Pour Moi?

I am so thrilled to receive two blog awards from Debbie at Along the Narrow Pathway! My first ever blog awards! Thanks so much for reading my blog!

So, I'm supposed to tell 7 things about myself.

1. I majored in French in college.
2. I have always loved being around children and known that I wanted to have a family of my own.
2. I love the piney, sagey scent of the mountains near our house.
3. I drink four cups of coffee a day. Two in the morning and two after lunch.
4. I love pugs! I have two of them, and yes, they are allowed on the bed at night!
5. I am left-handed.
6. I like fruit better than chocolate. Isn't that weird?
7. I am WAY cooler now than I was in high school!

Now comes the really hard part... Passing the awards along to seven deserving blogs. I read so many cool, creative and informative ones, it's a very tough decision! Here are just a few that I enjoy...

Masterpiece Theater

Urban Cottage Homeschool

In a Tiny House

Stone Age Techie

Lagniappe Academy

Et Si On Apprenait...a la Maison?

Not Wedgies! WEDGES!

Oh, dear, we seem to have another problem. We really need to split this piece of wood into two pieces. (You're going to have to use your imagination here!) Yesterday, we used a simple machine called a ramp to help us do more work with less effort. But which simple machine could help us do this job?



What we need is some sort of inclined plane that helps split things apart. Something like a...wedge!



Wedges have a pointed edge that makes it easier to push materials apart. Which end of the nail is easier to push into the cardboard? The flat end? Or the pointed wedge-shaped end? The wedge end helps push the cardboard fibers apart.



Wedges are all around us. The blade on an ice scraper is wedge-shaped. So are the blades on scissors and nail clippers. (Scissors and nail clippers are wedges attached to levers.)



Our front teeth are wedge-shaped so we can bite into apples! The blade of a shovel is a wedge that helps push the dirt apart, and the wedge-shaped tines of a fork get between your food and your plate.

Here is a really cute wedge...



We're making an In the Hands of a Child lapbook to record all the cool stuff we're learning about simple machines...



Hey, Mom! Aren't you using little wedges inside a lever there?

Simple Machines: Ramps

Oh, dear. We have a problem. We need to get those heavy blocks to the top of Mount Bookmore! If only there was a simple machine to help us!

Simple machines can make work easier for us. For example, have you ever tried to lift a really heavy book with just your index finger? (Don't use your weaker fingers--you could hurt yourself!) That book feels so heavy when you lift it straight up off the floor.

Simple machines to the rescue! A ramp makes the work much easier!



Now try pulling that heavy book with one finger. Doesn't it feel lighter? Of course, the book didn't get lighter. The ramp is helping us do the work. The book may weigh the same, but we can lift it with less effort. (Pugs find ramps exhausting, apparently.)


So, how will we get those blocks up to the top of Mount Bookmore? Oh, excuse me, I have just been informed that these are teeny tiny Egyptians trying to get stone blocks to the top of a pyramid. What will they do? They'll use a ramp, of course! And if they're really smart, they'll use some smooth logs, too.


But using one big steep ramp is awfully hard for those teeny tiny Egyptians. And the taller the pyramid gets, the harder they have to work to get to the top. How can they make the job easier?

Using more ramps! These ramps are not as steep, so walking up them is much easier. Of course, you have to walk a longer distance.

So, what have we learned about ramps?

They are a type of inclined plane. A "plane" is just a surface, and "inclined" just means that it's at an angle. They make it easier to move things. We use ramps all the time, like going down a slide or unloading things from a truck. A lot of building have ramps so people in wheelchairs can get inside.

What have we learned about simple machines?

There are six types: ramp, wedge, lever, wheel and axle, pulley, and screw. They help us do work. They help us get more done with less effort. Mom, are we going to do levers today? Well, when? Tomorrow? Can I use the ramps for my cars now?

Our "Classroom"

What does your workspace look like?

When we decided to homeschool our children, my husband and I agreed that we needed a specific place to do it, or the books, projects and papers would take over the entire house. (Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Keep reading...)

