Horseback Riding to Music: The 2014 PALS Fun Show

One of the few things that I was legitimately sad about, when I began homeschooling, was the fact that the children would miss out on performances, and I'd miss out on attending them. As a child, I remember music pageants, Christmas performances, school plays, etc. How sad that the kids would miss out on these precious opportunities to perform for an audience!

Snort.

Yeah, the kids participate in PLENTY of shows, homeschooling or not, and Matt and I get absolutely our fair share of butt time on back-less bleachers and in dark auditoriums, watching them shine. They dance ballet, they fly on the silks, they walk the runway, they skate to music, and they ride around the arena.

This year's horseback riding show, the PALS Fun Show, was even more special and exciting for the kids than last year, as their riding instructor has just really outdone herself in making sure that the kids have an interesting and enriching curriculum. You already know how much I love the homework that she gives them (a weekly assignment to research and report on a horse breed; I also ask the kids to research and report on that breed's country of origin). This year, she also thought that the kids might enjoy performing as a mounted drill team in the Fun Show, so she choreographed a routine for them, practiced it with them for ages, and sent me home with the patterns so that the kids could practice it at home (they taped it out in our big family room and ran through it until perfect every single day).

The kids got to choose the music for their performance, and after much listening to many songs, and my realization that my kids don't really ask for or take a lot of interest in non-narrative songs (their only real favorite album is The King, the Mice, and the Cheese by Stevesongs, and that's really more of a musical), they finally settled on Blondie's "The Tide is High" and the Indigo Girls' "Get out the Map." For a while, Will was pushing for "The House of the Rising Sun," and for some reason the thought of them performing to it was super cracking me up, but I'm pleased that they eventually followed the path of the girl bands.

I really like arriving early, so that we can watch other riders perform:

I just like watching the other riders, but the kids do seem to always glean some new information or source of inspiration. For instance, the kids always ride with their horses on a long lead held by a volunteer, and another volunteer walking next to them (one of my favorite things about PALS is that it's EXTREMELY aggressive about rider safety), but as they watched other riders navigating the trail course in the arena, they noticed a kid, about Will's age, who was permitted to ride completely without walkers! GASP! They were enormously impressed, and have declared their new goal in riding to be showing their instructor that they can control their horses well enough to be permitted to ride without walkers.

Of course, I like the walkers! One lesson last term, the kids were practicing leading their horses, and Syd, walking while holding the lead right next to her horse's muzzle, tried to halt her horse but didn't brace herself so that when he didn't obey, she was pulled right off her feet. Before she could fall directly in front of her horse's front legs, however, her sidewalker snatched her up and set her back on her feet, and the lesson continued without a pause.

You'll notice the walkers in this video of their performance--one holding a loose lead in case she needs to take control of the horse, and one walking/jogging next to each child in case she needs to take control of the child. You will not, however, notice the music; although I'd been looking forward to getting a little teary while watching the kids perform to a couple of my favorite songs, I'd been very slightly bummed that this meant that I wouldn't be able to put their performance on YouTube to share with family and friends--can't play a video featuring songs that I don't have the rights to! And so although the kids were bummed that the stereo futzed during their performance and didn't play their second song (of course the kids carried right on, though, the troopers), I was actually pretty pleased--all I had to do was a little trimming, and I have a nice clip of the drill team performance, without that pesky music:

And after the performance, of course, are the judges' comments (Will has excellent posture!) and the prizes--

--and the fun times! Fun times include getting one's face painted, doing arts and crafts and coloring pages--

--hanging out with the other riders, and apparently eating one's weight in cookies, from what I witnessed with my own children, at least.

It was, indeed, a performance to make a Momma proud, and the perfect show for the kids to take part in--they worked hard, they were pleased with the results, and they've geared themselves up to work towards even bigger accomplishments.

And they have trophies! I wish that *I* still did stuff that won me trophies...

Work Plans for the Week of October 20, 2014: Field Trips, Flowers, and the Sun

 

We've got one last school week all together before the kids head off to California adventures with their grandparents for a week, and it's a bustling one!

