Always Ice Cream Review- A Great Resource for Homeschoolers!

I stumbled on a another online program for home school and it is really, REALLY awesome! Let me start off by saying that I wasn't given anything to do this review, I just love sharing when I find a great resource. Always Ice Cream is a site for girls only that is full of games and education videos. It is a christian site which I love.  The girls can add friends (kinda like a Facebook for kids, that is completely safe and moderated). They can even join groups and email or send messages to their friends and the girls in their group. Girls can build and decorate their house and even design decorations and furnishings and clothing and open a store. Then they set the price of what to sell their items for and sell them to the other Always Ice Cream Girls! I love this because it goes along with the business stuff we are focusing on right now. In their store they have to pay for the item they design, like say they are going to design a couch they have to choose the couch and pay for it. I'm not sure what the costs are but then they customize it with different colors or fabrics, So if they pay $25 scoops (they pay with Ice Cream Scoops instead of money) for it then they sell it for $30 they only make a $5 profit. They can buy pets and food and accessories for their pets. All this is just the bonus extra stuff. The best part of the program is that to earn the scoops to buy and do this stuff you have to play the games or watch the videos, all of which is educational! And not just educational but really fun! You can set the grade level that the kids are playing at so they aren't just playing way below their level. There are games and videos that teach, Math, Language Arts, History, Science, Life Skills ( my girls love the Cooking Class and Cooking Show games!),Foreign languages, Geography and Bible (I'm pretty sure you can set your account to Christian or Jewish and maybe Secular). They also have just for fun stuff but you can't earn scoops for that stuff. This program is so full of inceitives! Some of the things you can do is play against your friends, earn medals when you level up in a game and they have a top earner contest each month, where if you are one of the top earners that month you get limited edition stuff for your pets! The site is for either Kindergarten or First grade to Eighth grade. Now I bet you are thinking WOW! All that must be pretty expensive! Nope! All of that for less than $9.00 a month! And they offer a FREE trial! Oh and each week you will receive an email with a report of everything your child learned and did that week! All the games they played, any medals they earned and what videos they watched. If you have a boy that you think would just love something like this you are in luck, they have a boy's site called Clever Dragons! This isn't just great for homeschoolers, it would be awesome to play after school or during the summer.


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Resources For Teaching Economics

I thought I'd share a few links and resources I've found to help teach money concepts to kids.

It's my life Game Super easy and fun game that is easy enough for young kids to get the concept but challenging enough that older ones can't beat it the first time- It's a good introduction to buying and earning.

Be your Own Boss Game this game is a little easy to beat but is a great introduction to starting a business. In this game you pick a business, decide how to get your capital to start the business, learn about promoting and advertising. It's really simple and easy enough for even young kids.

Teaching Elementary Economics This site has lots of lesson plans and games to teach economics.

If you have access to Hulu they have a great show called Biz Kids.

A few book resources:
My two favorite Bible Studies are How to Manage Your Money by Larry Burkett and Discovering God's way of Handling  Money by Crown Financial Ministries.

Some Really great books that I have read are The Money Smart Family System by Steve & Annette Economides, I don't follow their system but they have some great advice and really help get you motivated to make changes in the way you view money. Managing You Money Cliffsnotes, I found this book for like 50 cents at Goodwill and it's a really good introduction to economics, saving,and investing. It's written simple enough for an older kid or a teen to understand. Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Guide to Investing both by Robert Kiyosaki and one of my favorites that I read over and over is The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. This book is the one that really got me to make the changes I needed to. It's such a simple concept that can literally change your financial situation. I got is at Goodwill for like $2.00. Best money spent ever!

And my favorite books for kids are The Everything Kids Money Book by Brette McWhorter Sember, J.D. and The Young Investor by Katherine R. Bateman. The Everything Kids Money Book  is one I left on the coffee table and Kyle and Lacey both would flip through it. It's simple and Interesting. The other book is outstanding for kids and adults to learn about investing in stocks, bonds, and CD's. It is simple to understand, but very informative.

I also bought Cashflow for Kids the game. It's kinda expensive but I lucked upon a really cheap one on Ebay. It is awesome.

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How to Make School More Relevant

