First T-Ball Game

Whirlwind of Educational Activities Last Week

Tuesday morning Esme and went to her first marionette show. The puppeteers performed Cinderella and were lit up so that the audience could see the show and how they make the marionettes move.

Friday, the most exciting day, we took our first family trip to the Boston Museum of Science. We decided this would be the perfect way to end our Human Body unit and segue into our dinosaur unit. Even though we've really been studying dinosaurs all year, it will be official for the next few weeks. The museum was WONDERFUL!! Our family universally agreed that it was a fabulous trip. Esme particularly enjoyed the senses room and of course the dinosaur section. She also liked the classification room and the anatomy room. She was disappointed that we didn't get to see every singe exhibit, but we have assured her that we will go again very soon!

Saturday Esme and I attended an all-day Earth Day celebration with Girl Scouts. Esme made her own applesauce over a campfire, cleaned up a campsite, made her own paper, went on a hike, explored wetland muck for life, made lip balm, sang Native American folk songs, beat a drum, and had a yoga session with a professional instructor.

Although Sunday wasn't an official homeschooling day, we did get a chance to spend some time at the beach and explore some things we don't see around our town every day. We waded in salt water and searched for hermit crabs with Esme's cousin, Dylan. Esme and Ethan made a great sand castle, and later we climbed on some very cool weather-beaten rocks.

Today Esme had her regular Girl Scout meeting and had her first TBall practice. It has been a whirlwind, but wonderful!

old units and new activities

At last, the human body unit we have been working on forever is drawing to a close. This is our last week on this unit, and our book of the week is The Ear Book by Dr. Seuss. We are not 100% sure what we will work on next, because semester breaks create a strange schedule for our family. Since we have already covered so much information about dinosaurs this year, we are considering doing a brief dinosaur unit.

I am excited that I am also going to start doing some new lessons. This year we have divided up labor just about 50/50. I have researched and written lesson plans, and coordinate the series we've participated in and planned field trips. Ethan has done ALL of the sit down, day to day lessons. It has been a bit hard to fit everything in, so I am going to start helping out a bit by doing some reading with Esme at night. At least three days a week she will read to me from her Brand New Readers sets, and I will read chapter books to her. We are hoping this will free up some time during the regular lessons, so that Ethan will be able to focus more on activities around Book of the Week, spelling, grammar, etc., but Esme will still get the extra reading practice that she needs.

It is hard to believe that we are almost to the end of our second year of homeschooling!!

Recent Lessons.....

This weeks book of the week is by the famous Stan and Jan Berenstain! We are so excited that Esme is reading on her own! We have also started using the Early Readers sets by Candlewick in addition to the Bob Books. Esme is learning about different types of words, and has a very good handle on nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

Esme is about to start graphing in Math, and then onto some more serious addition and subtraction activities. We're almost done studying the Human Body and pretty sure that she's going to want to do an Earth Science unit next. She is very interested in all things Science!

Meeting Mo Willems!

The big day finally came that Esme got to meet Mo Willems! He is the author of some of our favorite books, including Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, and the Elephant and Piggy books. He read two books aloud and then signed the children's copies. Esme had received a gift certificate to the bookstore for her birthday, so with our hefty discount she was able to to get 4 Elephant and Piggy books!