So, we fixed up an underused area in our basement and called it our "classroom." Here is where the kids do a lot of their work...


However, the tables are NEVER that clean! Here is our "library."



And this is the "teacher's desk," although I tend to do most of my planning and record-keeping at our kitchen table, which, frankly, is more pleasant than this corner of the basement.



It's great to have a space just for homeschooling, but we don't spend ALL our time there. In spite of our (naive) plans to keep homeschooling from taking over the whole house, we discovered that frequently changing venues really helps keep the kids' attention. If their interest is waning, I know it's time to take a quick break and transition to a new activity and location.

We almost always start school at the kitchen table because it's just so nice to read and discuss things over breakfast. Then we might move to the sofa in the family room to finish reading and maybe watch a BrainPop movie... Then, if the weather is nice, the kids might take their math to the front porch... On cold, blustery winter mornings, we have been known to stay in bed and read. And when our kitchen and basement flooded earlier this year (see previous post), we did school stuff everywhere from the library to IHOP!

I have to chuckle when I think of worrying about letting homeschooling "take over our whole house." Experience has taught me that homeschooling is a lifestyle--not only does it take over your house, it takes over your whole life! And why shouldn't it? Learning isn't limited to one time or place--it happens over an entire lifetime, and it happens everywhere we go.

Happy homeschooling!

Pioneer Cat

Super just finished an interesting book called Pioneer Cat by William H. Hooks. I asked her to share her thoughts about it...

Mom: What was your favorite part of Pioneer Cat?

Super: When Snugs the cat had kittens. She had kittens inside the covered wagon while they were crossing a river. The main character is Kate, and her little toddler brother kept pointing at their wagon and saying, "Kitty!" She thought he was worried about Snugs, but when she finally went in the wagon, Snugs was curled up with her kittens.

M: Where are they going in their covered wagon?

S: To Oregon. They're all in a wagon train. Kate meets her new friend named Rosie in the wagon train. That's one of the biggest parts of the story because she left her favorite friend behind when they left Jacksonville.

It seems like they don't really have a home. They travel everywhere in their wagon. They were in Jacksonville and that's the longest they ever stayed in one place. They stayed there two years. Before they leave for Oregon, Kate meets a little starved cat and names her Snugs.

M: Why is the cat named Snugs?

S: Because she snuggled up to her when they went to bed. She crawled underneath her quilt and Kate said, "You like to snuggle, don't you? I'll name you Snugs." In the morning her mom finds out about snugs.

M: How does the mom react?

At first she thinks Snugs followed them. But Kate can't stand the thought of not telling the truth, so she tells her mom, "I brought her with us, she didn't follow us." Her mom says, "You put her in the box?" And she says, "Yes," and her mom says, "Well, I did tell you that you could bring anything that fit in the box."

M: Explain about the box.

S: Before they leave for Oregon, the mom gives the kids each a box and says, "Here. You can take anything that fits in this box." Kate says, "How am I going to bring you with me Snugs?" And Snugs just jumps in the box. She's really smart. She can understand humans.

M: If I gave you a box like that, what would you put in it?

S: Monique (the rat) and Titan (the gerbil) and a few of my toys.

M: Is there anything else you want to add?

S: Snugs is always getting lost. Kate cries a lot in the book. One time a herd of bison ran through their camp and she thought Snugs got trampled.

You know what I did throughout the whole book? I kind of imagined I had the same problems that Kate had. Like when she was worried about Snugs getting trampled, I thought about if something like that happened to one of our pets. Or when Kate was leaving her best friend, I imagined how it would feel to move away and leave my best friend. That made the story more interesting for me.

M: What are you planning to read next?

S: Probably On the Road with Down, Girl and Sit.

Our Second Year!

The books were useful, but nothing beats a year's worth of experience!


This is the first August in many years that I haven't gotten that sinking "August already?" feeling in my stomach. Sure, I'm a little bit anxious about what our second year of homeschooling will bring. (Are the kids getting everything they need? Are we doing too little? Are we doing too much? Should we be spending more/less time doing x, y or z?)

