Homeschooling from the Heart

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April 20, 2008 - Gardening Projects

Now that all of our children are old enough to allow us some freedom for working in the yard while they play (and help us with the gardening chores) we are looking forward to putting in a decent sized vegetable garden. It will be so nice to have fresh homegrown tomatoes, green beans, snap peas, peppers..... I could go on and on listing what I'd like to plant but what will actually get in the ground and thrive remains to be seen.

This past weekend we went to our local petting farm for their annual spring event which included watching the sheep get sheared and crafts for the kids. There were also some interesting displays in the main building. One was a lady who raises red worms in her basement in rubbermaid tubs. She feeds her food remnants to them and they turn it into compost for her garden. It is certainly fascinating stuff but I'm not sure I could get involved in something like that.

Something else I am interested in that I learned about at the the petting farm is creating a monarch butterfly waystation. Apparently, the monarch butterfly population is declining due to shrinking habitat and herbicide overuse. There is a program out of Kansas where you can get certified as a Monarch Waystation by planting nectar and host plant varieties for monarch butterflies to use for nectar, laying eggs and caterpillars food. The website address for more information is www.monarchwatch.org. Last year we ordered Painted Lady caterpillars from Insect Lore and watched them turn into butterflies and then released them. This will be a fun way to take that experience one giant step further. It will also get us involved in an activity that demonstrates to the children how to be good stewards of the earth and the creatures God made for us to enjoy. I'll keep you posted as we create our butterfly garden and hopefully even see some of their lifecycle occur there!

We also got some sunflower seeds for J and M to plant and grow for the Sunflower Growing Contest. Maybe one of them will win a prize for tallest sunflower or largest bloom.

I'm so happy that spring is finally here (it seemed to take forever to arrive) and that we have much to look forward to during these warmer months.

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October 7, 2007 - A New School Room

Our current school area is the kitchen table, but I've often thought it would be great to have our own school space to leave maps and things available for the kids to use, and where we could leave things be and have most of our stuff in one place. You can't do that in the busy kitchen. I decided today that I'm going to turn our spare bedroom into a school room. It was sort of an "Aha!" moment and a "duh! why didn't I think of this before?" We live in a bungalow with 4 bedrooms, two of which are upstairs. JD is occupying one of the upstairs bedrooms and the other has the futon that our parents sleep on when they visit us. Eventually that room will become MD's room but dh will not be ready to do the reinsulating, etc. necessary for another 2 years. I'm going to get some cheery paint (I'll take some color suggestions

), get out all the extra toys that are just taking up space and find some sort of table or desks that we can use up there. I won't be able to get started until November since my in-laws will be using that room for the next 3 weeks (they arrive on Monday). Until then I'll just have to be content with planning and searching for the right furniture!

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August 22, 2007 - MD's Day

MD and I had a fun time this afternoon. We had a playdate with our homeschool group this morning and once we were home MD didn't waste time before asking to "do school". The youngest was napping so that gave me freedom to devote all my attention on my 4 year old. We started with Hooked on Phonics and then I pulled out Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons to see if she was better able to follow than the last time I introduced it to her. She was doing great but I could tell she was losing interest after about 5-10 min. She finally said, "I want to do my old one because I like cutting out letters". About a month ago we did a little from My Father's World Kindergarten learning about the 7 days of creation and she really liked cutting out the numerals. So after we finished Lesson 1 from 100 Easy Lessons we moved to the table for the writing portion. Instead of just getting out paper and a pencil I had her practicing writing 'm' and 's' in corn meal in a pie tin and then we made the shapes of the letters with clay. After about 15 minutes of that she got to cut out her letters and then decorated them with glitter and pompoms and googly eyes! Then I had her write 'm' and 's' on paper after tracing mine and she did good. We ended our school time with a bit from MFW learning about the sun and that "Jesus is the Light of the World".

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August 19, 2007 - Unit Studies

JD asked to learn about different topics in unit study format this year. He didn't know to call it that but I knew that is what he meant. We're going to start with Volcanos. We will be visiting Hawaii in December where my mother and father-in-law live. We'll be visiting the Big Island for a few days and will be staying near Kilauea. So we're going to do all the learning about volcanos that we can in the meantime as well as learn more Hawaiian language using a free dvd from my husbands alma mater and a CD program that we bought the last time we were on the islands. We may get the opportunity to practice with some Hawaiian speakers when we are there. Here is a link to a volcano unit study I found that I'll probably start with.

We've also made a list of other topics we'd like to learn about in the coming year. Some of these include magnets, electronics, spies and spy stuff, dinosaurs, horses, farms and animals that live there, rocks and minerals....

We're going to be quite busy I think!

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About Me

I am a Christian wife and mother of 3 in Michigan. This is where I will be sharing our experiences in homeschooling our children. I welcome comments and look forward to hearing from my readers!