Typical Day In One Picture

A typical day during homeschool.

A genius fix if you don't like the smell of hard boiled eggs.

Growing Avocado

I have an overripe avocado.  Since we are busy with Spring planting I thought Beauty might enjoy getting this set up.  Here's a video on how to do it.

 I really like the information from Hand Grown in California.

I had one avocado tree before but I managed to kill it.  Or rather, the weather killed it.  Mr. Father and I have plans in the works for a greenhouse next Spring.  If this seed sprouts it should live pretty happily in a greenhouse during the winter.

All the supplies needed.

Beauty cuts the avocado, removes and washes the seed off.

 

 Mrs. Mother helped insert toothpicks.  Beauty set the seed in the glass, filled with enough water and placed it next to the kitchen window.  Now we wait.

Garden Web

Homesteading Unit

I've decided we are going to work on a homesteading unit.  I'm not sure of all the details yet.  We've been doing a few things that I will now organize and officially call a Homesteading Unit.  Two things we have been working on:

• Gardening

• We read Little House In the Big Woods

I recently ordered a movie off Amazon.  This is Volume 1.  There are 4 volumes so far.  Click on the pic to order off Amazon.

I've watched about half of this and it will work for watching in short segments.  The kids are doing almost all the work.  I was really surprised with how capable the children are at cutting vegetables.

Continuing with this unit we have:

• Started reading Little House on the Prairie
• Made Beauty take more responsibility with jobs in the garden

Things I want to do:

• Research about plants Beauty is growing
• Research about bugs we find
• Drawing plants/bugs for art
• Harvesting vegetables/fruit
• Cooking and preserving the harvest

Is anyone else working on a unit like this?

Week 18

Beauty has been spending most of her extra time outside learning to ride her bike better.  She has pretty much covered every way you could fall off a bike.  She has definitely earned this patch.  I bought her a new helmet, too.  She may need some bubble wrap soon.

Something we really enjoy working on is gardening.  This is one of Beauty's pumpkin plants.  It now has a couple of blooms.  Pumpkins won't be far behind.

I ordered two more books.  They are both Kumon books.  One is for telling time and the other is for counting coins.  I didn't feel these were covered enough in her other books.

I've been pondering a lot over her curriculum.  I'm not satisfied there is enough work in areas I think are important.  Mostly math and handwriting.  Beauty has been working out of her curriculum's math books but also a book from Lifepac.  The handwriting book's lessons are too short and Beauty can easily do a full page of work.  She is going to finish her book in a few weeks.  I've ordered her a second grade handwriting book.  I think she'll start cursive writing when she officially starts second grade in the fall.

Beauty is also working on writing letters and addressing envelopes.  I'm not sure how relevant learning how to address envelopes is these days with the shrinking service of the post office.  I think it's important to know how to decipher where the mail came from, though.  

We still have yet to embrace any formal science unit, unless spending time in the garden counts.  Maybe when she completes another of her books I will use that time slot for her science.  It's one of those classes that will require planning on my part.  Bleh.

It's a Bike!

Sorry for that little lapse in time.  Other adventures were happening and I couldn't get to writing.  

So we left off with Beauty doing something charitable.  Something that was her own idea.  Beauty learned how to ride her bicycle without training wheels.  She is constantly wanting to go outside and ride her bike now.  

The "problem" is her best friend doesn't have a bike.  Her friend is in a foster family and I won't get into any of that except to say there's no bike.  Beauty asked me a very simple question:  "Can't we just buy her a bike?"  I don't know if you've seen the price of kids' bikes lately but it could easily be around $50-80.  That's simply an amount we don't have to spend on a bike for a friend.  

The next day we headed into Goodwill to browse around and look for something I could paint and upcycle.  Lo and behold there was a bike!  The price was $10.  This was an amount that not only could we afford but Beauty wanted to use her allowance money.  She bought the bicycle with her allowance money for her best friend so they could ride bikes together.  Now they are the 2 happiest little girls riding around on their pink, slightly old and rusty bikes.  An amazing act of charity and friendship in my book.

Mr. Father decided Beauty needed a killing tool bow and arrow set.  Boy does she love this.  Boy does she have a lot to learn.  Mostly not loading it backwards and shooting herself.  Ahem.

Charity Begins At Home

I've been in awe of some posts I've seen of families and their charitable work.  It's. so. much.  I would pretty much need a clone to get half of the things done they are accomplishing. 

I pat them on their back.  Their bar is too high for me to reach.  Sometimes *something* steps in and opens your eyes to a charitable contribution so perfect. 

Today we arrived at the perfectly formed contribution.  It was a statement said but not thought about it.  Then we talked about it out loud, "Well, what if we did what Beauty suggested?  How much is this costing us?   What are we teaching Beauty?  What is the end result?"  Tomorrow it will be finished...

To Be Continued...

Girl's Engineering Day at University of Texas

We finally did something uber educational.  I registered Beauty for Girl's Engineering Day at UT last fall and the day arrived to see what this was all about.  

The day was beautiful!  This made the wait time tolerable.  This is my only complaint about the event.  It didn't start till 2 p.m.  I wrote it down on my little post event questionnaire, too.  Before the event started Beauty did a lot of this:  

One kind group had set up a trebuchet and was lobbing water balloons.  This was fun and I may have been a little more enthusiastic than Beauty.

Once the event started we were given a list of activities to try and could come and go as we pleased.  Beauty was happy to see what a real college classroom looks like and cut her finger trying to put up the desk top.  Injury!  Hopefully she will not retain that as "College will kill you!"  A quick band-aid and we were back in the game.  

Beauty chose to do a bubble wand making class.  She had to make a bubble wand using a choice of various materials.  After she was happy with her wand she took it outside to test it.

Know why everyone is looking at her?  Because her heart-shaped bubble wand worked.  She blew giant bubbles.  Check.  Next activity.

Her other favorite activity was making a dome out of toothpicks and gumdrops.  This was especially delicious educational.  Beauty received a bag with toothpicks, gumdrops, and instructions for putting it together.  Afterwards, there was a test site to see how it would hold up under earthquake conditions (everyone pound your hands on the table).  

There were some other interesting activities like making a helicopter bunny and making a kazoo that she enjoyed.  After a few hours we were ready to leave to go shopping since we were in the big city.  My most memorable and exciting thing was running into the woman who I had originally talked to about starting homeschooling.  We were both on the fence about it and I had started researching  into it.  I had wanted to give her a book and then hadn't seen her since.  What a nice surprise to see her!

Overall, I liked this event and I hope we will be able to attend next year.  I hope it's earlier in the day, too.  It was well organized and well staffed.  If you have the chance to go to one of these you should.


*This week we've seen huge strides in learning.  Beauty taught herself how to ride her bike!  That's a real win in my book.  She learned how to tell time.  She's 2 weeks into learning subtraction and yesterday she started adding double digit numbers.