Kids, Uncorporated

Down by the Station, Early in the Morning

2011-04-06T00:23:00.000-04:00

The Uncorporated Garden 2011: This Year's Plans

2011-03-31T09:30:00.011-04:00

In 2010, we put in three cherry tomatoes and two bell peppers in the back; carrots and Gerber daisies and marigolds and cukes out front. In the fall, I dug out the back bed, expanded it and the area around the (cut back) lilac, and turned over the beds out front. The kids thought it great fun to poke around and find worms.

This year, I have a plan set up for our six planting areas. In no particular order, meet the beds!

The Lilac Bed, with unknown spring bulb

The expanded Back Bed, with various bulbs

The Raised Bed, sometime home to neighborhood chipmunks

The North Porch Bed - not much to look at now

The West Porch Bed, with containered chives

The Planting Boxes - the long ones are specifically for the kids

A bonus bed for something tall!

I'll post later on the specifics of each bed, but overall we're hoping to produce tomatoes (cherry and Roma), bell peppers, green beans (bush and pole), carrots, radishes, okra, cucumbers, basil, cilantro, oregano, chives, thyme, and rosemary. We'll definitely salt in some marigolds here are there, and there may be some other herbs, but that has yet to be seen.

I'll also keep a running list of garden tasks, more for myself than anything. Tasks so far:

~~Mark out planting locations in the back bed~~ done
Clean out leaves from all beds
Turn over soil
Add topsoil, sand(?), compost
Save eggshells and coffee grounds
Transplant mums from raised bed to west porch bed
Buy seeds/seedlings

But first, we need to wait for things to warm up! We're still nearly two months out from our average last frost date, and we're still dropping below freezing some nights, so it's still planning at this point.

This may be our first bulb to bloom - any day now!

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We are ostensibly homeschooling our two kids (ages 2 and almost-5), although it's been rather informal so far. We are however seizing opportunities as they arise to reinforce reading, math, and other basic skills, with the hope of laying a solid foundation for when we ramp up a formal curriculum.

This garden update is part of The Homeschool Village's Garden Challenge - we will continue updating through the growing season. Photos of the garden beds were taken March 30, 2011. Check back to see our progress!

Previewing the Uncorporated Garden 2011

2011-03-29T22:27:00.000-04:00

I will never again take for granted having a piece of land in which to grow food. Discussions of health, convenience, and food security aside, it's just plain fun to go out and dig in the dirt. And if I'm going to dig in the dirt (sorry - the soil), I might as well get something productive out of it beyond just pretty flowers.

As a family, we have lived in four places over the last six years. When my wife and I started out, we had a "garden apartment", which allowed us a small garden on the north (!) side of our unit. We got lots of shade from the surrounding buildings and the garage, but I think we managed to eke out some flowers. I remember specifically having some spectacular (for us, anyway) sunflowers that were the result of some forgotten birdseed.

Just before Isaac was born, we moved closer to my workplace at the time. We had a second-floor apartment with no garden space of our own. It did have a balcony, though, that overlooked an ecologically-poor stream (but it was so nice to have the sound of water outside). We had a couple of container gardens out on the balcony (north-facing, again!) in which we grew flowers and a family of ducks.

During our 18-month housesitting adventure, we finally had a decent plot of land (just shy of an acre), but it wasn't ours, so instead of ripping up the acre of golf-course grass and planting veggies, I got the privilege of mowing and mowing and mowing and mowing and mowing. For the record, grass is (mostly) evil. Just sayin'.

If only he was really cutting the grass!

I stuck a few spring bulbs in the flower beds, and had a container of chives, but beyond that the gardens were fairly ornamental. I suppose I could have done some significant container gardening, but my work schedule never permitted me the time to get it organized.

Here in Saline, we have garden space on both sides (south and north) of the townhouse, and even a raised bed that a previous resident constructed. It had rhubarb and ornamentals when we moved in; the back garden bed had hostas, century plants, and others. I like rhubarb, but I'm the only one, so in the larger interest of starting fresh, we cleaned out the beds and did our own thing.

Someday, I'll have enough space (and construction capital) to build an herb spiral, but that will have to wait a few years.