But this year's anxieties are mild compared to the back-to-school-blues that our family used to experience each fall. No more worrying about whether or not my kids get a good teacher! No more wondering how many rowdy or mean kids will be in their classes. No more piles of homework that monopolize our family time. No more school schedule imposed on our lives! And best of all, no more missing them all day, which is what I used to do when we outsourced their education.


Yay! I'm very excited to be participating this year!

So, bearing in mind that we are still fairly new at homeschooling, and that nothing ever goes quite the way I planned, I have put together a schedule and curriculum. Putting it on paper helped me bring our goals into focus, and it feels good to have a road map for the upcoming year. But, if I learned anything last year, it's that schedules may be printed on paper, but they are never carved in stone!

Our fall/winter schedule is planned around weekly swim, guitar, and piano lessons. (The spring schedule will probably include theater instead of swimming.) We have a terrific indoor pool in our town, which is a bonus since they can offer lessons in any weather, and Dude hates putting on sunscreen! Our local rec center offers evening art classes for children, but the kids were concerned about doing too many outside activities, and besides, we really enjoy doing art together as a family. So, we'll continue working our way through Meet the Masters. It works fairly well for us, but we do supplement it very heavily with books, projects, and field trips.

With P.E., music and art covered, I'm able to spend my time planning the "core" subjects. Math is by far the subject that I work hardest on, because I cobble together math lessons from so many sources. If there is one perfect math curriculum that works for my kids, I still haven't found it. This year won't be much different, except that we'll add Teaching Textbooks for independent work on Fridays. Our main curriculum will still be Math on the Level, and every day we'll play games like Roll-n-Multiply or do activities from Family Math, MathWise, or The Mailbox. Oh, and I decided to start a math-themed "word wall" on our first day of school. It's for me as much as for the kids: all those terms and properties get jumbled in my head!


Dude's favorite way to practice math


Both of my kids ask, "How much do I have to write?" when given any type of writing assignment. I think this is a habit left over from school, but I'm sorry to say that I didn't help much last year. I got so bogged down in grammar and punctuation that I lost sight of what all those mechanics are for: communicating your thoughts and ideas on paper! This year I plan to give them more opportunities for free writing. Journaling is a great way to do this, and we have some lovely journals that we hardly used last year because writing took a back seat to grammar. We'll be adding journal entries at least twice a week, once on Mondays so the kids can write about their weekends, and once on Wednedays during their free afternoons.

I recently found a book called The Four Square Writing Method by Judith and Evan Jay Gould. (You seasoned homeschoolers have probably known about it for years, but it was new to me!) It's a very visual way of organizing your thoughts before writing an essay. I think it will work well for both kids, but especially for Super. She is actually a very good writer, but she tends to get stressed out during the planning/prewriting stages. I really wish I had been taught this way! Honestly, how many of you made a traditional outline, Roman numerals and all, before you wrote your research papers? I usually wrote the paper and then made an outline, only because the teacher expected me to turn one in.

I also downloaded Teaching English Through Art by Sharon Jeffus from CurrClick. It has some really fun ideas that we'll incorporate into our writing lessons this year. Last year I used a manual called Mastering the Mechanics that really emphasized the importance of modeled and collaborative writing. We'll probably spend a few weeks writing together before the kids take off and do their own thing. Once the kids have had a chance to write freely, they can practice all that grammar and punctuation junk during the editing process. I did purchase Junior Analytical Grammar for them, and it does look like a good way to learn and practice grammar. I just don't want to focus so much on writing "correctly" that the kids don't get to be creative as well!


Accidental life science: our frogs had babies!


Teaching science was intimidating for me last year, since I have a very weak science background from my own public school days. I let the kids decide most of what we studied: Dude chose cells and chemistry, and Super chose astronomy and animal classification. (Way to keep it simple for me, kids!) We took a very eclectic approach, using lots of living books, some science kits, and NOEO Chemistry. We also made three lapbooks: wild birds, wolves, and cervidae (deer family.)