We have been really busy lately and one of the things I have been thinking alot about is how I teach the kids things that are relevant to their lives. I never learned to balance a checkbook, make a budget or even simple things like saving money or planning for my retirement. As a result I am years behind what I could be doing. I am determined to give my kids a head start on these kind of things. I want relevancy in our homeschool and I gotta admit I still got a little of that unschool, real life learning spirit in me. I want my kids to be able to succeed in our world. And it's not the same world I grew up in. Finances is one of the most relevant things we can teach our kids. And one of the most neglected even among homeschoolers. I have never been asked to diagram a sentence or label the anatomy of a frog but I have needed to open a checking account, fill out a W-2 form, make a budget, pick a 401 k, manage a retirement fund. All these are things I had no idea how to do and so I put it off, neglected it and made costly mistakes. So I've been researching, reading, and finally implementing these things in our homeschool. I started out by opening each kid a savings account. I was able to open a little savers account at my bank for just $10. The kids all earn money by doing chores. I know some parents don't believe in paying kids to do chores but I think the lessons they learn from earning and managing their own money definitely outweighs the drawbacks. Just the lessons about tithes and charity makes it worth it in my opinion. Anyway I told the kids that once they earned $10 I would take them to open a savings account and I sweetened the deal by offering to match whatever they could save dollar for dollar for one month only. When each child had earned enough we went to the bank and opened their account. It was a really great experience my banker walked the kids through the process, let them initial and sign some of the papers and praised them for starting a savings so young. Now when their statement come in we open them up and review how much interest they are earning and how much they have deposited since their last statement. Even Lily is already learning how money in her savings is worth more than money in her piggy bank. I think it means more to them because they own it. It's not an account that I started for them, that I put money in it's their account with money they earned. Every couple of months I offer incentives to save. Sometimes I match their savings, Sometimes I offer bonuses. But when they get their allowance (or paydays as they call it) they choose how much goes to save and how much goes to spend. It's a good start.

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Time4learning Review

I have posted a few times about time4learning and I thought I would write  a review about our experience with it so far. Time4learning is an online program for grades Pre-k to 8th grade. In the lower levels all the lessons are animated. In Pre-k 1 through 2nd grade pretty much everything is animated. I really like this because most of the time my kids don't really think of it as school, it's just fun computer time. Lily is using the Pre-k program. She has access to all of Pre-k 1 and all of Pre-k 2 lessons. The lessons cover things like the alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes, safety, manners, and so much more. There is a different topic for each week of school. One of the great things about Time4learning is that the parent has complete control of the program. There is a parent forum where parents can discuss and swap ideas. The way we use the program is I pretty much just turn Lily loose on it and let her do what she wants. She can jump between level 1 or level 2. She can repeat her favorite lessons as often as she wants or skip lessons that she doesn't want to do. I don't require her to do it everyday, some days she plays on it a long time, some days she doesn't play on it at all. Some of the other mothers on the forum have their child follow the sequence as it is laid out for them, and supplement the lessons with art, books, trips, crafts, etc. to coordinate with the topic they are learning that week. I think that would be a lot of fun, I just never get around to doing it.

Lacey started doing Time4learning in Kindergarten. So far she has done kindergarten and first grade and is working on second grade now. Another great thing about T4L is that when you pay for one grade level you actually get access to 3 grade levels. You get the grade below and the grade above. So if you pay for first grade you get kindergarten and second grade also! A lot of the lessons at this level are set up to either look like a cartoon that you watch or a game you play. Lacey loved the animated science lessons. She has learned so much. She can repeat lessons that she doesn't understand and sometimes, especially in math, I will let her skip a lesson and go back a couple of weeks later. One lesson I let her skip was the lesson on  money. She really struggled with that lesson, so I just had her skip it. About a month later we went back to it and she flew right through it. Another great thing about T4L is that it grades all the work, has quizzes and tests that you can have your child do and grades those too. Again, you don't have to make them do the quizzes or tests. Lacey doesn't take all the quizzes in Science and Social Studies, but she does is Language Arts, Language Extensions and Math. If she doesn't pass something she can go back and repeat it or if she scored really low she can do the whole lesson over. There are lesson plans, reading lists and even spelling words. We don't use any of that, but it's nice to know we have access to it. I'm still pretty flexible with Lacey. She has to do computer work on computer days but I let her have a lot of breaks and if she really isn't in the mood to do something one day I will usually let her do it on the next computer day. We school year round so she has plenty of time to get through the lessons.

Kyle is in 5th grade. He started in 3rd grade on T4L. At 3rd grade the lessons start requiring more reading, but there are still a lot of it that is animated. One complaint I have now that he is in 5th grade is that he can't do some of the lessons unless he has the book that goes along with that lesson. The books are ones that you can usually check out at the library, but it still aggravates me. Up until 5th grade nothing else was required and I found that a lot easier. Now I gotta make sure I look over his lessons so that he will have the required book or let him skip the lesson. Sometimes though I will have him google the answers. I don't think of it as cheating, he is still learning the information plus he learns how to find information on the Internet. One of the lessons I let him do this on was a lesson about Thomas Jefferson. Another great thing about T4L is that you can generate all kinds of reports, attendance reports, grades, and even duration report, where you can see how long your child spent on each task. There is an icon on their desktop where they can check their grades and what work they have done. I am a lot stricter about Kyle's work than Lacey's. He has to do 1 lesson a day in each subject. If he finishes before three which he almost always does, I have him work extra.

