at the exhibit as well. The kids were pros by that time!

Big D enjoyed the T-Rex vision. His body looked pretty funny with a new head.

We also watched a Discovery Channel movie telling all about the types of dinosaurs that lived in America millions of years ago.

We learned a lot AND had fun doing it!!

Worth a Thousand Words (or more)

Since I posted hardly anything all summer long, I went through my pictures from May through August and found quite a few worth sharing. As you can see, we had a fun summer!

Dad at an Alumni basketball game

Grandpa shoots a free throw at the Alumni basketball game

We definitely brought the most fans to the game

These two are just too cute together

Miss M's Girl Scout troop

A self-portait

Banana on a boat with a couple of her cousins

Miss M in the parish picnic parade

Big D in the parish picnic parade

C.B. in the parish picnic parade

All three kids were in the same area in the parish picnic parade group photo

Me and my kids on Mother's Day

Banana and a big ole fish in the hippo habitat at the Zoo

Banana performs in the Tiny Tot Circus

Banana becomes an elephant in the Tiny Tot Circus

Mr. H gives his baby cousin a kiss on her two-week-old head

Mr. H in a sea of bubbles after a Babaloo show

Miss M and her friends at a swim party

Mr. H and C.B. read a story on the couch together

Banana and some of her cousins at a family birthday party

Our tired niece falls asleep while playing at our house

Big D took this cool picture of his uncle from under the water on a float trip

Floating cousins

Big D entertains his baby brother in church

These two look up to no good to me