Stella comes home!!

On December 19th, Flat Stella came home:

Stella had been in Montana, with our good friend, Anika:

Together, they went to Anika's favorite coffee shop...

They spent some time in the snow:

...and climbed a frozen waterfall:

She came home with a new winter coat, which sent Mane scurrying to make one for Stanley, too! 

...and Mane also set to work filling their Christmas stockings!

Stella came home with a nearly full journal, lots of other photos, AND an email address! She had such a fantastic adventure! Thanks, Anika!!

Once they were back together again, Stanley & Stella had a blast lighting Hanukkah & Advent candles with us, playing dreidel, and eating pistachios from the Christmas Goat!

Stanley & Stella

Remember Flat Stanley? Did you think he'd disappeared? Well, he & his friend Stella are still around, and have made some of our field trips with us this year...

Stanley and Stella on the Osceola Train:

And on the Red Wing Trolley:

And they accidentally spent a week in someone else's purse:

Last spring, Stanley went to Mexico with Mane's grandpa, and this fall we're hoping to send one of them by mail to visit our friend in Montana! Stay tuned for more Stanley and Stella updates...

Flat Stanley

We began "rowing" Flat Stanley this week. Aurora made her own "flat" people:





We're going to use the flat people as we study more geography and family history. You see our geography wizardry book in the photo, along without our newest homeschooling gadget, the Samsung Galaxy Tablet!

Mane is a strong auditory & kinesthetic learner. This is, in part, because she struggles with reading. I, in turn, have been struggling with homeschooling her because it's very time-intensive to have to read everything to her. SO, the tablet is part of the answer to easier homeschooling for us. We have Story of the World on audio. We downloaded a FREE audio Bible from Faith Comes by Hearing. And we received, as a gift, some of the Your Story Hour Bible Story CDs.

We use Math U See for our math curriculum, and we ordered the song CD that goes along with the curriculum. We didn't use it for adding and subtracting, but we are using it a LOT for multiplication. Mane can learn almost anything that's set to music!

For English grammer, Mane has been listening to The Case of the Missing Parts of Speech, which is a musical I was in as a child and is the reason I know all my parts of speech!

We check audio books out from the library all.the.time.

We use Hooked on Phonics (HOP) for a reading curriculum. This year's HOP has a CD-ROM, and Mane both hears and sees her reading lessons and activities.

All of these things have helped take some pressure off me and moved Mane toward greater independence with her learning. Except for the Hooked on Phonics, all of these things can be uploaded to the tablet, and Mane can use them independently. As she becomes more of a reader, we'll also be using the tablet's Kindle application for e-reading.

Wee Gillis

Our Five in a Row studies have begun with the tale of Wee Gillis, a young Scottish lad, who can't decide if he wants to be a Higlander, like his father's relatives, or a Lowlander, like his mother's relatives.

The book is full of possibilities for our studies over the next few weeks. We've begun with an exploration of Scotland. Mane has drawn a flag and dug up a pile of images of bagpipes, kilts, tartans, and clan emblems on google images.

We've been reading our way through Scotland: Enchantment of the World by R. Conrad Stein. Last year we studied a number of biomes (ecosystems), including deserts and prairies. So, we're paying special attention to the biomes of Scotland, and we'll be making biome posters (or maybe a biome book) this year.

Our history studies just happen to intersect with our studies of Scotland, as well. We're still using The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child: Volume 1: Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emporer. (Also known as Story of the World or SOTW.) We're currently studying ancient Rome, and, of course, a very famous structure in Scotland is Hadrian's Wall, which the Romans built because they could not conquer the Scots, but they really wanted to keep them under control somehow. We've been looking at maps of the Roman empire and marveling that the Romans were not able to conquer Scotland when they had already conquered so much of the world.

Last night, Mane and I began a family tree on-line at geni.com. Since Mango's family comes from Scotland, our study of Scotland has peaked Mane's interest in family, ancestors, and genealogy.

