Summer is gone but the memories aren't

 So we made a trek down to Hilton Head this summer and stayed at our beloved Disney Resort. Did you even know they had a Disney Resort there?  This year we were joined by my parents and one nephew. It was a large crowd but with a 3 bedroom villa we had room to spare.

Of course the beach is wonderful but there are so many other things that we love to do when we stay at this resort. The main pool is great because it has a fabulous slide. 

It  also offers many great activities for the kids. Wildman and Chickie opted for a wildlife tour out in the marsh to see some nature close up. Wildman turned out to be a pretty darn good fiddler crab catcher. We also got some real crabbing accomplished out on the dock. This little guy needed a little direction to find his way back to the water and he was not happy about the suggestion made with the shoe! 

One cute little craft the girls made were these "seashell in my pocket" things. Super cute and now holding a place of honor on my kitchen windowsill.

All in all I would say it was another memorable summer vacation that add to all the other fabulous ones we have had on Hilton Head!

Crazy School Days

School is fully underway and we are off to a productive start. I have the girls helping with the younger boys although Mini Monster is the most interested in do "projects".
Here he is with Chickie and Big Mac doing calendar.

Wildman is working hard on his writing, controlling his grip, and is finally beginning to get sounding out. His tendency toward being auditory has made it a tough road as he sounds out words WITHOUT staring at them like most kids do. One glance and then he has to pull his eyes away. Phonics Road 1 has been working for him very well!! We have a ton of vowel teams in our vault(ee,ai,aw,au,ow,ou,ay,oy,oi...) and he is beginning to pick up speed decoding. I use some laminated sentence strip pieces to create a word walk that he has to travel and read. In there I have included sight words that are useless in terms of phonics. Have, from, some, where, there, have, and others.

For Nature study I have opted to go with a Simply Charlotte Mason approach in addition to what Oak Meadow offers. He would do nature all day if he could. I LOVE these books but sadly our library only has 2 and I will be paying dearly to get more as most are out of print. Crinkleroot is the cutest character ever!

They are always interested in flowers and when Grandma's cactus did its once a year bloom we had to go over a look!

Patty Cake, patty cake, Baker's Man...

We have all heard this little rhyme but do we really know who the heck the Baker's Man is? Apparently my little man does and he has drawn a picture for you!

Summer Fun at the Fair!

My plans to work through the summer fizzled. It was too hard to have 2 kids home from PS NOT doing work, as well as the whole neighborhood being off too. This is why I long to move far, far away from other people...but I digress.
Summer has been a fast and furious few weeks of fun for sure!

At my urging the girls entered the county fair and alas they won!!!

 Here Mac won a first for her stamped card. This was a good category since not many kids in this division even bothered with stamped crafts! That netted her $4 which was a pleasant surprise.

She also entered a pastel drawing of a pineapple. It was really quite good but we only got an honorable mention.





Chickie whipped off a sweet poem about a baby bird and won 1st! She was very excited by this. Not surprising that there were very FEW entries for poetry in her age range. Novices-lol.

 Even Grandma won a 1st with her hand hooked rug that she designed.

Frogs, frogs, and more frogs!~

We have frogs! Through some trial and error we have managed to get 3 of the 16 tadpoles to frogdom. It was a lesson in patience, especially for me. It requires daily water cleaning, boiling and freezing lettuce, and careful observation to catch them at the right time so they don't drown. Our first casualty was the one tadpole that appeared to be crazy and was swimming in circles non stop. Then we had the 3 that went belly up due to water conditions-sigh. Then we had the poor little guy who converted to lungs and didn't get up onto the rocks. He became a meal for his family-YUCK!Here is what they look like when they first get front legs. It is an odd thing to watch. It seems like the legs develop under the skin and kind of pop out, but not both at the same time. They spend a few hours as 3 legged frogpoles. We did realize that once the tail starts to wrinkle and get thin that it will be a matter of hours. That prompted us to put them in a holding tank where we also realized that they are both gill/lung at that point! We then move them into a more permanent tank with a little pond and less water around the edges. Here is our first froggie who is about the size of my pinkie finger nail! I bought some food and we are hoping they will begin eating soon(we now have 3 frogs complete).

Owls in the family....