Herb Spiral illustration from The Saturday Evening Post

Next time: Last year's efforts and this year's plans

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We are ostensibly homeschooling our two kids (ages 2 and almost-5), although it's been rather informal so far. We are however seizing opportunities as they arise to reinforce reading, math, and other basic skills, with the hope of laying a solid foundation for when we ramp up a formal curriculum.

This garden update is part of The Homeschool Village's Garden Challenge - we will continue updating through the growing season.

70 Degrees of Freedom

2011-03-17T20:38:00.000-04:00

I remember working in the office when the first warm day of "spring" (whether official or not) came along. I would stare longingly out the window at the people playing in the park across the street and usually I would come up with an excuse to walk downtown for lunch.

This year, I got to spend a warm St. Patrick's Day with the most important people in my life: my wife and kids.

After a picnic lunch, playground time, and birding at Gallup Park in Ann Arbor, we came home to get a couple chores completed. When Tiffany left for a dinner shift at the restaurant, the kids and I loaded up the wagon and headed out to soak up some rays on a walk around town.

Three and a half miles later, we were back home and none the worse for the wear. My feet are a little sore now, but I'll get over it. It's so good to be back outside again!

I (We) Love The Zoo

2011-03-05T12:56:00.000-05:00

One of the things that you can do when you are uncorporated (and have memberships to local places) is randomly go on educational trips with your kids. As in, we find ourselves with a couple hours to kill and we decide to drive in to the Hands On Museum. Or the zoo.

This past week, Tiffany and I both had Wednesday off, and it was sunny and above freezing, so we packed up the kids and headed down to the Toledo Zoo. That's what everybody does in early March in Michigan/NW Ohio, right?

How to Zoo in Winter: lots of blankets in the wagon!

The place was dead - I think we saw maybe twenty other patrons while we were there. It was like having the place to ourselves (although I've never really felt crowded at Toledo Zoo). The flip side is that lots of the concessions/train/carousel weren't open, but that wasn't really the point of our quick visit there.

After visiting the polar bears, seals, wolves (sleeping), giraffes (indoors), and eagles, we headed across the bridge to the main part of the zoo. From the bridge, we had the best view of the lions that we've ever had - and the lions were up and about! Isaac and I stopped to take a peek through my binoculars.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but this so reminds me of my dad.

Next up is the duck and goose pond, right across from the aviary (which I never get to as often as I'd like!). The birds are much easier to see when the vegetation is down for the winter.

How freaky would this be without depth perception?

The new kids' section of the zoo opened last year, but I hadn't been yet. Nature's Neighborhood includes many activity stations, including an outdoor theater, climbing structure, a stream and beach area, and goat petting. We opted for the indoor portion, with a home-type setting, a forest, and education room. Esther particularly liked the turtle statue and the large-scale bird's egg.

The education room had an exhibit/activity about different types of bird beaks - macaw, heron, and pelican - and how easy or hard it was to pluck rubber worms out of the water with each. Water + kids = instant fun.

Isaac figured out quickly that the 'heron' (long tweezers) worked best

The indoor forest includes lots of interactive exhibits, with features on leafcutter ants, Really. Big. Spiders., and honeybees. What do you think Isaac went for first?

Between the house area and the forest is a secret passage - a hollow 'log' accessed through a sliding bookcase. Both the kids thought this was great fun.

At the end of the passage is a large bird enclosure with lots of psittacids (lories, cockatoos, etc.) and some other colorful, friendly birds. Esther enjoyed meeting a pair of White-crested Laughingthrushes, and they were certainly excited to meet her!

We will most certainly be back to check out the outdoor activities in Nature's Neighborhood, as well as revisit some of our other favorite places at the zoo, but I don't think we'll ever get so lucky as to have the place to ourselves again!

Too Late for Resolutions?

2011-01-26T23:03:00.000-05:00

So, co-op went reasonably well yesterday, although Isaac was barefoot through half of his second class. Nobody seemed to mind much, so I'll just roll with it. That's one of the dangers with cowboy boots - easy (for him) to slip off. He didn't seem to be much of a behavior problem though, so that's always good. We are beyond ready for his sleep to get sorted out again - I want my well-rested, well-behaved son back!

I've got a new responsibility at co-op: running the canteen/concession stand/yearbook-fundraiser snack counter. Seems pretty simple so far - the hardest part is lugging everything upstairs for lunch on a REALLY SQUEAKY cart. I think every teacher along the back hallway stuck their head out to see who was making such a racket!

