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Friday, September
15, 2006
We got together with some friends yesterday for
homeschooling activities. A friend of mine, also a homeschooler, lives in a
semi-mountainous part of this area. She invited us, as part of a small homeschooling
co-op, to get together for some fun. We met at her house. At first, we snacked
and looked around. It’s quite gorgeous there, and they’ve got animals, which
A.J. always likes. They were “growing” butterflies and had hermit crabs and a
betta in the house. They also had an indoor/outdoor cat and some chickens and
ducks and a great garden. My friends’ sons were quick to tell me they used to
have gerbils, but, well, let’s just say that their cat is a very good mouser...
Anyway, another mom and her 6-year-old son joined
us and led
the kids and moms in some fun yoga, including frog and snake poses (of
course, my ever-expanding stomach kept me out of some of these poses!).
A.J.
participated in about half of this but was also interested in playing
with one
of the kid’s “expandable” balls (the ones that fold up really small and
then
fold out to be almost as big as the kid) and hunting gnats (he thinks
it’s
great fun to try and eat them ;)).
Inside, we felted wool for the first time. You take some
wool and dip it in soapy water (or just a certain kind of soap) and shape it
and dip it and shape it and dip it. As it was our first time, we tried for a
simple shape: balls. A.J. said this was his favorite part, although he didn’t
last a whole long time, but I did notice that the younger children
(particularly A.J. and the 4-year-old girl) lasted a bit less time at each
activity, so I suppose that’s normal. We brought some extra home to work on it a little bit more later.
We spent time indoors and outdoors playing, and of course,
the moms chatted. It was lots of fun, and we might make getting together with
this group (there are also two other moms and their kids who were not able to
make it) a regular thing.
Saturday,
September 16, 2006
Well, today is a work and get-stuff-done day (grooming the
pets, getting house stuff done) for me and Dad, so A.J. has been spending some
time playing on his own (which he does very well). He’s been playing a lot of Fate, a computer game with quests and
such but has also been drawing and coming up to talk to me frequently about how
his game is going, etc. Two or three times a day, I also sit down to help him with a quest or something.
I tried to interest him in a little Spanish review, but
he was very nice about letting me know that he wasn’t too interested right now--too
distracted by the game he had been involved in.
I wanted to write about some of the stuff A.J. likes to do
on his own and with us:
·
Playing on the computer (playing games, making
tables of stuff for sale or game stuff in Microsoft Word, and making books in
Storybook Weaver)
·
Making up new versions of the games he plays on
paper with drawing and writing and creative thinking
·
Drawing pictures of ocean creatures and their
prey (today one picture was sperm whales and giant squid)
·
Reading: Some of his more recent library books
that he reads on his own or we read together have included The Ocean Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallota, Dolphins by Michael Bright (Discovery Channel/DK/BBC series), Extraordinary Fish (in the same series),
and Rays by Kris Hirschmann
(Creatures of the Sea series). He’s also looked a bit at the Egyptian Book of the Dead, to look at
hieroglyphs. These are in a game we’ve been playing off an on (Mysteries of
Horus), and the book has a list of some hieroglyphs. He has made up some of his
own since. We get about a dozen new library books every 4 weeks or so. He never
wants to turn them in, but he always likes the new ones. A couple of times, I
checked out videos, but he never gets around to watching them. He’d rather read
the books!
·
Jumping on the beds or just about anywhere ;)
·
Going for walks around the neighborhood with me
and sometimes dad (we don’t do this enough, but I’m working on it!) and looking
at all the different birds, flowers, and other animals
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