First Days

Well, I haven't even finished figuring out our goals for the year, but these kids knew school was starting for everyone else and they would NOT be denied! Actually, truth be told, they've been wanting to start homeschooling for weeks and I've been holding them off in an effort to get myself more organized. I suppose one of my favorite things about homeschooling, and Unschooling in particular, is that there really isn't any difference between a normal day at our house, except there's less TV and more Mommy. Oh yeah, that reminds me, here we go into the couple of months when I can't keep my house straight AND homeschool at the same time. Sorry there, honey!

So Monday was our first day, and we decided a trip to the park was in order. We found a few leaves and identified them in DaddyO's Boy Scout manual, speculated as to how a tree grows with its lower trunk split open wide, and of course got in lots of running, climbing, dangling, and bouncing. The boys also enjoyed taking pictures with a one-use camera I had picked up a while back, although they were endlessly confused as to why they could not SEE the pictures immediately after they took them! Kids these days, I tell ya. I remember a family friend saying something about how weird it was when her daughter didn't know what a vinyl record album was ("That's a big cd, Daddy" was the quote, I think) and now my kids are flummoxed by the idea of actual film. We're taking one of those cameras apart, doggone it.

Today, Tuesday, I was a little better prepared. We got in some wonderful math practice while playing The Ladybug Game (I lost), then Tex and I found and explored a new dinosaur website (www.kidsdinos.com) where he played two wonderful games: one showed you the dinosaur and its statistics for height/weight, when it lived, and what it ate, and you had to classify it as a "large meat eater, small meat eater, armored dino, large plant eater, duckbill, bird-footed,", etc.; the other was a version of Hangman that showed you a drawing of the dino, its stats, and then you had to guess its name in 8 turns or less. Tex and I had to actually go get some of his dinosaur books, look in the time period for dinosaurs with some of the same characteristics as the pictured dinosaur, count the number of letters in the name, and even deduce possibilities from some of the Latin root words he's learned (-saurus, cera, cepha, raptor, etc.) to help him narrow the letter choices. It was very difficult, but he enjoyed it so much! We also started a list today of topics he wants to explore, and tops on the list is various forms of "engineering and architect". He wants to build a tent, a fishing pole, and maybe a spear out of bamboo. And we're going to use that Boy Scout manual a lot more because he wants to learn survival skills! Methinks I smell camping with DaddyO this Fall...

Oh, and my favorite. At four o'clock I told Tex he had to wait until five to turn the TV on. He was not pleased. But we spent the next hour making the aforementioned topic list, and he also played fractions in his head by dividing the loathsome hour into quarters, thirds, and sixths. I tried to coach him through fifths but that was a little too hard. "Mommy, you just got carried away with the math." Yes, yes I did.

Still working on that goals list. Can't have them learning without me being able to sort it into my little boxes, now, can we????