A Familiar Path - Homeschool Blogger

Moving

Sat, 12 May 2007 17:30:00 -0500

I'm moving. Please stop by and say hello over here.

Spell it

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 17:58:00 -0500

We often spell things around here in the presence of Milo. It’s fun when you have a child who can finally understand all the things you spell. If the kids are outside I might say, “In five minutes bring Milo in for his n - a - p.” Clementine knows exactly what I need her to know and Milo doesn’t have a premature fit because of the hateful word.

Another oft spelled word is gum. “Mom can I have some g - u - m?” from Emeline is a nice way for her to ask for something that I don’t like for Milo to have but he loves.

Tonight, Milo was still bouncing around after the girls were settled in to bed. Clementine got up to tell me, “Mom would you please but him in the b - e - d.”

“I’m headed that way now,” I told her.

Milo, ever attentive to our conversations started coming toward the kitchen, “I want b - e - d,” he spelled.

“You do, you want to go to the b - e - d?” I asked smiling.

“Uh huh!” he said and went right to the cabinet where we keep the g - u - m.

Sobriety test

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:36:00 -0500

The other night Clementine asked, “Is my sobriety test on Monday?”

At first I was surprised that she knew the words sobriety then I wanted to laugh and I did. I told her a sobriety test was something you took when you had too much moonshine and she would be taking a standardized test on Monday.

We began the standardized test today and it goes through Wednesday. This morning she was nervous but when I saw her at the first break she had relaxed considerably. She said the test was, “easy and fun”. I’m not sure easy and fun will translate to high scores, but at least she isn’t worried and stressed.

We are still waiting to hear news about my mother and I am still waiting on things to happen with me. So thank you so much, you who have never even met me and those of you who have, for lifting me up in your prayers. It means so much to me.

The Reluctant Dragon

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 00:37:00 -0500

Our most recent read-aloud has been The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame. My kids really enjoyed it and it was one of those I wasn't so sure they would like.

It is a small book and it only took us about four nights to read it, but it has no chapters so when I had to draw it to a close each night I met with protests to, "please just finish the chapter." The inside flap says that this book was originally a chapter in Grahame's Dream Days.

It is the story of a boy who stumbles upon a dragon. He is not your typical dragon. He likes to think deeply and gaze out over the Downs. We have also been reading The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, a long time favorite of ours, and the dragon reminds me a lot of Ferdinand.

Add this read-aloud to your family's reading list for the summer. I think your kids will enjoy it as much as mine did.

Chasing fireflies

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:54:00 -0500

This evening, when the day finally cooled down, we went nature hunting. I�m reading A Pocketful of Pinecones and, while I�m not ready to recommend it as a good read, it has given me a few ideas. I gave the girls pencil and paper and we walked around under the trees looking.

I told them to look for something interesting to draw for their nature notebooks. They surprised me with their looking. Right away they were bent over a trail of ants, even Milo, looking just as hard as the girls were. The ants were carrying eggs and seemed to be making a new home. They found an empty cocoon, a mushroom and some black-eyed susans.

The end of the walk was most productive. Near the edge of the woods fireflies blinked and were easily caught. We put them in a plastic bag and I bet they caught 20 of them.

Once home, I showed them pictures of ants and fireflies so they could see how their body parts were drawn. They drew pictures and colored them and we identified the black-eyed susans and pasted everything on a notebook page complete with illustrations.

We frequently go on walks around the yard but I don�t often have them looking, hunting for interesting things. This evening they poked sticks in holes, noticed animal tracks and asked about the oak tree roots they saw above the ground. Milo seemed to know exactly what we were doing and he made me laugh poking his own stick at things on the ground and bending over to take a closer look whenever the girls did.

I think there�s something to teaching them to take a closer look and listen. I know this is something we will be doing a lot more often.

One more funny

Sun, 11 Jun 2006 22:23:00 -0500

Emeline was pushing Marie Osmond (my old Barbie) and Shaggy (a Scooby Doo Barbie) in Milo's Tonka dump truck tonight. They were going pretty fast in circles on the living room rug. Then I hear Emeline saying to the riders, "Hold on to your careers!"

I started laughing before I could even ask her what she thought that meant. Did she know what a career was, I asked?

