Back to "School" 2014

 

Actually, this just means I'm back to dedicating about 3 to 4 hours in the morning to learning with the kids, and then taking notes and planning a bit for the next day.  We actually started slowly last week, with project time (their favorite) and a bit of dictation and math review (emphasis on a bit).

Wednesday-
 *Girls separated laundry 
*Started out with bird watching.  Jenna and I read from the bird book (and she wanted me to look up what "hulled" means) a bit as we watched.  We noticed things about the Junco, looked at a ruler to check and see if our birds were matching up to the sizes listed (concluded our birds would only meet the size estimates if you measured from the tips of their tails), and oohed and aahed over our red-bellied woodpecker (determined she was a female).  I noted that we don't have quite the variety of birds at our front feeder (but our view is so super, amazingly close) as we did in the backyard.  Jenna wondered why.  Jenna and Caroline both filled out their bird sheets.


*Kids took care of the chickens and played outside on the rope swing and in the snowflakes.  I gave them warm tea when they came in.  :)  They also dumped the ashes.  Why do I count this as part of our day that's worth recording?  Because I agree with Renee Tougas at FIMBY:

Involving children in home life, not just involving them but depending on them, at age appropriate levels for pet and animal care, cleaning, laundry, chopping wood, cooking meals - good old-fashioned chores - develops self-discipline.

*Deskwork- 2 math review pages for Jenna while Caroline read a Bob book to Lambie.

*Jenna dictated Chapter 1 of a story to me:  Sunny Bun Buns the Adventures of a Chicken (inspired by a book the three of us loved:  Louise:  The Adventures of a Chicken.
*Caroline dictated her to me about the adventures of Rosie the Chicken.

*We watched a couple of Cornell birdwatching videos that were sent to my email.  Learned that the Junco looks different based on what part of the country he lives in (we noticed we have two different colored varieties).  Also got excited about trying the new Cornell bird identifying app, Merlin.

 

* Jenna asked if she could try adding an embroidery braid to Caroline's hair (I initially balked at doing this for project time, but see the value in letting them explore things that aren't "academic.").  She watched the video several times, tried it on Caroline first and then tried it on me.  She asked me to read Gulliver's Travels (an annotated version Bryan found for her at the library-she's been reading it on her own, but she loves it so much, she wanted Caroline and I to get to read it too).  Caroline got in my lap to listen and sucked her thumb.

*Clean-up
*Girls played
*Ate lunch around 1:00 and I read more of Gulliver.  I got out the map so we could see where Gulliver went. 

A bit from FIMBY I found that summarizes SO WELL the importance of exploring interests outside the typical academic realm:

When children become a young adults, after a childhood of creativity, exploration, and play, "applying themselves" looks like a whole lot of intense study into things adults might question as valuable or worthy.
You've got to kind of expect this, especially after you've given young children time to develop interests, and don't box them into subjects. School subjects are constructs, "real" in name only.
Adults don't go through life thinking of their days and activities in terms of "now I'm doing math, now I'm studying history, now I'm having phys ed." No, they balance the checkbook, read for the pleasure of it and to learn about something they're interested in, and work out because it feels good.
Even so, when well meaning adults see young adult students spending heaps of self-directed time on things that don't easily quantify as "American History, Chemistry, or English" they get a little panicky. What about the success track as laid out above?
(Perhaps at this point I could direct you to a different success track. Let's say the story of Steve Jobs who spent heaps of his young adulthood "playing" with electronics.)
Here's the rub. It's hard for people to understand when another person, child or adult, is invested in and personally driven to do something they themselves don't value, or can't see as valuable in society.
And yet these outliers, these people who pour energies into solving problems other people didn't even know existed or make art that modern day sensibilities don't get, these are the very people, all through history, who are society's movers and shakers.
Even if people question the assumption that the conveyer belt education system is "the track to success" (success by who's standards? by what measures?) they assauge that cognitive dissonance with the belief that by conforming to the system you at least learn self-discipline.
My question is: Do you learn self discipline with compulsory education?

The Purpose of Life

Summarized in a blog post.  Ha Ha.   

I'm going to keep a collection of my favorite quotes about what the purpose of life is here, so that I can easily find it (instead of quotes spread randomly across five or six years worth of journal entries).  :)

I dunno.  I'd like to think I can come back and read these when I'm wondering, "Now what is the purpose again?"

From Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
 
"If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation… If the character doesn’t change, the story hasn’t happened yet."

The notion that one of the reasons we exist is to GROW, is both inspiring, comforting, and beautiful to me. The impatient, judging, perfectionist side of me needs to be realistic about change, recognizing it's a stack of dozens of small actions and behaviors, not an instant permanent shift.   When change is internally driven (rather than imposed upon us through circumstance), it is very slow, requires dedication, and isn't linear. 

