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Mushrooms After Rain

For anyone who either lives in Southwest Florida or has been following the weather news, you may know that it had been raining here - a lot.  As in Tropical Storm Debby has meant days of rain and more rain.  For Seneca, this meant go outside and get soaked!  I assure you we are in a safe area and the times when she was playing outside, there were no high gusts of wind.  The gusts of wind did occur during these days, but not at the specific moments when she was outside.
     Yesterday the raining here had stopped and we could see its effects on our neighbor's lawn - mushrooms!  Seneca has recently been quite enthralled by mushrooms after learning that gnomes live in mushrooms.  So, for her, a great kingdom had just sprouted!  She went and got one rather large mushroom with a very round and smooth top, not like the typical mushroom we often think of.
  We spent some time exploring this mushroom of hers.  She compared the different textures  on it. Then, she held it up and said, "It's the sun!"  We also figured out that it could be a wheel, a gnome's home, or a table.  She then washed her hands thoroughly after so much mushroom touching.
       From there, I decided to tell her the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  Now, I had pretty much remembered the story, but I was really second guessing myself on my memory of it.  I decided I had better look it up on the internet.  Fortunately, I found a site which re-told the Norwegian folktale.  It was a good thing because I had forgotten the nuances like the "trip-trap, trip-trap" each goat makes as he crosses the bridge.  I re-told her the story before bedtime as well.

On hiatus

So, all homeschooling stuff has been put on hiatus while I am dealing with a herniated disc in my back. I did do a mini geometry lesson with Liam.  Seneca and I do still do phonics books and I can still tell her fairy tales. 
 It is so frustrating because I had so many things that I wanted to do with them.  Some of it will just have to be done from textbooks I guess.

Seneca's Day June 16, 2012

June 16, 2012
Seneca and I listened to The Grimms' The Sleeping Beauty on storynory. It is a free resource of audio books. After that I read three books to her. We read Woolbur by Leslie Helakoski, I Know A Rhino by Charles Fuge, and The Carot Seed by Ruth Krauss.
We did form drawing after reading time. Seneca walked a straight line. I drew a straight line on Seneca's back. Seneca found a crayon and a pencil and held them up as straight lines. She practiced drawing the straight line form on scrap paper. She then put her first entry into her Main Lesson Form Drawing book.
Seneca painted with home made paint from flour, corn syrup, water and green food coloring.
Then, it was outdoor playtime with friends.

We re-read The Carrot Seed at night just before dinner and ate pot roast with beef, potatoes, onions and lots of carrots.

June 2012

  Yasmeen has completed eighth grade and made honor roll three times this year. She made honor roll for fourth quarter.  Sadly, I wasn't able to attend her moving up ceremony as I was in the hospital with a bad back. 
  Liam and Yasmeen will both attend the same school in the Fall. For the summer, Liam's goal is to work more on math.  He is really  excited about going to this school, so we are approaching math in a more traditional manner than with unschooling.  Although, many unschoolers will say that if a child wants to learn a subject and wants to learn it in a traditional method of textbooks and workbooks, then there is nothing wrong with that.   We reviewed long multiplication tonight.  He did fairly well with it.  He knows how to do it, this was just getting the gears in his head turning again.
 Seneca continues to work on her phonics with me.  She also has glue and glitter at her disposal for whenever she wants to do some crafts.  She likes to go outside and dig in the dirt and make a cup of mud. She calls this her "project."  Seneca has a collection of shells and she decided that the cone shape ones are gnomes' hats.  Another set of them are the ships in which the sea gnomes sail away.