Journal

July 11, 2012

            Seneca wanted me to re-tell the story of Snow White by the Brothers Grimm.  As I did, she acted it out.  This version is more detailed than the Disney one.  The wicked queen makes two attempts against Snow White before using the poisoned apple.  Seneca seemed to like all the times that she got to pretend to faint.

            Seneca is becoming a bit grumpy when it comes to lesson time.  She had lots of fun with acting out her story, but she hasn’t wanted to do her form drawing lately.  She did some forms today, but I wanted her to calm down and focus on just one form.  I gave up on that fairly quickly though.  I had hoped that we would do some phonics words today, but she wasn’t having it.  We did however play more make believe and she played with a mancala board and pieces.  

            Seneca heard me speaking to her brother about nocturnal animals and she piped in that she remembered that Jaguars were nocturnal.  She said that she remembered learning that from her library book.

            I’m struggling at times between wanting to introduce new concepts and lessons to her, but at the same time making sure that we have time to review lessons that we have already done.  I know that she gets more out of repetition at this time.  However, as she gets closer to potentially entering kindergarten, I want to be sure that has progressed along as well.

            I’m thinking about only adding on a few more fairy tales to the ones that I tell her.  My curriculum book for her is full of many fairy tales, but I am leaning toward telling less and then repeating them throughout the year. 

Plugged In Summer

  So, I've had to take a grand plunge into the world of what many may call mainstream parenting.  I have a pinched nerve in my back which is affecting my right leg.  I hobble around and can't stand for very long.  I have a chair in the shower.  I can't stand up long enough to cook anything, so this means that the kids and I have to live on take out. 
      As most everyone knows though, take out does not equate healthy.  It definitely equals expensive though, except for McDonald's.  So, I suck it up and we eat a lot of McDonald's.  Granted, we also try to get salads from McDonald's.  I have had friends go shopping for me and pick up things like yogurts, ready to eat fruits, hummus and pita bread. 
       Another foray away from my ideals is the amount of tv the kids have been watching.  I had all of these glorious plans for our summer.  I have tickets for Sunken Gardens in St. Pete as well the The Florida Aquarium.  They are just sitting in the limbo of the computer just waiting for me to print them out.  I also had plans to go to the beach and to the parks in the evenings just to get the kids unplugged.  Well, if I can't drive and can barely walk, those things have proven to be impossible. So, Dora the Explorer to the rescue in our house these days.  Oh well, at least this situation is only temporary.  
            In the meantime, I do try to encourage non media activities as much as possible.  The older kids are working on their summer reading for school.  A lot of the shows that Liam watches are educational. He was just watching the civil war era movie, Gods and Generals, and he was looking at one of his civil war books. 
        Seneca worked on writing some of her phonics words yesterday. She also spends a good amount of time somersaulting and running through my mother's house.  She'll get to go to a mall in Tampa tonight with her awesome sitter.  I know, I'm raising a mall-chick, what can I say?  Well, we hardly ever go to the mall, even when my leg is good, so again, choose my battles.
    And she has spent many a time with me in my bed reading her phonics books, telling stories, playing I Spy, cutting and gluing at her table, coloring, and more.  So, she is not a drone all day long.
       Just before class started the other night, one of the young ladies was talking about how her friend has a 3 year old daughter and the little girl has these neat games on ipad to play.  I thought about how glad I am that my child will not have an ipad until she is much older.  Even, my teenage kids don't have an ipad.  So, while my five year old will be watching more cartoons than I would like, she still is free from the ipad craze. 
     The thing is, I know we will come out the other end of our plugged in summer just fine. 

10 Things You Now Get to Keep with Obamacare

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.