Traumatized

Esme is so intrigued by dinosaurs, we've been taking her all kinds of different places to learn about them, reading about them, etc. We were super excited that the Springfield Science Museum was having a special animatronic dinosaur exhibit, and as soon as we could go, took her down there. I think she could have handled the roaring. I think she could have handled when the T-Rex looked right at her and bared its teeth. But what she couldn't handle was the bloody prey dead at it's feet. Poor Esme! She knew that some dinosaurs eat plants and some eat meat, and she knew that eating meat meant they eat other dinosaurs, but the bleeding Triceratops was just too much for her and she burst into tears. We tried to move along and she was quite taken with a planteater for a while, and dug out some fossils with a brush while wearing goggles, but when the Velociraptors were devouring another planteater, we had to go. All she talked about the whole rest of the day was how she liked the planteater, but didn't like the meateaters. She had nightmares about dinosaurs that night - wake up sobbing nightmares. The next day she started recreating the scenes with her toy dinosaurs, trying to work through what she'd seen. She wanted me to tell Auntie Lisa about it. She still talked about it over and over, and was afraid to go to sleep again. By the next night she was more cheerful though, and said, "I don't have to think about the meateaters now, I can think about something else while I go to sleep." On Thursday she went out with Nana Carol and could recount the whole thing for her without being retraumatized, so I think she is doing okay now.

My friend Susan and my mother-in-law Donna came over Tuesday night for an art party! We had dinner and wine and made collages using fairy pictures that Susan had brought. It was so much fun. I love spending time about creative people! I always feel so inspired afterwards! Lucky for me, tonight is my cyberscrap night with Lisa!

Tests and More

Esme has officially started taking tests in both Math and Spelling. She's done taken three Spelling Tests and gotten every word right, and taken two Math tests and gotten about 90% on each. We're very proud!

Esme has been enjoying her human body unit. We got a cow femur from a local butcher and they sliced it the long way for us so that she could observe the inside. A few days ago she ran into the kitchen and announced, "Parts of your body need oxygen blah blah blah!," and ran back out.

The Ford finally died. It is literally on the road dead. No compression in two cylinders. But I am really excited about my NEW car!! Whoo hoo! Okay so well it's not a brand new car or anything, but it's going to be new to me! And it is going to run and be reliable! Very exciting! I haven't been able to drive on the highway since November, and since I am not a homebody, it has been slowly killing me. I am getting my new vehicle this week, so happy days will be here again!

I won't have as much creative time this week as Esme's party is this Saturday and we have quite a bit left to do to prepare. Mostly we have to get our entire house organized and everything put away so that our guests will be able to move freely through the house! Esme's party is going to be bigger than ever though, since she all of a sudden seems to have lots of little friends. It's a dinosaur theme. I am soooo wishing I bought those Basic Grey dinosaur stamps on clearance when I saw them!

I was so lucky to be a Guest Designer at Scrapperie this month and get to create with the Cherry Jubilee Essentials kit! The only thing added to any of these pages was Stickles - everything else came in the kit.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Even though Dr. Seuss passed away several years ago, kids still love celebrating his birthday! Since he was born on March 2nd, next week our lessons will revolve around a tribute to him. Our book of the week will be The Cat in the Hat.

Video

This is a pretty good video about some of the myths of homeschooling - trust me, I've gotten almost all these comments, many from complete strangers. I try to not to be bitter about it, but it can be frustrating. I believe this was made by some homeschooled children for their mom.

Just finished this new little bunting for Esme's Bitty Baby, Emily. So much fun to sew with a machine.

Esme is very interested in dinosaurs! We've been trying to read books about them and take trips to see evidence of them whenever we can fit them it. Esme has been asking to go see some actual dinosaur bones, so we took her to the local natural history museum this past weekend.

Did this layout at Stephanie's last night.

This week's lessons....

Book of the week is The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss. Esme did wonderfully on her short U words spelling test so now we're moving on so short I words. She's learning about bones and will soon move on to the muscular and circulatory systems. In church school she learned about needle felting, and we just started a 4-week Fractured Fairy Tales series at our favorite local bookshop.

Taking a challenge at Scrapperie to blog about my Sunday activities....

First, I wake up my daughter. This is a challenge because she is used to sleeping late all week and has to get up around 8 on Sundays, and usually finds it objectionable. Then we get ready and head out for church. The first activity at our church is Sing. We sing lots of different kinds of songs for about half and hour, and then we have Sunday School. Esme goes to Godly Play and I go to Adult Ed whenever it is offered. Every other week we stay for the church service. This was supposed to be our week but I was feeling so blue after Adult Ed I decided to make it next week instead. Also next week is the last Sunday before Lent, so it will probably be extra festive.