In a totally other direction, a theme of Wee Gillis is the way Wee Gillis' lungs develop because he has to call the sheep in the lowlands and he has to hold his breath while "stalking stags" in the highlands. His well-developed lungs eventually make him able to play the biggest bagpipes in all of Scotland. Sooooo, as you may have guessed, we'll be studying lungs. Mane's interest in the human body has grown steadily since she was very small. This year we'll be making posters or booklets of the human body systems (similar to what we'll be doing for biomes). She's already studied digestion, the senses, the heart, and reproduction. So, we'll be tying it all together and adding the remaining systems this year. I anticipate that biomes and body systems will be semester-long or, perhaps, year long studies this year.

Clocks, American History, and Bird Watching

Today Mane and I had a long, long discussion about WHY it might be important to tell time on a regular clock, as most of the clocks in her life are digital. I've taught her to tell time TWICE, but it hasn't really stuck because she doesn't keep using it on a regular basis. She basically told me that time-telling with the hands on a clock is an outdated skill, and she doesn't need it! I explained that sometime in her life it might be really important (in the absence of digital clocks, for example) to be able to tell time. That may not have been particularly motivating, but the online games I found for time-telling were pretty successful in helping her brush-up on her skills.

********************************

We've continued reading Paul Revere's Ride, and now we've started reading America Alive by Jean Karl. We're covering some American history in fast forward in order for the stories of Paul Revere, the Declaration of Independence, and the 4th of July to make sense. So far, I've really enjoy this book, as it gives an honest history, beginning with how the first people probably came to the Americas via a temporary land bridge between what is now Russia and Alaska. The story does not get hung up on names and dates, but it references the important things while maintaining a storytelling feel. Mane and I sat with her inflatable globe between us as I read, and we found everything on the globe as we went along. Today we made it as far as the Spanish and the French coming to the Americas. The next chapter is about the English. Tomorrow I plan to print a map and have her draw lines and label some of the people groups coming from Europe to the Americas. Since she enjoys maps, this should be fun for both of us!

********************************

We've been having a tremendously enjoyable time watching birds lately, too! A friend of mine gave Mane a bird watching journal for her birthday, and she has been steadily filling it up. As many of you know, we live in a duplex downstairs from my in-laws. A few days ago we went and sat on the upstairs porch with them and watched the birds. We saw several house finches, along with the usual chickadees, cardinals, sparrows, and robins! A few weeks ago my father-in-laws snapped some photos of a wild turkey in the yard!!

Studying the Declaration of Independence...

Around the dinner table...

Over the month of June, we'll be rowing Paul Revere's Ride. I wanted to do this last year, but summer got busy, and we didn't have a plan. This year I have a plan, and we'll be covering some early history of America up through the Revolutionary War just in time for the 4th of July!

The Ugly Duckling

Yesterday we began "rowing" The Ugly Duckling.  This story is not part of our Five in a Row  curriculum, but I happened to find a unit study at the thrift store for The Ugly Duckling, and since it's spring, it seems like a good time to row a book about ducklings! We started by reading The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Anderson in A Treasury of Children's Literature. I have to say that I find this version of the story very compelling. It is beautifully written, and the theme is many-layered and rich. I got to thinking about how important the lesson of this story is for children (and grown-ups) - both that people are more than what we see on the outside, and that we are more than what people say about us. The Ugly Duckling had been teased so much about being ugly that he believed it, and it took the love and care of other swans to convince him that he wasn't ugly at all. I think we'll be spending some time on this story just to let it simmer, to talk about how the things we say affect other people, but also, how we can be secure enough in ourselves to let hurtful things go. And we'll be talking about how to bring healing to others and how to repair our own mistakes when we've said destructive things to others.

Today we read another version of the story and compared it to the one we read yesterday. Then we talked about swans, what baby swans are called, where swans live, etc... Mane had already looked them up in her North American Wildlife: Birds Field Guide book. She has declared swans to be her favorite birds (though we've been through this with cardinals, whooping cranes, eagles, and owls already)! Mane learned to make a simple sketch of a swan by beginning with the number 2, and she followed instructions for making a swan hat out of paper!

