Exploring Life In The Grit Of The Earth
Posted in Home Schooling on May 9th, 2010
One of the things I was worried about when deciding to homeschool Kaia is that she would feel that she missed out on some of the fun things that big schools offer like going to school games, prom, and year books. Now, I laugh about those things, but back then, they were a huge deal. [...]
Posted in Home Schooling on May 7th, 2010
Last week, were were able to enjoy a day at the Biltmore House during their Homeschool Festival. They put this on twice a year and it’s lots of fun. Their focus this year was Farms, Flowers, and Food. We made terrariums, listened to a stories about farming, learned to make peanut butter, made leaf prints, [...]
Posted in Home Schooling on May 6th, 2010
Kaia and I have been working on the concept of symmetry in math for the last few days. We’ve looked at the symmetry of shapes, objects, foods, etc. We talked about how our bodies are symmetrical (one arm on each side, one leg…), but thought it would be fun to see what it would look [...]
Posted in Chickens/Ducks, Home Schooling on Apr 18th, 2010
One thing I really like about homeschooling is going on field trips! (OK, I know that I could go on field trips even if Kaia was in public school, but it just seems like more fun when we get to design and plan them ourselves!) She just finished up her solar system and prehistory studies. [...]
Posted in Home Schooling, Mothering on Apr 11th, 2010
We are wrapping up Kaia’s Prehistory studies this next week and she has been begging to do a dinosaur dig. I got this kit because it looked like it was pretty good quality and the tools (which are metal) could be used again. The kit says it can be ‘hours of fun’, especially if you [...]
Posted in Chickens/Ducks, Home Schooling, Knitting on Mar 30th, 2010
Let’s start our morning with some daredevil antics! Don’t see anything wrong with this? Let’s look again: Then off to a sweet farm tour where we enjoyed some fabulous home made jellies and ice cream, and I scored an angora fleece from this guy: Then we spent the rest of our day enjoying the beautiful [...]
Posted in Home Schooling on Mar 11th, 2010
Kaia and I have been busy planning her summer and second grade curriculum. No, we won’t really be doing much ‘real’ school work during the summer, but she has asked to learn about certain things, so we are planning ‘camps’. Mythology, Weather, and Mapping camps. She will also be attending a couple of camps outside [...]
Posted in Home Schooling on Mar 1st, 2010
We found this craft when we were cruising around on the web looking for info in sea monsters of prehistory. (scroll down to Sediment Fossil Surprise). As soon as Kaia read the details, she was dying to do it. So, saturday, we got all our ingredients together and created our layers of history in a [...]
Posted in Home Schooling on Feb 21st, 2010
As part of our dinosaur studies, Kaia and I made some coffee fossils. (Yes, that was me who shoved Jasmines head into the clay to see what it would look like!) It was a really simple recipe with very cool results! I love having things like this to do in our home school days. I [...]
Posted in Home Schooling on Feb 12th, 2010
Smrt Lernins is having a photo contest. They want to know what homeschooling looks like to you. Well, we’ve only been doing this for 6 weeks, but it seems like I’m always posting pictures about what Kaia is up to. There are so many photos to chose from. But, I think one of my favorites [...]
Posted in Home Schooling on Feb 3rd, 2010
Kaia has decided that since I am taking sewing lessons, I must teach her! Now! As often as possible!!! So that she can use the sewing machine all by herself… with no one watching! Hmmmmmmm….. We’ll see. I did, however, help her make a little bag to hold her new fossil collection in. She did [...]
Posted in Home Schooling on Jan 23rd, 2010
You can’t study pre-history without making trilobite cookies!! This was Kaia’s first time using the cookie press and she LOVED it! I had to make her a deal though… we make one full sheet of trilobite shaped cookies and she could use the rest of the dough to try out all the other cookie press [...]
Posted in Home Schooling on Jan 16th, 2010
For a family that lives on 25 acres, we seem to spend most of our time indoors, especially in the winter. Now that Kaia is at home most days, I thought it increasingly more important to make getting outside a priority! So, we’ve added a weekly Outdoor Hour Challenge to our studies. This week, we [...]
Posted in Chickens/Ducks, Home Schooling, Mothering, Organic Gardening on Jan 16th, 2010
Finally, it’s gotten above 35 degrees!! The snow has been on the ground for a month and it seems like every morning I’ll wake up to a little more! The past few days it’s gotten up into the 50′s and it’s been wonderful! The chickens are having a field day taking dirt baths and stretching [...]
Posted in Home Schooling, Mothering on Jan 9th, 2010
This week was the first official full week of Kaia and I homeschooling and we had a great time. Along with the standard weekly math, spelling/language, and stuff, we’ve begun studying prehistoric times (Thanks to Sarah for the curriculum!). We started by doing our own little recreation of the Big Bang. Kaia stuffed a balloon [...]