After church we usually go home and wake up my husband. He works late so he usually does not go with us, unless there is something special going on. We usually have lunch together and then either settle into a nice day at home or go out someplace fun. We're a homeschooling family so two days are never the same for us - routines don't really happen in this house!

It's Been a While....Updates

This year is flying by. We have sooo much going on and lots to share. After trying out a couple different things this year, we've decided that structured lesson plans are what work best for our family, and we have gone back to the more traditional schedule we used last year. We're glad we tried more of an unschooling approach, but now we know this is what works for us.

We are happy to share that Esme had her very first spelling word list and test this past week, and she got 100% correct on her test! Whooo hoooo go Esme. She is moving right along in Math and Reading too. Most of Esme's interest revolve around science, and we are considering an Earth Science unit when we finish up our Human Body unit. We are hoping that we'll be able to take a trip to the science museum soon. I am excited about the new art curriculum I discovered, called Discovering Great Artists. We've just started and Esme has learned quite a bit about Picasso. I am hoping to use this in conjunction with our Picturing America materials as well.

Esme has been staying very busy. In Girl Scouts she's been learning about how to care for pets including going on a field trip to Petco. This month we're concentrating on dance - last week the girls learned line dancing from Aunt Cathy, and next week they'll be doing folk dancing with our friend Ben. They also have a snowshoeing event coming up, unless we have a big thaw between now and early March. Esme is still loving ballet class and we are very happy with her new dance school. We'll be starting a new series for homeschoolers around fractured fairy tales starting on Tuesday. We are looking forward to seeing some other kids we haven't seen since Fall.

My new niece Chloe!!!!

So glad he is now our president!!!

Cyber-scrapping with Lisa - this is my first layout of the night!

Grant Recipients!

I am thrilled to say that we have been chosen as participants in the Picturing America program. We'll be receiving 40 laminated images of great American art to use in our studies. It is kind of funny to see Esme's Homeschooling Adventure listed as a grant recipient on the website! One requirement to receive the grant is that we use it with a group, so for Fall I'll be working on a way to do some kind of program that we can invite our local homeschoolers to attend.

This is the second grant we've gotten since we started homeschooling in Fall of 2007. The other was two huge boxes of legos from Lego Systems, with the condition that we would then donate them to the public library.

I am very grateful for organizations that see the value in awarding grants to homeschoolers as well as schools and libraries. We will use the prints we are about to receive to their fullest, and share them with as many other families as possible!

R.I.P. Number Six! Patrick McGoohan died today at age 80. Full story here.

Made these wind chimes to sell at our church fair - three flower pots decoupaged and strung together. Tried to do classic summer colors.

Working on ATCs right now....here are some from my first and second series. Happy New Year everyone!

This was one of my favorite gifts to give this year. It is a magnetic board with two clips that I made for my best friend's mom, Carol. Carol loves to get homemade gifts, especially ones that include pics of her granddaughters. This was a pizza pan from Dollar Tree, and the clips are from Dollar Tree as well.

Made this project for my sister-in-law's baby shower. The little baby face is a photo of my grandmother that I copied. I altered a clementine box and layered it with tissue for the wrapping.

Physical Education and Homeschooling

Esme got to come visit me briefly in the gym at school this week before my students arrived. I showed her some of the relay activities I have the kids do, and let her bounce balls and shoot hoops, and played catch with her with a koosh ball. She loved it! She says she wants to make her playroom into a gym!

Physical Education for Homeschoolers is naturally very different. It's easy to plan a variety of team games for classes of 18 to 25. Esme has and will play team sports through local leagues - she has done two seasons of soccer, swimming lessons, etc. We also try to include lots of physical activities in our weekly lesson plans. A couple weeks ago I bought this book to help give me some ideas, and learn about the different body systems that each activity strengthens. It is written by a man who was both a homeschooler and a gym teacher.

