Spontaneous Homeschooling

Sometimes the best homeschooling projects are completely unplanned by me.

P. found a caterpillar outside while he was playing and immediately brought it inside to show me. I tried to act excited while he dangled it in front of my face. . .

He set up a home for his caterpillar, from which the wily, little, squirmy, guy escaped two times.

Can you guess who had the misfortune of finding him???
Yep. It was me.

So we came up with a better home and now we are waiting to see what happens.

Researching information on his discovery was suddenly a fun thing to do.

We are thinking it looks like a monarch caterpillar. The last several years we have found black swallowtail caterpillars, but never a monarch so it would be fun to watch something different.

I love how the caterpillars seem to know that school has started and teachers everywhere need help in coming up with a science project. They appear at just the right time.

I'll let you know what we end up with after it emerges from its chrysalis.

Adventures of Flat Molly

My cousin's daughter has been reading about Flat Stanley in school (which I have never read and I'm starting to feel a little left out.) They were given a project to color a flat portrait of themselves and then send the portrait to someone else in the mail.

And so Flat Molly came to visit us all the way from Minnesota.

We had so much fun showing her all the sights on my father's farm to give her a real Kansas experience. First we stopped at the wheat field which is still green, but you can see that it is all headed out. By the middle of June or so, it will be a glorious golden color.

We arrived just as my father was about to feed the cattle, so the kids and Flat Molly hopped on board to have a ride.

Flat Molly really loved the cattle and politely introduced herself, but they were rude and just kept munching away.

Flat Molly also got to climb up the loading chute which was a little worrisome because it was so high and she is so little, but Princess H. took good care of her and she made it back down safely.

Princess H. thought that Flat Molly needed to visit the fruit trees. Here she is looking at a tiny peach which was much too small to have even a nibble of and we were all starting to get a little hungry. . .

so we all stopped at the strawberry patch to find a snack. Flat Molly ate very neatly and didn't get even one strawberry stain, but. . .

I can't say that Pumpkin was able to do the same.

Talk about melting my heart. . .

Princess decided she wanted to participate in the local PBS station's Young Author's and Illustrators contest. We have only been concentrating on Spelling and Reading this year not writing because I wanted to make sure that she had all the tools necessary to write before trying to put her thoughts and ideas on paper.

(The PBS rules stated that "inventive spelling was permissible-What??? NOT in my school thank you very much. . .)

So it was with some hesitation that I agreed. Princess procrastinated until the week it was due (where could she be getting that trait from? Yeah. . .okay so she does sound a lot like me.) and then came up with the following story:

Oh, my. . . I have no idea if she will win or not. Frankly I don't even care. I am totally in love with this story.

Monkey See Monkey Do

I have recently begun to notice that my children like to do what they see me doing. A couple of examples:

I absolutely adore reading and will actually forget about the rest of the world and not even be able to hear people talking to me while I read-just ask my mother if you don't believe me.☺ I will often see A. pick up a book to read just for fun. I love seeing him do that. He learns so much from reading even the dumbest fiction books. Often he will ask what a word means because he has read it in a book and we get to have our vocabulary lesson right at the dinner table.

Little Pumpkin is only 2, but when we sit at the kitchen table to do our phonogram review (we use Spell to Write and Read in which you learn 70 phonograms) she likes to repeat the phonograms too. She speaks exceptionally well and to be honest a little bit too much. I truly think it is because she has heard these foundation blocks of our language over and over since she was itty bitty.

WARNING: A 2 year old who can express her thoughts clearly can be a bit daunting to parent. Yesterday she told me "But its not my fault!" Huh??? What in the world do you do with that???

Princess wants to do the crafty things she see me doing. I have been doing a lot of embroidery lately (I'm really starting to enjoy embroidery-so relaxing!) and so she has started her own project. I must admit to not being too excited about putting down my own embroidery to help her get started because I thought she would need a ton of help, but she is doing really well. She has only stitched her project to the sheets on my bed one time! Not too bad considering her teacher has done something similar several times before.☺

It makes me wonder what would happen if my children caught me reading my Bible more often or if they saw me being kind or going out of my way to be generous to someone who needed help?

Field Trip

We went to the Farm show for a home school field trip today. We had a lot of fun. I grew up on a farm and never appreciated it.

Until now.

I was NOT a good farmer's daughter. Just ask my father about the time he sent me out to chisel (which is some sort of plow I think. See???? I don't even know what farm implements are called!!!!) a field. I didn't mess up the field on purpose, truly I didn't but . . . well . . .enough of that story. Moving right along.

This is Tuesday (that really is her name-I'm not trying to mess you up on what day it is today☺), a lovely Llama introduced to us at the farm show and we enjoyed meeting her tremendously.

Little Pumpkin loved her and her eyes sparkled with joy when she got to pet her and felt how luxuriously soft she was.

Tuesday's owner explained that llama's are very sensitive creatures and are often used to help autistic children. Isn't that interesting???

There were lots of flags around today in honor of Veteran's Day.

Lots of good stuff to eat.

including the best mustard around. YUMMY!!!

There was a horseman show at 11:30. It was interesting because so much of what he said actually applied to raising children.

He said that a horse that is green broke isn't really completely broke. A friend of his was bragging about how good a horse that he had recently broke was doing and this trainer reminded him that because he was green broke that he should still expect the horse to still try to get his own way. A couple days later, the friend told him that he was right. He had gotten bucked off the horse that he thought had been trained so well.

He could have been talking about my children. Just the time I think they know what I expect and are obedient . . .

guess whose child starts crying in Walmart. Yep, one of my little sweeties whose mission in life seems to be to keep me as humble as they can.☺

We even got to go out for lunch at my hubby favorite fast food place.

Pianos

Several days ago, my children had an opportunity to play "lunch music" at a local nursing home. It was fun to see the smiles that it brought to the lovely people who live there. Little Pumpkin did her part by dancing to the blues pieces and swaying to the slower ones.

Just another way, Simply Music has blessed our lives. Love that program!!! We are so fortunate to have found a wonderful teacher in our area.

On the topic of piano's and yet totally and completely unrelated in any other way, I wanted to show you one of my favorite garage sale finds of the summer. This beautiful needlework was in a hideous frame and this frame housed a hideous picture so I bought them both and made things right. ☺ Guess where it happily hangs now. . . yep, right by the piano. Yeah, I'm clever like that.

Oh, and don't even ask about how Pumpkin's coat is going. . . Grrrrr. . . lets just say that I'll be headed back to JoAnn's soon for more corduroy. I will NOT let this project defeat me. ☺

The Time Has Come

Good-bye Summer. We will miss you.

Music

As a homeschooling mom, one of the things I enjoy the most is searching to find the best programs to help my children learn. I found a winner with this piano program. Simply Music is a lot different then traditional piano lessons. Rather than learning to read music before playing, my kids are playing the music and then that will translate into learning to read it later. They have learned so much more in the 10 months that they have been taking lessons then I learned in the 6 years I took traditional lessons. They can play any chord, accompany someone else, transpose their accompaniment (yes, you heard me - transpose!!!! I know, I couldn't believe it either), change a major chord to minor, compose or arrange their own music, and the list goes on and on. They already know a least 50 pieces from memory that they can just sit down and play anytime they want. They are learning the artistry of playing music before learning the nuts and bolts of it. And the best part is that I get to learn it all with my kids. Love it!!!