No we did not add owls to our already crazy house, but we are reading a book by that name. I added the link to it over there on the right in my Amazon slideshow. Anyway, I decided there would be not better time to dissect owl pellets than now! They look really gross when they are unwrapped but they are quite light and really just a mass of dried fur and bone. We used a wooden stick and tweezers to pull them apart slowly and a chart to try and see what we were getting. That kit is also linked over there on the right.Big Mac found a skull and it was mostly intact, which was cool. Even Wildman got in on it with a careful hand!
Nature seemed to be on our side today as Chickie walked out the door and stumbled upon a bird egg sitting in the grass. Since it was cracked and obviously liquid in the middle we cracked it open to take a look.

Magic Schoolbus Kits-Going Green

I cannot say how much I love these kits! I am not a sciency person who just can't wait to do experiments. These very affordable kits are absolutely the best thing for a person like me. There is something in there for all of the kids to learn. This past week we ventured into the Going Green kit.
We started by setting up our compost tube that we need to observe for the next few months.

It will be interesting to see the process as we are unable to see into our large composter out back.

Then we moved on the paper making activity which wasn't as green as it should have been since we had to rip up perfectly good construction paper since they didn't want it to look like newspaper. Now that I think of it, I am not sure how that is even considered a green activity in the end since you use quite a bit of water and electric. Oh well.
 

Our little froggie wanna-be's!

We recently became owners of 16 amazingly cute tad poles. I have always been fascinated by these little critters and wanted to raise them. Not really sure if I bargained for 16...but here goes nothing!

It remains to be seen what we will do with the little guys once legs start to appear and we have to make their environment a bit more frog friendly. My biggest fear is that they will drown! Right now we are feeding them boiled lettuce that we chop down and they hang on it eating like nursing babies. Pretty funny to watch. The plan is to put them into a deeper tank of some sort once they are close to changing. The kids want to keep frogs but I really doubt I can keep up with feeding my own 6 kids plus 16 frogs!

I went online and grabbed this nature study unit in hopes of gleaning as much out of this as we can. I love Shining Dawn units!

Reviewing the why of it all....

Recent events have me reconsidering the "why" behind the decision to homeschool. I used to think that it was superior education. While I still believe I can give my kids a more tailored and generally better education, I no longer feel this is the driving force. I want them with me; with the family. Time is flying and soon I will have one graduating.
That terrifies me. I feel like I have missed out on so much because he spends all of his time away from the family and at school. I wish I could take back those days. Soccer Star and Mini Monster get along so well and I am afraid that he will flee the nest and lose connection with the littlest. What I really love about homeschooling the youngers is that they learn to live and communicate better with their siblings. I don't have that. I don't even speak to one of my brothers and rarely see the other. We have nothing in common. So much for the great socialization that public provided. I learned to disconnect from my siblings and my family is what I learned. I barely remember being at home once I could drive! I want more for my kids. I want them to be friends and have more than what I have with my siblings.
Another change in thinking is that I really don't value or put much stock in the overwhelming pursuit of a 4 year school. WASTE of money for the most part. So much can be done at CC for a fraction of the price.
That said, I do have 2 in public school and hate it every day they walk out the door. My greatest wish would be that they came home and spent their days with us, lunches outside in the sun, and impromptu field trips to fun places. I just miss them.

Week 1 of Oak Meadow

Well we completed our first week of Oak Meadow and I am very happy. It will take some time to get the feel for how days/weeks should go but I know it will be more relaxing than the classical pace.
Big Mac began IEW writing this week as well and I am hoping that will give her guidance and confidence in her writing. She likes the history element of OM and I am only picking and choosing which grammar we do since some of it is review of what she already knows. She continued with 5 lessons and some corrections in Horizons math and I look forward to her switching over to Teaching Textbooks next year. We already have Mr. Q' science and she enjoys the style of writing so she continued her study of biomes and did some work with food chains that we will continue next week.

Chickie is a total writer/creator/independent thinker. She has a poem, from the OM syllabus that I copied for her, and is turning it into a booklet by researching and drawing or printing pics of the flowers mentioned. She even discovered that the earliest blooming flower we have out front is a windflower! We made grapefruit bird feeders and have been patiently waiting for visitors with little luck. I think perhaps our backyard might be a better place.

