Here's Our Homeschool This Week

This week, we've:

played endless games of Sorry; built lots with blocks--

--and I mean LOTS with blocks--

--judiciously spent saved Christmas/birthday money at our local toy/educational supplies store (thanks, Papa!); put together one of those damn Playmobil sets according to instructions (bought at aforementioned store with aforementioned birthday money)--

--made pretty things with pattern blocks, both on the carpet and with translucent plastic pattern blocks on the overhead projector (both of those sets being brand-new school supply purchases from that same store, but by the Momma this time); watched Extreme Engineering; played briefly with our brand-new Cuisenaire rods(love that school shopping!); goofed around with a laser level; and cut out paper snowflakes. Syd played some Curious George online and with a dot-to-dot computer game; stamped with number stamps; and helped me make banana cookies, pancakes, rainbow cupcakes, and vegetable soup.

We spent plenty of time at PBSKids.com; spent plenty more time with books independently, especially my Will, who is a reading machine of late; visited the library a couple of times; watched a little Electric Company (the new version, not the old); had chapters from Nancy Drew and Just So Stories at bedtime; and listened to four or five of the Magic Tree House audiobooks. I can't even tell you the books that Will has devoured this week, but they include some Boxcar Children titles, 101 Dalmatians, some Magic Tree House titles, some Nancy Drew titles, some Shel Silverstein, and other picture books, chapter books, non-fiction, and poetry that she's come across.

The kids have taken many beautiful photographs on beloved subjects--

--played with Colorforms (another new school supply purchase); helped me paint some pretty paint in the basement; and attended a scrapbooking class at the public library--

--which was VERY well enjoyed. Syd decorated some frames for some maps I'm going to tack to the walls in their playroom--

--colored with Sharpies and crayons and colored pencils and whatever else she could find; masterminded the design and construction of her new skirt; and worked on some balancing butterflies, project still in progress:

Syd finished filling out her reading program form and submitted it to the library, earning herself a book as a prize. She also did some handwriting copywork for fun and helped me label stuff.

Will watched a LOT of Blue's Clues, sigh, and some Walking with Dinosaurs (or Walking with Prehistoric Beasts or Walking with Early Mammals, etc.); attended Critter Junction, an animal program at the local library; took care of the tadpoles, some teeny froggies, and the odd caterpillar or spider for a while; researched strawberry plants, rainbows, the ocean, giant sea turtles, and I don't even recall what else; and, big sigh, took a field trip to the Emergency Room and experienced the treatment for a cracked tibia, x-rays and hard cast 3/4 up the thigh and all. 

We played the rain stick and the recorder; listened to the Muppets and Throwing Muses and some seriously inane kids' music and other CDs; and had any number of dance parties. In addition, Syd's goal is to learn to whistle, so there's been much practicing of that, and even a screening of a documentary on the International Whistling Competition.

We began the timeline!!! We've added the epochs and some info on dinosaurs and human evolution; Will has big plans to cut up an extra Smithsonian dinosaur encyclopedia that we have on hand, and I still need to mark out some basic demarcations from early humans to the present so that we know where to put stuff. Will's also been into the short video clips on the Liberty's Kids web site, although she's very annoyed that I insist on supervising her visits there, since it contains outside advertising.

We walked and biked and scooted downtown and all around; helped with chores like grocery shopping and cleaning and gardening--

--went swimming; had boisterous playdates with good friends; picked blackberries and peaches--

--played on various playgrounds, including one magical maneuver on the monkey bars too many (CRACK!); and, most recently, practiced and practiced and practiced walking on crutches.

And that's how we homeschooled this week. Please, let next week be uneventful.

Dinosaur Summer

We love dinosaurs around here, did you know? My kiddos' obsession colors every aspect of our days together, from the big, such as the little kid's AWESOME picture of a dinosaur that she drew yesterday--

--to the small: see the dinos on the big kid's jammies?

We've got some awesome dino-lovin' activities planned for this summer. We'll be practically in the front row for the Walking With Dinosaurs Live show when it comes near us in July (we're having to forgo our traditional huge summer birthday bash to afford the tickets, which are OUTRAGEOUS, but it's going to be worth the budget re-allocation, I know), and do not worry, I've already mapped out the locations of the dinosaur museums that we can visit on our June trip to Wisconsin--the Milwaukee Public Museum, the Dinosaur Discovery Museum in Kenosha, and the Field Museum in Chicago, likely. Wisconsin is light on dinosaur museums because it doesn't have a fossil history because dinosaurs never lived there because it was covered in water during prehistoric times; this is what you get to learn when your children are obsessed with dinosaurs.

We'll also have the time and the nice weather to do some other dino activities that require more time than the big kid's three-hour daily preschool would allow (three hours doesn't seem that long while I'm living it, but I have to plan my whole damn day around it!). Whenever we can wrangle my partner (I'm begging him to ask for flex-time at work this summer. I really want him to work four ten-hour days instead of five eight-hour days, and since he's a designer, he actually could use the extra time at work in the evenings, no phone calls, no visitors to his cubby, to focus on his designs), we're going to make measurements on the basketball court over at our neighborhood park and then draw life-size dinosaurs in chalk (this Smithsonian handbook on dinosaurs is our most precious family resource!), and I also want to score a load of helium balloons on some calm day and use them to measure out dinosaur heights in the park--ooh, I'll also need a lot of string.

We go creek-stomping around here a lot, and the kids enjoy searching for geodes and crinoid fossils (the big kid claims that she is "the best fossil hunter out of all my friends," and I have to say that it's probably true), so depending on how interested they are, it would be fun to add on more of that into our dino activities. Where we live in Indiana is actually a superb place to explore for fossils--a shallow prehistoric sea left lots of little ocean critter fossils, and a glacier later on the same site kept the bedrock from being too covered with subsequent layers of earth, so now you can easily fossil hunt (where it's legal) in most creeks, road cuts, and limestone quarries (but not caves! All the Indiana caves and sinkholes are closed to the public this year in hopes of stopping White Nose Syndrome from spreading. Sucks).

Perhaps we could even find a brachoid!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!