Time4learning also offers an Art program. The Art program is free for the first six months then you have to pay extra for it and it's only offered for 3rd grade and up. The art lessons start with an animated introduction, then moves to a short history of the art concept being taught. They kids then can play one or two games that reinforce the lesson being taught. Finally, there is one or two options of art projects the kids can do.

We are blessed to live in Texas where no record keeping is required, but in states where you have to keep a record this program would be invaluable. You can just print off a weekly or even monthly report that would show how often the child logged in, what they worked on, and what grade they made. I love that T4L has their phone number right on their home page and when you call you actually get a live person that can help you. I have called dozens of times and never been on hold for more than a minute or so. The people in the office have always been helpful and friendly. This isn't a Christian program so I'm not thrilled with everything taught. Sometimes there are references to witches or evolution but it's not really an issue for us. Sonlight kind of taught us how to deal with such situations, so it's not a big deal. But I do want to mention it. Now for the price. It's very reasonable, twenty dollars a month for the first child and only fifteen for each child after that!

A Great Science Resource

One of the books I bought years ago that I still love and use ALL the time is the Giant Science Resource Book. This book is really, really great. I bought it when I was really into lap booking. It covers plants, animals, human anatomy, space and so much more. There are pictures to color, cut and glue, and you can reduce the copies for mini books. We have used it so much I really consider it invaluable. There are over 290 reproducible activities!  It's just so much more convenient to have something on hand when the kids get interested in a topic instead of having to search the Internet for an activity or coloring page. This book is especially good if you have a kid that likes hands-on-crafty type of stuff! 

 It isn't from a Christian point of view. Just wanted to let you know.

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Making Pine Cone Bird Feeders

We finally got around to making our pine cone bird feeders. The kids had a lot of fun with this. Becca and her kids came over. Oh and they brought the COOLEST thing! A dead lizard! The coolest thing about it was that it had been dead a good while so it was mostly a skeleton. Oh my goodness the kids were absolutely fascinated by it! I wish I'd had a magnifying glass so that they could really examine it. Then we worked on our science notebooks. The kids made their amphibian pages last week so this week we worked on our bird pages. We are learning about animal classifications and habitats, since the two kinda go together and overlap. We checked out some pretty neat books from the library. After we did our science notebooks we made the bird feeders. They were just pine cones smeared with peanut butter and rolled in bird seed. Super easy! Then the kids hung their feeders in our pear tree. 

Noah and Hannah making bird feeders

Lacey rolling her peanut butter covered pine cone in bird seed.

Kyle and Noah goofing off.

Lily making her bird feeder.

Kyle climbing the tree to hang the feeders.

Noah hanging up his bird feeder.

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Animal Habitats

Lacey has been learning about habitats in school lately and so we have been setting up different habitats up in our living room. We set up our toad habitat  last week. Lacey and Lily set up an ant habitat all by themselves. They got a jar and filled it with dirt and ants. The ants have been very busy burrowing little tunnels and carrying food. We wrapped the jar in black paper today to encourage the ants to build some tunnels against the glass. I know I have an ant farm in storage somewhere we may go get it out and see if we can get some ant eggs and maybe a queen ant. For now though they seem satisfied with the jar. This week we set up a lizard habitat. We have two lizards so far. All the kids love watching the animals but Lily loves playing with them. We googled lizards and I think what we have is a Mediterranean House Gecko and a Green Anole. The green lizard is really cool because it turns from green to brown very quickly. Lily is still very sad about losing her turtle so we look for a turtle almost every day. We hope to find a another turtle and to set up a turtle habitat. I'm going to try to go to the library tomorrow and check out some books on lizards, ants and toads. I'll put the books by the coffee table so the kids can flip through them while they are watching the animals. We have fish in our pond but we are thinking of setting up a fish tank in the house. The fish pond is kinda murky so it's hard to see the fish except at feeding time. I'm seriously running out of room for all these habitats though! Right now we have the frogs in a pretty big aquarium, the lizards are in a smaller aquarium and the ants are in a pickle jar. All of them are on my coffee table and I'm running out of space. I was thinking about moving the coffee table against the wall by the t.v. but I like having a coffee table by the couches. I bought a bunch of aquariums and critter keepers at a yard sale a year or so ago and now I'm glad I did. They have really come in handy.

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Super Heroes, Toads And Home School

Today was such a great day! It was like my ideal homeschool day.I woke up this morning and the three younger kids all piled in bed with me. We laughed and talked and played around a while, then we got the idea to make up a story about a family of super heroes. So I got out a notebook while we brainstormed ideas for our story. We all made up our own super hero. I was so impressed and surprised by all of their ideas even Lily made up a super hero. We talked about their powers and costumes and made a description for each of them. We gave them names and weaknesses. We made up the villains for them to fight and the setting for our story. We talked and played around with the story for an hour or more before we finally put it up and got out of bed. I'm not sure if the story will ever get wrote, I hope so, but it was fun making up our heroes. After we got up and dressed and fed Becca and her kids came over and we took the kids to SOSO Park to look for pine cones. We planned to make the bird feeders we didn't get around to making last week. At the park the kids found three toads. They quickly decided they were a family so we brought them home and I dug out our Pets In A Jar book. We set them up a pretty good habitat and read a few paragraphs about toads from the book. Then we let the kids just watch them and touch them awhile. We set the aquarium up on my coffee table so the kids could see and reach it easily. Here are some pictures of Lily playing with the toads, she was the only one really brave enough to hold them.

