We sew on Thursdays

Here is Cyan with her 4th sewing lesson from last week. She is loving it. This week we are still working on paper, but I told her that if she got her regular school work done 'the easy way' we would make her kitty toy today. She has been waiting to make Taio a cat toy for weeks... it is big incentive. Plus, I just don't feel like doing a whole lot of eyeballs falling out reading work. Sewing sounds like more fun!

Logan desperatly wanted to help... he was SO upset he could not touch the sewing machine. So he settled for this instead:

Apparently, a huge bag of lace from a friend is fun too.

The book we have used for these lessons is My First Machine Sewing Book by Winky Cherry. It is a great reference, but not necessary. Before we got the book, I was having her sew, with no thread, through simple mazes that I printed out on line. Basically this is what they teach. They do have some information I did not about what parts of the machine are called. But the machine they use is very old, and with mine being a pro machine, they don't always even have the same parts. Luckily, the book costs less than $20 and it is a great way to get a curriculum pattern down for teaching to sew.

One of THOSE homeschool moments...

...where you wish you were invisible.

We are high maintence library patrons.

Ok, so Cyan and I are checking out our 22 items from the library (these are the items that were on hold), and Cyan went to look at the new DVD's. As she is walking back to me to show me her finds, she spins the DVD rack (pretty much as fast as she can). Low and behold, DVD's shoot in about a 10 ft radius around the DVD rack as my daughter stands there, completely speachless.

Oh yes... the library ladies loved me today. Some laughed, and said it was alright... others were not so much. We helped pick them up and left VERY soon after. I am guessing the lady that was sorting as we left is STILL sorting, an hour later.

A big lesson in centripetal force was learned today

Nature Study Wednesdays

A huge part of our homeschool is nature study.  It has become most of the science section for Cyan's school year.  We work on our Ecojournals each week, which are like a journal for nothing but our observations in nature.  Cyan has put pictures, dictated entries (while I write), we have mapped the yard, and have created some refuge for birds, bugs, and critters inside our yard.  We have put our observations in a three ring notebook by season.  Meaning that spring 2008 will go with spring 2007, and not just after Winter.  They will continue to go in order according to season because I want to be able to see the entire picture of the seasonal changes.  My oldest (Alex, 6th grade) has already started to notice a few differences in this year and last year that we hadn't observed before.  This will be an interesting project to continue for years to come, whether I am homeschooling or not.

The Green Hour Challenge is an amazing idea.  Harmony Art Mom has put together a challenge each week for children to get out side and observe nature.  We have just started this project, and have really enjoyed looking at the others.  We will be doing this each Wednesday with our Ecojournals.  For the most part, it is very similar to what we are doing already, but it is fun to get different guidence every now and again.

Other resources on nature study:

Fun with Nature and More Fun with Nature put out by NortonPress Books is great for bringing along on nature walks.  It has wonderful pictures and information on all sorts of things.  These two volumes have been in my car off and on for the last 7 months.  We bring them to the tide pools we travel to, even sometimes to the zoo.  They cover everything from Shells, to Leaves and Seeds, to Feathers, to Scat (poo) and all with wonderful pictures and explinations.

Child's Play in Nature by Leslie Hamilton.  This book has wonderful ideas for begining to get to know the world around you.  Everything from Acorn people (using the acorn caps as hats, and acorns as heads) to flashlight walks in the dark, it has great step by step instructions for each craft or activity.  It is a must for the youngest nature walkers.

The Little Hands Nature Book by Nancy Fusco Castaldo.  Another one for the youngest nature explorers of us (ages 2 - 6).  It has games listed for the little explorers to do, like find the bear in the woods (a stuffed bear, of course) and how to take care of a wolly bear caterpillar.  Lots of fun.

Easy to Create Wildlife Habitats by Emily Stetson.  This book expands on observation and help for backyard wildlife.  It also has many ideas for things that older kids can do, like help yourself nesting supplies for birds, how to cast a deer footprint, and how to create a worm bin. 

One Small Square series, by Donald M Silver is a wonderful way to get to know habitats that are not your own.  They lay all of the peices of the habitat out in a form that is so easy to understand, that even complex ideas like arctic animals changing into their white coats for the winter is easy to grasp and fun to learn.  I have learned a ton from this series.  This is where most of our unit studies on animals start.

Tuesday is baking day

Every Tuesday is baking day at the Rose Garden.  Today we made buttermilk biscuits in the shape of shamrocks to go along with my Irish Beef Stew.  Alex helped more than Cyan did, but they both enjoyed trying to figure out the recipe (the recipe had an addendum to make buttermilk biscuits from a regular baking powder biscuit recipe). 

I will have pictures of our baking efforts eventually. 

Book List

Books, wow I love books. Some of them take my breath away with their ideas and ingenuity. Here is a list of books I use for homeschooling on a daily basis:

A Well Trained Mind By Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise

First Language Lessons For A Well Trained Mind By Jessie Wise

Drawing with Children by Mona Brooks

Sunflower Houses and Roots, Shoots, Buckets, and Boots by Sharon Lovejoy

All Year Round by Ann Druitt

Fun with Nature and More Fun with Nature by various writers, brought to you by North Word Press

Unit Studies

Cyan and I have been doing animal unit studies all year. I will list all that we have studied and eventually I will have a post for each one that can be looked up for others who want to study these wonderful animals.