- - -

On the homefront, there are a few things I need to get nailed down. I'm not my wife and I can't juggle it all in my head. Printouts on the fridge, here we come!

Number one: we need to get a schedule. I wish Isaac and Esther could read it and follow it, but that's probably hoping too much. At the very least, I need to have it in front of me most of the day so I can, oh, start dinner sooner than 6:30 at night. And having a designated computer time about which I don't feel guilty would be great too.

Scheduling leads in to #2: meal planning. If I'm going to be the one at home all day and preparing meals, I need to have some sort of plan. I'll be happy with weekly for now; if I can actually get a whole month planned out, great! This should help out with grocery shopping and budgeting (four weeks of grocery budget spent in three this month - eep!), as well as getting meals in the kids. Tiffany's tried a couple times to tell me what the kids will eat, but I never remember it for more than a couple days, so Isaac ends up eating what he wants to tell me (usually, a tortilla and a glass of Maryland milk) and then has a meltdown later because he's hungry.

The last thing for now is getting an adult responsibility chart set up again. I tried early last fall to divvy up household chores between me and Tiffany, but it didn't take so well. I'm hoping that the combination of a new daily schedule (with designated 'chore' times) and a more realistic (read: more succinct) list of chores will prove to be a workable solution. I'll let you know how it goes.

Do you have any good tips for managing any of the three items above? How have you set up a meal plan for your household?

Do-Over!

2011-01-25T08:11:00.000-05:00

Our homeschool co-op starts up again this morning. Isaac's classes this semester are Insects and Safety (two separate classes, not a single class on how to protect yourself from wasps). He's excited about both - I wonder how long it will be before he wants to take one of his 'weird animal' books to share.

I was going to be teaching a class on birds(!), but we didn't have anywhere for Esther to go while I taught (the nursery class is full - again - <grumble>). The solution was for someone else to take over my (mine, I tell you!) class and I'll be helping to run the canteen, while Esther tries to stay out of trouble. We'll see how that goes.

- - -

Speaking of Esther, she's in the midst of potty training herself. Yay! The biggest challenge for me is to recognize when she needs to go. Usually she starts taking her clothes off - that's my cue. She seems to think that she has to be naked to go to the bathroom. I'm sure she'll grow out of that eventually, right? In the meantime, we'll have to get her some big girl underwear pretty soon. Hopefully, she'll be ready before we run out of the current case of diapers!

Tuesdays with Tiffany....on Wednesday

2010-11-10T07:40:00.000-05:00

...and a spotlight on Isaac's obsession, Geography!

Isaac's first "State Journal Page"...Objective is for him to draw the state, put a star on the capitol, and write a simple sentence about the state. He has to make up his own sentence.

Pennsylvania: The Keystone State. And, yes, he even knows what a keystone's job is. At my last inquiry of him about what a keystone is, he answered very matter of factly, "It keeps things from falling apart, like Jesus keeps my heart from falling apart!"

New Jersey. He didn't write a sentence here, but he did make sure to draw Thomas Edison and the light bulb!

Georgia: The picture to the far left is a peanut plant, next to it a peach tree, then a peach and peanut. The train you see is the "state train of Georgia" called the "Peach Glider". He didn't draw a star for Atlanta, but who knows why?!

This is his first time to come up with such a "real" sentence! "Peaches and Peanuts grow in Georgia!"

Connecticut: It is the Nutmeg State. I know the river is mislabeled, but I just wrote what Isaac told me. He's so rarely wrong about these things, that I took his word for it! There really is a river though that divides the state in half!

Massachusetts: It is the Bay State. This is his first time doing the copying without some amount of guidance. A few misspellings, but altogether, not bad for a 4 year old!

We haven't gotten to this state, yet, but Isaac made the landscape of Arizona. The cross looking things are cacti, the "wood floor" is the dessert sand, and the circle train track is going around the Grand Canyon!

We can't do Geography without trains!


This is a fabulous site called Sheppard Software. It has great games and activities from pre-school to high school! We'll skip a few things on their site, but overall, we love it!

This is a video of Isaac playing one of the geography games. He gets the general outline of the United States, and then has to click on the space the state that they tell him is in! He does a really good job with this!