Lily played with the toads off and on all day. she made them hop and swim, she watched them burrow in the sand and she dug them back up. Long after the other kids bored of the toads she was still fascinated by them. I think the daddy toad is Jump, the mommy is Hop and the baby is Skip. After the kids had played around with the toads awhile Becca helped the kids make color wheels out of paper plates while I went up to the store to print out some stuff about birds and amphibians for our Science lesson. We planned on studying about birds today, learning the characteristics of birds and then making the bird feeders but after finding the toads we decided to study amphibians instead. So while the kids colored different amphibians we discussed what an amphibian was, and how they were different than birds, fish, reptiles, and mammals. The kids cut out the amphibians and glued them in their Science notebooks. Then Becca and her kids left and Lily, Lacey and Kyle played outside while I cooked lunch. While we were eating lunch we decided to play a Dutch card game that our friend Tess brought down with her. I'm not sure what the game is called, it's kinda like Go Fish! After lunch Kyle got on the computer while me and the girls put together puzzles of the world. I bought a book a few years ago from somewhere, I don't remember now where I got it, but it's like a board book that has puzzles built into it. You can take each puzzle out and put it together then store it back in the book. It has different things to look for on each map, like find the train or find the pyramids. Well, I thought it was a pretty cool book so I bought it but nobody ever really payed any attention to it so it's just sat on a shelf collecting dust. I came across it the other day and thought the kids might like it. I left it out on the coffee table and the kids found it and began playing with it, putting the puzzles together and looking through the book. So today the girls wanted to take all the little puzzles out of the book and make the whole world map. We spread it out on the dining room table and put it together. We played with the puzzles until they got bored with it and went out to play. We didn't do any of our computer work but I think we still learned a lot and we had fun. As a bonus it was neat to see Lacey and Hannah get so excited about amphibians because they had already been learning about them with their time4learning.

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Unschool Vs Tradition School

I was reading some old posts I had written and looking at the pictures, I don't know if anyone else does that or not. It's seems a little weird to admit to reading my own blog, but hey I wrote this blog mostly for myself anyway so who cares right?  While I was reading I realized how much I miss Unschooling. I don't know what it is about Unschooling that calls to me, speaks to me in such a deep way. I had to put my Unschooling books in storage because if I flip through them I forget why I went back to a more traditional school method. And Lord help me if I get to lurking on Unschooling sites. Maybe I lack the confidence to Unschool? Or the patience? I really like the curriculum we are using now and we are very relaxed about it. Or at least I'm mostly relaxed about it. I definitely think they kids are learning more "school stuff" now.  To help me work through all the Unschool/Homeschool feelings (and because I love making lists) I decided to list all the things I loved about unschool and all the things I love about a more traditional approach.

Things I love about Unschooling:

1. I love being able to sleep as late as I want and stay up as late as I want. I really think I'm actually a nocturnal creature. Getting up early just feels wrong. 
2. I love waking up know that there is absolutely nothing I have to do that day. It's why I love Saturdays. I actually had a conversation with my dad about this not long ago. I told him how I love the freedom and peace of unplanned days, I love waking up knowing I can do whatever I want that day. And he said that he hates waking up not knowing what he is going to do that day.  He likes to have his day all planned out.
3.  I really enjoy being able to play with the kids all day and not worrying about their math scores.
4.  I love the time. Time to scrapbook, time to garden and blog, to live life instead of teaching how to live it. I always feel like I'm waiting. Waiting to start school, waiting to do reading lesson, waiting to finish school, waiting for bedtime.

Things I love about traditional homeschool:

1. I really love that the kids are learning things that I feel are important, things like math and grammar. 
2. I love the curriculum that we are using.
3.  I love doing group work with the kids, I love the conversations it leads to. 
4.  I really, really like that they are learning better behavior.
5.  I love the sense of accomplishment they get from mastering something they had struggled with.
6.  I love the peace I feel knowing that they are learning what they need to know. 
7. I love that my home is more peaceful.

All in all I miss the freedom of Unschooling but I don't really think it's for me. I think something in the middle works best for our family. That's where I am right now trying keep it in the middle- not too unstructured but not so rigid they lose their love of learning and hate school. I need a word for it. Halfschool? Midschool? Hmmm maybe not. Oh well, whatever it is it's working for now.

