Experience Based Unschooling

It's always interesting to me how different my children are from each other. Whereas, by age 5, Lexie and Ashlyn had fallen into a "school" routine.  I have to admit, I keep expecting Little Bit to fall into a similar routine, but so far it hasn't happened. Once in awhile I'll create a schedule for her, but she just hasn't had the natural interest in formal learning that her sisters had by much younger. 

Recently I came across this article, and thought it might be an approach that could be adapted to work well for Little Bit. Not so much because I feel like she HAS to be "doing school" yet (while I tend to grumble extensively about the many hoops we must jump through to homeschool in PA, the one positive is that we don't have to start jumping through those hoops until age 8, so she still has another year before I have to actually keep track of any "school"), but because it would give me the structure *I* need to have a variety of options available for her on a regular basis instead of her randomly asking me to do something and me scrambling to figure out if I have what we need for it. 

So, over the weekend, I set up her new school system. I had this little 4 cube shelf in the entryway and hadn't really done anything with it (not sure it will live permanently in the entryway, I'm still figuring out furniture placement in this house, but for now, it works.  The basket on top is a book basket, I included her Jesus Storybook Bible that we're currently reading once a week for her Bible anyway, some picture books the correlate with what the big girls are doing in history, and some other random picture books off our shelf that I think she'd enjoy. I also had a Jim Weiss audio that correlates with the big girls' history that I think she'll enjoy, but I have it as an mp3 on my computer, so didn't have a "book" to put in her basket for that one. So I printed off a picture of the cover and laminated it, we'll see, going forward if I decide to print off all the Jim Weiss covers as we get to them, or if I make that the generic "Jim Weiss audio" indicator. 

The other basket on top of the shelf is her reading stuff. Lexie has been working with her on reading, somewhat sporadically. She uses the McGuffy's Primer and the foam letter tiles we have in the basement and spells the letters out with the tiles for Little Bit to read. I also have a .pdf that is copywork to go with the McGuffy's Primer so in this basket is the McGuffy's Primer, the copywork to go with the lesson they're on, and the plastic container has a combination of salt and glitter that she can trace letters/words in if she wants. I ask that they do at least one lesson per week.

One bin is the "Watch" bin. I didn't put much in this bin, because honestly, she watches plenty of TV on her own. I don't mind, it's mostly educational. Wild Kratts, Martha Speaks, Magic Schoolbus . . . but because she watches it without prompting I don't feel the need to encourage it, per se. But I did put in a science video that we have, the Samantha American Girl movie (Lexie just finished reading the Samantha books to her), and, since we were planning to go to an Ice Harvesting demonstration Sunday, but didn't because of weather, I printed out a picture of them harvesting ice, and laminated it, to indicate that we can watch a YouTube video on that this week. 

Another bin is the "play" bin. This is really a way to "force" me to take time to play games with her (though if she gets her sisters or Daddy to play with her instead, that's fine too), and a way to draw her attention to some games that she's old enough for, but hasn't noticed yet. I put 2 games she hasn't played, an "old favorite" (Sorry), and a puzzle in the bin for this week.

The "Create" bin will, not doubt, be a favorite bin for her, and was one of the main things that attracted me to this idea. She LOVES doing anything arts & crafts related, but I'm really bad about taking the time to pull things together for her to do crafts. My hope is that this will "force" me to pull together all the "pieces" for several art projects each week. I want each week to include a variety of different art medium. For this week I included: Sculpt - a package of model magic, Paint - a suncatcher paint kit, fiber - the "learn to tie your shoe" thing the big girls had when they were little, the printable (make a booklet by drawing pictures) that goes along with this week's Jesus Storybook Bible story, and the other thing for this week, that I still need to pull the pieces together for, is a ladybug craft (milk carton lids, black paint, googly eyes, glue). Also, when I was looking for videos for the "Watch" bin, I was reminded that we have some See the Light DVDs that Little Bit might be ready for, so I put one of them in too. Only problem is, I'll have to hunt down the required art supplies AFTER we watch the first part of the DVD. But we'll see how it works out. 

 And finally, the "Active" bin. Again, a big part of this is to get ME to be more intentional about having activities ready for her. The plastic bag has a "toss game" that the big girls had when they were younger. I found it when I was unpacking. Another activity that goes with this week's Jesus Storybook Bible story is a version of "red light, green light" so I printed a picture of a stoplight & laminated it. I have directions saved for how to dance the Virginia Reel, and figured all 3 girls could try that out as a part of history, so I printed out a picture of people dancing the Virginia Reel and laminated it and added it to the bin. I also have a geography game where I printed out full page pictures of each continent and laminated them. The game is a poem that names all the continent and then mom calls out the names of random continents for kids to jump to. I was still working on laminating the pages when I took these pictures but it's in there now.

She doesn't have to do all the bins every day, I told her she could pick 2, and she said "is that all?" so I changed it to "at least 2". Some days she might do all the bins, some days, not so many. I'm hoping to keep at least 3 or 4 things in each bin (adding new as she uses some of them), so she always has plenty of options. If she consistently passes over something for a couple weeks I'll pull it out and assume it doesn't interest her.