Tough times

We've been struggling for structure (have I written this before?) because it's been such an off year. The last few weeks have been challenging but productive. We're starting out every day with math & reading, followed by a break, then Story of the World (SOTW) or Five in a Row (FIAR). Whenever anything gets challenging Mane claims she's tired or she doesn't understand and wants to quit. These few weeks have been practice in perseverance. I'm insisting that she either go take a nap if she's that tired OR finish the work. I'm trying hard to avoid "school at home," monotonous drudgery of workbooks and assignments, but I do insist that math & reading practice need to happen. She doesn't balk at SOTW or FIAR...unless I try to get her to write something down or have a conversation with me. She wants me to read her stories and expect nothing of her. We've been doing that. Now I need to step it up. She's so proud of her school notebook when she actually puts work into it, but it's been like pulling teeth to get the work to happen. She's been in a slump. But, I guess, I have been, too...or, rather, one after another since November.

So, as I said, it's been tough but productive. It's been bumpy, but I'm seeing a trend toward more willingness to work, to have a Socratic conversation here and there, to look things up and write things down. I think we're seeing the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. We've both needed to dig our way through.

What have we been doing? Well, Mane will be moving on to lesson 21 in math by the end of the week. She's finishing up the 2nd Hooked on Phonics chapter book. (There are 2 chapter books in the middle of the 2nd grade level.) She's very proud of her reading and actually told me a few days ago that reading goes better for her if she practices every day. AND she announced that she can't wait to read big chapter books on her own. This is a huge increase in motivation. I've been trying to pace her carefully to keep her from tiring and continue her feelings of success.

We've been reading The Gullywasher for FIAR. We found some National Geographics about Mexican cowboys and U.S. cowboys and looked at the pictures. One article about Mexican cowboys told of a pilgrimage that many hundreds of Mexican cowboys make to a statue of Jesus in the mountains each year for Epiphany. So, Mane & I asked Vespera & Niteo if they'd heard of this pilgrimage. They both had, AND Niteo ended up telling us about a bicycle pilgrimage that he made to a sanctuary with a statue of Mary in Juquila, Mexico. He told us about the journey and the other people that went, and he looked up youtube movies for us to watch about it. Then Mane took a picture with Niteo, and she wrote a little paragraph about talking with him in her school notebook.

Later we read a book about cowboys in the "Wild West" and listened to cowboy/cowgirl songs. Mane printed some pictures that she liked from google images for her notebook, and she drew the 4 major trails on a U.S. map that the cowboys(girls) followed to bring the cattle to market each year.

We dug out this timeline that I printed a long time ago for our history studies and marked several key events from SOTW that we've studied this year. We looked at where the Greeks fall on the timeline and began talking about the beginning of the Olympics.

Yesterday we watched footage of the torch relay for this year's Olympics. We watched the torch lighting in Olympia and talked about how the torch is lit using a mirror and the sun's light. Then we found Greece and Canada on the map. We found Vancouver, along with several other places where the torch has been.

The plan is to pick some Olympic athletes to follow and learn some things about them before the games begin. We'll record the opening ceremony tomorrow night (because we're going to be our with friends) and watch some on Saturday.

Weaving

We found a lovely book about weaving at the library called Kids Weaving by Sarah Swett. Mane completed her first weaving project - weaving a card for Mango - after we read the first portion of the book. The book includes some history of weaving and weaving terminology - a perfect guide for kids AND adults!!



Mane has been writing common nouns, proper nouns, and verbs from A New Coat For Anna, as we have continued to row this book. I reviewed the book with her using the comprehension questions from the Five in a Row book and was AMAZED that she could remember what Anna's mother traded for each step in the process of making the coat after only reading the book twice. (I didn't ask her the questions after the first reading...hmmm, makes you wonder!)

Here's Mane's intro to the section in her notebook on A New Coat For Anna:

Today Mane is writing her own story with the steps for making applesauce...in the same manner as the steps to Anna's new coat.