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What We Are Strewing

Strewing is a term that unschoolers use to describe what interesting things they are leaving around for their kids to discover. That definition is provided by Sandra Dodd. You can read more about strewing here . So I have been strewing. We bought an ant farm a couple of years ago which the kids found the other day. We filled it with sand and caught some ants to put in it. We wanted a queen ant and some eggs. If you order ants you only get worker ants. So we got out our Pets in a Jar book and looked up how to catch ants. We didn't get a queen ant but we did get some eggs. Lacey, Lily and Kyle helped catch the ants. We watched the ants build their tunnels and carry the eggs to a separate nursery. Lacey and Lily spent a lot of time looking at the ant farm with a magnifying glass. A couple of times we were even able to see a little black dot inside the egg that we believe to be the little baby ant. I checked Kyle out some books on drawing and bought him a calendar that he can color and make. We started reading Little house in the big woods. We built a diorama of a jousting tournament (something else I had bought years ago and never got around to doing). I took Lacey and Lily shopping. We went in flower shops and looked at flowers, we spent a good bit of time in an old antique store here in town, we visited a pet store and talked to the owner about her different pets. The antique store was especially interesting, we looked at old kitchen utensils and farm equipment. Then I picked Kyle up and we all went to the library. At the library I showed Kyle where the joke books and dinosaur craft books were and he spent a long time reading and then telling us all jokes. I also checked out some books on Native Americans to leave laying around. No interest in them so far. My Aunt and Uncle just started a blog about building their house so I showed the blog to the kids and we read it together. It was pretty interesting, so far we saw how a foundation is built. Kyle really like the pictures of the trucks and crane. We created a family blog. I left colors and alphabet coloring books around and I found an old electric calculator that the kids have all had a ball playing with. We found their felt board in the garage and made felt pictures together. Its been fun.

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What You Learn By Ditching School

A couple of weeks ago I was trying to decide what to do about school. Should I keep unschooling? Or go back to school at home? Or maybe somewhere in the middle? While thinking and planning and praying I made a list. I found the list yesterday while flipping through my notebook and thought I would post it here. My list.

What I learned-
1. Kids want to learn- it really is true kids do want to learn. The may not want to learn what I want to teach them but they do have a desire to learn.
2. Everything is learning, even when it doesn't look like learning-I learned maize is corn. I learned that from watching the movie grown ups the other day. I also learned that it is almost impossible to go a whole day, let alone a whole week without learning something. And It doesn't have to be working fractions on a piece of paper to be math, it may just be realizing that if you have twelve crayons you and your two sisters can each have four.
3. My kids want some structure to their learning- Okay not all my kids but Ashley definitely does. And Kyle and Lacey like workbooks. Especially if they can do them when they want to.
4. Learning should come from as many real experiences as possible- Life really is the best teacher. Just letting them live life, surrounded by people, going shopping, visiting friends, playing on the computer, going to church, cooking or doing chores, all these things teach them how to really live in the world.
5. Don't think more is better, often less is best- Its better to focus on a few things that they really enjoy or love than dabbling in several things that they don't care anything about. I think we (teachers, parents, society ?) have gotten the idea that information is power and that we may leave out some vital piece of information that is going to somehow prevent kids from living a productive life. So we try to cram as much information as we can into their heads, hoping that we can give them that one magical piece of knowledge that they need to be happy, useful adults. But I don't know what they are going to need as adults, will they choose a career in science? Or maybe one requiring mathematical knowledge? So how can I predict what they need to know? Maybe it is better to help them develop their interests and help them learn to find the information they need as they need it.
6. Leave plenty of time for play- sometimes they do their best learning while they are playing. And Besides they are only going to be kids once and for such a short time. I need to give them time to play, to dream, to wonder. They have a lifetime to think about jobs and bills, relationships and responsibilities, but only a few short years to build a fort, fight monsters and dragons, be a princess or hang out with friends. I want to nurture their childhood and enjoy it- it passes so fast.

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Why You Should't Unschool

Okay, I really need to rethink the words I use!! Somehow my kids (Ashley and Donna) have gotten the idea that I am against learning and education! What?! Since we have been unschooling for about 7 months now, I understand it and love it and get it more and more. Maybe I should call it Child Led Learning? or Self- Educating? I don't want my kids (Ashley) to think I don't want her to learn. But is it working you ask? Well if you understand what unschooling is all about- learning something because you want to not because a teacher/ parent is making you learn it- then YES it is definitely working! And while she will vehemently deny it, Ashley is my biggest success story. Ashley insists on doing school work, she picks out her language and math and she chose to take a science class and a sign language class through our homeschool group. I don't have to nag or prod her to do her schoolwork, so I should be on cloud nine right? But it really annoys me that she thinks I am against education! About the only part of schooling we argue about is the stuff I try to assign her, which is stuff she sees as unschooling. The stuff I assign her is not actually unschooling, it is things like how kids learn, ways to learn without traditional textbooks and traditional schools. So should I just drop it and let her believe that the traditional way of learning is best and I am just anti- education? I don't know. I want her and all my kids to feel the excitement and wonder I feel when I learn something I never knew or see something I have never seen. I want them to find something they are passionate about. I want them to see life as an adventure, an exciting and wonderful gift that we are given and to love life and learning. But I am DEFINITELY not saying that we unschool anymore! We are homeschooling- just very untraditionally.

