Notes on weeks 1 & 2

Wow, have two weeks gone by already? We're starting to sort out this home school scene a bit. The first week I made up whatever I wanted for the girls, that was a nice way to ease in. This past week we were given all kinds of work books. At first flip through, the math and science look good, some of the English stuff is okay but the socials...we will probably be charting our own course on that one. While the books lend much needed structure (for this random soul), I've found that they distract us from doing the things we really want to do fairly often.


Some "extra" learning we've done:

Ivy decided it would be cool to build a Barbie house - full scale, two floors plus loft. Where is Papa Larry when we need him? I asked her to draw up a design for me of what she had in mind. We went over all kinds of factors and got out a doll and some wood to see what proportions would be appropriate. That's as far as we got that day but I want to follow this up. Problem solving, design, math, learning to use tools...all good stuff.

Worm relocation mission. Our compost bin is packed with happy worms. The mission for the girls was to redistribute some worms into the various garden boxes. We followed up on the internet and figured out the basics of how worms actually break down food.

Paper boat building. I'd always wanted to make an origami style paper boat so on one of our first days (it was sunny), we printed off instructions, packed some paper and headed down to a local beach with a stream. We made a few boats and watched them run the "rapids". We learned that they are useless once they've capsized but if they do well, they could manage up to three runs before they were soaked. It was fun to speculate about why they stopped in certain places or went backwards at times. We also learned that I cannot hold a baby, video, and save boats from being washed out to sea all at the same time. The video suffered by the way, the baby and boat were fine, although a tad soggy.


A (lame) scavenger hunt in the bird sanctuary. I thought this would be a clever way to get the girls excited about going out. What happened was some weird frenzy of rushing around the trails, moaning about not finding the items and wanting to get it over with and go home. Normally they love to run the trails and they discover lots of cool things. Interesting.

Planet Earth videos. The timing worked out so that this series we've had on hold for months showed up this week at the library. That's been our afternoon down time the past few days. I ask the girls to draw a picture and make a few notes on what they find most amazing on each one.

The girls had a fabulous day with Dianne (Jeremy's mom). She worked on some introductory Spanish with them, helped with workbooks, made lunch together, letter writing and sticker making. There was probably more but I can't keep track of it all! Ah yes, she took Ivy shopping for her Brownies uniform, which she's over the moon with excitement about. The uniform! The friends! The campout!!!

Making pancakes, baking soda volcanoes, the list goes on. As I document this it's becoming clear why I'm so blessed tired every night.




I hope the reader isn't lost in some rosy haze about all of this. Did I mention the raspberry-crazed and somewhat intolerant toddler lurking around most of the time?



These are cool things (to me) but don't get the idea that the girls are always on board. They think my ideas are lame or they don't want to go out. Often they run out of steam before the project has reached the conclusion I'd like to see it get to. I suspect my expectations of attention span and depth of analysis are too high for their ages. I have to be careful not to take the fun out of everything by making them document it. They love to learn and explore. It's painful to sit down after every adventure and make notes.

The classroom portion of this deal starts for Ivy tomorrow morning, at 10:30am, sharp. Heh heh. I'm very curious to see what it's going to look like.