On our reading list right now...

While we're not sitting down for "school" each day, we are learning about American history through cuddled-up reading time, which seems to be the way in which my children learn the most, more than worksheets, or paper crafts, and so forth. Some of our current books include:

The Look-It-Up Book of Explorers
Leif the Lucky
The D'Aulaires Book of Norse Myths
Pedro's Journal
Columbus

After we get through exploration, we'll move on to the colonists. A Book in Time has lots of good suggestions for books about that time period. We also watched This is America, Charlie Brown: The Mayflower Voyagers last night, which finally got Cassia interested in Pilgrims, etc. Cyrus watched the video tour of the first Thanksgiving a few days ago and got very interested then - he's been coming up with random facts for the last couple of days!

We're also learning about the human body. And we've watched a lot of MythBusters. Cyrus and I also watched Punkin' Chunkin'. We really wish they had shown more of the kids' division on the show, but it was still pretty interesting, though we were sorry our favorite contraption did not win. Anything named The Launchness Monster is pretty cool!

Cassia is showing more and more interest in reading. She asks to do reading lessons on the computer, and has me read pages of her favorite books over and over until she can "read" it back to me. I am so relieved... I read early, Cyrus read early, and it has been difficult waiting until she was ready... I can be very impatient!

Other than that, we're just puttering along. We read, we watch movies, we play games, the kids build contraptions out of anything they can get their hands on. I did ask them to start math back up soon, just a few lessons a week. They both opted for Saxon math again for now... we'll see how long it lasts! I'm still searching for the perfect science balance for them. We started to look at Aristotle Leads the Way but decided that would be better in another year or so. I'll figure it out eventually. What I need is a website like A Book in Time that has living science books rather than history. While they're not living books, I am considering ordering the e-book versions of Real Science 4 Kids pre-level and level 1 Chemistry, then Biology. The e-books are quite affordable, and I don't need the student lab book or teacher guide since I have a gazillion experiment books that I could easily correlate to the topics covered. I could read the pre-level to Cassia and Cyrus could read level 1, or I could read it with him.

Today we have Second Thanksgiving at my mom's house (we had ours here yesterday, and she had hers at her church). And I work for a few hours tonight. Tomorrow we're off to see the local junior college production of Willy Wonka, and are very much looking forward to it.

Wishing you all a...

And here are some free Thanksgiving resources for homeschooling/enrichment:

Virtual Tour of the First Thanksgiving (also has lesson plans, printables, etc.)

Thanksgiving Crafts Free e-Book

Thanksgiving Then and Now

Historic Recipes

Thanksgiving Printables

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day!

A (Two?) Week Review in Pictures...

It has been a busy couple of weeks... lots of learning from life!

Driving the RC police car around (yes, it has working lights and sirens)

Crafting paper bouquets from sparkly construction paper

Building a house all on his own (even I couldn't understand the directions)

Being my chef's assistant

More kitchen assistance

And they made brownies themselves (from a packaged mix, but still by themselves)

We checked out a cool museum exhibit called Mad Science

The art installations almost all had moving parts

We went to a glass fusing studio to make ornaments

The kids were impressed with how hot the kiln has to be to fuse the glass, and how long the process takes

We checked out the view from the Golden Gate Bridge after attending a children's symphony. At the symphony, they played one of my children's favorite pieces, Grieg's Hall of the Mountain King from the play Peer Gynt.

We went under the bridge too, where it was a little dark and mysterious, and very noisy

We also attended a homeschool day at another local museum. Here the kids are checking out worms.

Making plaster casts of animal prints

Listening to bird calls

Checking out leaves close-up

In addition to all this activity, we went roller skating with friends, and visited the library for a bilingual storytelling with music. We read from The Saturdays, read some Greek myths, and the kids curled up together in the big chair, laughing hysterically at a book about poop. Cyrus read about Thomas Edison, and continued reading from The Marvelous Land of Oz. I read to Cassia from the Blue Fairy Book. They watched a couple of videos on the human body, and played physics games on the computer-- Crayon Physics and Construction Fall. Cassia has been using Click'N Read Phonics for a few lessons, and is sounding out signs, words on trucks, etc... FINALLY!

We also got the house a lot cleaner, which gave me time to make homemade playdough. I've noticed I am much more motivated when my house is clean! We scented the playdough with Chinese 5 Spice, and Cassia colored it pale green with food coloring. As I type this, they're making various animals and geometric shapes with the dough.

We have a lot coming up in the next few weeks as well. Thanksgiving, of course. Plus we have tickets to see a full length stage production of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. A lovely friend is sending me Oak Meadow 2, on loan, to see if I can incoporate some of it for Cassia. I am searching out a copy of Oak Meadow 4 for Cyrus too, since I think he'd love the science and art, and probably the history too.

I'm in the process of finding, and making, more math games for them as well. The book Homeschool Your Child for Free has lots of good hands-on ideas. And I am trying to make good use of Freely Educate... we're going to take the virtual tour of the First Thanksgiving, and some virtual tours from the National Museum of American History. I also want us to get back to watching our free American history dvds. And we have a pile, or two, of library books to read through. We're officially almost unschooling through December, then in January will reassess and see where we're headed next!

Human anatomy...

