I can't believe I forgot to post about this...

but we finally made it to the Rosicrucion Egyptian Museum last Saturday. We've actually been hoping for months to make the trip, but it just kept getting delayed. Since we are now finished (for the moment anyway) with ancient Egyptian studies, this seemed like a great way to wrap it all up. And we had a fantastic time! So much to see... we played Senet in the garden, checked out all the pavilions, and slowly made our way inside. Once we actually went in, we saw everything from mummies to ancient mirrors, from a tomb replica (the kids' absolute favorite part) to a replica of a birthing room (although my MIL, who tagged along, could not figure out the purpose of the bricks... I tried several times, to no avail, to explain the idea of squatting during childbirth). My favorite part? All the day-to-day stuff. That is what fascinates me about history - it is not the big events, it is instead how people lived, regular people. I also loved watching the kids, especially Elf, connect what we had studied to what we were seeing, like the Code of Hammarubi, and statues/sarcophagi/etc. of famous pharoahs. Fairy loved the idea of a hippo-headed goddess for some reason. We also stayed for a planetarium show, and the kids were amazingly quiet during the whole thing!

Now for...

Today's topic - a recipe for success, or lunch! I'll give you my attempts at success... variety. We don't just sit down and school-at-home, nor do we do one hands-on project after another, or sit around reading for hours on end (although I could easily do that. Well, easily if I didn't have to stop every 42 seconds). We mix it up. A somewhat typical homeschooling session, for lack of a better word, might look something like this:

CircleTime first (adopted from Oak Meadow - it gets the children focused on what we're sitting down for)... verbal

Then we'll do our Meeting Books from Saxon, which involves calendar work, and checking the weather/temperature... writing, reading thermometer

Poetry memorization... again verbal

Explode the Code... writing

Then, we likely have a jumping jacks break, or a running around the backyard like maniacs break

Cyrus reads aloud... verbal

Math... written

History or science read-aloud time or watch a documentary/movie... verbal/visual

Maybe an art, history or science project, if we have time... hands-on

I also read from a chapter book at bedtime.

Biggest challenge...

I missed yesterday's from Dana's Principled Discovery Home Educaion Week topic due to writing an ecology report, so I'll try today's, which is to share one of my greatest challenges. For me, I'd say a great challenge is finding the right path of education for my family. I am easily attracted to many types of schooling, ranging from classical to Charlotte Mason, to Waldorf-based, to unit studies, and more. I can see benefits to each, and so I want to try them all. It doesn't help that, as we homeschool through a charter school, I have lots of stuff easily available.

I think what I need to do is forget the labels. As a home educator, I am free to pick and choose what works for us, and to move past what doesn't work.

Oh, and by the way, isn't my blog looking pretty? I feel blessed in that I have a friend who designed my great new banner for me. I could spend all day looking at it!