When Mom's Away

2010-10-13T09:34:00.000-04:00

Muffin Tin Monday

2010-10-11T13:47:00.000-04:00

This week marks our first Muffin Tin Monday! The basic idea - food in a muffin tin. It's intended to change up the mealtime routine (what routine?) and can be breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, dessert, whatever!

The theme this go-around is Pumpkins, so here's our entry.

Clockwise from the left, we have a Happy Pumpkin bologna sandwich, three mellocreme pumpkin candies, a stack of mandarin oranges with an onion sprout stem, homemade pumpkin bread sticks, and yogurt with pumpkin purée. Of course, Isaac started with the candies.

Apples, carrots, and now pumpkins. Don't you just love fall?

They help you see in the dark, don't they?

2010-10-11T13:37:00.000-04:00

The weather this past week in Southeast Michigan has been absolutely gorgeous. Cass Lake weather, we would call it - sunny and mid-60s/70s in the day, 40s and high 30s at night (good sleeping weather). It's this type of weather that makes me miss being in an office all day *so much* </sarcasm>

Anyway, so I took advantage of the day and did some fall clean-up around the garden beds. As I was pulling dead leaves and weeds out of the raised bed, I found some of the carrots that we planted (at Isaac's behest, though he won't eat carrots to save his life) back in the late spring. Not expecting much, I tugged at the tuft of green and found a tiny little carrot, about half as long as my pinky and not much bigger around.

Yay, a carrot! That I grew! Nobody famous once said, "Food never tastes so good as when you have raised/grown/cooked it yourself." Or they should have, at least.

Continuing with the garden cleaning, I pulled up the netting that we had placed over the sown carrot seeds to deter little munchy creatures from going all Peter Rabbit on our garden. If you ever want to harvest carrots easily, install plastic netting over them when you sow. The tops grow up through the netting, and when you pull it up, zzzzipp!, up come all the carrots at once!

But Zeb, I didn't know you could grow pre-sized baby carrots? Yours are so cute!

I will confess that I have always been apprehensive about growing things from seed - too high of a failure rate after the seedlings get to be about 2 inches tall. With that in mind, when we saw a plethora of tiny carrot sprouts, I was so overjoyed that they were growing(!) that I couldn't bear to thin them out. What if I plucked the good one and the rest of them failed?

As you can see by the photos, none of our carrots grew very large, because they were overcrowded. But we did get carrots, by George! Who knows if we'll try again next year?

Esther continues her agricultural exploration

Just to tie this to home education, Isaac worked on a file folder game later in the afternoon. And what should appear out of the bag, but a carrot counting game! Isaac breezed through it like a champ. Counting 1-5, check!

Psalm 46:10

2010-10-08T23:30:00.000-04:00

In this past Sunday's church bulletin, we received our monthly Focus on the Family insert. One of the articles therein addressed the practice of observing a Sabbath, a day of rest.

Sabbath has been rattling around in my brain for years. I don't like to work for pay on Sundays, and I try to focus Sunday activities more on family time than other things.

I don't really want to get in to a deep study right now, but both the Old and New Testaments talk about observing the Sabbath and proscriptions for activity during the period of rest. I've also got a book at home called Sabbath Keeping by Lynne Baab; I'm about two-thirds of the way through that. I'll probably do some more in-depth study and writing about Sabbath once I finish the book, but that'll probably be posted somewhere other than KU.

That said, there's no time like the present to begin new practices and forming new habits. As of sundown Saturday, I plan to observe a 24-hour sabbath. My basic guidelines at this point are:

Mark the beginning of Sabbath with some type of ritual. For now, I think lighting a candle will be in order.
Take a leisurely shower either Saturday night or Sunday morning to refresh the body.
No work for pay, no housework (dishes, laundry, yardwork, etc.), minimal cooking (flameless, if possible)
No electronics, which is mainly the computer since we don't have a TV. Cell phone will be on for incoming emergencies, but no outgoing calls.
Enjoy my rest with my family.

We'll see how this goes and how the practice evolves in our household. How do you explain Sabbath to a four year old and 1.5 year old? ;-)

Do you practice sabbath in your home? What does it look like? Share in the comments below.

Shalom, my friends.

