12 Days of Homeschool...

As we're eating breakfast out the other morning, a boy asks Noah where he goes to school.  Noah replies, "I'm homeschooled."  The other child looks really confused, pauses for a moment, and responds with, "You're kidding me!" Noah gives him a funny look and says, "No...I'm not kidding. Why would I do that?" :)

   

Stayin' Busy...

Yesterday marked a month without Chris...and my has time flown by!  Normally deployments seem to drag and within a week of him leaving, I'm beginning to experience some serious doubts as to whether getting married to the Navy was such a great idea.  This time is different.  Maybe it's because I often have little surprises such as this to look forward to in the morning:

A plumeria blossom Noah left for me by the kitchen window

Or quite possibly because we've been hanging out with great friends like these:

It could even be that we were so happy with our homeschooling curriculum that we decided to keep the lessons going year round:

But whatever it is, Noah and I have settled into our first month of deployment quite well and are happy to keep things moving along until Chris returns...a really long time from now. (OPSEC!).  :)  

Noah just finished playing with i9 soccer in Honolulu and it was a fantastic experience for him.  We had been playing with an MWR-affiliated league and unfortunately we were afraid that it had almost ruined any sort of positive association Noah would have with the sport.  Organization was extremely poor, there was a great deal of standing around, too much chit-chat from the group leaders, not enough play, and overall it was just an incredibly poor experience.  Noah HATED it.  So we quit that league mid-season and hoped that paying double and joining an independently owned and operated youth sports team would drastically improve Noah's opinion of soccer.  It did.

Noah and his buddy, Wesley, playing tag after the game

Receiving medals from Coach Hector and Coach James

Certificate from i9 Sports

Coach James hired a face painter to come and do all the kids' faces after the game - SO NICE!

Silly Puppy 

         

We also continued with lapbooking. This week's study involved plants and flowers.  I picked up the following titles from the library and we've spent the last few evenings pouring over them:

From Seed to Plant - Gail Gibbons (my favorite)

How Do Plants Grow? - Melissa Stewart

Plants and Life - Sally Morgan

Seed, Soil, Sun - Cris Peterson

Plant - Fleur Star

Noah LOVES lapbooking.  As soon as we complete one, he's asking to do another.  If I was to ever consider fully going the route of "unschooling," this would be how I'd do it.  You can pull in reading, writing, art, science, math, geography...you name it...all under a topic HE decides he wants to study and when he wants to study it.  Instead of being forced to learn material that he will never use or absorb information in a format that doesn't appeal him, going this route enables him to follow his innate curiosities and passions.  I don't know if I could jump on board the unschooling model entirely, but I do see the many benefits to this style of learning.  It definitely works.

Here's his latest video describing his work.  You'll have to excuse my reaction in the last few seconds - I was really trying hard to contain my laughter as he describes one particular part of a flower. 

 

     

Lessons at the Doctor's Office...

Noah and I found ourselves in a terribly uncomfortable situation today, but I'm pretty proud of my buddy for handling it fairly well.  While in the optometry office this morning, I noticed a woman who appeared to be having trouble breathing - her respiratory sounds could be heard clear across the room.  Then I noticed the trach. Oh, okay...that makes sense.  Well, I guess her breathing issues were not normal because she then begins to clean the thing out right there in the middle of the doctor's office.

Noah went bug eyed, covered his ears (which is what he does when he's really freaked), pulled his feet up into one of the office chairs, and got really quiet.  I have to admit - *I* was beginning to freak out a little, because the smell was just horrible.  It was one of the worst odors I have ever encountered and I was trying hard not to gag.  Noah was sitting to my right and I watched as his eyes slowly rolled up from looking sideways at her to rest on me (he never took his hands off his ears) and he politely whispered, "Mommy...WHAT is she DOING?" I told him that she was having trouble breathing and what she was doing was sort of like when he blew his nose when he had a cold.  He nodded and didn't say another word about it. I don't know if she had to perform that tracheal suctioning right there in the office or just didn't want to excuse herself, but I was proud of Noah for managing his fear as best he could.  She scared the crap out of him and yet he kept his cool with just one polite question.

He waited until we were leaving the building to hit me with how he was really feeling - that it made him "sad...and really, really, really scared."            

Lapbooking: The Titanic

I took a little bit of a break from blogging over the last two months and Noah took a short break from school.  With visitors in town (Chris' parents just celebrated their 40th anniversary - Congratulations!) and Chris' deployment fast approaching (which he is now on), we didn't want or need the added pressure of trying to ensure Noah was keeping up with his curriculum schedule.  We just kept things rather informal - reading library books in the backyard, doing math problems in our heads while waiting in line at Target, drawing and coloring, field trips, watching "When Animals Attack!" videos on YouTube...you know, the important stuff.      

So now we're back to our regularly scheduled programming.  I decided early on that we would be year round homeschoolers (for pretty much the same reasons this homeschooling mom outlines here), so we've been working on a few fun projects in conjunction with our Sonlight curriculum.  Lapbooking has been something I've been very interested in further incorporating in Noah's learning (we did one for Easter) because in breaks down the information into manageable pieces, helps cement ideas and information in their minds, and provides them with a fun, creative record of what they've learned that they can return to anytime they wish.  In addition, there are so many great tutorials on lapbooking out there and plenty of Internet sources and templates for various subjects/topics that putting one together is quite easy - in most cases, the real work has already been done for you (you the parent, not your student) and you just need to find the applicable PDF file(s), print, cut, and begin your lapbook!