"A bottom?" she answered.

Then I had to bust out laughing all over again.

Homeschooling expectations

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 12:05:00 -0500

My expectations for homeschooling weren't much to begin with. I actually considered the first year a test to see if I was capable of educating my child. Now, looking back, I find it so strange that I ever thought a public school teacher could teach my child better than I could. Did they know my child better than I did? Did they care about my child more than I did? Did they have more individual time and attention to give to my child than I did?

Yet, at first, I didn�t consider any of those questions. Instead my question was: Will I be able to teach her everything they say she needs to know?

I didn�t always plan to homeschool, however, I feel that God began to work on my heart long before I began to think seriously about homeschooling. By the time my daughter was school age, the only thing I was sure about was that I didn�t want to send her away from me all day.

Four years later, I have learned so much more about homeschooling, although our experiences really haven�t changed that much. We still read together, study nature together and the rest of the stuff just changes as the children are capable of doing more.

Homeschooling has more than met my expectations, but not how I expected. When we first began I imagined the learning would take place in a specific place at a specific time with the right materials. Now I see that it is so much more than just educating my child. It is about building relationships, spending time with my kids every day, all day and doing fun things together. I can�t see ever wanting to change this way of life for our family.

A skunk stinks better

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 00:30:00 -0500

Riding in the van home this evening with my children we smelled a skunk. Oh how they held their noses and went on about the smell. Living in Arkansas I can take the smell of a skunk any day compared to the smell of chicken houses.

However, never one to miss an opportunity to converse with my children using sarcasm (as learned by my own mom), I saw a chance to nip the next pet idea in the bud by saying, "Maybe we should get a skunk as our next pet."

"Oh, no. I'll never want a skunk. They smell awful," Emeline said in a nasal, but perfectly serious voice from the pinched nose.

"Well, I'm pretty sure a field mouse will stink too." I am still trying to discourage her from wanting a field mouse for her birthday.

"But a skunk stinks better than a field mouse," she so wisely reported.

She is certainly making this field mouse out to be "pet of the year." Some of you commenters aren't helping my case either!

It's a luna moth!

Thu, 1 Jun 2006 14:44:00 -0500

Exciting things are happening here today. When we got up this morning one of our caterpillars, which had made a cocoon about two weeks ago, had emerged a beautiful, luna moth! I think I was more excited than the kids.

We have managed to raise a caterpillar from an egg, fed it as it grew as a caterpillar, patiently waited on the cocoon and now we were rewarded with the moth.

We decided to set it free. Emeline let it go this morning.

Some history: A while ago, a luna moth was flying around. We caught it and put it in a bug box for a while. When we let it go we discovered it had laid eggs. We kept them and they hatched into the smallest green caterpillars we had ever seen. We read on the internet what to feed them and watched them grow.

This is one of the first photos of the caterpillar.It is not the black one but the small, green one on the leaf at the bottom left of the photo.

Here they are a few leaves later. They liked sweetgum tree leaves. They grew pretty big.

And today. Now the girls are putting together a book of drawings and writings about our experiences with the moth and caterpilars. It was so much fun and rewarding.

Bedtime Surprise

Tue, 9 May 2006 00:09:00 -0500

Clementine lost her two front teeth tonight. She has been babying these loose teeth for months now. If I weren�t equally squeamish about all things teeth, I may have been tempted to pull them while she slept.

I was in Milo�s room, with him on my lap reading Goodnight Moon. We were on one of the black and white pages when she came rushing in hysterically sputtering and spraying drops of blood all over us. Milo was fascinated by the spray on the white pages in his book. Emeline was standing nearby with a horrfied expression on her face and I was still trying to figure out what was going on.

She was crying because she had bumped her teeth pretty hard on my bed and it knocked out both teeth at once. It hurt a little, I�m sure, but she was also quite surprised.

When she calmed down a little and after Milo was tucked in, the girls and I cuddled on the bed and comforted Clementine. "I�ll look ugly now," she fretted. "And I can�t talk right."

"You�re adorable," I said and went to pull out my old albums to show her some really funny pictures of me without my two front teeth. Then, I had to take a picture of her to put in her baby book.