Tiffany Tuesday - The Apple Experiment

2010-10-06T12:30:00.002-04:00

A guest post from Tiffany, who is starting a new semi-regular feature, Tiffany Tuesdays. Enjoy!

This was supposed to go up yesterday, but my shoulder left me immobilized most of the night last night. But here you go, anyway!

Monday, when we went to the library, I told Isaac that he needed to choose 1 apple and 1 pumpkin book BEFORE he chose 2 train books. Well, he did one better and chose 2 apple books, 1 pumpkin book, and 2 train books (including one about how they brought Abraham Lincoln's body back from Washington D.C. to Illinois for burial). On our way home, Isaac dove into his first apple book ("My Apple"). It's a great little book with various mini-experiments for kids to do with apples. Well, he found the "does it float or sink" page and wanted to know the answer. One thing I like about this book, is that it doesn't give the answer, forcing you to do the science experiment with him.

We dialoged a bit about apples and whether they might float or sink. I asked Isaac what he thought would happen. He answered with, "I think the apple will sink." I decided now was a great teachable moment and taught him a $5 word, explaining that when we make a guess about what will happen and then do an experiment to find out, our guess is called a hypothesis. And oh, how I wish you could hear him say it. It is unbelievably cute!

So, we got home and raised the platform on our learning tower. Zeb got out a bowl of water, and I raided our bag of apples left from our picking adventure last week!

Here is our first go round at introducing Isaac to the Scientific Method...

The Question: Will apples sink or float?
Hypothesis: The apple(s) will sink.

Experiment:

Place one small apple in the bowl.
Place one large apple in the bowl.
Place multiple apples in the bowl.
Let them be kids and just make a royal mess...

Conclusions:

The small apple floats.
The large apple floats.
You can put 4 apples in the bowl and they still float!
We had to leave the tower upside down overnight to let the feet dry.

And the documentation of said Scientific Method!

And if that weren't enough, Isaac's class "Storybook Forest" had the theme of apples this week! They did some fun crafts and read the book "Ten Apples Up On Top", which is a fabulous book if you've not ever read it! One of their activities was to put 10 apples on the page (picture below). Isaac did put exactly 10 pictures on his page, which is not a surprise. What was startling to his teacher, and what I thought was pretty cool, was that he put 3 of the apples in their mouths. A few minutes later, he went to his teacher and asked, "May I please have another apple paper. The kids' apples are in their bellies now." She let him have another paper.

Isaac is doing very well at homeschool co-op and even helps to clean the rooms afterward to earn money for things he wants to save up for. He has the opportunity to sit and watch a movie, but chooses cleaning instead! I love this kid and it makes the cleaning job (we have for 6 weeks) go so much faster and a lot more fun! Hopefully, Zeb will post soon about Isaac and his money ~~scheme~~ plan!

Tiny Tot Jam Session

2010-10-06T00:01:00.024-04:00

How is a Librarian like a Bartender?

2010-10-05T00:41:00.000-04:00

...they both cut you off when you've reached your limit.

It's the return of Library Monday. We skipped our weekly library trip last week for some reason that I can't recall now, but we made up for it this week by taking the whole family, through the woods, with the wagon. Fun times. It's cooled down enough here that the killer mosquitoes in the woodlot aren't a concern anymore. Thankfully, no need for these in October in Michigan.

Our pattern over the last month or so has been that we end up checking out more books than we return (or at least it feels that way when we're carrying the books back home). I've joked that, taken to its extreme, this pattern would eventually result in us schlepping the library's entire circulating collection to our bookshelf at home.

I no longer have to fear this conclusion, however. As we were checking out tonight, the librarian got to our last book on the counter and received an error message on the screen - we had reached our limit! Apparently, 30 books is it for any single patron to have at one time.

So, here's the Saline District Library's current off-site storage inventory, with a beginning reader thrown in for scale:


And of course, he selects the train book.

Esther even gets in on the action from time to time. Here's a shot of Isaac teaching Esther about different types of trains:

And Esther having enough...

I tell ya, kid, this home education is hard work!

Gospel Challenge

2010-10-03T23:01:00.000-04:00

This morning, Pastor Bert issued a challenge to the congregation.

There are 89 chapters among the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). There are 89 days left from now—4 October—to the end of the year (or so he said; I haven't counted myself).