We've been spending a lot of time with the Making Words book lately - practicing spelling and organizing words according to rhyming. Lately we've been using words that look more alike, and Mane has needed to really attend to letter order. She has a tendency to guess what word she's reading based on the first few letters. Today we did a much longer lesson because she just wanted to keep going. She took out her magnet letters & her little magnet board and used those rather than the letter cards. It's a nice, colorful change from the letter cards, and the magnets are more three dimensional.

We're on to lesson 17 in Math U See...rounding to the nearest thousand and ten thousand. We spent a long time with the math blocks this morning clarifying the concept of rounding and estimating. For some reason, the leap into ten thousands and hundred thousands is more difficult...perhaps because we've moved more into the realm of the abstract. I can't "show" her a hundred thousand math blocks. ;)

A Podcast about A New Coat for Anna

Warmth, Waiting & Woolly Friends: A New Coat for Anna

Posted using ShareThis

A New Coat for Anna

After a Christmas wedding, a car accident, and some medical crisis, we're back to some more academic type schooling this week. Mane is working through lesson 16 of MUS, and she's nearly halfway through the 2nd grade Hooked on Phonics. She's been painting most days with a daily watercolor calendar we bought at Barnes and Noble after Christmas. The calendar features famous watercolors and some helpful tips for trying your own similar painting.

Today we read A New Coat for Anna by Harriet Ziefert. We'll be rowing this book for the next few weeks. It's about a little girl who needs a new coat after World War II. Her family has no money. So, her mother barters for wool, then for the spinning, then for the weaving, and, finally, for the tailor to make the coat. It takes a year for Anna to get a new coat, but, in the end, she has a new coat and several new friends. Today Mane drew a picture in her school notebook to begin our pages on A New Coat for Anna.

Today we also continued our studies of early and ancient China. We read about the Great Wall of China in You Wouldn't Want to Work on the Great Wall of China! by Jacqueline Morley, and we looked at pictures of the terracotta army in The Emporer's Silent Army by Jane O'Conner. We talked about how being so terribly afraid of everything is what made the emporer Qin so cruel and ruthless and how we don't need to live our own lives in fear. Both books mentions some of the advantages of having an organized empire (standardized weights & measures, standardized money, better roads, better protection from invaders). We talked about how those things are good, but they would be better if the emporer had cared more about the people who were doing all the work to make those things happen. We did some comparing to the early rulers of Mesopotamia, as opposed to Hammurabi.

Plans I just need to write down for next week before I forget:
- Demonstrate how non-standardized measurements are a problem
- Talk more about acting out of fear vs. acting out of care and concern for people
- Learn more about weaving - maybe make our own weaving loom
- learn about making dyes (Anna's mother dyes the wool red with lingonberries in the book)

A Blur

The last two weeks have gone by in a blur...not full of activity, but full of sleep and recovery. I had my appendix out Novemeber 4th. I was sick for the two days prior to that. So, today marks 2 weeks since this whole thing started. I am still tired beyond belief, and homeschooling takes a great deal of energy. So, we're going slow...doing a lot of incidental learning and reading books.

So, on Novemeber 2nd, Mane and I began rowing Mirette on the High Wire. We read both Mirette on the High Wire and Starring Mirette and Bellini. We watched a bunch of youtube videos about the Wallenda family (famous for their high wire walking and seven-person pyramid) and other real life high wire walkers. Mane drew a picture of Mirette walking the high wire for her school notebook. My mom ended up coming over on Tuesday to help me out, and she read Mirette and Bellini Cross Niagara Falls and The Man Who Walked Between the Towers to Mane.

Tuesday night, Mango taught Mane about how the fluid of the inner ear helps people to balance. I think later this week I'll have her draw some pictures, maybe a picture explanation of how balance works.

For several days after I had my appendix out we talked about the appendix and the digestive system and laparoscopic surgery.

Mane played "store" with Mango and practiced reading and counting money. She continues to do a great deal of incidental reading on her own. Over the weekend, Mango worked with Mane on a business venture they'd like to start together, and they spend many hours busily creating a website. Mane did a great deal of the typing and spelling herself.

We continued reading The Hobbit together...