MONDAY: Right now, the kids and I are in a study lounge in the basement of the building that I used to teach in at our local university; the older kid is meant to be coloring in the chapter 2 vocabulary flash cards from Song School Spanish, while the younger kid is meant to be researching the Dartmoor for tomorrow's horseback riding class, but mostly they're getting me to look up how much bounce houses cost (a lot), and speculating where they would keep a bounce house if they bought one (the field at the bottom of the hill behind our house, although the ground might still need to be leveled some), and how much fun they would have with their own bounce house (again, a lot).

Soon, however, we'll wander up to the first floor parking garage of this building, where I'll collect several more little kids, and then we'll all wander over to the campus greenhouse, where we'll take a tour, search for flowers, identify their parts, and generally have a fabulous field trip together.

After our field trip, the kids and I will go immediately over to our weekly volunteer gig; the older kid was able to man the meat counter entirely by herself last week!

In Math Mammoth this week, the younger kid is finishing up multiplication and moving into a review of telling time; the older kid is finishing up long division and moving briefly to averaging, and then into fractions.

TUESDAY: The kids have their last rehearsal for their horse show during this day's horseback riding lessons. I also found a picture book about the Lippizaner for them to read; I don't remember if they've had this breed to research yet, but it's a great story that highlights what makes a horse breed special.

I'm not looking forward to helping the kids with their Halloween costumes, to be frank, but it's one of those things that a parent must do. The younger kid's costumes, in particular, are generally elaborate and require lots of parental help; for this year's Tinkerbell costume, I believe that I will be required to take her shopping for white yarn and the exact green fabric that she requires, and teach her how to make yarn pom-poms.

The kids will continue to work on the Junior Ranger badges that they chose last week; I do ask them to put the location of the park that they're working from on our big wall map, but I'm fine that the badge books themselves are cross-curricular--there are so many interesting, unexpected things to learn!

I realized that I haven't yet asked the children to memorize our new address, so we'll be doing that, as well as crafting our fire escape plan, under the auspices of the Girl Scout First Aid badges for Brownies and Juniors. We're going on a field trip to the fire station on Thursday, and I know the fire fighters will ask them!

WEDNESDAY: Don't tell the kids, but I am NOT signing them up for an aerial silks class this week. The rest of our calendar week will be VERY busy, and so will their trip to California next week--fun, but busy!--and so I want them to have one last completely free day to rest, recharge, and play.

THURSDAY: We've got our regular homeschool group's afternoon at a local park, and a field trip to the fire station in the morning (there will also be an ambulance there, and EMTs who will discuss first aid, also for the First Aid badges), but I am the most excited, by far, by the partial solar eclipse that clear skies will allow us to witness on this afternoon! And just two weeks after the lunar eclipse--what a treat!

A couple of units of First Language Lessons will finish off the day. The kids don't really seem to be understanding adverbs, so I'm finally thankful for how slowly this book moves.

FRIDAY: Ten Times Better has some fun, easy multiplication poems to memorize, and then I'll be going over a few more problems from the AMC 8 with the kids; I don't expect them to ace this upcoming exam, by any means, but studying for it has enabled us to discuss a lot of interesting math concepts, as well as learn that a dot is the same as a multiplication sign, what an ellipses means in math, and how to work a multiple-choice question.

After this day's spelling test, the kids will be writing sentences with their new words, again, as well as playing Spelling City. The sentence-writing turned out to be a GREAT activity last week; I had no idea that the kids would have trouble writing complete sentences! We'll be repeating this activity weekly until that whole subject-verb business is an absolute no-brainer.

The kids had their first ice skating class of the season last week, and once again had a fabulous time. This week, they'll be heading straight from there to a friend's Halloween party; since we'll be missing spending Halloween with the kids (they'll be in California with their grandparents), I'm glad that we've got *some* Halloween festivities to experience with them here before they leave.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Busiest. Weekend. EVER! The younger kid's got ballet class and Nutcracker rehearsal, both kids have the horse show performance that they've been practicing for months for, and the university is hosting its open house for the science departments, AND there's a big end-of-the-year party for 4H that afternoon. We will all sleep well that night!

On Sunday, the older kid only has chess club, but I'm sure there will be tons of frantic shopping and packing and laundering and panicking, because the next day will dawn with us on the way to the airport to send the kids to their grandparents in California.

And yes, I will spend next week weeping/working/partying/missing my babies.

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!