Life Cycles:
Butterfly

Nocturnal Animals:
Owl
Fox
Racoon
Bat

Animals of the Northwest Forest:
Elk
Caraboo/Rindeer
Hawk
Great Horned Owl
Golden and Bald Eagles

Arctic and Antarctic Animals:
Polar Bear
Penguin
Seal
Walrus

These are all so far, but we have learned a great deal. (Even me... who would have guessed that homeschooling teaches the teacher as much as it does the kids?)

Life is budding everywhere... beware lots of pictures.

One of the wonderful things of homeschooling, is that you have the time to research things, much more indepth than you would if you had 35 kids to follow. With only the three (and technically only two because Logan is just along for the ride at this point) I don't just have time to talk to them about owl babies. I have the time to take them to Nisqually Valley Refuge and watch the fledgling Great Horned owls, sitting in the trees,

watched closely by their mama, jumping from branch to branch, stretching their wings. All from only a few hundred feet away. (This is one of those moments when I REALLY want a better camera.) Here was some of what we read as prep for this trip.

After we had watched the owls for a while, (it took that long for some of us to see them. Camoflage is an amazing thing.) we walked around the refuge and saw the rest of what the wetland forest world has to offer during this time of rebirth.

You could see the life budding everywhere. From the bracken ferns on the trunks of all the trees,

to the musrat, building her nesting home, to the ducks;

A mating pair of Malards.

Some other kind of duck. I think it is a variety of wood duck.

After a while, we wandered on from the wooded wetland area to the more open wetlands. There is a look out, about 500 yards away from where the owls are, looking over the whole wetlands. We saw thousands of geese, a handful of ducks, and a beautiful red tailed hawk. He was SO close to me, soaring under the platform I was on, but I missed him with my camera until he was farther away. It was one of those breathtaking moments, where you are almost not sorry you missed it on camera, because there is no way film would catch how stunning it was to be standing right next to a soaring raptor. It was amazing!

Yet another wonderful homeschooling moment. No matter what days off my husband is given, we are always ready to go on an outing with him. We can always "do school" on the days when he is not home. That makes our weeks flow by so much nicer than when we had one set of days, and he had another. We have a lot more family together time.

Poor Cyan. Soon after we left the hawk, got a lesson in 'why we stay on the path'. She stumbled off the pathway, and landed with her left hand in stinging nettles. This tragedy (becuase they REALLY hurt for a while) along with the fact that it was the coldest day we had had in weeks, sent us home a bit ahead of schedule.

We were on the way back to the car, dh, Cyan, and Logan up ahead, and Alex and I laging behind. And out of the corner of my eye I saw this:

A Great Blue Heron, about 25 ft away from the path. She (I honestly don't know the gender, but...) was watching us pass. Barely moving, just watching intently, ready to move if we got too close, but obviously used to humans in close quarters. If not trusting, and still very wild.

And oh so beautiful!

Cyan's review for March

Daily work/Life skills... Daily calendar work includes writing the date two different ways ("Tuesday, March 18, 2008" and "3-18-2008") which she puts on most of her daily assignments.

Math... We have been working with money and place value lately. Carrying 10s has been a bit of an issue, but we are starting again, working with popcorn, glue and popcicle sticks, and so far it seems to be sinking in. As far as money goes, we have every thing down (including addition and subtraction of money) up to a dollar. The switch to over 100 is getting her every time. We are working on that.

Science.... We are still primarily doing nature studies and small nature experiments. We are writing weekly in her eco-journal and having at least once every two week outings to see all the life that is budding in our area right now. Last week we went to see two baby great horned owls at the Nisqually Refuge. We have been writing numerous small stories about arctic animals, and watching videos on them constantly in our free time. She is rather enthralled.

Social Studies... She is in a homeschool group are on at least one outing a week. Yesterday we had a St Patricks day party with cornbeef and cabbage and all the gold and green trimmings and crafts.

Fine Arts... Cyan draws all day long. Ever single assignment has a drawing aspect, even if I didn't know it. ;)

The first step always feels like the biggest...

Pulling my kids out of school was the first step. And it has taken a year, many debates, and much foot dragging for me to get both of them liberated from the public school system. Alex still has to finish out this year, but I figure, we can start documenting this now. The ideas will creep up, and run away from me in the next months, and I wouldn't want any of them to go away for good... so here it is. The first post of a new adventure in homeschooling in the Rose Garden.

Our address says we live in the city...

I just don't buy it. We may be small, and in the city, but this is a farm darnit! ;)

Catching up

Catching up:

This last weekend, we went to the East Side of the Cascade mountians to see my friend Sunny, and her two girls. We had a blast! We were a little worried about the trip back, however, when it started to snow. We had to go over the mountain passes, and we were a little worried about getting stuck. But we didn't.

Just about a mile away from Sunny's house we saw this small pond COVERED with water fowl, and in the true spirit of homeschooling, we had to stop and look.

It was just amazing how many types of birds that were there... if it hjdn't been about 20*F we would have stood there all day... but the cold rushed us back to the car pretty quick. I had time to take a few good shots of the birds though.

Cyan's poem for January

Work

By Anonymous

Work while you work.

Play while you play.

This is the way,

to be happy each day.

All that you do,

do with your might,

things done by halves,

are never done right.