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Why You Should Thow Away Your Textbooks

If the kids learned absolutely nothing by unschooling I have to admit I'd still maybe choose to unschool simply because of the change it has made to our family life. I know that makes me sound like a terrible parent, like I don't care about my children's education, which of course I do. I do want my kids to have a great education but what is the point of education? Isn't the whole purpose of school to prepare kids for life? And isn't the best way to prepare for life is to simply start living? At least that's what all the unschooling sites, books and blogs seem to say. So instead of sitting down to fill out pages of arithmetic problems we go grocery shopping, we bake cookies or play monopoly or life. We count and multiply and measure and weigh things. Instead of reading science textbooks we have been studying our turtle (which we released last week after an explanation how wild animals are meant to be wild and don't really do well with long periods of captivity) and taking long nature walks, and examining different bird nests.



And in between the cooking and the games I realized kinda all of a suddenly how much better everyone seems to be getting along. I guess it's not surprising when I think about it. Without realizing it I created the same environment in my home that I was trying to get away from by homeschooling in the first place. One of the main reasons I started homeschooling was because I wanted to be with my kids. But spending all day doing math and reading lessons, trying to corral the little ones long enough to teach the older ones doesn't really count as quality family time. And by the time the school work is done the kids just want to be free to do what they want, free to go outside or watch television. And I just want some quiet time. But now they ask each other to play games, they watch t.v. together. Kyle and Ashley reads to Lacey and Lily. Donna watches shows with the little ones. And it seems like we have time to do all the things we wanted to do but never had the time. One example of this is playing cards with the girls and my dad. He comes over at least 3 or 4 times a week to play spades with me and the girls. It's so nice to see a real bond between him and the girls forming and I have learned so much about my dad and my own childhood during these card games.

I think the reason I like sonlight so much was because it did help make school time seem like family time. In fact I still enjoy reading my sonlight books to the kids. I think I've taken the relaxed time we felt while doing history and extended it to all our subjects. I struggle with whether or not the kids are learning enough but everytime I start thinking about going back to our old school ways something happens to encourage me to keep unschooling, at least one more week.

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Our Teacher This Week Was Well....Different!

Did you know that turtle shells bleed? Or that turtles have 5 toes on their front feet but only 3 on the back. Did you know that turtles eat worms? And tomatoes? And hot dogs?

I didn't know any of these things until my dad brought a turtle home for us. Lacey promptly named the turtle Franklin ( of course), Kyle named it Raphael, after the teenage mutant ninja turtle. Every morning we take him/her/it outside to walk around and enjoy some fresh air and we dig for worms to feed it. We have learned a lot about worms also by doing this. Like where the best worms are, and for some reason we found that we have better luck the earlier we dig for them. Why is that I wonder? Do they burrow deeper later in the day? Also we learned that we have better luck closer to the ground and under bushes. We don't seem to find as many the deeper down we go. Oh and one day while we were digging for worms we found a really weird something. I don't know what it was. Worm? Centipede? Baby snake? I have no clue. It didn't look like anything I'd ever seen before. It was smooth like a worm but moved like a snake in a way. It slithered back and forth but also could go forward or backward. If agitated it struck out kinda like a snake. My dad said it was a centipede but it didn't have any legs. Shane said it was a baby snake but it was red and yellow without any black. And I don't know if snakes can move backwards! Anyway we feed it to the chickens but now I wish we had kept it a while. There is still lots of discussion about just what it really was.

Anyway back to the turtle. We also discovered that Franklin/ Raphael prefers fat long worms to the skinny ones. And he'll eat grub worms but he doesn't seem to like them very much. Sometimes we'll put him in a puddle of water to swim around for a while. He doesn't seem especially thrilled by this but Lily insists that he wants to go swimming so I let her put him in occasionally.

One day we decided to draw pictures of him. That's when we discovered that he had 5 claws on his front feet but only 3 on his back. That seems strange to me so hopefully we can check again the next time we draw him. Kyle and Lacey drew some really good pictures! I told them to really pay attention to the shape of his body and the color of his shell and body. They even drew the way his shell has a scalloped edge instead of a smooth edge.

Today we learned that their shells actually have blood and nerves in them. We learned this because Lily accidently dropped him and a tip of his shell broke a little. We saw blood and examined him and it looked like the blood was coming from his shell. We looked up on the computer about his shell and sure enough turtle shells can bleed! So now we are handling him much more carefully.

I think he is getting used to us. He'll walk around even if he sees us and he'll come out of his shell while Kyle is holding him. I think we'll keep him another week or two then let him go. I sure am enjoying having him aroung though.