The challenge? For the rest of the year, read one chapter of the Gospels each day. We start tomorrow with Matthew 1 (actually, I read it tonight to the kids at bedtime, but Tiffany and I plan to read it again on our own).

'Old Bible' photo by eye2eye on Flickr.com

If we claim to be Christians, we must be people of the Book. We have to know what the Bible says if we claim to believe in it. John MacArthur said:

"The Bible is always attacked. The worst attack of all is by people that say they believe the Bible, yet don't know what it teaches. That is the subtlest kind of attack there is. There are people all across America who say, "I believe the Bible from cover to cover," but they don't know one paragraph of it. They believe what they don't know."

If we want to show fruit in our lives, and not just be leafy, we have to have the same mind as Jesus. So many of the activities and ministries that we claim as evidence of our faith and salvation are really only leafy and never produce a single fruit for the Kingdom.

So come along with us and read the Gospels. When was the last time you really did?

Hi-Tech Sight Words

2010-09-28T11:30:00.001-04:00

...if PowerPoint can be considered "hi-tech".

Isaac likes to play on the computer. I want to drill him on his sight words. Tiffany had the brilliant idea to combine the two. Result:

Just the three of us: Isaac, me, and my bald spot.

More to come. Our count stands at 30 down out of 315 (but we've only presented him with 50 so far over two days).

Weekend Update

2010-09-27T23:57:00.000-04:00

This past weekend was a bit busier than usual for us - on top of Tiffany working *all day* Saturday. From 5 AM to after midnight (with an hour or so break around dinner), it was just me and the kids for the day. Being the weekend, we didn't do school per se, but we did have lots of experiential learning and socializing.

Bowling - Isaac is in a bowling league this year. It's a drop-in thing, and he's actually missed the last couple weeks, but it's all fairly laid back. This Saturday, he joined in the second game with three others about his age. They bowl with 6-pound balls and with the bumpers up, but he's getting the hang of the general mechanics of the game. I even got him to start putting his fingers into the holes. Now to get him to actually roll the ball down the lane instead of dropping it - we had to go retrieve his stalled ball from the middle of the lane 3 or 4 times.

Note that the ball is airborne - not standard technique.

You try bowling with a ball that is more than one-quarter your body weight!

The Caboose - After our bowling excursion, we went out for a walk. I'm glad I actually had shoes on and locked the door, because our "around the complex" walk turned into a walk to the Depot Museum and the static display caboose. Sorry no photos - I didn't think to take the camera on a "quick" walk - but I'm sure we'll be back.
The museum is just around the corner from us, but it's only open for a few hours Saturday afternoons. That doesn't stop the kids from climbing around the caboose when it's closed, of course, but today we got to go inside and see the beds, stove, desk and typewriter, etc.

Downtown - Of course, since we were already out and about, I figured we'd walk downtown to check out the Harvest of the Arts/Oktoberfest shindig. The kids weren't too much interested in all of the artist booths - they were busy with their own art:

They did perk up when we got to the Kinderplatz area - an inflatable obstacle course, sidewalk chalk, sensory tables with spaghetti noodles and play dough, a petting zoo (my kids have never met a llama/deer/chicken/bunny/goat/donkey they didn't like), and pony rides. FREE pony rides.

As I expected, Tiffany was a bit jealous that she didn't get to participate in their first horseback ride!

On the way out, what else better to eat during Oktoberfest than... pizza. They don't like it at all, do they?

Apple Picking - We were planning on going to the orchard on Saturday, but after our impromptu walk downtown, I figured we had had enough for one day. Sunday after church all four of us went out to our local orchard to pick apples - one bushel, plus however many we managed to gorge upon. I don't eat many apples out of season anymore, so my first trip to the orchard each autumn turns into my own personal applefest. I even thought twice about buying cider because I'd eaten so many apples out in the trees, but fortunately cooler heads prevailed and we now have the remnants of a gallon sitting the fridge.
I'm sure Tiffany will post more photos over at her blog, but here are a couple to set the mood.

There she goes, enjoying that American agriculture again. Nothing says fall in Michigan quite like eating an apple whilst riding a giant pumpkin.

Now, we need to get cracking on converting that bushel of fresh apples into sauce, butter, pie, and crisp!

But Don't We Walk By Faith?