Wildman has been a bit under the weather and did not do much this week. He is ahead by OM standards since K and 1st are a slower pace than what I had been doing. He has a knack for math and we are continuing with Singapore since he likes it. He also love any Burgess animal story and asks for those to be read. He addressed an envelope to his friend by himself and spelled out "Dilin" for Dylan yesterday and I was impressed. He can sound out words but has never tried in writing by himself.
I ditched Caesar's English for Big Mac and have listed it for sale. Instead I ordered Sadlier Vocab Workshop to give her a boost since she is a reluctant reader and lacks extensive vocabulary. Looking ahead to Phonics Road 3 I can see that we may be crunched to do IEW, PR, and Sadlier all at once. It is MUCH more involved than PR 2. I really like what I see and the writing picks up BIG TIME at this level.
With any luck I will be posting more about our OM days and feeling the release of stress!

Back to blogging and ditching it all!

After a long break and some chaos in my train of thought I am back in full force. I came to the realization that a "rigorous" classical education is not what 2 of my kids can handle. I also learned that I was doing more stressing, more planning, and more yelling. Where is the love of homeschooling when the days are long and frustrating?? I was trying to piece together so many different things I was just not able to keep my sanity or focus. Solution? Oak Meadow.
Oak Meadow is  more relaxed curriculum that is all laid out for me and will get the job done while not sucking the life out of us. I am adding in Phonics Road(for now) for the grammar/writing tweak and we will continue with Meet the Masters and our current math/science. I also have Big Mac starting on IEW History based lessons to get her into more writing. I will see where OM takes us drop the writing from one of them if it gets to be too much.
Anyway, having spent last week in Disney and then coming home to order new curriculum...well we did little this week other than math and reading. I am all set for next week!

Science is...well...fun!

When I would hear nature study I would cringe. I mean how do you measure and evaluate such an animal? You don't and that is the beauty of it. You look, listen, enjoy, and just revel. We took a hike through a local park and the things the kids notice now is just, well, a homeschool thing. Here is some of what we saw.

It appears to be an egg sack we think? Cool to say the least. A great variety of fungi and stuff went well with our recent discussions.

Okay so maybe that cute thing holding the leaf was not found out in the woods....but an awesome example of nature anyway! Much to Chickie's dismay, these were not just seeds that she touched, but fox scat. The big eeeewww for the day but educational to say the least. We also encountered a frog, lots of water spots, geese flying overhead in the classic V formation, and showers of falling leaves. Wonderful time spent in the woods!

School so far...

When we started the year I was bent on trying to get Big Mac to be the perfect classical student. WE WILL be a note taking, encyclopedia reading, outlining machine!!! No. Not happening. She is not that type of student. Regroup....
Ok, I am backing down on my classical aspirations and decided that Charlotte Mason is more my style. I rearranged the classroom and am bringing a LOT more living books into our lives. I am making read alouds a priority as well. I have turned back to WWE 3 for Big Mac as well. WWS was not working.
Things that are working are:
Phonics Road
Latin for Children
Horizons math
Nature study
and this week we start Trail Guide Pathways of Exploration! So excited!!

I am letting nature dictate Nature Study and we go with the flow. Since squirrels abound I got a bunch of books on squirrels, including this one which looks really good!

Our rotation schedule seems to be working out well. This week Chickie is off and she does really well at entertaining Mini monster. It is a bit of work keeping track of who did what in history since I run them together, but since Big Mac needs more depth I can use this week to do that with her.

Wildlife pastry? Not quite!

Here are some pretty peculiar nature finds. Since they grew in the leaves under a cherry tree it was safe to assume that they were some form of fungi. But which one? Thank goodness for Google. After searching online and in the Handbook of Nature Study we concluded that there delicate looking things were earthstar mushrooms! The ones shown at left are the miniscule variety. The ones we have are about twice that size.
The small top pouch contains spores that puff out as it dries out. Looks like we will be stopping for some unscheduled nature study tomorrow as we sketch and research fungi! Oh the boundless freedom of homeschooling!

AHHHHH spiders

Quite in line with the current nature theme and the fact that we are nearing Halloween, spiders abound! We have a big, ugly, orb weaver on a bush on the side of our house. I guess to his mom he is pretty-lol. His beautiful web is about 2 feet across. Later in the day we went out to check on him and he was not alone!







He had a meal with him! Stink bug roast to be exact! EEEWWW.
The girls did their own drawings of Mr. Spider in their nature journals and we will keep checking on his progress!