Someone from the local homeschooling message board was kind enough to give us a gently used pair of child-sized cross country skis this past week and Esme got to try them out for the first time last night. She skied down to the mailbox so I could drop the Christmas cards in. It was slow-going at first - she doesn't have poles yet so she fell down quite a bit, but she loved it and got pretty good at it by the time we got back home. She skied all around the yard today while Ethan shoveled our walks. We're looking foward to being able to take her to Mount Tom or some other park with lots of open space so she can ski all around.

It's been a difficult couple of weeks around here. Family member in and out of the hospital, others not well, car trying to die, friend evacuated first for carbon monoxide, then for flooding, problems at school that in my mind shouldn't be, awkwardness other places, more family problems, a burned up toaster oven, my scanner bulb burned out and can't be replaced, etc. My stress level has been building up and every little thing makes me want to cry!

However, at the same time, I have many things to be grateful for. Tonight is Ethan's last night of double shifts, and the extra money should enable us to pay off our new water tank. A good friend offered to make sure that we get a good new used car. My family and friends have generously said they will watch Esme so that I can work this week. And in a few short days, I will be on vacation with my sweet husband for twelve whole days! Hooray! Plus I will be able to have my family over for Christmas dinner, always a delight and I am soooo grateful that I get to do this.

Yes things have seemed not quite right around here since sometime in September, but perhaps that means things are about to get better. I am preparing a list of resolutions and goals for the New Year. I am challenging myself to be more creative and more focused on what I really want to do. I am planning on more time at home with my family - I realized last week how much they need me, and was reminded that the reason I took this job was to have the flexibility to be here for them. I want more time for my friends too, especially the ones who support homeschooling and who encourage me to be creative. I feel like I am about to burst with ideas, in 2009 I plan to express more of them!

I hope everyone is happy and well, and that everyone and anyone reading has a wonderful holiday!

We have a winner! I let Esme choose a random number on her chart and IamDerby is the winner! Thanks everyone for the wonderful comments and compliments - they were so appreciated! Hope everyone is having a wonderful December!

You've seen my projects, now win a kit to do some of your own!! I received the complete line of Love Letters products from Little Yellow Bicycle and would like to share the love. Leave a comment about the line or any of my projects to be entered into a drawing to win the page kit (shown here) and a little extra surprise from me. I will let Esme draw a winner Friday evening.

Mini Album and Fold-Up Folio from the Love Letters line by Little Yellow Bicycle

I love our church. Growing up and for the last few years I've gone to churches that held Sunday School during the service. Our new church has played with the schedule several times during their search for a new rector, but I think they've finally got it right. We start every week with a Sing. There are tons of musicians - people playing guitars, usually someone on flute and someone on piano, plus lots of kids playing percussion, etc. We usually sing a variety of songs, ranging from kids songs to traditional hymns. We do rounds and sing antiphons. It is so fun! It is in a smaller space so just a few people make it feel full. Next we move on to Sunday School, and while my daughter is learning Bible stories and church traditions, I get to go to adult classes. So far I've learned about the history of Christianity in our area, Religion and Politics, and much more. Then I grab my daughter and we head over to the service, which since our new Rector arrived, has been fairly traditional, which I also like. I have also been lucky enough to meet several very creative, likable people there, and feel very included and appreciated. The new rector is wonderful too, and that seems like the icing on the cake. I feel home.

Got the photos from my brother's wedding last year and couldn't wait to start scrapping them! Almost everything here is LYB Love Letters!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This week Esme reviewed her Math lessons, read some Bob Books, practiced her Dr. Seuss books, and learned about the first Thanksgiving. Esme seemed fascinated to learn about a time when people didn't have all the modern conveniences we have today.

This is my next project using the Little Yellow Bicycle Love Letters line - a special album for my husband for Christmas!