2010-09-24T00:20:00.001-04:00

My current project is setting up a pre-test for Isaac with the Dolch sight words. One of our curriculum goals for this year (I'll get them all up here eventually!) is for Isaac to master all 315 of the sight words.

I'm planning to quiz him on batches of flash cards - no more than 25 per day - to get a baseline. From there we'll figure out how to work with him to learn the rest.

Check out our Dolch Sight Words page to track our progress!

How have you worked with your kids to learn sight words?

I Didn't Think You Were in the Library That Long

2010-09-20T21:43:00.001-04:00

Monday, and time for our weekly walk to the library. Thankfully it was chilly today, so no mosquitoes in the woods between here and there.

After picking up our requisite train books, and grabbing Rookie Readers about New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut, we headed to check out with the librarian. I forget exactly what she said, but we started talking about all the state books. I ~~trotted out my trained monkey~~ asked Isaac to tell her what the capitals of Delaware and Pennsylvania are, and threw in my latest favorite my-four-year-old-knows-this fact about the source of maple syrup.

She was duly impressed, and when I mentioned we were homeschooling, she offered her observation that the homeschoolers that come in to the library are much more willing to engage in conversation with adults, a trait that she wished her children had picked up. Take that, "what about socialization" nay-sayers!

Needless to say, Isaac tends to make quite an impression wherever he goes.

Tomorrow: first day of co-op!

Daily Record - 16 September

2010-09-16T21:32:00.000-04:00

Today, in addition to his typical free play, Isaac showed off his great imagination. I was awoken by him asking me to play with his wooden trains (he only has plastic ones, unfortunately) and he was pretending to carry them around in a box about four times larger than he is. So funny to see him pantomiming hauling around a huge box!

We later had a discussion about keystones - what they are, how they function in an arch. His question was why Pennsylvania is called the Keystone State. We found pictures from our trip to the Delaware Children's Museum back in July - he played with big foam arch blocks then. We showed him a map of the 13 colonies, with Pennsylvania in the middle, and told him how people called it the Keystone State because of how it held the young nation together. He doesn't at all understand the concept of "past" yet, but the question was answered.

Isaac also drew and lettered a card to a friend of ours from church. It includes a rainbow on the outside, and a picture of a checkers game. He enjoys writing cards to people and it certainly reveals his empathic nature.

In the afternoon, we watched a geography DVD from the library on the Northeast US. Isaac now can tell you that maple syrup comes from trees. "Which kind of trees, Isaac?" "Maple syrup trees!" He also drew both Delaware and Pennsylvania (with Harrisburg indicated) on his drawing board.

Just before dinner, he spontaneously sat down with a Blue's Clues placemat and began to work on shapes and patterns. He verbally completed the two pattern matching exercises - both shape and color - but then made up his own version of the exercise when he had the marker. Sometimes he surprises us with what he's picked up here and there.

Tomorrow, I think we'll work on his memory verse for the week (Genesis 1:1), read through our state books again, and I want to sort through the workbooks we have to see what he's ready for. I think we're both - slowly - getting a clue about home education.

Introducing Journal of the States - Delaware

2010-09-16T00:29:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend, we purchased a couple of composition books that are set up with story pages (blank top half for drawing, guide-lined bottom half for practicing handwriting).

One of these is going to be (well, has become) Isaac's Journal of the States. Our hope is that for each state he learns, he completes a page in the journal. At a minimum we'd like him to draw the state, draw a couple things associated with the state, write its name, and include whatever else he wants to describe. (Overall, our state curriculum goals also include identifying the name and location of the capital, and naming two "state facts": state bird, state flower, state insect, state tree, etc.)

I started it with him today. Delaware was our state last week, so he drew the state, added a dot for Dover, wrote "Delaware" 1.5 times (after getting hung up on the first W), then drew another figure. I was looking at it upside down, so it wasn't readily apparent. "What is it, Isaac?"

"It's the United States. Here's Delaware. It's kind of hard to see."

Explorers

2010-09-15T22:32:00.001-04:00

And now, for something completely different, a guest post from my wife. She regularly photoblogs over at Adventures of the Acuff Family.

Next Tuesday morning, we embark on a new adventure, one that we have been anticipating for a few years and are excited to see come to fruition. Isaac will begin attending a homeschool co-op in Ann Arbor. It has hundreds of kids from birth to high school and a wide variety of classes available.