Posted in Do It Yourself, Home Schooling on Dec 15th, 2009
We’ve had the crafting spirit in our home lately! This weekend Kaia and I made some santa ornaments after seeing them at Write-It-Down. We just happened to have everything we needed and couldn’t resist the cute little guys. Then we had a few friends over for more crafting. We made beeswax ornaments with beeswax from [...]
Posted in Home Schooling on Dec 8th, 2009
I always love seeing kite paper stars in the windows. They are so bright and happy. They fancy-up any house! With the winter coming on and it being a gray, gloomy day, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to make some of these! A Toy Garden and Nova Natural Toys have nice selections [...]
Posted in Do It Yourself, Home Schooling on Dec 5th, 2009
Creating our holiday cards…
Posted in Home Schooling on Nov 19th, 2009
Kaia has just started getting into reading. She’s really not had much of an interest until I started introducing fun games and stories. I found this game through Pink and Green Mama (the original game is at The Snail’s Trail). It has everything my daughter loves… rainbows, paint chips, secret peak through windows, funny make [...]
Posted in Home Schooling on Nov 16th, 2009
Kaia and I took a little detour from our scheduled homeschooling (detours are fun!) to study a little about comets and meteors. The Leonid Meteor Shower is at it’s peak Tuesday and Wed. (I wrote a little about it at Homemakers Who Work), and we plan to set up a cozy spot outside tonight (well, [...]
Posted in Home Schooling on Nov 14th, 2009
Kaia absolutely loves to color! I think she spent most of her kindergarten year drawing rainbows! So, when I’m planning out our day, I try to make sure that she has time for coloring, and it’s even better if some of her actual ‘work’ (math, language…) has drawing required! Then she’s really happy. Frequently, though, [...]
Posted in Do It Yourself, Home Schooling on Nov 10th, 2009
I have great memories of my elementary school art class. The room was dark and and crowded, but our teacher always had the greatest projects for us. One of my favorites was linoleum print making. You trace a picture onto a linoleum block, carve it out, roll paint onto it and press it onto paper, [...]
Posted in Home Schooling on Nov 9th, 2009
We’ve been having so much fun homeschooling. Yes, there are those moments where I want to shut her in her room and turn the music up real loud to drown out the drama. But, I guarantee we would be having those moments if she were in school full time too. In just a few weeks, [...]
Posted in Home Schooling, Mothering on Nov 1st, 2009
We’ve been talking for the past few evenings and Toby and I have decided that we are definitely going to homeschool Kaia next Jan. I did a general outline of topics today and it got Toby really excited too. From Jan. through May (at least) I would like to touch on (formally or informally): -Continue [...]
Posted in Home Schooling, Mothering on Oct 29th, 2009
Right now, Kaia is in school 3 days a week and home schooled two. Though there are definitely those hair pulling times, we are really enjoying ourselves and looking forward to all the things we can do together. So, we are actually thinking of home schooling full time. It’s something we had thought about doing [...]
Posted in Chickens/Ducks, Home Schooling, Mothering, Pets on Sep 25th, 2009
Kaia has been studying the 5 kingdoms of life at school for the past 4 weeks. So, we thought we’d take a trip out to the Nature Center to see what in the Animal, Plant, and Fungus kingdoms we could find. Poor little papa peacock is moulting and has no tail feathers. But you see [...]
Posted in Home Schooling, Mothering, Sustainable Living on Sep 6th, 2009
I’m a creature of habit. I like things organized. I like routine. Yet, my life has little of this. So, with Kaia starting the first grade and homeschooling part time, I thought it might be nice to create a basic rhythm that we can count on. Even if things get adjusted here and there, we [...]
Posted in Do It Yourself, Home Schooling, Mothering on Jul 5th, 2009
We started Kaia Camp Day 4 off with a little exercise! We headed to the Dojang when Kaia, Toby, and I take Tae Kwon Do and did a little hooping. It’s the first time I’ve hooped since last November when I was 32 weeks pregnant. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to dance/hoop [...]
Posted in General, Home Schooling, Mothering on Apr 17th, 2009
I saw the fantastic idea of story dice here and had to make some! So, I ordered a bunch of blocks and Kaia and I spent a few days last week painting. She made a winter set and a spring set, and I made 4 sets of 4 blocks (extra sets for Kaia’s school K-2 [...]
Posted in Home Schooling, Mothering on Jul 6th, 2008
Now that Kaia is 5, we’ve decided to start giving her an allowance to teach her about money. We tossed around lots of ideas of how it would work, but then we ran across this article. So, Kaia now has 4 jars and each week gets $2 to put into each jar. “Spending” is for [...]