Learning By The Way

The theme for Uncle Seth’s birthday party was “Castle Carcasonne”. We dressed up as honored guests, invited to King Seth’s castle in France in bygone days.

The court jester honored a popular medival tradition by making balloon animals. (!) Pictured is a balloon dragon.

The young ladies in waiting with Princess Arianna.

Two young princes and a knight in training, amusing themselves before the feast

After wanting to go for who knows how long, I finally made it to the dollar a bag sale in the book sale room at the Pekin Public Library. Before we arrived, I wasn’t sure whether I would need to share a bag with Raquel. Actually, we both ended up getting 2 bags worth of books. I got a reprint of a journal that was written in 1830’s by a woman who lived in Tazewell County (that’s where I live!), a short history of recent events in South Africa, and some regional cookbooks. And some more stuff. We found several good children’s books, too. A biography of Gladys Aylward, a book about the pilgrims, a Berenstain Bears book, and nifty little find called The 13th Clue.

Moriah has read the biography of Gladys Aylward. She informs me that Miss Aylward had 100 children, She found them or bought them on the streets in China. I can see that Moriah is jealous, and so am I.

A typical pose for Toby, intent on his task. In this case, assembling a Where’s Waldo puzzle.

This morning has been unorganized, but a goodly time nonetheless. I read to Elsie and Peter two of the books that our family received for participating in the library reading program. One was Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, which I very much enjoyed for its fairy tale quality and wonderful illustrations. The other was a book called Dinner at the Panda Palace, a fun counting book. Elsie enjoyed doing several pages in a beginning readers workbook. Peter did a workbook page requiring him to match lowercase letters with capitals. I helped him with this so that we could review sounds, too. He also did a dot to dot. Learning is so much fun!

Moriah helped Elsie complete a Mad Libs page, a fun exercise which allows her to explain parts of speech to her little sister. Moriah usually give choices for Elsie to choose from, so it gives her a really great grammar review.

Two of the three older children have completed their math page. Moriah is working on hers now. Did I mention this morning has been disorganized?

Samuel has had his nose in a book at every opportunity since early this morning, and has already finished two of the library books. Toby is engineering with Legos. Life is good.

Moriah made mashed potatoes with Aunt Raquel today. This is one of her favorite foods, and she wanted to learn how to make it. We had them for lunch, and they were yummy. Lunch turned into a laughter fest. Samuel started it by telling his sister in a voice both piteous and commanding, “Please don’t chew on my ribbon!! I keep telling people not to chew on my ribbon.” It struck me as uproariously funny that he has had to reprimand more than one person for chewing on his ribbon, and I started laughing uncontrollably. He waivered for a moment between being offended and laughing with me. He chose laughing. I won’t even delve into the fact that it seems somewhat odd to me that he is attached to a particular piece of ribbon to begin with…

After lunch, it was off to the library. It was the last week for reading program prizes, and everyone got to pick out a book. Moriah borrowed 2 American Girl books, Samuel chose 2 alien books, and Toby picked 2 Bionicle books. I hope they aren’t getting in a rut…

Yesterday, Samuel came to work with me.  A part of our educational goals is for our children to see that the world is bigger than our homeschool and the body of Christ bigger than our local church.  The children get to see both when they come to work with me.  My workplace is very flexible regarding children here and the environment is friendly to bringing little ones who are big enough to keep quiet to the office.

I have a small table in my office that Samuel worked at and read, and often there are things he can do here as a volunteer to help out.  Yesterday there wasn’t much grunt work around but he managed to keep himself busy and we had a wonderful lunch at IHOP.  Samuel finished his workbook page before we got here (he did it in the car) and was able to interact with quite a few people he doesn’t normally see.

We’ve completed the formal learning time today. Moriah chose an easy addition page. Samuel worked on factor trees again, then did some subrtraction. Toby completed a multiplication crossnumber puzzle, and we finished up the decimal lesson from yesterday. I used two abaci side by side, one for whole numbers, and one for after the decimal point. Since he already understands place values on the abacus, he was able to see how the abacus on the other side of the decimal point had place values less than one. We had a good time finishing up the page.

We didn’t have poetry night last week- it was so busy with traveling and evening appointments. But we are starting up again this week. I’m working with Moriah on her poem “A Fairy Went A-Marketing” and with Elsie on “There was a little girl” . Toby has a humerous selection “The Twins”. Raquel is working with Samuel and Peter on their selections. Samuel likes to keep us in suspense about what he will be doing.

Samuel continued his study of factor trees, declaring that workbook his favorite. Moriah practiced addition, and I studied with Toby about decimals. This caused us both some small amount of distress, and I thought afterward of several ways I could have described it differently to help him understand it better. However, he did finish all the problems correctly, and I am thinking I will tackle the next page with him tomorrow better prepared.

Samuel went to work with Dad today, a treat as always. They had lunch at IHOP, he played ping-pong, and assumably helped with stuff. Moriah and Toby missed him, but kept themselves very entertained playing with a new Bionicle that Toby invented today.

Moriah experimented with having a disability today. She went around for a couple hours blindfolded. She navigated around the house very well, discovered the usefulness of a stick to avoid bumping into things, and drew pictures. I thought she wrote remarkably well blindfolded, though her pictures didn’t turn out recognizable. She enjoyed her experiment, except for the tender spot on her head where she ran into the wall.

After the 3 older children finished their math pages, and Elsie finished her phonics pages, they had a little time to clean their rooms before lunch. After lunch, we set out to Fondulac Farm Park to attend the birthday party of their friend, Ryan. A fellow homeschooler, we first met Ryan at ballet, and now they attend choir together, too. Despite the intense heat, everyone had a wonderful time. The Farm Park staff played games, gave tattoos (temporary, of course), and then sent us all out with ice cream cones full of animal feed. We fed the goats, sheep, donkey, miniature horse, and a very large horse. Do not be concerned, I extracted Nathaniel’s hand from the horse’s mouth before there was any damage done. There was also a strange wooden contraption reminiscent of a cow that the children could “milk”. This they did with gusto. Then the children spent a considerable amount of time rearranging the sand in the playground before we left for home. A full and satisfying afternoon!