Homeschool Wednesday

Ah homeschool. Sometimes you can plan and something as simple as lunch can screw up your whole day. Poor B cut himself deeply with a butter knife at lunch today. You know, because you can't tell an almost 3-yo anything. They just need to experience it. And this time it was thisclose to being the experience of stitches. As it is, he only needed steri-strips and a few days of quiet to keep the wound from reopening, but it was close.

So our homeschool Wednesday was brief, with only a short drop-in class and a map of the neighborhood, drawn to appease the ISP coordinator.





Earlier in the week, before The Injury, we had been planning a week of all outdoor school. Monday was a day at the river, with math and form drawing and singing and bird watching. We saw a sandhill crane - truly an amazing bird. The photo is from a backpool at the river. The boys are "fishing." We were keeping an eye out for the steelhead trout that are supposed to be making a comeback in this river, but we didn't see any at the fish ladder (and we watched for quite awhile. Well, I did.)

Tuesday we spend the morning at the beach watching the high surf (because when better to go to the beach then when there is a high surf advisory, right?) and using the sand as our chalkboard practicing division and multiplication and later some form drawing. We also took a bit of time to build sand "Titanics" and to go hunting for cool rocks, shells and beach glass. At lunch we headed over to another local park because we didn't want sand in our picnic lunch. And then we rode on the swings for 40 minutes followed by some reading and bird watching - this time we saw a red tailed hawk and an acorn woodpecker.

An actual FO report

And it is sewing again. Remember when I used to knit?

Anyway, today it is the Charming Handbag from Bend-the -Rules Sewing. I want to love this book. I really do. The projects are adorable and I have made 3 of them so far since I got the book and 2 of them had serious errata issues and one of them was extremely difficult to follow (this one) The directions were spotty. It produced a very cute handbag, but required me to do a lot more thinking about construction and a bit of investigation on the internet for the errata (like missing pieces of the pattern errata)

In other news, I think this handbag is a little too cute and little for me. Tim Gunn, Fashion Guru, says that bigger women should have bigger handbags, and this one is just tiny and adorable. With a bow!

The fabric is Moda from my Local Fabric Store. Don't ask me the specific type.

Homeschool Wednesday

I would like to keep a bit of homeschool on here regularly just to keep family (Hi Grandma K!) updated. We are most definately full time homeschooling now. Come Parent/Teacher conference week (early next month) we'll do an exit "interview" of sorts with his former teacher and the academics administrator.

The photos above are from today's main lesson. We are covering the Four Processes. Z is already ahead of basic addition and subtraction, but I want to tell the stories so I can use the squirrels for more advanced math later on, so we are hitting these as a review and then working on some worksheets to advance his skills afterwards.

He is still having trouble with the drawings sometimes and especially with spacing his work appropriately on the page and writing his number sentences clearly. I am trying to slow down his tendency to rush through by requiring different colors for different things in the equation (each symbol has its own color plus= green, minus = red, equals = purple, etc.) Having to pick up the different crayons requires him to at least approach it with a touch more thought.

We are also practicing skip counting in preparation for multiplication which begins tomorrow. He can already skip count through 2s, 3s, and 4s.

We are doing a Form Drawing lesson during this week and we are working on standing forms - especially circles and squares. Today we're going to get the big chalk out and hit the sidewalks instead of the paper. And then we're going to walk the forms we draw on the sidewalk.

Then this afternoon - more knitting. My goal is to have him continue working on a large project to help him build up his ability to work towards a larger goal. It is slow going.

A FO and a peek into my house

I took this photo because I realized I don't have a Completed Projects 2008 section yet (or I didn't) and since I just finished this... I'm not even going to do a real FO report on this. It *is* just a Ball Band Washcloth. The funny part is the photo. I took the photo while the kids were sitting down to snack and I had sat down with a few things to read and saw the washcloth sitting over to the side and so I grabbed my camera to take a photo. So you have a photo of the table, the cloth, the knife used to spread the almond cream cheese on B's crackers, dripped spots from B's cup of tea which he drank exactly two sips of, but had to have a full cup like me, my Southern California Day Hikes book (with page held open by a matchbox car), the catalog from Paper, Scissors, Stone (I'm obsessing about recorders again in addition to some other art supplies), and my copy of Living Crafts magazine's 1st issue that a friend of mine put together. I love this magazine, BTW. I highly recommend it. And I need to order my subscription! The 2nd issue is out.

We're off to letterbox this afternoon as soon as DH arrives back from Mexico. Should be any time now. Yay!

Homeschool this week

R Rapunzel Chalkboard Drawing
Originally uploaded by woolfairy

Well, the end of this week anyway.

Today we finished the 1st Language Arts block and here is the chalkboard drawing from that block. And then here is Z's representation of that and our representation in braided challah. Yum!

Gone to Vegas

We headed off to Vegas this past weekend for a family wedding. It was a first trip for all of us except DH who is an old hand at Vegas. First off - it is a crazy long drive. Or maybe that is because we missed a turn off and went waaaay out of our way and travelled 352 miles instead of 316 miles (but got to see Edwards AFB) Yikes. We fixed it by the time we were headed back though. No fools we!

We got there later then we intended therefore and weren't able to hook up with the family that night. Instead we took in the sights of Paris and even went to the top of the Eiff-faux Tower. Gah! Don't look out the windows as you are going up in the elevator. Just saying. At least we chose to eat dinner afterwards.

Saturday morning after breakfast we headed out to Red Rock Canyon for a little hiking/letterboxing. This place is truly amazing. The boys watched some climbers in full gear climbing some of the rocks there and even practiced a bot of rock climbing themselves. We then took the 13 mile scenic drive and stopped off around mile 7 so Z and I could hike into ice box canyon after a letterbox. And when they say Ice Box Canyon, they aren't kidding. It must've been 15 degrees cooler there then at the car and we found a waterfall that was iced over. Z was so amazed that he couldn't stop talking about it and lists it as the very best part of the entire trip.

We raced back to the car and then back to the strip because we didn't want to be late for the wedding. We made it with minutes to spare and then proceeded to have a wonderful time and I reacquainted myself with relatives I hadn't seen in more than 2 decades. Turns out my cousin and I have most everything in common! Except that she has girls.

Sunday we hit the Shark Reef at Mandelay Bay. What a fantastic place. And then we joined the family again for a little Superbowl time. By the time we were done there, the boys had bonded with their cousins and Great aunts and uncles and we had all had a marvelous time and were exchanging contact information.

Then Monday, as if we hadn't had enough fun, on the drive home, we hit the Calico Ghost Town outside of Barstow and the boys and their dad had a blast. The Mystery Shack was the pronounced favorite, but I think they liked the rock shop pretty well too!