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How An Unschooler Socializes and Unplanned Science

Today I took the kids to a play day with the Carthage Homeschool group. I met up with a friend from church and her 12 year old daughter there . The kids all had a great time. The older ones hung out, talked and walked to the store. Donna (16) had a very good discussion with my mom who joined us for the play day about the merits of unschooling. I think mostly my mom tried to convince Donna that sticking to a schedule was important so you learn to be responsible and be on time for a job. Donna's main point seemed to be that school is oppressive and depressing. She's on the second chapter of The Teenage Liberation Handbook, hopefully she'll get the idea that learning is fun and exciting as long as it's done at the students pace and a subject that the learner is interested in. I helped Donna out by pointing out people we knew that went to (public) school who were still unable to keep a job because of tardiness. Oh and by the way my mom totally supports my homeschooling (even my unschooling) her and Donna just enjoy sparring back and forth!

After we got back from the play day I picked up my nephew Noah and he and Kyle rode their bikes together. I got bored so I went outside with Lacey and Lily and watched all the kids ride their bikes together. While they were riding I started looking in the trees and noticed a bird's nest. That led to us walking around the block trying to spot bird nests in the trees. We spotted so many! I never really noticed how many bird nests there were around here. Well, that led to a discussion on bird nests: Why are we seeing so many? Why are they so high up? Why are some so much bigger than others? I wonder if there are eggs in the nests. It was very cool. Like a totally unplanned nature/ science moment. Then they met up with the neighbor's grandsons and rode bikes together, played baseball and then spent the evening roasting marshmallows together. I think Kyle made some good friends today.

Donna and Ashley meanwhile decided to play 2000 ( a card game) together. This is a little surprising because they aren't much for hanging out together unless it's with other people also. I hope maybe this will become more of a habit.

All in all we had a great day! It was so nice out and so nice just being with the kids!

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Our Unschool Experiment- Update

Well, Donna and Ashley are starting to read The Teenage Liberation Handbook ( at my requests). I waver between being whole- heartedly sold on Unschooling and missing my old school methods. I especially miss the conversations I had with the kids about history and religion. We still have lots of conversations but probably not ones as deep or meaningful. I'm really trying to respect the kids as people and trust that they will learn and grow. Whenever I begin to have doubts I flip through The Teenage Liberation Handbook or the Unschooling Handbook and I ordered a couple of other books also. I have no qualms concerning Kyle or Lacey they seem to just thrive in this relaxed environment. Kyle is always doing some type of math. He loves counting! And lately he's been asking lots of questions about times tables and fractions. Lacey is constantly writing. She loves writing her letters or copying words I write for her. We are all trying to get more involved in life, especially church. We have a great event planned this Saturday called Street R.A.G.E. (Reaching All Generations Effectively). Ashley wants to get involved in it and I'm hoping Donna will as well, but I'm not forcing the issue. I'll try to post about it Sunday or Monday.

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How To Introduce Shakespeare To Your Kids

Well, I think I mentioned in a previous post that Donna was reading Romeo and Juliet and getting interested in Shakespeare. Yesterday after she had read awhile in her book ( No Fear Shakespeare) she watched the Reduced Shakespeare Company again. Kyle, Lacey, Lily and Ashley watched it with her. Kyle and Lacey LOVED it! They laughed so much. The two of them ended up watching it several times, fast forwarding it and rewinding it to their favorite parts over and over again. After they had watched it so many times I was about sick of hearing it, they mercifully decided to give it a rest. I have to admit I was greatly relieved but then they really surprised me. They began acting out their favorite scenes! Their favorites seemed to be from Hamlet. Later that night Kyle was still talking about the different plays and how funny it was so I started looking up Shakespeare for kids on the Internet and came across The Animated Tales of Shakespeare from BBC. Each episode is about 30 minutes and I found where we could watch the complete episodes on YouTube. So we ended up watching Midsummer's Night Dream and Hamlet. The cartoons were pretty good! I can really see unschooling being great for the little ones but I'll admit I have my moments of doubts with the older two.

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Our Unschool Experiment- Update

Well, I think we had a very productive week. We accomplished so much, not everything was academic but still worthwhile and fun. Here's some of the things we did this week; played lots of spades, started teaching Kyle to play chess, played bunches of games (hungry hippo, math bingo, storytelling, chess, spades, 2000, and settlers of catan. We also painted Ashley's room, ripped the carpet up in the dining room,and gave Donna her first driving lesson. I started potty training Lily. I read lots of books to the 3 younger ones. Today we started reading Mrs. Piggly-Wiggly. It was SO funny! Kyle played Lego's alot and today he got out a measuring tape and started measuring the different things he was building! I was really surprised to see him do this. He even asked a bunch of questions about it, like he knew what inches were but not centimeters so after I explained centimeters he remeasured everything in centimeters! He also read a bunch of books on his own. He played outside. Oh, and we decided to paint planets on his wall so we got out a bunch of books on space and looked up each planet and read a little about them, mostly how big each one was and what color. He is very excited about helping to paint them on his wall.
I feel pretty good about it so far. Tomorrow we are going to try to go to a historical demonstration/ reenactment. I don't know much about it but it's free and hopefully the kids will like it.