Pastor Deem on the purpose of life, quite simply, "Relationships."  .  That's it.  Love.
The primary changes I would like to see in myself over time primarily involve being better in all of my relationships. 

Happy New Year's Eve!

Elving...

 Jenna decorated Caroline as a Christmas tree.  :)

This was probably my favorite day of the Christmas Season.  Just a couple of days before Christmas, with Christmas music in the background, and a warm fire going, I got to be an elf assistant for all the Christmas surprises being made.

Caroline made adorable matching Indian headbands for Jenna and Kaya.  She used brown velvet ribbon and made multiple trips to the chicken coop to find the right feather for each headband.  (Uh-she also gave the present to Jenna as soon as I left the house that afternoon, telling Jenna that I okayed giving the present early.  haha...she just couldn't wait until Christmas morning!!). 

Jenna sewed a felt dress for Caroline's handmade doll.  She even put on little wings using artificial flower petals.  TOO CUTE!  Jenna also made Caroline a set of paper dolls.   

Jenna trying to hide her work from Caroline who kept accidentally getting peaks of what Jenna was making.  :)

Sewing while reading Harry Potter.

Finished dress being modeled by Jenna's doll.  Note the delicate, white wings.

Even Daddy was busy elving in the basement.  He's painting Harry Potter Wand Boxes...

Encampment 2013

I always love the encampment, but this year may have been my favorite because we stayed all day BOTH days.  The girls didn't want to leave for a second.  :)  We even stayed late Sunday to help the Fletchers pack up and the girls played with their new friends for over two hours. 

 
 Opening colors on Saturday morning.  The wind was COLD.   
 


 The girls and Belle, the sweet girl who camped with us.  Oh, how the girls loved that!
 
 

The very kind Indian on the right agreed to pretend to "capture" Caroline --as she had been hoping to be captured, or at least fascinated by the prospect of it, all day.  Once she saw the Indian was coming for her, though, she PANICKED.  She came out of our tent with a look of utter terror and ran to hide behind me and Bryan. The Indian felt horrible that she teared up, but given that she re-told the story over and over, I think it didn't end THAT badly.   Jenna wished it had happened to her.  :)

Here is the Fletcher Camp.  Our little tent was just to the left of the picture. On Sunday the weather was perfect...

The Fletcher family gave me this dress!  So nice!

We huddled close to the campfires at night (nighttime and early morning are my favorite times!), Jenna played some violin with a blacksmith violin player, and both kids ran and played with other kid participants. There were even fireworks on Saturday night to celebrate the 40th anniversary.  Watching fireworks with fife and drum core playing in background was pretty awesome!

And of course, we listened to our Highland Reign band.  They added a fiddle player this year!

Caroline made a little rug

The girls got into finger-knitting a few months back.  Caroline had an idea what she wanted to do with hers:  swirl it into a rug and sew it together.  I read how to do it, got her started with a blunt needle, and she sewed for well over an hour. 
It's so sweet as a baby rug!

Starting "School" with a Project Based Learning Focus

Since I saved this post first as a draft, it's going to be out of sequence.  This should have been posted mid-August.  Anyway...

I decided to get back to "school" by focusing solely on something I want to be a major part of our homeschooling:  Self-directed Project Based Learning.  The "how" comes from Lori Pickert's awesome blog.  I signed up for one of her classes and concentrated for three weeks on the girls and I adjusting/learning how this was going to work for us without worrying about anything else.  This allowed me extra time to read her blog, take notes and troubleshoot. 

The kids took to it immediately, getting SO excited when I told them they were in COMPLETELY in charge. 
The first couple weeks, we had the birth of "chicken notes" (I follow Jenna around the yard and record her observations and ideas about all things chicken). 



Watching the chickens lay their eggs.  She did this for long periods of time and learned all about their habits.

Caroline wanted to do something new everyday, but she thrived on the total attention to her ideas. 

One day, she made a cornhusk doll for Jenna. We watched a video and she made it herself.  She squealed with delight when she finished and decided to give it to Jenna immediately rather than wait for Christmas.  she also made one for herself.  Here's the scene:  

 

Her sister was touched and loved it.

She wanted to make one too.

 We also had a dollhouse building day (actually think this was our first project day.  Jenna was unsure of what she wanted to do and she ended up liking Caroline's idea).  They worked on these all morning and then dropped them  We are building confidence in trying things, in establishing the new routine, and following through with ideas.

 This is the new desk area I set up for them.  They went nuts for it.  Everything in one place and within easy reach.  They are using it all the time, even at night.  :)

This has nothing to do with PBL, but we were reading about Columbus and the girls wanted to know why you can't drink seawater.  We found out the ratio of salt in a cup of water, added a bit of food coloring, and I let them try it.  :)