It's going to be hard to rein in my science-loving kids, but I'm hoping to narrow our scope a bit this year! We still have quite a bit of chemistry stuff left, so this fall we'll alternate between NOEO Chemistry and a biomes unit study. We're using an excellent book called Amazing Biome Projects You Can Build Yourself by Donna Latham and Farah Rizvi. We'll do some of the projects in the book, plus some of our own. Super really wants to build dioramas of each biome! We also have a couple of fun Snap Circuits kits to supplement our Evan-Moore Electricity: Current and Static unit. Dude has requested some physics: he wants to make some model simple machines. Oh, and we'll choose a few African animals and either write research reports or make lapbooks. Wait, didn't I just say we were going to narrow our scope? ;)


Lots and lots of living books

History was Dad's domain last year. He loved history in high school and college, still reads biographies and historical fiction, and is pretty much a walking encyclopedia of historical facts. It's wonderful to see him pass his enthusiasm on to the kids--history is by far their favorite subject, and they know more about ancient history than most adults (including me!) This year we'll continue studying ancient civilizations. (Notice I'm using we. That's because I'm getting an education in history along with the kids!) We really want to do all the Egypt projects that we didn't get to last year, so history will be very hands-on for the first few weeks. There are tons of Egypt resources out there; we got most of ours from the library.

Dad and I have found a system that works really well for history: we get the kids started on making something, read to them while they work, and stop every so often to have them narrate or discuss what we're reading. What do we read? Library books, DK books, Wikipedia and other websites, and excerpts from Story of the World and A Little History of the World. We also stop and add to our timelines every so often. This year we'll review ancient Egypt in more depth, then learn about ancient Africa outside of Egypt, move up to the Indus Valley, and then over to ancient Greece! Depending on how much depth the kids want to go into, we might be studying Imperial China by the end of the year, but there is no hurry. We all love history, and we love having the freedom to move at our own pace.

After looking over our subjects and goals for the year, I put together a couple of Excel spreadsheets: a weekly schedule, and a year-at-a-glance. Our weekly schedule will go something like this:

Mondays: Math, Language Arts, German (Rosetta Stone), History, Piano.
Tuesdays: Math, D.E.A.R. time, Science, Guitar.
Wednesdays: Math, Language Arts, Swimming.
Thursdays: Math, Language Arts, Science, Art.
Fridays: Independent Math Practice, Language Arts, History.

I never got around to making a year-at-a-glance chart last year. Even though I had general goals in mind, I often wished for something concrete to refer to as we moved through the school year. I'm very checklist-oriented, and even if we totally deviate from it, I enjoy starting with a detailed plan.

Unlike previous years, when starting school meant turning my kids' education over to strangers and hoping for the best, I'm really looking forward to another year of learning. Super and Dude are excited, too. Every day they come to me with another idea for the year: "Mom, can we do an acid rain experiment? Mom, can I write a story about aliens? Mom, can we study mammoths?" Answer: Yes! If that's what inspires you, then absolutely, yes!

Happy homeschooling!

Moose Watching, Eh?

The thing about moose watching is, it's not the end of the world if you don't see a moose. After all, the scenery is beautiful...



...and it's nice just spending time in nature.



The other critters in the woods are awfully cute!



But if you're really patient...



...you just might see a moose (or TWO!)

Summer of Cousins (Part Three)

This time, we stayed home, and the visitors came to us. R. and S. and their adorable girls aren't actually our cousins, but we've been friends for so long, they are like family. (Dad and I went to college with S. back in the previous millennium! )

We decided to take them to one of our favorite places on Earth.



Yes, I'd classify this as the desert biome!



We packed a picnic and found some shade under an ancient cottonwood tree.



After the heat of the day broke a bit, we took a hike...



...chatted a bit with the locals...



...and admired this guy, who was kind enough to pose for us.



It was a lo-o-o-ong hike.



But look at our reward!

