It's not exactly "breaking the CK barrier," but I was very excited to have a little something in the In Your Words column in Creating Keepsakes this month. I wrote about my substitute teaching experience from October to January this past school year. Now I just have to make sure everyone at school sees it so I get all the good gigs!!

Nature Journal

We've started a nature journal with Esme. For now she's dictating what she wants to say and copying it into her journal to record her thoughts, but we're hoping that as her writing and spelling improve she'll be able to do more on her own.

I can take one class for free every semester at an Ivy League college. I am super bummed that yet again this semester, I cannot find a class to take. Classes are geared toward people who live on campus which is understandable, but I am bummed that there is nothing that I could remotely apply to my life offered in the evening that isn't filled immediately. It seems like such a waste not to take advantage of this opportunity, but at this moment the only thing I could take would be Riding I. Not sure this is the perfect time in my life to start horseback riding with no prior experience. I so want to go back to school, and there are many things I would like to take including environmental science, sociology, education, religion, etc. It's sad that I can't make this work!

The Nebraska Exchange

Project Learning Tree's Activity #20 is to be paired with students in a different region of the country, and send each other a box of things that tell about your local environment. A couple weeks ago I signed up to be paired for the exchange, thinking we would probably be paired with a class somewhere. I was delighted to get a call last week from another homeschooling family who'd received our name and was interested in swapping boxes. The family includes three elementary aged girls and one older schooled brother. They live right in the middle of Nebraska. The mom and I talked for a while and decided to send biographies around Labor Day, a Summer/Fall box at the beginning of November and a Winter/Spring box in mid-May. We are so excited about this project! Esme and I are having a great time choosing items to include in the box. Anyone who has ideas please email me! We'll update the project here on our blog. Since Esme is in the beginning stages of learning to write, I decided to do her biography as an interview. Here are some of her answers:

How old are you?
Five. And a half.

Where do you live?
At home - in a house.

Who is in your family?
My mommy, daddy, and me.

Do you have an extended family?
Nonna, Grandma, Auntie Lisa, Dylan.

Do you have any close friends?
Sarah.

What do you like to play?
I like to play princess dolls and legos.

Do you have a favorite game?
I Spy Bingo.

Where are some of your favorite places?
Friendly's, Nonna's house, Mount Tom

Do you play any sports?
Soccer and swimming.

Do you do any other activities?
Daisy Girl Scouts. Lego League.

Do you have a favorite movie?
Yes. Ariel and Enchanted.

Do you go to church?
Yes. And Sunday School.

What makes you laugh really hard?
Talking funny.

Do you have a favorite dinner?
Spaghetti and [turkey] meatballs.

Do you have a favorite color?
Yes. Orange!

What is your favorite time of day?
Reading time.

What is your favorite season?
Fall. Do you know why? Because I can jump in piles of leaves.

What are some of your favorite books?
Fancy Nancy, Seymour Makes New Friends, I Spy, Super Completely and Totally the Messiest, Paddington

What do you like to do with your family?
Go out. I like to eat at restaurants. I like to go to the Family Restaurant.

Do you like to take trips? Where have you been?
Yes. I have been camping.

What do you want to do when you grow up?
I want to buy clothes for grownups. I want to be a hairdresser.

Do you want to have children? How many?
Yes. I want to have two. One girl. One boy.

Do you have any pets?
I have Pekoe.

What is Pekoe?
A kitty.

What do you like about homeschooling?
I like doing my new math. [first curriculum]

What is something you're good at?
Swimming.

What is something you're not good at?
I'm not good at writing twos.

Is there anything else we should know about you?
I play Barbies every day.

This layout is soooo old! I'm not even sure which summer these photos were taken. I remember it being a super fun day, and that I was so excited to scrap it right away. Then when I got home I printed the pics, got the layout about half done, and put it in a drawer. Over time I have slowly added additional elements, making it a strange mix of my old and more developed styles. It's finally done! (Except I still have to go back and look for that date!)

Next time you see Esme....

Ask her a basic difference between a deciduous and coniferous tree. I did my first full Project Learning Tree lesson with her this weekend. We searched for pine cones and found several different ones on the ground at camp. We compared and contrasted them and used them to identify two local types of trees. We started her nature journal - she both copied words into it and illustrated.

A Full Summer

Esme is staying busy this summer. In June she finished up soccer and Daisies, complete with her first Girl Scout camping trip. She has done two weeks of swimming lessons, a Junior Rangers program, Vacation Bible School, and continued with Lego League. She has ten stamps in her park passport and will be getting a couple more this weekend.

In addition to bringing Esme all over the place and being involved in all of her activities, I was also fortunate enough to get to attend a Project Learning Tree workshop. This is a wonderful environmental education program. I left certified to present the K through 8 curriculum. I learned so much in six short hours. I left overwhelmed by all the things I want to learn!! This weekend I will start teaching Esme how to classify and identify different types of trees.

Who says summer is for relaxing?!?

