Biking with the Kids
Every time the weather gets cool and crisp, I think of the White Stripes song, “We are gonna be Friends“; I don’t know why – we’re not in school, lol. Anyway – we’ve been out as much as possible – biking and/or hiking every day, soaking up the cool weather. It is so lovely outside; I just can’t say enough about it. The kids have even dragged out long-sleeved clothing. I’m thinking that might be a bit premature but who am I to criticize?
We got the house all decorated – it’s officially fall-like now. We still have a couple of crafts to put together to really make it feel festive, but there is definitely a fall-theme around here. This is just my favorite time of year – so much crafting to be done and baking – I generally don’t like to cook, but I like ‘craft cooking’ – cookies, candy, baking… that’s really fun. especially since my darling (and much neglected of late) friend Linda showed me how easy candy-making can be. Just take something (anything, really – well, anything edible), melt some chocolate in the microwave, dip and voila! Real, handmade candy. So easy, even the kids can do it. It’s messy, especially when you add food coloring or flavorings, but so much fun and so very tasty.
We’ve also been working on costumes; Peagreen has thus far always chosen some character that is hard (read: impossible) to find commercially, so we’re usually making his costumes from scratch. Last fall, he was Luigi, which was thankfully easily located. This year, it’s a Mario theme again, but a new? character he calls ‘yellow flying Toad’. Here’s a picture:
I converted his bike helmet into an approximation - all we need now is the propeller on top. He’s pretty jazzed about it as-is though. Truthfully, I’m mighty pleased with it myself. The helmet was silver; I Mod-Podged white paper over the black stripes and over the holes, then with yellow tissue paper. I painted the decals on the sides (mostly free-hand – impressed much?) then Mod-Podged agin to seal it all. I added his name to the front and the date on the back. It’s a one-of-a-kind, for sure! I picked up a yellow Old Navy track-suit jacket from Goodwill a few days ago, and a yellow tee-shirt; all we need now is yellow sweatpants (or I’ll make some) and red socks (to cover his shoes) and he’s good to go.
Aww – I love photo angles like this one that make his face still look so round and baby-ish. My baby’s no baby anymore. Boo {tear}
I’m working on a Queen of Hearts get-up. Not the new Tim Burton Queen, more a cross between the Disney Alice and Wonderland and her:
Either way, I think I’m getting this wig:
LittleBoyBlue is planning on being a Transformer (but that’s not set in stone). He’s mentioned Bumblebee; how odd if both my boys end up yellow this year, lol. No clue what Loverly Husbands’ plans are… he did promise to costume for the party though, so we’ll see.
This post is brought to you by the letters, H, S and A; and by the number 4. We’re off to the Houston Zoo in a bit with our fabulous homeschool group, so look for a re-cap of that tomorrow sometime.
Ciao, baby!
~h
Wrapping up the Weekend
… with a few more pictures from our wonderful vacation…
Today is the last day of Loverly Husband’s vacation and tomorrow is back to the daily grind. We’ve had such a great week!
Warmly,
~h
“… and the rain, rain, rain came down, down, down”
“… in rushing, rising riv’lets, til the river crept out of its bed and crept right into Piglet’s!” Awww, I love that song. And Winnie the Pooh. And Piglet and Tigger, too.
Anyway… so with our grand plans of yester’evening, we woke up to wet, wet, wet. Not pouring rain, but seeping rain. No big huge wet splatters – you can totally walk around and miss all the raindrops – but if you put a pot on the porch and come back 20 minutes later, there’s an inch of water in it. It’s THAT kind of rain. Persistent. And…wet.
After considering the many bits of advice and how-to stories I’ve found on sites like The Labyrinth Society and this video, which is totally awesome and time-lapsed, I decided that it might be a good idea to start small and maybe in chalk on the driveway to see how big and how much work (kinda) it was going to take. Unfortunately, chalk and rain do not mix well, so we opted for an indoor masking-tape labyrinth on the schoolroom floor. It’s not perfect, and it is small – very small for an adult to walk, but the kids love it, and truthfully, so do I.
I think when we built it outside, we’re going to make at least 7 circuits, and it will need to be much bigger than this – I would like to be able to sit in the middle. This one is 3 circuits, and is about 5 or 6 feet across.
I drew it out in dry-erase marker on the floor and then taped the lines out. It took about half an hour or 45 minutes – not bad, I think.
Despite the rain, I was itching to be outside. We donned our … well, nothing special actually – just flip-flops and play clothes, and gathered our gardening tools and started preparing our new veggie/flower bed. I have had these plastic “wrought iron” garden border fences for the longest time. I’ve occasionally toyed withe the idea of planting a flower bed and ended up not sticking with it (warning you now that it’s highly likely that this same scenario will play out again with this new gardening endeavor). I think I had alligator eyes before though and planned out way too much for such a novice. This time, we’re doing a small (SMALL) patch of ground right at our porch. Small enough for me and the boys to at least get our hands good and dirty – and boy, did we!
IN the slush and mud, we picked pokeys (sweet gum balls) out of our space. Our ground had a lot of clay in it, so I wanted to make a raised bed of sorts. I’m sure we’re going about this all wrong, but it’s done now. We marked off our space and filled with (mostly decayed/ing) leaves.
