Cana
Callie had her Gymnastics Performance last night at the High School Auditorium. She is a gymnast at the Dust Devil Gym. They did a fun flinstone them. The kids and coaches as seemed to be having a great time. JT even noted that there wasn't that much smiling in Wrestling!
Cana
Rusty brought a pinata filled with candy to Park Day to celebrate Morgan's Birthday.
Cana
Callie created these cute little characters using playdough. Her favorite is the cat.
Cana
I went to
Coas Book Store yesterday and traded in some books for some Earth Science books for Callie. We already owned the Children's Night Sky Atlas, published by DK. I picked up "The Visual Dictionary of the Universe", "Discovering the Universe" & "Understanding Earth". I was pleasantly surprised to find the CD's still with the used textbooks. Nice.
Cana
So how does doing school at home differ in what Callie and I are doing? Well most importantly I am not telling Callie she has to do anything, she doesn't. She wants to do what she is doing, everything that she is doing. She has even decided there are a few things she would rather skip, but the benefits for working through the tough things for her is worth it. I asked myself if I would be OK if she decided to do something else tomorrow and when I said yes and meant it, I knew this was more about her than me; as it should be.
We have decided to not use lesson plans. First of all, I spent about 6 hours at the computer looking for the right lesson to fit what we wanted to learn and still couldn't find it, plus I wasted 6 hours. I know that I don't have that kind of time. Who does? We are using a more individual approach. We are starting off with the Big Bang. What better place to start than the beginning! We have found some hand-on activities that we want to do. A interesting video from netflix staring our favorite Astrophysicist (yes we have one), and plan on looking for used textbooks at the used book store. Callie plans on summarizing what she has learned and putting it on this blog.
Here is a
link to the outline page on our website
Cana
Our tent was perfectly situated in a little group of trees. This helped shield us from both the sun and the wind. There were 3 trailers and 2 tents in our group. We fit quite comfortably in the site we were in.
The camping trip would have been perfect if Callie and Brent didn't get a sunburn. We still had a very good time. The kids received their burns on an exciting adventure of inter tubing down a river. They got lost down an irrigation ditch, found a swamp and crashed a graduation party. Exceptional circumstances! It has been pointed out, that it was an adventure they will remember.
This trip will ruin me for all other camping trips, the food was wonderful, good friends, delicious wine and gorgeous scenery. This picture was of our Sunday pancake breakfast. Sharing the cooking responsibilities allowed us to each put together one great meal and not feel overwhelmed with a ton of cooking.
Cana
Callie and I spent quite some time discussing college and career plans today. She has come to the conclusion that she is not sure what she wants to do, but is pretty sure college is involved.Of course this brought up what it takes to get into college; so we looked at college websites about admission requirements and discussed what she was doing to meet the requirements. This is a big step for her. She told me that she didn't realize there were requirements. I said that even if she didn't do "college prep" college was an option, but she strongly felt she wanted to spend her time getting as ready as possible. There is a lot of information out there about general college admission requirements and we were able to come up with a decent list of things that we thought she should complete as part of her high school program. We had already decided to spread high school out over 5 to 6 years instead of cramming it in to 4.
Callie stuck mainly to the basics. I wanted to encourage her in what she wanted, allowing that it was her decision what to do with her time and I would support her. She wants to take Japanese. We will be purchasing the Rosetta Stone for this. She also wants to continue her art, writing and other hobbies; so she has allowed plenty of time for those interests. She wants to work independently on math as needed. We will only be doing one course at a time. She is going to begin with a high school level earth science program. She has already hit many of the topics, such as plate tectonics and the hydrologic cycle, but we will be digging a little deeper. I will be outlining the program on our website.
She is really excited and focused and seems to be having fun. I can hardly believe how old she is getting.
Cana
I have done so much laundry in the last 24 hours. I had no idea that we had that many clothes. I'm still not sure that some clothes didn't take a couple trips through the laundry machine.
Our living room and dining room is cluttered with camping gear. We are leaving late this afternoon to go camping. We are going with friends to a campground close to Cliff.
We are each making a single meal, I am doing dinner on Saturday night, chili. Simple, straight-forward camp food. We are tent camping but hope to get a tear drop trailer in the near future.
Cana
Brent's book on Earthquakes and Volcanoes arrived. He was very excited to get his hands on it and check out the projects and activities inside. We used these books last year quite successfully; he did rocks and soil and early US history. Brent likes to really get into a subject and do it for a long time, but struggles picking what he wants to do. He likes using these books as a reference and source of ideas. These books contain a collection of activities & ideas all related to the one subject and he picks and chooses what he wants to do. The activities become a spring board for lots of related things. I'm not sure the writers intended these books to be used for months at a time, but that is how it works for us. Who knows how long this current love will last, but we haven't "finished" one of these books before, so we probably won't this time either.
