a gift

The girls' dear friend Esme was sick for a couple of weeks.  Bored. She found a paper grocery bag and came up with this amazing gift for Anika...

a dollhouse!

With a fireplace...and a rug!

...and some stairs...

...and a family portrait and a fancy chandelier...

 ...and a bedroom, with three beds...

Ani loves it. She made these ladies to live in it....

Their names are Anika, Eliza, and Esme.

THANK YOU, ESME!!!

(tour given by Anika)

Science curriculum, home-style

This is the time of year when I am thinking a lot about how we do things here at home.  The truth is that I don't think of it as "how we school" but how we go about our days.  This is just the time of year when I try to pry the bits and pieces out of the whole and file them away by label: science, mathematics, language arts, social sciences, etc...We opt to have our homeschooling evaluated by a certified teacher, rather than submit standardized test scores, and though the woman who performs our evaluation is understanding of how we do things, it is kind of a challenge to me to try and make lists of where the things we do fit into those categories.

Black Rat Snake

Today's excursion to the bike path illuminated the way we do science around here.  We make a lot of observations....

We pause and watch and wonder...

Why do butterflies eat poo???

 We research...they need nutrients that they can't get from nectar - like nitrogen and phosphorous.

We notice how the recent rains have affected our river, and the amount of trash the increased flow is able to carry...We notice that some plants are very successful at taking over this new "island": poison ivy, virginia creeper, and jewelweed for starters.

We talk about the plants we see.  We count their petals...

We name them....in the picture above Eliza is able to name eight different plants without any help: chicory, Queen Anne's Lace, plantain - two varieties, clover, dandelion, horsetail fern and poison ivy.  We continue down the path - grape vine, sumac, jewelweed...I don't think it is really important for kids to know the names of things just for the sake of knowing them, but it is something I am interested in and Eliza seems to be interested in that as well.  It also makes the natural world more familiar to her.

We "I spy" their parts...I spy...something curly! ...something blue! ...something green (she says with a grin...what isn't green here??)...something a bug has been chomping...

And then the girls have a GREAT idea for a new mystery about a plant that has lost its leaves, or maybe a plant that acts like a vampire and drinks blood, a mystery that is solved by two sisters, sort of like the Hardy Boys...but that would be getting into Language Arts, not science...right?

:: :: :: ::

I compile lists of books, games and resources we have used and will use to support all of this exploration.  Here are a few of our most often-used resources:

A variety of regional field guides on wildflowers, insects, amphibians, reptiles and birds (our favorites are Wildflowers Of Tennessee, The Ohio Valley and the Southern Appalachians and National Wildlife Federation Field Guide to Insects and Spiders of North America , as well as the series of field guides put out by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources)

Hands-On Nature

Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science books - good for introducing a topic

A Kid's Herb Book

Wildcraft Board Game

Snap Circuits Jr - this is a new activity for us, and it is so much fun! Eliza is able to use it herself with minimal guidance and Anika often asks to get it out as well.

David Attenborough documentaries...we love this naturalist, and it is amazing how much the girls remember about the mating habits of the jumping spider or the hunting techniques of various insects from his Life in the Undergrowth, which I think might be our favorite.

In addition to this, our cooking leads us to various experiments, we have made body maps, outlining our skeletons and introducing systems of the body, and we check out books from the library that delve into geology, physics, biology, weather systems...Our library hosted a number of workshops this summer, two of which dealt with the water cycle and water ecology - our brains are brimming with thoughts about this world and how things work! Isn't that what science is about?

Full days

We've been dancing around summer, well, all summer, and finally, with more of Papa, it really feels like we are enjoying our days...we tended to the garden last night after supper - wow...  Our plot is nestled in the middle of all the other plots, so everywhere you look there is a jungle of growth.

Mama, I love our garden! I am SO HAPPY! and as she was falling asleep, I harvested tomatoes! and kale!  This was really all I wanted from our garden adventure. I am so happy...

 With Dan there, so much more gets done in our precious hour before bed - tying up tomatoes, checking on squash, while I weed and weed and weed...

There were treasures - leaves as big as umbrellas...

 Sticks, carved by beetles!

::  ::  ::  ::

Today the morning was cool and we were feeling lazy...lots of playing with paper dolls, blocks, board games, "school" (we squeezed in more telling time and fractions as well as a good bit of reading and writing, all while being other people), and then there was this dashing french fellow and his coy bride...

I assume he was french, anyway, he kept saying things like "croissant, huh, huh, HUH!"

Tonight after supper (I love these long evenings) we went to the library for Open Mic night.  They host this a couple of times a year and we've never been, but we've got the bug after our recent performance night, so we went to check it out. 

After a slowish start with the hosting couple singing a song and telling some knock-knock jokes, Eliza got up to tell the story she told at our party.  It is not a short one, but she stuck with it (as did the audience) - and into a microphone,  no less. I think she is so cool.

We decided on the fly to reprise the song we sang the other night, borrowing the guitar and an autoharp from the hosts - next time maybe we'll go a bit more prepared!

Lovely to be at the library at a time when we're usually getting ready for bed...lovely to be there together...

Summer Salon

Food and zaniness.  Laughter and appreciation.  Friends and families...We hosted what we called the Spring Salon back in April, and it felt like time to do it again...

Eliza drew with henna as people arrived...

It was hot, but we persevered...

We had acrobatic apple trees...english madrigals (that would be from the hosts. our kind audience let us perform it twice, to get it right...!!)...a bell choir...

...a cooking demonstration, making lemon frosting for a ginger peach cake...

 ...an original skit about guitars and space cowboys from the future...

...and about then my camera's battery died (bad timing!), but there was more singing from our family - Eliza and I sang Winter's Come and Gone, I played guitar and Dan played mandolin - and Eliza told the story of The Three Golden Apples, complete with storyboard pictures.  She was amazing! She hadn't wanted to practice beforehand, and I just trusted her instincts about it - she was so excited to share the story, and she was just so poised and funny and clear...I was really proud of her.  It held everyone's attention, even getting some kids to flop down closer on the floor, whispering to each other "I think that old woman she's talking about is a witch".  It was awesome.  The performances drew to a close with our friend Sam's "Salon in a Bag" that he supposedly picked up at CVS - think jester, juggler, joker rolled into one...

I love what people bring to these evenings. Incredible food, a bit of excited nerves, and so much good will and talent...I feel like I'm getting to see beyond the daily workings of our friends and into some amazing pockets of creativity and sparkle...

Lake Hope

Camping!

I did help for a little bit, but then I got distracted...

I couldn't tell you what any of them are, but I am beginning to think that the world of fungus might just be as fascinating as the world of arthropods...

After swimming in the lake, we had some Irish dancing with mandolin...then supper, then the most important ingredients for a successful camping trip:  campfire and marshmallows.

I don't seem to be capable of selecting decent tasting graham crackers (really, there is a history there.), so we ditched the idea of the traditional s'more and replaced the cracker with, well, more chocolate, of course!!! It was not bad, though a little messy(er) to eat.

Ani says this is her favorite view of the world, and she filled her eyes with it this trip.

Some unexpected excitement for us the next morning - keys locked in the car and a visit from an officer with super cool tools to unlock the car...Ani is demonstrating for us.  

After a quick trip across the lake in a rowboat - the girls' first time in a boat other than the ferry! - we headed to our friends' home in the woods nearby.  

There was amazing food (as always) and lots of entertainment

A lovely couple of days "away" - not relaxing so much as just good time together...we're all mosquito-bitten and tired, but we had a really good time...