Work Plans for the Week of October 13, 2014: Spanish, Silk, and Science

MONDAY: More multiplication for Syd and long division for Will in this week's Math Mammoth; Will needs the drill, but I'm actually skipping much of the multiplication lessons for Syd, and just giving her the practice/extension problems, because she's got her facts pretty well memorized. Mental note for those with kids in the younger grades: if you can encourage your kids to memorize their multiplication facts early, they'll be able to skip past about half of third grade math!

The Connemara pony is the kids' research subject for their horseback riding class this week; as usual, one kid will research the pony, the other kid will research the pony's geography of origin, and they'll perform a Youtube search for interesting videos of the Connemara to see it in action. The kids also need to choose a song for their drill team performance--the current favorite is an instrumental version of "The House of the Rising Sun." I suggested a song from My Little Pony but was shouted down; apparently that would be "embarrassing." At what age do children develop an appreciation of camp, I wonder?

Tired of waiting for our local university's children's language class to sort out its funding, I'm starting the kids on Song School Spanish this week. The vocabulary in this volume is roughly equivalent to the vocabulary in the Latin volume Although I hate to book more than one extracurricular per day, we've got both our weekly volunteer gig and the kids' aerial silks class today. And although it would conflict with Syd's ballet class and so she can't do it, Will says that she wants to perform in her aerial silks program's winter recital, which would mean two-hour rehearsals on most Saturdays until late December. I'm not eager to take it on, but there's no other reason not to, and I'm loathe to discourage Will, who works so hard at aerial silks and yet struggles with confidence, from goal-setting and performing.

TUESDAY: I'm excited to watch this prehistoric flower documentary with the kids, and although I'm not sure that I'll have completed their display materials by tomorrow, the kids can still get started on prepping and labeling their fossils.

The kids blew through their last Junior Ranger badges, loved them, and I think got a lot out of them. I'm eager to see what they choose next.

Will has Robotics Workshop (she's becoming a LEGO Mindstorms expert!), and Syd has a playdate during that time. She and her little friend both like cooking, exploring our woods with walkie-talkies in hand, and pretending to be animals on obstacle courses--they get along great! I consider playdates as a "subject" because they're something organized into our day, and take away from the kids' free time, so I need to make sure that I've accounted for them, lest I book the day too full. And for Syd, unlike Will, they're absolutely crucial, so I've also got to make sure that I've got at least one one-on-one playdate scheduled for her each week.

WEDNESDAY: A true Free Day, for me, means zero scheduled activities OR an all-day outing, but the kids really, really, really want to take this Minecraft workshop at the library, so we will.

THURSDAY: First Language Lessons is a bore, but it's an easy lesson to delegate to Matt. After this week, though, we may need to take a break and just practice sentence diagramming; the book is so formulaic that I think the kids may be simply memorizing the book's formula, not necessarily the diagramming method.

I loathe carving Jack-o-lanterns, for some reason, but at least the kids are old enough now that I can pretty much just hand them the supplies and leave them to it.

I've got to prepare the dyes for this play silks project, but I'm interested in seeing if the kids really can "paint" play silks using the dyes without incurring a ridiculous amount of bleed. The date of the discovery of silk (2696 BCE) is the memory work for this lesson.

FRIDAY: I'll be going over this problem and this problem with the kids, to prepare them for the AMC 8 next month.

We've been studying spelling during the daily memory work, so I plan to have the kids take their spelling test before they write their sentences. Will they scream less about fewer sentences? We'll see!

I wanted to start the Flowers badge this week, because my first Girl Scout Co-op meeting about it is next week, but Will is really into her Digital Photographer badge right now, so she'll likely want to continue working on that. Syd has a few more activities to finish up for her Dancer badge.

We're going to see La Boheme this weekend, and I had hoped to have a more expansive unit of study on it for the kids, but unfortunately, there's really not much out there geared to studying opera at the elementary level, and I didn't feel like creating my own materials this time. Instead, we'll simply read this summary of La Boheme, listen to the music, and get excited for the show!

The kids have their first ice skating class of the season on this day. Will adores ice skating so much that I often feel sad for her that we don't have an all-seasons ice skating rink, but I admit that it does feel good in the spring when we can drop it from our schedule!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: This weekend is going to be insane. Just... insane. Saturday morning brings ballet class, which I also have to attend, since it's Parent Observation Day. After that, we'll zip home and get a bunch of party food started in the crock pots that I'm borrowing, but a few hours later Matt's got to take Syd back for Nutcracker rehearsal--my little snow angel is going to be performing in our local university's production of The Nutcracker! I'll stay home from that, at least, to continue party prep, because later that afternoon, we're throwing a housewarming party!

