This week was a huge break from our typical family rhythm. We spent an inordinate amount of time in government offices and looking at a variety of housing projects. We are tired and so not much “school” happened. BUT, we did the important things: some art and music, lots of books, and tons of time playing outside 🙂

Family Highlights and Announcements

My husband and I headed to a Home and Garden Expo Saturday morning to check out some vendors for improvements we want to make to the house and look for some ideas for what we want in the new house. We actually won a tub makeover! The contractor also started working on the house on Thursday.
Monday we spent the entire morning at the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Social Security Office. No, there are no pictures! I had three children under the age of four with me. We at least got part of the job done. Back to the DMV later this week.
We are actually headed to look at some new potential homes this weekend, so wish us luck! It’s such an overwhelming process.

“R” Fledgling Home School

Mother Goose Time – Me and My Family

Count and Clip

Ladybug is an excellent counter. She got tired of waiting for me to try to find the clothespins, which I had placed somewhere so safe that I couldn’t find them 🙂 So, she used her hair clips. She’s a resourceful little one!

Make and Play

We have doing a lot of Invitation to Play art activities with Mother Goose Time this month. The Make and Play activities are a bit more structured, but Ladybug has gotten creative even with those! Here is her bird. After you create your bird, the activity card prompts the kids to imagine that the bird is lost and can’t find her family. What do you do?

Ladybug decided that since the bird couldn’t find her family, they must not be in the air or on the land. Thus, she needed to build her an oxygen tank like scuba divers use so that she could go under water and find them. She asked for a piece of paper to draw her bird and then attached the provided cup (meant for the body of the bird) to the back of the paper and decided that was the oxygen tank.

Note the oxygen tank on the back!

We also had some headbands that we used for Make and Play this week. Ladybug gave hers a hair clip on its ears and Owl decided to put the eyes on his rabbit’s ear tips. They crack me up!

Exploring Nature with Children

Week 1 – Seeds

We covered seeds this week. We discussed how seeds can be dispersed by the plant itself, animals, water, or wind. We also talked about how important it was for seeds to travel away from the parent plant in order to have enough resources to grow.
We read The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle (one of our all time favorite books).
We also read A Seed is Sleepy by Dianna Aston.
Our poem was Autumn by Emily Dickinson.
Our piece of art was Squirrels In A Tree by Archibald Thorburn.

We found all kinds of wonderful seed pods on our walk. The Magnolia tree and Moon Flowers had incredibly cool seed pods. We also found some Yucca plant seed pods and a few we are still researching.

“R” Weekly Rhythm

Morning Basket

Morning Prayer
Squilt Lesson 5: Gloria in excelsis Deo by Antonio Vivaldi
Calendar
Letters: A, M, T
Numbers: 1,10,11
Character Trait: Loving
Spanish: Weather

Get Outside

We spent a lot of time outside collecting items for our nature study and enjoying the cooler weather. Guppy has had some trouble sleeping this week, probably due to some new teeth, so the stroller ride helped him get some much needed sleep!

Most of our routine was side tracked by errands and unexpected events this week 🙂 Hopefully, we’ll back to semi-normal next week. That’s the great thing about rhythm though, you can always return to the chorus after a unique verse 🙂

Mama Corner

Mama Homework

What is a prima dona (as referenced in “In My Own Little Corner” from “Cinderella”?
Why does a match only burn once before you throw it away?
How do you collect the silk from a silk worm?
How did Ada Lovelace die?

Mama Moments

I love watching Daddy reading to the kids! Ladybug is a little obsessed with the story of Ada Lovelace right now.

Mama Projects

1. I’m still gathering the last of the materials I need to start A Year of Playing Skillfully. Makes me appreciate Mother Goose Time magically arriving each month even more so. I think I finally have everything for the Around the World Curricula we will be using this year.

2. I started a Common Place notebook. My first book is Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are. I have been meaning to read this book forever. I’m two chapters into the book and so far it is not at all what I expected. I was anticipating an inspirational, devotional type book, but have found it to be more of an intense read that may offer a more enjoyable alternative to When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

3. An ongoing project of mine is researching Charlotte Mason, Classical Education, and Waldorf teaching philosophies in an effort to find the right fit for my family. Currently, I’m reading A Charlotte Mason Education: A Home Schooling How-To Manual. She has all kinds of awesome resources in there for handicrafts and learning about art and music and celebrating seasonal fun and tradition, but we are talking OLD SCHOOL 🙂 Not that that’s a bad thing.

Mama Gratitude

This week, in addition to all the big things I have to be thankful for, I am also grateful for

delivery services that magically bring diapers and interesting books right to my doorstep,
online support on Instagram and Facebook from other home school families,
and a chance to move forward with our house remodel.

Fabulous Finds Around the Net

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has tons of great resources and now has a home school kit for sale! Whoot!
This carved tree art was all the rage at our house this week.
Tips for Cooking with Siblings!