My children are fixated on human anatomy, so much so that a friend who had lambs butchered recently saved us a heart for dissection purposes. I decided to put together a unit on anatomy that should take us up to the Christmas break at least!

Books
Basics
Blood and Guts
Eyewitness: Human Anatomy
The Way We Work
Your Skin Weighs More Than Your Brain & Other Freaky Facts
The Wonders Inside the Human Body

Digestion
The Quest to Digest
The Truth About Poop
Gee Whiz! It's All About Pee

Circulatory System
The Circulatory Story
Squirt! The Most Interesting Book You'll Ever Read About Blood

Skeleton (and Muscles)
The Bones Book (& Skeleton)
Muscles: Our Muscular System
Bones: Our Skeletal System

Cells
Enjoy Your Cells!
Germ Zappers
Have a Nice DNA!
Gene Machines

Crafts, Etc.
The Body Book: a hands-on craft book, the kids will create a multi-layered human anatomy model out of paper
Human Anatomy Coloring Book
Dissecting a lamb's heart
Magic School Bus: A Journey into the Human Body science kit
A Guided Tour of the Visible Human
Visible Body

Videos
All About the Human Body series
Bill Nye the Science Guy (selected titles, under "Human")

I'll let you know how it goes. Oh, I also reserved The Boys' Body Book for Cyrus, as he is getting older and has more questions! Makes me feel like he's getting too old too fast, but better that he get answers through me (or M) than elsewhere!

Wordless Wednesday... morning visitors

Another week in review...

We have had a good learning week, and most of it wasn't sit-down-at-the-table learning. Instead, I gave Cyrus and Cassia the freedom to choose, and I have to say, I am pretty impressed with what they've chosen. They would like homeschooling, at the moment, to focus on science and mythology. I'm good with that. Yes, I will still insist on math for both, reading lessons for Cassia, and writing for Cyrus. But, that's it. The rest is up to free choice. Obviously, I am not all about unschooling, and I don't know that I ever will be! But that is okay. I am learning to let go of those pesky "learning standards" the state has, and which I do not have to follow, being a private school.

Anyhow, what we did this week was this:
Language Arts & Literature, etc.:
We started reading A Wrinkle in Time, taking a break from The Borrowers series. I also checked out Gods & Goddesses of Ancient Egypt and the D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths, which we'll start in the upcoming week. Cyrus has started The Marvelous Land of Oz. Cassia and I are still reading our way through The Red Fairy Book, and she did some work on both Progressive Phonics and Starfall. She is going through a phase where she is copying words out of books, mainly fairy books, and then asking me what they say. I think this is pretty good practice for reading and writing!

Cyrus is fascinated by dragons. Some time ago, I taught him how to look up books on the computer at the library. This week I taught him, at his request, how to place books on hold. He found a couple of good books available right away (see the sidebar Amazon widget), and placed two more on hold. He and a friend are planning to search for dragons when they grow up, and are designing armor that will hold the dragon's "acidous" (acidic) saliva and venom at bay.

Math:
Again, more Go Fish, War, and Solitaire, including Clock Solitaire, which my mom taught them. They did a few pages from Math Mammoth, and I got a book called Marvelous Multiplication for Cyrus (at the library). His current goal is to learn enough about multiplication and division to start the Life of Fred series. I dug out my old, battered copy of Family Math and am browsing through it for Cassia-friendly games and activities.

Sciences:
We re-watched the Symphony of Science videos (which we love), and which inspired, at least in part, the current interest in science. I'm adding science videos to my Netflix queque... old Cosmos episodes with Carl Sagan (we watched the first one already), the Life series, and so on. We're going to start reading The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way and following interests from that.

History:
We started New World Explorers (by Homeschool in the Woods) but set it back aside to pursue deeper interests in science and mythology. I'm also looking at Liberty's Kids for them to watch, and they are planning to watch one episode a week of America: The Story of US.

Other:
We attended a 4H Business for Primaries (the younger crowd) meeting, where they learned about library systes, and what it would take to start a community library-- funds, a building (or at least a room), books, a check-out system, fine system, etc. Then we went to Park Day for the first time in a while which was really nice.

And today we went to the Farmer's Market. We drank homemade chai, and got lots of good, fresh veggies and fruit. We looked at beautiful yarn (hopefully I'll be knitting soonish), tasted smoked olive oil and fresh butter, smelled beeswax candles, talked to farmers, and ran into a friend. We planned a week's worth of menus and headed off to the grocery store to finish shopping. Right now, there is a beautiful fig tart baking in my oven, recipe courtesy of Deborah Madison's Local Flavors.

And since I'm freeing up our agenda in learning, I'm finding lots and lots of cool opportunities in our local homeschool community. A field trip to a California history museum, a potential history faire in which to participate, a chance to hear the San Francisco Symphony, another field trip to the local county museum, and to a wildlife preserve. Another trip is in the works to go walnut picking. Regular playdates at a friend's farm in on the calendar. Maybe some regular ice skating too!

Not Quite Wordless Wednesday

Halloween 2010

M's Goofy Angry jack o' lantern

My raven/crow jack o' lantern

Cyrus's Spider pumpkin (he carved it entirely himself)

Cassia's Frankenstein (she actually carved about 75% herself)

Vampiress

A cross between the Grim Reaper and a Phantom

Trying out the first project in New World Explorers