Today we read Mirette on the High Wire again. I printed a map for Mane's school notebook, and she circled all the places mentioned in the book. I wrote out all the places we've talked about (and several others that I already know that Mane knows) on index cards. Then I had her draw cards and find the places on the map. I asked her if each place we a continent, country, or city, and we talked again about the distinction between those things. Whenever she could find a place, she got to keep the card. I think we'll keep using this stack of cards and adding new places as we study them in Five in a Row and Story of the World.

We read The Painted Circus, which has a circus theme (to go with high wire walking) and is full of optical illusions. Then Mane showed them all to Vespera & Novio, who happened to be hanging around the house this morning. :)

As I was typing Mane, began lesson 12 in MUS...adding money. Tomorrow she'll take the test, as this is exactly the same as the addition she's been doing - only with a decimal point and a dollar sign. She had no trouble with the practice page.

Cork Trees

Did you know that cork comes from trees that grow in Spain & Portugal. In The Story of Ferdinand, Ferdinand likes to sit under a cork tree and smell the flowers. So, today we watched a youtube video on how corks are made:

Unschool

This week's schooling has looked largely like unschool. I'm impressed with the results and feeling comfortable with where this week went, even as I'm ready to get back into a schedule.

Mane read early readers from the library for her reading practice this week. She finished 1st grade Hooked on Phonics last week, and I wanted to spend a week reinforcing reading skills before moving to the 2nd grade materials. She's eager to get started, too, and I wanted to build that enthusiasm a little.

Mane is about ready to finish chapter 11 of MUS, after her huge leap in math lessons last week. I practiced reading price tags with her at Savers this week, and she's been practicing the money counting all on her own.

Monday night we took a close look at the section on India in the book Wonders of the Ancient World. Mango was with us and asked a lot of excited questions, which was good review for Mane AND an opportunity to find out more. Tuesday we had a friend from India come over to make Indian food with us:







We continued talking this week about Ferdinand and the country of Spain. Mane asked a lot of questions about how the Mexican people came to speak Spanish, since the Spanish language comes from Spain. So, we talked about how countries sometimes take over other countries, about the way that many European countries formed colonies all over the world, including the United States. I explained that Mexico used to be made up of the Aztec and Mayan people, just as the United States used to be a whole bunch of Native American tribes. We talked about why countries take over other countries, especially about how it usually involves taking the other country's natural resources. This led to a discussion of natural resources, naturally occurring elements, and the periodic table. Whew!!

Ferdinand

Yesterday we began rowing The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf.



This is a sweet little book, and it really ought to be in every child's library. It's a story of a young bull named Ferdinand, who grew up to love sitting under a cork tree smelling flowers rather than fighting like all the other bulls. Mane and I discovered today that Disney made a movie of the story, and you can watch it on youtube:



While we read the book for the second time to day, Mane picked out common & proper nouns, as well as the one interjection in the story. She drew a page for Ferdinand in her school notebook this morning while I read more to her out of the Jewish holidays book. She's finished memorizing Psalm 23, and we began work on The Lord's Prayer this morning.

Last week I didn't write here at all. It isn't that we didn't do anything, but, rather, that we were extremely busy. On Monday we did all our regular math & reading, read a book called A-Z India, and made fresh squeezed orange juice. We ended up talking about fractions while we made orange juice because we saw how much juice we got from one orange & then from two oranges, and we estimated how much would be needed to make a cup of orange juice. We talked more about how we know that a food is a fruit (because it has seeds in it) and printed a page of pictures of fruits with the seeds showing for her school notebook. We also split up the big long timeline we began two years ago and put it in a three ring binder in order to make it easier to add things to the timeline in the future.

Tuesday we went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art with some other homeschoolers. We made our way through a whole lot of the museum and then spent time letting the children play together in the family room at the Institute. It's so inspiring to see Mane recognize pieces of art that she's seen before and watch her discover new things. I'm always interested to see the types of things that interest her.