And one final basket. The basket on the floor next to the shelves is our "done" basket. After we read a book or she does a craft or plays a game or . . . anything she is to put it in the "done" basket. That way I can check in the evening and know for sure what school she's done, and what bins I might need to replenish. It also means that art supplies that we'll use again (paint, etc) gets put where I can find it,  library books don't get lost, etc. It will also be useful if we continue with this approach long-term because I can use the "done" basket to keep records once she's old enough that we have to report to the state.

I used chalkboard labels on each bin, and for the baskets I stuck chalkboard labels onto colored paper and punched holes in the paper to tie the labels onto the baskets. I'm hoping to get chalkboard markers soon, which will, I think, be "brighter" and less likely to wipe off, but for now I used chalk pastels to write on the labels.

Catching Up . . .

I'm not doing well with blogging regularly, am I? We've been busy, but not doing anything too earth-shattering. Here are a few pictures from the past month or so . . . 

Don't think I ever posted pictures of the wall decals Little Bit got for Christmas. This is the wall under her loft bed, isn't it perfect? 

As some of you might remember, for Lexie and Ashlyn's 7th birthday, we went to the American Girl store in New York City and they each chose a doll and some accessories, and we had tea in the cafe.  I was starting to think we wouldn't be doing similar for Little Bit's 7th birthday. Whereas Lexie and Ashlyn enjoyed the American Girl books starting when they were 5, it was just recently that Little Bit has decided they're interesting. But, just in time for her birthday next month, she has dived head first into the world of American Girl.

So we WILL be having another American Girl 7th birthday after all. She has decided that the doll she wants is Samantha. And she wanted to get Samantha's bed since both her sisters have a bed for one of their dolls. However, while Josefina and Kit both had reasonably (for American Girl stuff) priced beds, Samantha's is much less reasonable. So, Lexie to the rescue! She has made a bed for Samantha. She made it in an afternoon out of a cardboard box! And then went through our fabric bin and button box and made a comforter for the bed over the next couple of days. Little Bit rearranged things under her loft bed in preparation for Samantha's arrival :)

While our BIG snow of the winter was the topic of my previous post, we did get a beautiful snow storm a couple weeks ago. It was truly beautiful, snowing most of the day, and turning the whole world into a powder-sugar covered landscape. As an added bonus, the temperatures were near freezing so, while we enjoyed a quiet day at home, we COULD have gone out if we'd had to.

Our rather quiet winter has led to lots of creativity from the kiddos. One afternoon as I sat in the living room a piece of yarn dropped down through a knot-hole in the ceiling (which is also the floorboards of Lexie and Little Bit's room). When all was said and done, Lexie and Little Bit had created a tin-can telephone from their room to the living room.

A week ago, Friday, Little Bit and Ashlyn noticed a stray cat in our yard. Ashlyn went out and "made friends" with it and wanted to bring it inside. While it WAS a very cold day, I assumed, especially since it was a very friendly little cat, that it lived somewhere nearby, so vetoed the idea of letting it in the house. However, the next morning when I went into the sunroom for my morning Bible time, I noticed that there were quite a few cat footprints in the dusting of snow we'd gotten overnight right outside the sliding door. It had been down near zero overnight, so not a night for a cat to be out and about :(

We headed out to church, and a busy Sabbath. It was "Jean Sabbath" when we do various community service projects in the afternoon. For the last several months Ashlyn has been asking to go pass out food and other things to the homeless downtown, but Lexie and Little Bit have wanted to help provide crafts and games at Olivet (the Big Brothers/Big Sisters center downtown). For various reasons we've ended up doing the crafts and games, so finally this month I told Ashlyn that I would take her to pass out lunches while Rodney took Lexie and Little Bit to Olivet. It was AFTER I agreed to that, that I realized the HIGH TEMPERATURE that day was going to be 15 F!! Brrrrrr . . . but we survived. People were very appreciative of the food AND coats that had been donated for us to pass out. AND because it was so cold, we didn't waste any extra time outside, so as it turned out, Ashlyn and I got to Olivet just as they were starting the crafts, so she was able to help with that too.

When we finally got home late Sabbath afternoon, the above mentioned cat came running across the yard toward us. Much as we DO NOT need another cat, I couldn't, in good conscience, leave it outside in weather THAT cold, when I knew it hadn't had a place to go the night before. So, I told Ashlyn to bring it inside until the cold snap was past. She's a pretty little thing (Ashlyn is guessing she's around 9 mo old, based on her research), and looks quite a bit like Lexie's first cat, Socks. Socks ran away several years ago, and soon after that one of the strays that came and ate on our porch at our first house in PA looked somewhat similar and was christened Socks Jr. Which makes this cat Socks the Third, or Tre.  It only took her a day to figure out the cat door and litter box, and she's very friendly with people, and amazingly tolerant of Little Bit carrying her around and generally mauling her, but she continues to growl at the other cats whenever they get close, and generally not play nice with them. So we shall see . . . once it warmed up, we put her outside and she ran off over the hill, so I thought that might be that, but at bedtime she came back. And again yesterday, she was outside, but came back at bedtime, so she seems to have claimed us as home base.