I can't wait to go camping!! We have only been on one trip this year but we have a couple more trips planned. Esme and I are pretty much obsessed with Mexican food so we made a new breakfast burrito recipe to eat a camp. We make it for her sans egg. We start with marinated chicken the night before, and use the leftovers. You need:

1 medium flour tortilla per person
1 egg per person
the leftover chicken
shredded cheese of your choice
rice (we like to use boil in a bag while we're camping)
taco sauce or salsa (optional)

Wrap the tortillas in foil and heat til they're warm. Heat up the chicken in the skillet, and boil the rice. Scramble the eggs, and they layer all ingredients in the tortilla, folding up the sides and wrapping the whole thing together. Serve with fruit. This is a hearty breakfast without too much cleanup.

The Project Learning Tree workshop was amazing!! I am so thankful that I got to go! If you haven't heard of this program, check it out here. I highly recommend that anyone who works with children and is interested in nature and the environment try to find a class.

One of the things I learned was how to teach children to classify trees. In the beginning, the names of the trees aren't even important. It's important that they observe what makes each tree unique and different from the others. I never realized how many important features of leaves there are! I learned to identify 2 new kinds of trees myself.

Another thing I learned about was observing changes in a natural setting. The instructor talked about finding a "sitspot" - a place you return to over and over and observe the changes from season to season, year to year, and make your own special place in the world.

My mom requested an altered monogram for her birthday - I made another version but I wasn't happy with it so I decided to give it another go.

Did this page as part of tonight's cyber crop with Lisa - it's a scraplift of a Vicki Boutin layout you can see here. I love doing layouts with blocks like this.

Our First Math Curriculum!!

I am super excited!! This past year we've followed the Massachusetts Frameworks for what we studied in Math, and it went well. I feel Esme was getting the hang of number sense and starting to understand how it all fits together. However, I decided that as she goes forward I would really like something structured for her. I am sure that if I buckled down I could develop my own program for her, but there are already so many out there, already developed, that are just wonderful. I've had the opportunity to look at different curricula through other homeschoolers, but ultimately decided on the one that I am most comfortable with, because it is the one I use at school. The Houghton Mifflin First Grade Math books are on the way to our house now!! I can't wait to get started!

I am WICKED excited. I just found out about some ultra cool educator workshops through Project Wild and Project Learning Tree. Theoretically I am going to learn so I can teach Esme and perhaps a group of homeschoolers or my Girl Scouts, but I am just excited that **I** get to go learn new stuff!!

I am suffering from a bit of apathy when it comes to my MMM entry. I really want to enter but I'm having trouble finding the motivation when my scrap area is such a mess. I want totally rearrange my entire house.

DCR's Park Passport Program

We are so glad we discovered this program! It has inspired our whole family to be excited about visiting our state parks!! We got a park pass for the first time this year, and have already visited several this year. It also works very well with our love of camping and letterboxing. You can get a passport by visiting any state park or by signing up here. Then every time you visit a different state park you unlock the box and stamp the image into your passport. We love the designs chosen for the stamps. We also go to learn about the No Child Left Inside program which is also super cool.

We rarely have the opportunity to go to the movies, and we were so glad we went to see "The Fall" this past Sunday. We hadn't heard much about it until we read what was playing at Amherst Cinema, but we watched the trailer and decided to give it a try. This was one of the most visually beautiful movies I have ever seen. The scenery and the costumes were unbelievable! I don't know why she isn't pictured on the poster, but the true lead in this movie was a little girl around 5 years old. Ethan and I were so impressed with her acting abilities. The movie has two stories intertwined, one about the little girl and a stunt man who meet in a hospital, and the other story he tells the little girl, filmed as she imagines it. We would highly recommend this movie!

I was worried that Esme wasn't going to have enough summer activities this year, but so far she's still got lego league, she'll do eight days of swimming lessons, and now she's going to do Junior Rangers. I think we're okay after all.

I am so excited to be out of school and have a chance to actually do Esme's lessons for a while! This year we divided our homeschooling activities almost perfectly in half - I did the research and lesson plans and Ethan taught Esme the lessons. We are about to start a new unit so I have some research to do, and then I'm looking forward to getting started on lessons next week! I am so lucky to have this summer off!

Today was my last day of school. I left school and went to pick Esme up at the library. When I got out of the car it was just starting to rain. I went into the chapel and said a prayer for all the students I've taught this year, and asked God to specially protect and guide 2 or 3 that were struggling. Then I walked out into the rain, and into the middle of a field so that it could pour down on me and wash away all the stress and tension of the last year, and leave me ready to start my summer. While I was in the rain I felt overwhelmed and grateful for my wonderful family that I was about to go inside to see, and so thankful for the opportunity to have this summer with Esme. When I went inside Ethan's whole desk was covered with Polly Pocket paraphernalia.

Gym and Swim

Esme finished up gym and swim this week. A local YMCA offers a class for homeschoolers during the day, and this was Esme's first experience playing typical gym games in a group and swimming with an instructor in a pool. Most of the kids were older so Esme didn't get a huge amount of individual attention, but she really liked the swimming teacher and he made sure to spend some time working with her each week. This summer she'll take swimming lessons with a group of kids her age and at her experience level - we're hoping maybe she'll have the same instructor.

One of our new favorite things to do is letterboxing. We find clues at www.letterboxing.org and have successfully found two. I took my class letterboxing and planted two along the way.