Wednesday we rode our bikes to Bible Study. When we got home Aurora's grandma came to pick her up and she went to spend the night with grandma so that Mango & I could go to the Education Minnesota conference on Thursday. I went to an absolutely excellent workshop on teaching U.S. history using picture books. The workshop was done by 6th grade teacher and children's book author, Pat Bauer, and her husband, a children's book illustrator, David Geister. After the workshop we went to the keynote address entitled "Life in the Next America," regarding the influence of immigration on America today by Ray Suarez. Here an interview with Ray Suarez here.

Friday we had a birthday party for Vespera. She had some friends come for dinner, a movie, and a sleepover! Mane got to watch reading Rainbow episodes and play, play, play for most of the day while we all made preparations for the party.

Today we have our homeschool group in the afternoon. Mane took test 7 in her math book & is ready to move on to lesson 8. She's about 2 weeks away from finishing 1st grade Hooked on Phonics, and then we'll be ready to begin the 2nd grade level!! Yeah! She's paying attention to signs and reading everything everywhere. We've seen tremendous improvement with practice and a solid program. The repetition of Hooked on Phonics seems to be the key to success for her.

Apple Trees

I'll review this week backwards starting with today! Right now, as I type, Mane is drawing a progression of pictures that show how rain makes applesauce, since we just finished the book...

The book is a bunch of silly talk, but in the end it turns out that rain DOES actually lead to applesauce. This is a 1965 Caldecott Honor book, and it lives up to its award!! The pictures are strange but fascinating, and the text makes us laugh every time!

Earlier in the day we read...
And we traced the trip the apples made from Iowa to Oregon on the map. We printed another map that shows the places where Johnny Appleseed planted apples.

Yesterday was full with the regular math and reading AND then the long bus ride to our homeschool group. On the bus we read a book about India...learning about how people lived, what they wore, what the government was like, and the kind of religions the people followed.

Homeschool group was a total blast!! We used the multipurpose room at a community center, but the rules have changed since last year. The kids cannot play with balls. We stood around scratching our heads for a while. Then the kids got out the tumbling mats and a bunch of chairs. They built houses and tents with the tumbling mats. Then they used one of the mats to set up a stage curtain, and a bunch of them worked out a play while the others lined up rows of chairs to watch. They *did* actually tumble on the mats for a while, too, and they played various and sundry animal games. I couldn't believe how the group of them could have so much fun with so little!!

On Monday we rode our bikes to Savers. It was a little cold and wet out, but we managed to go for a walk and collect leaves when we got home before it really started to rain. Mane made leaf rubbings and practiced identifying leaves:





We talked about various leaf shapes and how leaves from different trees turn different colors in the autumn.

That pretty much covers the basics of what we've been up to this week. Tomorrow we have a field trip to go on a tram ride to see the autumn leaves and then we'll learn about apple cidering!

Johnny Appleseed

Yesterday we read Johnny Appleseed: A Poem by Reeve Lindbergh, and began talking about autumn and trees and leaves and the varied topography of the United States. Mane made a picture in her notebook for Johnny Appleseed, and it was so cold that we had our first fire in the fireplace for the season. Mane laid out her notebook in front of the fire, and I fell in love with this idea of us homeschooling here in our cozy living room before a crackling fire...



We did a quick review of our history studies so far and put all the related papers in a binder, which will become our timeline. We looked over a National Geographic book about India, and learned more about how the people of India lived and what they believed. Mane did a word search activity from the back of the Story of the World Activity Book 1. This is good for remembering words associated with the history we've learned so far AND her reading and scanning skills.

Today we went to Bible study, had a picnic at the global market, and babysat for the friend of a friend. Now Mane is practicing reading with Grandma. She's starting to take pride in her reading!

I didn't write about Monday because it was filled with running errands and a long trip to the library, but, notably, Mane made a list of all our errands and checked them off as we went. She also sat in the car reading the map. Fun, practical reading practice. :)

The Prairie

I flipped through Mane's school notebook this morning so I could remember what exactly we've done with our week! We read Three Names again, and Mane wrote down common nouns and proper nouns as we read. We researched prairie plants, animals, and insects and made a page for each in the notebook. Briefly, we discussed the various biomes of the earth and printed a map.

