Family Tree

One of my favorite things about homeschooling is that the girls have the opportunity to explore whatever they want.

Think about it. Think about having the opportunity to explore anything. Would you learn vegan baking? Car maintenance? Yoga? Embroidery?

Perhaps, like my daughter, you'd get really, really good at Zoo Tycoon. Perhaps, also like her, you'd read every single Nancy Drew novel ever printed. Perhaps you and she could spend some time together studying another of her interests...

human evolution.

I did predict this somewhat--years ago I drew a learning map trying to discover where Willow's passion for dinosaurs would take her, although I didn't know about Zoo Tycoon: Dinosaur Digs then, either--but I'm confident that it, along with Nancy Drew and zoo engineering/animal husbandry, does not appear on many standard first-grade curriculums.

But it's apparently what first-graders do in our homeschool. We've had human evolution books, human evolution documentaries, human evolution web sites, and we spent a morning last week putting human evolution on our big basement timeline:

All the info comes from the Smithsonian web site, printed in color, cut out by me and the Sydmeister, and glued straight onto our wall:
 
 And then, of course, the Very Important Signpost:

If you'd like to add human evolution to your first-grade curriculum, here are some of our favorite resources...so far:

Books



Film

• Ape to Man from the History Channel
• Becoming Human from Nova
• The Human Family Tree from National Geographic
• Walking with Cavemen from the BBC

Web Site

• Interactive Human Evolution Timeline from the Smithsonian

And if I ever found a hundred dollars lying on the street, I'd get Willow's mitochondrial DNA tested to determine the migration paths that our ancestors took.

Look Up!

I'm pretty stoked about my roomy new linkbar. I'm adding permalinks to the appropriate categories as I happen upon them, and new categories whenever I get a minute to add them (About Me? Recipes? Top 10 Most Embarrassing Blog Posts?).

Feel free to suggest something that needs a permalink. You know how much I love you busybodies, you.

Pinback Photos Go Kaput

I'm still learning all about my new-to-me garage sale light tent. I tell you this to explain the following photo shoot:

Forty-nine photos, none of them usable, all because of the stinkin' glare. I didn't have that problem at all when I shot my previous pirate pinbacks, so more thinking and practice and thinking again is clearly required.

I hope it's nice weather again tomorrow...

Log Cabin

It's not a quilt. I haven't made a log cabin quilt in a coon's age. My goal is to make a log cabin denim quilt big enough to cover me and Matt in our nice warm bed, but considering that I haven't even found the time to photograph and list pinbacks, or my HALLOWEEN stuff, to my pumpkinbear etsy shop, much less sew the girls some nightgowns and myself some T-shirt panties and do the crazy thrifting required to finish collecting the Star Wars T-shirts that I need for Matt's quilt...

Yeah, enough about me. Last weekend, Willow mentioned that she wanted to make a "real" log cabin out of twigs. Syd and I gathered some fallen sticks around the yard, and then I sat down on the porch and broke the sticks into a big pile of roughly 6" pieces, and then promptly forgot about it. Don't worry--I can totally forget all about something even if I have to practically step over it to get in the house.

And yet, forgotten by me, there it still sat, apparently remembered by my daughter, and convenient enough for her to carry into the house one day after a bike ride, pile onto the living room table, and, using the glue gun already sitting there and ready to plug in (ahem...we use a lot of hot glue?), a log cabin came together:

 
 
 
 
Mid-way through, she stopped so that I could use the cut-off wheel on my Dremel to cut a door into the cabin, but I have no final shot to show you, as apparently the cabin still requires mud walls and, I'm not sure for what, but also "leaves."

How are the New Kittens Working out, Julie?

I'd say that they've made themselves quite at home.

Miniature Pillow, Proud Momma

Sydney was listening to an audiobook, and I was catching up on emails, requesting Ohio travel guides from the library, googling high-quality pdf images of the Titanic, uploading photos, reading a blog or two--you know, important stuff-when Willow appeared suddenly at my elbow and said that she wanted to make a little pillow.

Would I help her sew it?

WOULD I?!?

This is what every sewing parent waits for, isn't it? The day that your child appears at your elbow and desires to learn your skill? She doesn't want to spend her morning reading Nancy Drew! She wants ME to teach her how to sew!