I'm not a lover of curriculum especially when you lose site of the learning of a child because you are so rigidly following your to do list, but the way he uses these never feels forced or overly structured. Despite the use of a workbook, we consider ourselves mostly unschoolers; though I am not a fan of the name; I prefer Natural Learners. Brent is free to pick and choose whatever he wants to do. He likes projects and learning as much as he can about whatever strikes an interest. He chose this and could easily never do one thing in the book and that would be fine with me. I don't believe unschooling/natural learning is about restricting what my kids want to pursue; this includes educational resources if that is what they want. I like the freedom of allowing him to structure his own days the way that makes him happy while at the same time his sister chooses something completely different. Homeschooling is such a wonderful way to live. I wish I had been allowed to pursue my own interests when I was young. Sometimes I have trouble remembering what they were!
Cana
The day began with breakfast at a wonderful little french bakery next to the Hyatt. The food and coffee was delicious. They also didn't flinch when the kids ordered coffee too. They had bread all over in wonderful animal shapes. The kids want to try to do this too. Callie ordered the best french toast I have ever tasted, Brent got two mini Cinnamon rolls, but says next time he only wants one and then maybe a quiche. I got a fresh baguette with jam and butter. Yummy.
We got to the zoo about a half hour before Rebecca. The kids decided that the souvenir that they wanted was a stuffed animal, similar to the build a bear thing. They were quite cute and Callie also to a dress for her flamingo. No names yet. We watched the flamingos work on their nests and fight while waiting for Rebecca.
After the other kids arrived it felt like we were racing again. My left foot was hurting, I had stepped on the leg of a desk chair at the hotel and the side of my foot was swollen and bruised. I hobbled through the zoo OK. The zoo is really nicely set up. It was small and easy to see everything in just a few hours.
The birds on the net above the bridge made this feel like Jurassic park, except the only real danger was a little/lot of poo. The kids thought this was hilarious.
We couldn't leave town with out another spring roll, so we headed back to the Talin market to try the restaurant across the street. The rolls were not as good as the ones at the restaurant that shares the parking lot with the market. The meal was OK, the fish sauce tasted watered down and they didn't use basil. I will be going to the other restaurant next time.
Cana
We had a nice breakfast with Rebecca and her family before walking about a mile to the start of the Race for the Zoo starting line. Our 5K started at 9:00 am. The kids aren't tired, it was just really bright out. Brent and Julian couldn't hold still. They had ran to the race and were constantly wrestling and jumping around before the race began. Were weren't sure they would make it to the finish.
OK, Callie was a little tired. Rebecca and Clarissa were going with the boys. Callie and I were teamed up and Rebecca's parents had Sebastian, Damian & Isabella. I think. It was crazy. There were around 9,000 racers. We were wearing our green t-shirts, everyone but Callie, so it was easy to find each other before the race, but once it started I didn't see anyone.
The line of people seemed never ending, both in front of us and behind. Everyone was really friendly and the only ones that seemed at all in a hurry were what Callie called the "baby pushers" You quickly learned to stay out of their way. Throughout the race there were people in green zoo shirts encouraging everyone and making sure everyone was heading the right way. Some were in costume or playing music.
After the race we walked another mile back to the hotel. There wasn't much time to clean up before the lunch at the bistro; so everyone agreed to be stinky together. Thankfully we drove to the Bistro. Lunch was lovely. Afterwards Florent took Brent and Callie with Julian and his cousin go karting. They had a blast. I got to go back to the hotel and relax until dinner. We had dinner at a fun Greek restaurant on Nob Hill and headed home exhausted from day 2.
Cana
The kids and I headed up to Albuquerque last weekend. We left town around 10am on Saturday and headed straight for Talin Market. It is a little international market, nicely laid out. However, use restrooms elsewhere. We were able to find our spring roll wraps, fish sauce, sticky toffee pudding and Vietnamese coffee makers! Yeah! After shopping we had a couple orders of spring rolls at the little restaurant on the other side of the parking lot. Very good.
After our snack we went shopping at Barnes & Noble and then headed over to Sport Systems to pick up our race t-shirts and packet. They had only the kids sizes left, since they had changed the system and not held shirts for those that preregistered. Nice. They promised to mail mine. Not a big deal since we were wearing the St Clair shirts on race day anyway. While we were there the hail and rain came. It was intense. We were running around through cold running water to get our stuff. I couldn't stop giggling. The water was literally running over my ankles. The kids and I were soaked.
We were in a hurry not to get to the hotel to clean up before meeting Rebecca at the Bistro. The hotel was lovely, staff friendly and room clean. In addition, they had the most delicious, warm, chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. This is the view from our room. We were on the 14th floor. The building across the plaza is the Hyatt where Rebecca was staying. They are prepping for the Cinco De Mayo celebration in the plaza. The kids wanted to spend the entire weekend in the room.
We made it to the Bistro, got our St Clair tshirts and headed to the BBQ. Quite a busy start to the weekend.
Cana
You wouldn't think this would have much of an impact on us homeschoolers, but due to the Swine Flu, all their activities are also cancelled for this week. Brent is missing baseball and Callie is missing Gymnastics. Too Bad. Only one local school is actually closed, but many are concerned because the students are home with siblings and friends.
Cana
Brent recently told me he missed the workbooks we had last year from teacher created materials. He likes to have a focus. Workbook is really not an acurate description. It is a collection of activies on a specific subject. When we used them before, the kids picked through the activities and did what they wanted. Brent decided that he must explore anything to do with earthquakes and volcanoes! Yeah.