At least some of us will likely need to sleep in on Sunday, so the plan is to go out to brunch and then go to the opera. And then Matt and the kids are going to have to do all the party clean-up, because I'm clearly going to have to lock myself in my room and bust out all my weekend's work.

And after this, I only have one more week before my babies leave me for a week with their grandparents in California!

Work Plans for the Week of September 22, 2014: Belated and Badges

It occurred to me last night that I'd neglected to share our work plans at the beginning of this week, and, surely coincidentally, this week we've had a lot of trouble completing each day's plans in a timely manner. Surely coincidentally, but nevertheles...

MONDAY: I was going to move the kids' hands-on math day to Tuesdays while we're still having a day of review every week, but I had a (boring, tedious, miserable) appointment this Tuesday, necessitating the kids doing some of their school at their father's office, so I kept the review worksheets for Tuesday, and instead Syd reviewed multiplication arrays using dot markers--so easy and fun!--and Will watched this division video and then created her own stop-motion video on the ipad to illustrated a division problem--she used books, of COURSE. Syd then took the ipad from her and created a million stop-motion toy dinosaur movies, taping over her sister's movie in the process. Of COURSE.

Horseback riding lessons have commenced again for the fall session, and therefore so has the kids' weekly homework to research and report on a horse breed for their riding instructor. They use these horse/geography forms to record their research, and they switch tasks each week, with one kid researching the horse breed, the other researching the horse's geography, and then each kid teaching the other what she knows. We also usually do a Youtube search so that we can see the horse in action; this is a good one for this week's horse, the fell pony:

I gave Syd another Horse Diaries book to read this week, and I asked Will to read the rest of the ecosystem books for her Girl Scout Junior Animal Habitats badge, then write me one-sentence definitions of the ecosystems discussed in each book. She's happy to do pretty much anything that involves reading, even if it also involves writing!

At our volunteer gig, the kids did some gardening, did some playing, and then helped me run the meat counter. When the supply is low enough that I can move all of the meat to the shelves that are easy for them to reach, the kids can actually handle this counter independently--greeting shoppers, asking them their preferences, showing them their options, etc. I won't leave them alone while they do this, because I feel like meat shopping doesn't always bring out the best in people and so I want to supervise their encounters, but I do stand back and let them be in charge, and you can tell that they feel like Very Important People to have such a big responsibility.

Even though First Language Lessons Level 3 was great for a while, I'm back to feeling like it's moving too slowly. It's good enough that we won't ditch it, but we won't be moving on to Level 4 afterwards.

I'd planned on setting aside some time for memory work each day this week, and so I took cursive and states and capitals memorization off our regular schedule, assuming we'd do it during memory work time. I immediately discovered, however, that memory work is ideally done when riding in the car--the kids are contained then, and they can't escape my drills! But while this is excellent for spelling words, math facts, poetry recitation, and states and capitals, it's obviously impossible for cursive. That will have to go back on the schedule next week.

TUESDAY: Math review worksheets went really well this week, and now I'm torn between continuing to offer a day of extra practice in word problems and previously-acquired skill sets (multi-digit addition and subtraction for Syd; multi-digit multiplication and easy division for Will), which is great for building confidence and getting those feelings of mastery, or again using that day to advance in their Math Mammoth curriculum. Dang it, I want to do both! For now I'll keep deciding week by week, I guess...

For form drawing this week, we're working on the spiral, with the goals of making the flowing line steady and even and controlled (hear that, Will? CONTROLLED!).

Short story writing is still a success. Syd makes whole books out of her stories, with detailed illustrations on every page. Will's stories are still VERY short, but she does work on them with focus, and she's clearly quite proud of them when she's finished, so I'm saying nothing about it but praise.

I *think* I've now got everything unpacked that I need for us to start prepping our dino dig fossils, so I asked the kids to finish up the work for their Junior Paleontology badges this week; we'll mail them in, and they'll send the kids badges and certificates!