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Our Experiment With Unschool

Well Monday we officially started unschooling. It's scary and exciting. Right now I'm calling it an experiment mostly to ease everyone into the idea of it. We have been on vacation the last 2 weeks and were supposed to start back to school Monday. I spent the 2 weeks reading everything I could find online about unschooling, I also read The Unschooling Handbook and The Teenage Liberation Handbook. I ran across the Unschooling Handbook at a used book store and since I've been interested in unschooling for a couple of years now I figured I'd buy it and try to work some of it's ideas into our curriculum. But this book just spoke to me in such a powerful way that well, one thing led to another and before I knew it I was suggesting this experiment. That led me to ordering The Teenage Liberation book online and after I'd read just a few chapters of the Teenage Liberation Handbook I felt hopeful that this could work.

I also spent the 2 weeks watching my kids, praying, thinking, and planning. This is some of the things I've come up with. First there are 2 things that -I don't know let's just call them principles that I try to live my life by. First, if I'm not happy about something in my life figure out what is bothering me and why and change it. Second, Almost nothing is written in stone. I can always change my mind. So I knew I wasn't happy so I started thinking of ways to change that. And one of the things I wasn't happy about was that I always feel/ felt so hurried and pressured. I realized how much more relaxed and happy I felt on summer breaks and my 2 week breaks. I watched the kids and realized the seemed happier on our break, more relaxed, not as whiny. Also I noticed how much more time I had. Time to read to the little ones, cook, or play games with the older ones. How I felt just free to really enjoy my kids, my husband and my life. At the same used book store I also bought some books about Shakespeare. I've been wanting to start introducing Shakespeare to the girls. One book is No Fear Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet and the other is a collection of condensed versions of his plays. Well I left the No Fear book lying on the table and Donna picked it up and began reading it. She really liked it! If I had assigned this for her to read she would of hated it! I'd planned on reading it aloud to her and Ash. Anyway this book sparked an interest in her that I really noticed. Since then we've watched a modern adaption of his play The Taming of The Shrew ( 10 things I hate about you) and watched a DVD called the Reduced Shakespeare Company. This was SOOOO funny! We laughed so much! Neither one of us understood it all because we aren't very familiar with his plays but it gave us both a desire to read more of his plays! I noticed that Kyle spent alot of time building things with Lego's and playing outside. And Lacey and Lily both spent time coloring, helping me cook and looking at books. Lacey is always asking how to make letters and how to write this word or that. I noticed Ashley and Donna both liked to take long walks. Ashley likes to cook. Of course they both like watching T.V. and playing on the computer and texting their friends.

So I came up with 2 rules for our Uncshooling Experiment.
Rule # 1- No TV or computer until after 3:00 Monday- Saturday
Rule # 2- Everyone has to read at least 1 chapter in addition to their Bible reading everyday. They can choose any book they want.
So what have I learned so far? That learning is FUN! That kids do want to learn. That I have been destroying some awesome books by forcing my kids to read them. I've learned alot about my own school experiences and how little I actually learned in school. And I've remembered how great my kids are. How smart, funny and insightful each of them are. I look forward to this way of learning and if I change my mind? Well, nothing is written in stone.

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Our Wizard Of Oz Party

Well, today we had a Wizard of Oz party. I have been reading the book to Kyle, Noah and Lacey in school and since Kyle and Lacey had never seen the movie so I told them when we finished the book we would have a movie party. It was so much fun! First let me say that I love the movie but dreaded reading the book. But I think the book is even better than the movie! I highly recommend reading this book to your child. But anyway back to the party. Anytime I throw a party I go to this site

http://www.birthdaypartyideas.com/html/party_ideas.html it has ideas for almost any theme imaginable. Anyway I bought some green decorations ( to represent the Emerald City) not alot just a few to give the place a party atmosphere. And we had a green theme to our snacks- green jello, green kool - aid and green cupcakes. We played "melt the witch and get her broom stick". This was a frozen cube with a popsicle stick decorated like a broom stuck in it. They loved this game. And we played follow the yellow brick road ( musical chairs with yellow poster board to stand on instead of chairs to sit in). And we popped popcorn and watched the movie. Even the older kids joined us in the party- just to get out of school I suspect. But Donna and Ash had never seen the movie either. We all had a great time. BTW- we don't do this every time we finish a book but I just thought it'd be fun especially since my kids Had never seen the movie. And it worked out perfectly with this being our last day before break.

The site I mentioned before had so many great ideas I think I may throw Lacey A Wizard of Oz birthday party in May!

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