Noah has been begging me to do a unit study on the Titanic, but after having completed our pirate unit study (you can read about that adventure here) so recently, I just wasn't ready to jump into another GIANT project so soon...not with several weeks left to finish in our Sonlight materials.  So we reserved a few libraries books, pulled out the manila folders and the pencils and crayons, and went to work on creating a Titanic lapbook instead.  Here's photos of our finished product:

Front Cover

First Section

Information on "growlers" and "bergy bits," passengers and crew members about the ship, before and after photos, and important facts about this luxurious ocean liner.    

Geography and Class Division 

The Sinking of the Titanic:  A Timeline

Second Section

Noah's pretty accurate depiction of the sinking of the Titanic (Notice the people in the water and the sad faces on those aboard the lifeboats. I thought that big, grey scribbly thing in the top, left corner was the smoke monster from Lost - that would explain everything! - but he advised me that it was how the iceberg would have looked at night.)

That concludes our Titanic lapbook.  It was both easy to complete and lots of fun - both are qualities that I love in homeschool learnin'. :)  In the past, Noah has hated coloring or drawing (he'd rather paint), so these projects help encourage him to express himself in that format without a battle over simply covering coloring or workbook pages in large red or blue scribble and saying, "Done!" I think our next lapbook will probably involve a plant and seed lapbook of some sort, since we've both enjoyed our mini garden in the backyard.  Or maybe a lapbook on Donald Trump's toupee...we could cover a lot of subjects on that monstrosity - wind velocity, the power of adhesives, the devolution of humanity - the list goes on.
         


P.S. Titanic lapbooking materials seen in this post can be found on this webpage.   

Noah's Garden

Due to visitors and a few doctor's appointments, I'm a little behind on posting.  Oops! There's Easter pics and several other fun homeschool activities that require sharing and I promise I'll try to get to those as soon as possible. :)  In the meantime, I thought I'd show you a little "Noah" project we completed while Chris was on leave:

Our Herb, Tomato, and Strawberry Gardening Project

The perimeter of our backyard is lined with these awesome, low maintenance ferns...except for this one spot. It just didn't seem to get just the right amount of sun and water and so the ferns slowly disappeared and grass sprung up where ferns once grew, throwing off the balance of our little piece of backyard paradise.  Chris and I have been discussing what to do with this bare patch for two years and just couldn't come up with a solution we were really happy with  - transplanting more ferns seemed "out" as they'd just die like their predecessors and building a raised flower bed (the ground is rock hard underneath) just seemed like too much work and expense.  We tried a bird feeder, but reconsidered after the birds managed to happily decorate the fence with the leavings of all their feasting.  (We didn't want our neighbors to hate us, so the feeder was moved to another location).  And so a whiskey barrel herb garden came to mind:  easy and inexpensive to create, low maintenance, and a great way to add some fresh flavor to improve my cooking!  It would also make for a great homeschool gardening project to help provide lessons in patience, care, and responsibility for the littlest Dudley, which is something else Chris and I were pretty stoked about.  Apparently Noah was more than stoked about it, too, because he stole out of the house this morning while I was in the shower to get the following pictures and videos on my iPhone: 

I'm really glad he's excited about it, although not so happy that he went into the backyard unattended.  We'll have to work on that one. :)

So, that's our whiskey barrel garden.  We planted basil, thyme, strawberries, tomatoes, and various peppers and can't wait to see the fruits of our labor. We're also looking forward to someday having the space to have a REAL garden - complete with lettuce, squash, beans (that was actually rosemary that N pointed out in the video), and cucumbers - but that'll have to wait for another duty station.  In the meantime, we're pretty happy to watch these little guys grow and flourish in their cute little space in our backyard!    

Coffee's on Me (Pinterest Challenge)

Are there any Pinterest fans out there??  Are you up for a little Pinterest fun???  

If so, here's what you do:  Pick a favorite project that you've done with your kids - Pinterest inspired, of course - and share it with us.  It can be small or large, complex or simple...just something fun and educational.  It doesn't matter if you homeschool...just show us how creative you can be!! Send me photos and a write-up about your family's (or classroom) experience and I'll post it on the blog to share with others on Sunday, April 29th.  Readers will vote on their favorite project and the winner of this challenge will receive two bags of 100% Kona coffee courtesy of moi.  

Sounds like fun, right? Let's get Pinspired!  :)




If you intend to participate, send me a message using the "M" tab below and I'll reply with instructions for submitting your photos/write-up.  Submissions must be received no later than Friday, April 27th. Thanks and have fun!   

The Lord's Prayer

I've been trying to remember at which age I memorized this prayer and I can't recollect exactly when that happened.  Age 8?  9?  What I do know is that I definitely wasn't four years old.

I think he does a pretty great job. Way to go, buddy.