WEDNESDAY: I liked having Friday as our free day so much last week that I'm doing it again, which means that Wednesday was a regular work day.

The kids' Math Mammoth this week is more beginning multiplication for Syd, and more division for Will. Syd is breezing through her multiplication, since she already has most of her facts memorized, and division is slowly but steadily being driven into Will's brain, so every day it does become, thankfully, ever so slightly less miserable for her. LOTS of drill, though. LOTS of mastery experiences.

The kids love earning Junior Ranger badges so much that I've turned it into their geography study. They get to pick a National Park online (ideally one that we're unlikely to visit), print out that park's Junior Ranger badge book, and then they do all the activities at home, using the computer for research as needed. Just like with the Junior Paleontologist badge, when they're finished, we can mail the book to the park, and they'll send back the kids' badges and certificates. We can also request documentaries and books from the library to enrich each study.

Our Artifacts of Ancient China study is going well. We're revisiting the terracotta warriors this week (helps get those timeline dates stuck in the head!) by making terracotta warrior paper dolls; now that the kids know how the real terracotta warriors were painted, I think that they'll have a lot of fun making these paper doll versions really cute! I also like to have the kids watch these Crash Course World History videos, but screen them for your own kids, first, because they can be a little blue.

I'm sure you wouldn't have been able to guess it at all (ahem...) but the Minecraft lesson was by far the most popular part of Wednesday's curriculum. Syd doesn't really play computer games, and had never touched Minecraft before, but there's a mod-building workshop for Minecraft at the public library in a few weeks that I want her to take along with her sister, so I've given Will the job of teaching Syd how to play Minecraft before that date.

THURSDAY: Today is our last day of school for the week, and I am STOKED! I always stack Thursday with our quickest subjects, because our homeschool group's Park Day takes up most of the afternoon.

The kids lost touch with their pen pals over our summer hiatus, AND we moved, so I've got them renewing their correspondence today. And after some *gentle* nudging to finish things up last week, both kids are ready to choose new Girl Scout badges to start earning today--yay!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Ballet, chess club, and a photography workshop for both kids, which means that Matt and I will get an afternoon for ourselves! I also feel like there's a laser tag certificate sitting around somewhere that might expire at the end of the month, AND an ice cream certificate that's also about to expire...

Sounds like a fine weekend to me!

Out West 2014: Yellowstone's Canyon and Yet Another Geyser Basin

We were up early again this morning for a trail ride, which means there were more animals to be spotted:

My brother-in-law finally got to see a bison from a distance that didn't require binoculars. It was ridiculous--that first afternoon that Matt, the kids, and I spent in Yellowstone, we saw loads of bison, even one in the next lane of traffic(!), but as soon as Matt's family came to meet us there, all of a sudden the only bison to be seen were all reeeaaaallly far away, and that was practically the only animal that his brother had really wanted to see!

We saw bison on this day, though. Whew!

After the trail ride, we some driving and hiking along the Canyon:

There is another Young Scientist program specifically for the Canyon, but since this was our last full day, AND the kids were already still finishing up their Junior Ranger stuff and Will was still finishing up her Young Scientist stuff, I skipped it. Don't tell Will, though. She'd freak!

I was able to prove that I'm not a liar on one of these hikes; earlier, Matt's brother had commented on the fact that I mainly wear jeans rolled up to below my knees, and he'd be too hot to wear that. I replied that I'm really quite clumsy, and the less skin that I present to be skinned on hard, vertical surfaces, the better.

I happily, then, showed him my skinned palms after our first Canyon hike, when I decided that it would be awesome if I bounded up the trail's stairs--the roughly-hewn, irregular stairs. I of COURSE tripped and skidded *up* the stairs, banged up my denim-clothed knees, and scraped up my hands. 

I did not fall into the river and die, however. Yay!

The next day, Matt, the kids, and I drove through Yellowstone one last time on our way back to Indiana. Well, we *meant* to just drive through, but there was one more geyser basin that we hadn't yet visited! Can't have that! 

Okay, NOW we can leave.

Oh, fine, might as well stop at Old Faithful and check out one more eruption, and hit the gift shop for presents for the kids' friends back home, but then we're absolutely leaving.

Yeah, we didn't really make great time that day...