What We're NOT Learning

There are only so many days in our school year (180 to be exact) and in an effort to focus on what is truly important, we'll have to skip some of the usual school subjects. Here is what we're NOT learning this year:

Physical Education: My kids will NOT be playing Slap Tag this year. In this exciting game, one female player dares another female player to run past a male player and slap him on the behind. Traditionally, the game ends with a gang of boys chasing a gang of girls, screaming "Pervs!"

Social Studies: We will NOT be playing He Said She Said. This is a game where one female player reveals a crush on a male player, but makes her friends SWEAR not to tell. The friends keep the secret until lunchtime, when they approach the male player in the cafeteria and "accidentally" reveal it. Regardless of his actual feelings, the boy is required to exclaim "Gross!" and pretend to throw up. No one wins this game.

Math: We will NOT learn Friend Addition and Subtraction. This lesson has many variations, but it almost always ends with a small group of girls visiting the Principal's office to explain why another girl is crying. Some say this is a valuable lesson that kids need to learn in order to prepare them for the "real world." I say that parents should be teaching an alternate lesson: How Not to Arbitrarily Reject a Girl You've Played With Since Kindergarten Just Because Your New Friend Says She's Weird. As long as parents neglect this crucial lesson (also known as Kindness) society will continue to believe that bullying is a necessary part of the "real world."

Language arts: We will NOT be studying Hateful Vocabulary, Words My Dad Says While Driving, or Teenage Sister Vernacular.

Science: We will NOT learn about the effects of seven-hour school days on seven-year-olds. Nor will we study the effect that replacing Family Time with Homework Time has on the human psyche.

There are so many lessons to learn, but I simply have to be realistic and use the time we have to cover the topics that will benefit my kids the most. Math Concepts, Grammar and Punctuation, Creative Writing, World History, Music, Art, Life Science, and Physical Science will just have to suffice.

Peach Season

The first peaches are in! And I'm enjoying my morning Grape Nuts so much more...



Apricots, too! These are so gorgeous, they look like they might glow in the dark. They are delicious!



Have a beautiful summer Saturday!

Our Summer of Cousins (Part Two)

If you think it's humid in Oklahoma, head south to Caddo Lake State Park in East Texas.



We love it here, in spite of the heat and humidity. There is just something magical about this place. It's a cypress swamp, peaceful by day and a bit eerie at night.



We've been coming here for years. When Super was about three, she thought the cypress trees were covered in "spinach moss" instead of Spanish moss.



There are gigantic pines and oaks as well.



Some people brave the gators and snapping turtles and jump right in!



We prefer to stay on shore and practice casting.



There are campfires...



...and gooey s'mores...



...and best of all, more cousins!

They blew bubbles, chased fireflies, had water pistol fights, roasted hot dogs, ate more Blue Bell ice cream, told ghost stories, collected pine cones, got a few mosquito bites, and pretty much looked like this every day...



A kid's perfect summer!

Our Summer of Cousins (Part One)

Our Summer of Cousins began in Oklahoma, where the wind goes sweeping 'cross the...gorgeous garden of my aunt and uncle.



Seriously, look at all that green! Their growing season is TWICE as long as ours. I'd be jealous, but they do have to put up with little things like tornadoes, heat, humidity....



...and BUGS! This is a potato bug. He's kind of cute until you see what he can do to an innocent potato plant.



All the kids got right to work picking potato bugs. Would you believe, they actually thought it was fun!





We took a break from the garden and visited Turner Falls, a cool oasis in the midst of the heat.



Just outside the park, there is a little store with a giant sign advertising FRIED PIES. Well, of course we had to support the local business. Wow, were they good. We washed our sticky fingers in the creek.



And we wondered why the butterflies like the fire pit so much. A great research project for school!



The kids picked vegetables, dug in the red dirt, played in the sprinkler, caught toads, collected wildflowers, played hide-and-seek, ate Bluebell ice cream bars, invented a crazy game involving a baseball, a catcher's mitt, and badminton rackets, and pretty much had a FANTASTIC time with their Oklahoma cousins.

We were sad to leave Oklahoma (oh, that garden-fresh produce!) but there were other cousins waiting for us to arrive.

Coming soon! Summer of Cousins Part II.