Explorers Homeschool Co-Op meets at a local Lutheran church with tons of classroom space, a gym, and cozy little hospitality room that the moms (and dads) get to hang out in during their "off" hour. "Off hour"? That would be the hour you are NOT helping out in a classroom or teaching a class or helping in the nursery or cleaning up rooms or playing tour guide to the nearest restroom.

Each mom (and a few dads) is given two jobs. One is in a classroom. This can be teaching, co-teaching, or being an assistant. The other is a general task, like setting up at the beginning of the day or running the vacuum at the end of it. Some parents are lucky enough to teach or co-teach two classes and therefore, escape the menial tasks the rest of us get to do!

Isaac will be in the "lower elementary", which encompasses K4/5 and 1st/2nd grades. His classes this semester are Storybook Stew and Storybook Forest. Since Isaac LOVES to read, this should be a fantastic morning for him! In Storybook Stew, they read a story and prepare a simple meal or fancy snack that has something to do with the book they read. In Storybook Forest, they get to read about various topics and do activities that are associated with it.

My primary job will be to assist in the Art class for the K4/5 group. This could be fun....I think I'll make myself an apron between now and then! My secondary job will be to clean up, which would be fine, except that Isaac will have to be with me while I do it and he HATES the vacuum cleaner. We'll see how this one pans out! Zeb and I will take turns throughout the 12 week semester, depending on the stability of Esther's health. Zeb is capable of most everything I am, but there a few things that still only mommy can do!

We are looking forward to exploring our new homeschooling world, making new friends, and seeing how Isaac continues to blossom into an amazing little man as he interacts with peers his age and others around him.

I hope you'll keep coming back to see what our little guy and littlest gal are up to during the week and all that they are learning as we go...

Library Day

2010-09-13T19:10:00.002-04:00

So, clearly, it's easier to set up a blog than to maintain it. Oh well.

Isaac and I just got back from a walk to the library. Some helpful (friendly, courteous, kind, ...) Eagle Scout cut a new path through the woods behind the library to the park near our house. It's much more interesting to walk through nature and along the old railroad tracks than along the residential sidewalks. Now we just need to remember the mosquito repellent!

We took a bunch of books back and got a bunch of new ones, mainly on trains (natch) and Pennsylvania, which is our next state about which to learn. I also grabbed a book on woodchucks (groundhogs) in honor of Punxsutawney Phil, a geography DVD, and Isaac added a Signing Time DVD and two other books that caught his eye.

My administrative home education goals for this week include hammering out our educational philosophy and typing up the curriculum guides that Tiffany and I worked on during our drive home from Tennessee over Labor Day weekend. I know I want to take it easy with the formal curriculum plans this year, but I still think we should have some broad goals to work toward. I also need to sort out a rough schedule for our weeks, so we don't get to Saturday and wonder why nothing got done.

Sorry for the lack of updates. We had a great learning day at the fair last week - lots of baby and adult animals to discover. Tiffany and I picked up a bunch of workbooks and flashcards at Target yesterday for 70 cents each - check out your local Target's dollar section if you get a chance.

Time to cook dinner and read - Tiffany and Isaac have already started in on one of the steam engine books!

Learning for Today

2010-09-01T22:58:00.001-04:00

Both kids at home and just me - and I was so sleepy! With both at home, there's no good downtime during the day. And here I am up late on the blog. Oh well...

Art/Geography/Spelling

Isaac is nigh-on obsessed with his Magna Doodle drawing board - it's nearly an extension of his hand at this point. And when he's not drawing trains, he can turn out some impressive stuff for his age:

The United States. Note Lake Michigan.

He just sat down this afternoon and wrote this out. I didn't have the heart to tell him that we won't get to Alaska for another year. At least I caught it on camera before he erased it (he's got a quick trigger finger!).

Math
He doesn't like math, and he'll tell you as much. In a bout of wishful thinking, we have a few basic math workbooks lying around. This morning he picked up a first grade workbook and, with some coaching from me, turned out the following:

Note his 6 on the left hand page, my subsequent demonstration 6 under the equals sign, and his next 6 on the right hand page. And of course, we had to put stickers at the top of both pages.