I set Will loose among my fabric stash while I finished up a last email or two, and by the time she had decided on two 6.5" squares of novelty cotton (meant to be incorporated into a DIY I Spy Quilt Kit for Bazaar Bizarre, but oh, well...), we were ready to roll.

First, I had Willow arrange the squares right sides together, lined up perfectly, then I pinned them well inside the sewing path (anticipating some meanderings), and I drew Willow a sewing guide around the perimeter of the square, in a light blue fat marker:

For the first time, Willow sat in my sewing chair not on my lap, but all by herself. For the first time, she put her foot on the pedal. I showed her how to guide the fabric, how to backstitch, how to lower the needle and lift the presser foot to turn corners.

And off she went:

 
 
 
 
Thankfully, it was an excellent experience, with a pleasing result. I think that there's only one person prouder than I am of Willow's miniature pillow:

May everything she sews throughout her long, long life make her at least that happy.

Learning at Home and Everywhere Else

So this weird thing happens when anyone asks me about homeschooling.

I make it sound all lame.

Some mom at the playground innocently asks how homeschooling is going, and I get all excited and talk on and on and on, and I can see the mom's face sort of getting a funny kind of "oh, dear!" look on it as I talk, so I go on even more excitedly about even more great stuff, and then they ask a question about curriculum, and down it goes from there.

And they leave to go home and tell their partners, "Remember Julie? Well, she homeschools now, and I'm pretty sure that her kids just sit around and watch Spongebob all day."

We do not watch Spongebob. Well, the girls watch Spongebob, but only at the dentist, and they think that he's a piece of cheese, not a sponge. If you don't want your kids to watch Spongebob, you have to go to the pediatric dentist in Bedford, which is a half-hour drive from here.

One of the problems, I think, is that what excites me most about homeschooling, and thus what I talk on and on about, is often not what would excite most other parents about their children's education.

It excites me that the girls get to play pretend ponies for as long as they want, and never get interrupted.

It excites me that most days we bicycle to the park, and that park that's a block away is generally a three-hour trip, door to door.

It excites me that Willow doesn't even bother to ask for my help with Zoo Tycoon anymore, because she's way better at it than I am--"No, Momma, the spotted hyena needs a den to sleep in, not the bamboo bungalo!"

It excites me that sometimes the girls don't even get dressed all day, because they're too busy drawing, and playing, and listening to audiobooks, and lying on top of their bed staring out the window. If they don't feel like going anywhere or doing anything in particular, then we don't.

It excites me that I don't have to try to make the girls go to sleep at night if they're not sleepy, and I don't have to wake them up in the morning if they are.

It excites me that we can spend the whole day at the library, including the half-hour bike ride there and back, and we can stop at the park on the way, too, and at lunchtime we can walk over to another park to hear a concert.

Are those things nothing? They seem vitally important to me.

I always forget to bring up the stuff that I probably should be telling everyone about.

Willow can read anything you put in front of her--is there a certain grade level associated with that?

The girls have listened to the Magic Tree House audiobooks so many times that they can tell you all about Pompeii, the Titanic, the Great San Francisco Earthquake, the shoguns of China, and one-room schoolhouses.

They're quite looking forward to the Disaster Dioramas of Pompeii and the Titanic that I told them that we could make next week.

Willow is fascinated by human evolution. We all watched Ape to Man the other day when it was her turn to choose the movie, then we checked out the interactive timeline on the Smithsonian website, and then we had Matt print a bunch of pre-human bios to put on our basement timeline.

We're also building a miniature log cabin with twigs and hot glue, and a chia farm in the pony playset.

Sydney and I made half a dozen pinwheels that spin in the wind, and the next time we get to Lowe's we have a list of supplies that will improve our design immensely.

Every time we're in the car, we listen to The Story of the World, and it's the first time that I've really understood world history.

We took a field trip to an apple orchard. We took a field trip to a famous fossil site. We took a field trip to a different apple orchard.

On the two-hour drive to fossil site, Willow read Shel Silverstein poems out loud to Sydney, and both girls laughed and laughed and laughed.

Today we collected pinecones.

We also made bracelets out of UV-reactive beads, so that we'll know when to put sunscreen on.

Tomorrow we're going to bake a chocolate cake just for the hell of it.

Is that what I should be explaining about homeschooling?