Girl Scouts at the Horse Races

I'm pretty bad about making Matt take the kids by himself to Girl Scout events that I don't want to attend (that Girl Scout camp-out at Victory Field looked SUPER fun... for the children), and signing us all up for the events that I DO want to attend. So although Matt has taken various numbers of related and unrelated Girl Scouts to tea parties at a retirement home, movies at the university, service projects, camp-outs, geography fairs, sports and music workshops, etc., while I stayed at home and actively did not attend those tea parties and movies and workshops and camp-outs, we all went to the latest Girl Scout field trip to Hoosier Park.

Because I've been to retirement homes and movies and baseball games before, but I have NEVER been to the horse races!

Willow tries on the colors.

You're right by the track!

It was all harness racing this particular evening.

If there's not a craft project, it's probably not a Girl Scout event!

 The biggest perk of attending the races as a Girl Scout (along with the souvenir T-shirt and fun patch for the backs of the kids' vests) was getting to go on a barn tour. We visited a barn where some harness racers who weren't racing that evening were stabled:

Syd asked a trainer what was on this horse's legs, and she explained that sometimes a horse's legs get sore after a race, so they put liniment on them and wrap them, but sometimes they have to cover the wrappings with duct tape if the horses try to chew them.

My only prior experience with racehorses was seeing the thoroughbreds at Kentucky Horse Park, and they are VERY aggressive, so once I saw how accessible all these horses were, I reminded the kids to watch their ears and mind their mouths. Harness racehorses are mares and fillies, however, and most of them were about the sweetest horses we've ever met:

Way to mind her mouth, Syd!

Of course, every barn has its feisty horses. I love Will's face in this next photo--I was clicking the shutter as the horse started to nuzzle her, but caught her reaction just after it decided it would maybe rather eat her hair instead:

See Syd laughing? She was the only one who could see it and she wasn't telling anyone, but that dang horse is STILL eating Will's hair!

The kids and I were really only there to sightsee--

--but of course people bet on these races, and there were some spectators who were VERY invested in each race's outcome:

Matt, now... Matt enjoys gambling. I do NOT think that gambling is fun, because I do not think that we have enough money to fool around with giving it away, but I did point out to him a notice in the brochure that stated that if you donated $5 to the Girl Scouts while you were there, they'd give you that five bucks in casino cash or whatever. If you're going to give your money away by gambling, you might as well give it to the Girl Scouts rather than the casino. Matt hated all the actual casino stuff when he went in there, because it was all automated and therefore didn't work right (and do you even want to guess about how long I had to listen to *that* rant on the way home? Not that long, actually, because I fell asleep pretty much as soon as we hit the highway, but still...), but he also got a couple of vouchers to bet on the horses, AND during the barn tour he heard some kid who was also on the tour going on and on about the racehorse that his family owns, AND that racehorse was actually racing that night, so Matt placed a bet on that kid's horse--

--and she won!

I had been a little concerned about this trip beforehand--I was worried it would be seedy (it was, a little, but nothing that we're not used to) and that the kids would see a horse get shot in the head (no on-track euthanizations on this night, yay!)--but it turned out to actually be a really terrific adventure. A couple of times I got chatted up by race regulars who were pleased to see so many kids at the track and wanted to reminisce about their own childhood memories of going to the races with their parents, and all the workers seemed happy to go out of their way to make the sport accessible to the bunch of random kids running around. After one race, which the kids and I watched from right by the finish line, Syd was bummed because the horse that she was rooting for didn't win, and she said, "Why didn't #6 win? She was running so fast!"

The track's photographer happened to be walking by, on his way to photograph a horse that was NOT #6 in the Winner's Circle, but he stopped, came back to Syd, and explained to her, "Number Six didn't win because she started out too fast, and she couldn't keep it up. You've got to root for the horse that comes second or third or even fourth out of the gate, not first."

In the next two races, Syd indeed rooted for a horse that was not first out of the gate, and indeed, in both of those races, that horse that she rooted for won! 

Definitely educational, then, but I'm not sure what subject to call it. PE? Game theory? 

Equine Artwork

One lesson from our Drawing With Children studies that I'm really pleased to see Syd grasp is that copying is perfectly okay.