This morning we did some more reading about water. We made a pie chart of how much of the earth is made of water. This was a great way to discuss percentages and fractions. Then we made pie charts for the percentage of water in women, men & babies. Mane had some fun guessing how much of herself is water, since she's not a baby and not yet a woman.

Mane drew a water molecule, and she explained to me all the things she already knows about water molecules in the solid, liquid and gas form. She tells me that Mango told her all about it, and she surely did know all her stuff! Then she asked why ice floats, and we found the answer in one of our many library books on water.

Finally, this morning we followed some instructions for watching bean seeds grow from her nature book. Place seeds in a jar between the wall of the jar and some blotting paper, pour water in the bottom of the jar, watch beans sprout and grow:

Homeschool in the midst of life

We finished out last week by reading books about the prairie and identifying plants and animals of the prairie.

Mane spent the weekend with Mango while I went back and forth to the hospital with my aunt. My uncle was in the hospital near our house. Mane did lots of reading with Mango and also had some good playground time!

Monday I brought Mane to the hospital with me and we looked at a book about marbles, since the children in Three Names played marbles. We played a game where one person hides some marbles in the their hand. The other person guesses how many they're hiding. If the guess is correct the guess-er gets to keep the marbles. If the guess is incorrect, the guess-er has to give the difference to the person who was hiding the marbles. I quickly discovered that this is a great way to teach and practice small number subtraction facts! Yeah for us, and my aunt was quite impressed!

My mom was at the hospital as well, and Mane was quite happy to show off her new reading skills by reviewing her most recent Hooked on Phonics stories with my mom. Then she did a math page while we were waiting to talk with doctors and getting ready to leave for lunch.

After lunch, Mane drew a picture of animals that live in the prairie and had a conversation with my uncle about herbivores and predators of the prairie.

Today we biked to the clinic and to Target. Mane is getting to know her way around very well. She's always been very observant of her surroundings. Now that we're biking she leads the way to most familiar destinations. We're both exhausted from a weird weekend, but homeschooling allows us to spread our learning out through the day rather than cramming it into the first 6 hours.

No Impact

Mane & I went to see No Impact Man together at the Walker Art Center on Wednesday. Earlier in the day we went to Bible Study, did some math & reading, reviewed to portion of the 23rd Psalm that she's learning, and then did some research about No Impact Man. We talked about the things we already do to reduce our impact on the environment, and Mane drew some pictures of those things in her school notebook - biking, walking, recycling, and using less electricity. We related this to Three Names by talking about the ways the world has changed since the time of Three Names. We used a chart from homeschoolshare.com to categorize things into how things were done in the past and how they're done in the present (things like washing clothes and getting water).

At the Walker Art Center we wandered around the sculpture garden after securing our tickets. We arrived super early (by bus) because we wanted to be sure to get tickets. The tickets were free, and the art center was expecting a full house. As it turned out, we didn't have to come as early as we did, but it was fine because we played Swap & Fluxx until we got our tickets and then ran around the sculpture garden until showtime. Mane drew some pictures during the film, and she listened attentively to the film maker after the film. As a special treat, Colin Beaven, the author of the book & subject of the film, made a guest appearance. So, we got to see him live and in person. Mane was quite impressed. ...and she wants to start composting our food waste.

Thursday we met up with some friends and spent the whole afternoon at the beach! This felt like the second special treat of the week - to have it warm & beautiful enough in September to spend another day at the beach! Mane came home with a little collection of shells and a rock...and a darker suntan!

Today Mane played with the children of some friends of ours who are home on furlough from Russia. They have been missionaries in Russia since they got married several years ago, and now they have 3 children. The woman is planning to homeschool her children. So, we had a nice conversation about homeschooling while the kiddos played.

Later we'll be driving (gasp!) Vespera to school and stopping by the bank and the library. We have been SO busy this week that it feels like we've hardly gotten anything done, but I suppose it only feels that way if I think of seeing educational films and playing with friends, and exploring the beach as nothing...which I don't. So, I guess we did plenty, just not what we planned. ;)