On top of that, we added a layer of newspaper to help hold the new soil we were laying. We added about 3 inches of soil (not deep enough, I know) and some coconut husk planter liners to start seeds in with an organic seed starting mix. I added some petunias and marigolds and started some tomatoes, bell peppers and green onions and the boys started pumpkins, carrots, watermelon, cantaloupe and radishes. I know, I know – too late to start some of that – it’s not like we expect this whole big eatery to bloom in our yard. But we’ll see what comes up! It will be fun to keep an eye on. I’ll add more soil to the bed and when we have sproutlings, we’ll transfer them to the main bed and start new seeds. Here’s a peek at what we accomplished (and you can’t see it, but it’s raining):
This was our science and history lesson for today. We’re still doing ancient history; talking about how people started farming and building settlements. I have a pattern for a tee-pee that uses PVC pipe (Butterick #B4251) (similar to this one:)
We’re going to do a re-make of the shelter we built last week and see if we can make it more stable and permanent. I have several pieces of trim that we’re NEVER going to put up in the house, so I may try to use those for the supports. I need to drag the sewing machine out anyway and work on those quilts!
Warmly,
~h
“What’d you do in school today?”
I don’t know about you, but here’s what we did:
Got off to a late start! WE didn’t start school until almost 10AM. It’s cold and wet outside and that does not make for early mornings. We let the house heat up and then got crackin’ on school work. The boys started out with math and the we dove into our history lesson.
Since this is our “year 1″, we’re studying ancient civilizations for history/geography. Normally, LittleBoyBlue would be studying … I forget what 2nd grade is, but it’s not ancients – anyway, I don’t want to have to do 2 history lesson plans, so we’re just doing one, and year 1=Ancients. So there 
. His former school did not cover history in the same logical way that we plan to (i.e.: chronologically), so he’s getting entirely new material as it is, which is good.
In an effort to keep “history” from being super dry and boring, I found some lesson plans and books with activities that bring history to life. We tried one such activity today. In the book Stone Age People by Keith Branigan (a “Make it Work” book), we found “Make a mammoth bone hut”… and so we did. Sorta.
We didn’t follow the lesson plan exactly; I didn’t have some of the books it called for and we’re not in a class big enough to simulate “hunters” and “gatherers” called for in lesson 1, but I think our activity was true to the spirit of the lesson. We talked about the Bering strait and former land bridge, Pangaea, tectonic plates and how they move(d) and made shifts in the earth’s surface and other such geographically related topics, then got into a discussion about the people and how they lived. We made the bones of the structure from sentence strips and found they were too flimsy,so we reinforced them with cardboard, latched together with a combination of duct tape, staples and desk tape, then added construction and brown craft paper “hides” that we decorated and crumpled to give them some texture and attached to the bones of the building. The hut actually stood for a while, then fell while we were at lunch – I think this room has too much moisture in the air and it wilted the cardboard – but even so, the boys learned that it was hard work and a lot of it to make such a “home”.
After we finished our hut, we made lunch and the boys helped make Amish Friendship bread for Tuesday Tea, which went into the oven while we worked on spelling and phonics. I finished my day’s training (1.47 miles plus step and hula-hooping on Wii) while the bread finished cooking. It made the house smell so good, and turned out fabulous.
While the boys played, I read aloud. We began The Rime of the Ancient Mariner today. I found this performance by David Olney (part 1) on YouTube that we enjoyed quite a bit. There are also a couple of other links (one read by Orson Welles) that we looked at too, but this was the best “performance” in my opinion. We’ll read (and watch and discuss) more tomorrow and again until we get done with that, then begin on something new.
We didn’t get finished with school until 4:30, but the hut took a while to build, so it was a long day. Tomorrow is playgroup and our weekly library trip, so we’ll have less time for sit-down lessons. Anyway, that’s our re-cap!
Warmly,
~h
Our Homeschool Room
It’s FINALLY done! All in all, it didn’t take that long, really. A week of near-solid effort and I have the room that I envisioned (minus curtains and a rug that I haven yet to make/buy).
You can see the entire album with the before and after pictures on Photobucket.com here. I’m only going to post the after pictures here.
This is my desk. If you’re standing in the doorway, this is what you see.
This is the far corner. It used to have a bunch of boxes and things stored there, but now we have a chalkboard, white board and reading chair (rocker that I bought when I was pregnant with LittleBoyBlue). I also found that little easel at HEB for $19. It is a little small for my boys, but if they sit, then it will be just the right height for them to use. I figure that it will be perfect for art and for them to work on their nature journals.
This is LittleBoyBlue’s space. He and my husband are big fans of the Halo video games, so my son is thrilled to have Master Chief watching over him while he works.
This is PeaGreen’s desk. He is looking forward to filling the wall above his desk with samples of his work.
This is where the washer and dryer live, hidden behind the curtain. I anticipate being better able to get laundry accomplished since we’ll be in the same room with it every day!
So that’s our space. I’d love to implement workboxes, or a similar system in the near future. I am not sure if we’re ready for that just yet, but I do love the idea and the system seems to work for a lot of people. I saw a 13 pocket file folder thing that we might try as a “school on the go” type system.
I am so pleased with how the space turned out, and that I met my goal of finishing on time! I am normally such a procrastinator – I start out strong on projects (especially painting. Half the rooms in our house are halfway painted.) but fade once something else catches my attention and I rarely go back and finish the project. But I am super proud of myself for following through with this one.
Tomorrow is the big day! Wish me luck 
Warmly,
~h