I don't think Drawing with Children specifically mentioned our exact method, but if Syd (Will still rarely chooses to create art, although she did some drawing as part of plans for a butterfly garden a few weeks ago, and was noticeably at ease with it) mentions wanting to draw something in particular, such as the horse that she requested last week, I encourage her to look through our large collection of coloring books and choose an appropriate image to copy. The clean, dark lines in coloring book drawings lend themselves really well to the methods that we've been learning.

Fortunately, we've got a few really good coloring books of horses, and they were enough inspiration for Syd to sit down several times over the course of a couple of days and complete not just one, but many very detailed drawings of horses. Here are some of them:

Just as Drawing with Children suggests, Syd copied what she needed to copy but used it creatively--in all these pieces, she copied the horse itself, but added everything else from her own imagination. I especially like the tack that she adds; because of horseback riding lessons, Syd was able to tell me every single piece of tack that she put on her horse drawings, how to put it on, and what it's used for. I love that you can also tell, just from her art, that she learns English, not Western, riding--can you see where she illustrates that?

I sometimes have doubts about the horseback riding lessons that the children take--they're so, so, SO expensive and must be budgeted for so carefully, and it's not as if the children really have many chances to ride outside of their classes--but the children love their lessons and love the horses that they ride, I can see that the riding is good for their bodies and their hearts, and it's a life skill that I hope will be always useful. Will occasionally speaks of when she'll be old enough to volunteer with PALS, and at Girl Scout camp orientation both kids carefully noted the children at the corral taking their riding tests in order to qualify for "wrangler" camp--next summer, that could be them, if they wish!

Their riding instructor and I have spoken several times about the possibility of offering Girl Scout workshops at PALS; the program head and I have spoken about offering ongoing homeschool classes; and the head instructor and I have spoken about starting a Pony Club that would be inclusive of both recreational and therapeutic riding students. I'm hopeful that in the near future, these expensive yet valuable horseback riding lessons can become part of a larger context of equine enrichment for the kids, and ideally also for a slew of brand-new horse-loving friends.

Work Plans for the Week of January 13, 2014: So Much Science!

MONDAY: Our homeschool Science Fair is in three weeks, so it is time to get cracking! Ideally, I'd like the kids to get most of their research done this week (hence all the research and reports on the work plans), and their big project done next week, leaving that last week for them to have plenty of time to finish up their work and prepare their oral presentation and display board.

So science will be a big part of three days this week--fortunately, our other work for today is fairly cut-and-dry. The kids LOVED Roll 'n Multiply (and don't tell them, but I *may* let them play it for their multiplication table memory work this week, instead of the plain old tedious study that I made them do last week), Will once again balked at learning one more new line in "It's Raining, It's Pouring" but found it simple to do once she focused (when she begins to have the self-awareness to realize this pattern and cease it, I swear I will buy her a present!), and we are all eagerly anticipating heading back to our weekly volunteer gig in an hour or so, after our long holiday hiatus (as was exclaimed over breakfast this morning, "We haven't been to the Hub since LAST YEAR!!!).

TUESDAY: For their Science Fair project, the kids need to research paleontology, the skeletal system, and chicken anatomy, so on this day they're going to use our human skeleton model kit to create a plaster of Paris model of the human skeleton, glue it to a cardboard base, then use paint or embroidery thread--we'll see what they prefer--to key its bones to the identical bones on a diagram of a chicken skeleton. Both humans and chickens have mandibles, and femurs, and clavicles, etc.

That big project, plus a continuation of the work for the Girl Scout World Thinking Day badge (Will still needs to research another country's educational system, Syd still needs to watch a couple of international Sesame Street episodes and compare them to the US version, and they both need to begin their big service project), should intersperse nicely with the book work that they've got for math, grammar, and logic, leading to a pretty nice, if full, school day.

WEDNESDAY: Finally, we're horseback riding again! The kids are so excited to get back on their horses. I'm sure Cody and Lola have missed them terribly, too!

THURSDAY: We're going to move ahead to the next chapter of The Story of the World next week (mental note to ME to request library books and get the prep work done for that!), so we're working on the last two mummy and pyramids projects that I wanted us to complete first. For this day, there are SO many great interactive games about Ancient Egypt online, and the kids are going to think it's a real treat to get to explore them all for school. On the next day, they're going to transform Mason jars into canopic jars--I'm really eager to see how that project turns out!

Last week, Will loved using Scratch to play Spacewar, and spent more time goofing around on Scratch afterwards, even finding some games based on some of her favorite books (she's a big fangirl over the Warriors series, just so you know). She mentioned that she might like to try programming something of her own, but then never got around to it, so I put it on her schoolwork as encouragement. Syd also had a blast planning her fashion show design last week, and claims that she's going to sew it completely by herself this year (YES!!!), so I may have her sew a muslin of a shirt pattern that I think will be easy enough for her to use. Of course, I thought I had a pants pattern that was easy enough for her to use, but I sewed the muslin for her myself, and she didn't care for the style, so it's back to research for me! Maybe if she has to sew her own muslins she won't be so picky...

As a side note, Syd plans to use the following types of fabric for her garment:

• orange jersey knit--We're talking orange T-shirts here, or orange graphics on T-shirts, or even orange notions to embellish the garment.
• green formal fabric with sequins--Wish me major luck here, because who on earth would have a formal gown made out of green sequined fabric?!?
• green bottomweight--I'm tacking this one on myself, because I plan to STRONGLY encourage Syd to piece the inner thigh portion of the green sequined pants that she's planning on making with a regular green bottomweight fabric. I mean, walking the runway with sequins between your thighs--can you imagine?

So if you have any orange T-shirts, green curtains, or green sequined prom gowns that you're dying to get rid of, send them over to our house! 

FRIDAY: This may end up being more work than we can do on this day--I'm still playing with how to incorporate the kids' math class into their schedule--but if everyone can get focused, we *should* be able to create lapbooks based on G is for Golden: A California Alphabet (I LOVE the Discover America State-by-State series, as well as the lesson plans that go with the books), sculpt canopic jars, make some progress on the World Thinking Day badges, and write a report on chickens, chicken anatomy, and the life cycle of the chicken. I'm curious to see how these reports go, actually--I'm going to ask the kiddos to collaborate on each of their reports this week, instead of writing two separate reports. Will they realize that this makes the project much quicker and easier to complete, or will they fight the whole time and make it take ten times longer?

We'll see!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY/MONDAY: Here's to another holiday, another long weekend, and another short work week to come! I'm pretty excited that we have NOTHING scheduled for Saturday or Sunday; I hope the weather will allow us to take a long hike or go mountain biking. On Monday, I'll be doing our regular volunteer gig by myself while Matt takes the girls and some friends to a different volunteer gig with the Girl Scouts.

Also in the plans: yeah, they'll probably be boiling down a whole chicken carcass, bleaching the bones, and then beginning to re-articulate the skeleton.

Yay, science!

Kentucky Horse Park, Summer 2013

There's a LOT to be said about a week of school vacation! I was actually kind of bummed about it the first day, when my rotten little monsters basically just watched videos all day (the weather has NOT been as nice as I'd hoped, sigh...), but ipad issues aside, I am getting a ton of work done while the kids... rest their brains, is what I'm going to call it.

And that's how I'm *finally* getting around to editing the photos that I took during our family visit to the Kentucky Horse Park back in June, yikes!

Horses of the World show

SO much petting!

Horse evolution in the kids' barn!

Kiddo jump course

Hall of Champions show, featuring retired winning racehorses

You gotta double-fence the fields to keep the stallions from killing each other.

Sydney and I LOVE doing dorky statue mimicry.

Love. IT!

Sometimes random horses and riders in costume just go riding by.

This was a VERY patient pony.

a very, VERY patient pony

The park's museum is EXCELLENT, with, again, an extensive section on horse evolution--right in our sweet spot!

Of course, now that our free week is halfway through, the girls are (somewhat) over their Netflix Instant frenzy, and there's the imaginative play that I'd hoped they'd spend the day with, the fort building, the playing with chickens, the baking of delicious foods, and the heady anticipation of Halloween. We've had playdates and swimming dates, the invention of cinnamon/butter/salt popcorn, some time at the office with Matt, and ice skating to look forward to after they clean out the chicken coop later this morning. During all of this, I deep-cleaned the house, finished a set of chair covers for our janky old living room table chairs, planned a Harry Potter book club for Syd and some of her friends, finished the chore for pay magnets that I've been wanting for, like, a year now, and now that I've gotten these Kentucky Horse Park photos edited, well, I might as well plan the rest of the Kentucky unit for our 50 States Project!