We've been having lots of fun with school during the cold winter days, so conducive to indoor activities. We're using the Jesus Storybook Bible for Little Bit's Bible this year, and doing fun hands-on activities and crafts to go along with each story. The activity for the story of crossing the red sea was to create a shaving cream "red sea" for her plastic people to walk through. I'm not sure the sea ever parted or people ever walked through, but she had GREAT fun playing with the shaving cream :)

Lexie came to me last week and said she needed a flower to dissect for science. Ummmm . . . couldn't you have planned things to do that particular experiment when, getting a flower was as simple as going outside and picking a wild flower? Of course not, that would be too easy! However, she pointed out that they had passed carnations out to all the adults at church for Valentine's Day, so I had 2 carnations in a vase on the kitchen window sill. She insisted that one of those flowers was Daddy's and HE didn't care about flowers, so she should be able to dissect HIS flower. And that is what happened. . . it's amazing how different a carnation looks once it's been dissected, isn't it? I was busy with other things when she and Little Bit dissected it, but she said it was really cool!

For supper one night last week Lexie took her first stab at making homemade, sourdough pita bread. They got abit brown, but overall turned out quite well. They tasted great with the falafel and tzatziki sauce she made for supper, and even had the pocket that pita bread is supposed to have! Definitely something she'll be doing again, YUM!

And that pretty much catches us up. As proof of how weird our weather is this winter, last Sabbath's high was 15, and yesterday's high was 60!!!

Free Geography Curriculum!!!!

Just a quick post to let you know that TODAY!!!  Homeschool Giveaways is giving away a FREE US History curriculum! I haven't had time to look it over to see if it will be something that will work for us, but since it's only free today, I wanted to let you know about it while there's time!

http://homeschoolgiveaways.com/50-states-and-where-to-find-them/?c127020Le

SNOW DAY!!!

As you probably know, we, along with most of the mid-Atlantic, got a little bit of snow in the past day or so!

The snow started Friday evening and stopped last night. I have no idea how anyone is measuring snow because it was so windy, there are patches where I can see the grass (or, at least at some point yesterday, the pavement on the driveway) and places where it's up to the windows. I think one report says we got around 2 feet. . .

Anyway, thought I'd share a few pictures. All pictures are taken through the windows because I had no interest in going out in the cold! And it was so windy that I saw no point in shoveling if the wind was just going to move the snow right back where I'd shoveled. TODAY I don't have that excuse, so guess I'll be getting some good exercise today LOL.

The (covered) front porch has a rather impressive drift on it.

This was relatively early in the day. Looking out the sliding glass door along the back of the garage. Pretty sure we won't be using that back door for a day or two! 

Little Bit convinced Lexie to take her out to play. It was too deep to walk, too deep to sled. Too powdery to build things . . . but they were out for a little while, came in frozen solid and very happy that Ashlyn was making hot chocolate!

The cats and I preferred to sit in the sunroom and watch the snow. Though at one point when I was in the laundry room Moccasin was acting like he wanted me to let him out, so I opened the door (that would be the door in the above picture) he looked rather confusedly at the snow blocking the door, then a piece fell and hit him square in the face. He jumped, glared at me, and stalked away LOL.

Later in the day Lexie convinced Ashlyn to go out with them too. They dug a fort of sorts and were out there for quite awhile. I burst out laughing when they came in. Ashlyn's white hat, well encrusted with snow, makes her look like she's turning into a snowman! 

The birdbath gives you an idea how deep the snow is at least right there.

This is the door I opened for Moccasin (though it wasn't that high yet when I opened it for him). That is all snow! 

Looking out the dining room window. I love how the wind caked the snow on some of ht windows, making it look like a Christmas card with snow framing the edges :) 

The sliding door in the sunroom. I think it's even higher now.

Little Bit was "torturing" Daddy last night :)

God woke me up early this morning to have my quiet time with Him. The snow and wind have stopped and now it's all so beautiful and peaceful and perfect! Much as I'm not a morning person, I'm glad I was awake to watch the sun rise this morning!

And while taking pictures of the sunrise, I noticed that, now that it's not snowing and blowing, I can actually see the "fort" the girls made yesterday, so took a picture of it too :) 

God is good! I was nervous about losing power since we have electric heat, and haven't gotten the wood stove working yet, but it never even blinked. While I feel that everything we do at our church is important, and what He wants us to be doing right now, I was feeling burned out by it all. The snow storm came Friday night, giving us a wonderful, peaceful, RESTFUL Sabbath day! We snuggled under blankets and read and watched Drive Thru History and cooked and ate yummy food and the kids played outside. It was just what I needed!

And now, we are still rather thoroughly snowed in and plan to enjoy it while it lasts :)  

Wrap-up - Christmas, New Years . . .

Sigh, I'm behind again . . .

The Sunday before Christmas Rodney's sister came over for the afternoon. It was so good to see them, and Aunt Lynette managed to convince my children to pose by the Christmas tree for pictures. At that point we were also dog-sitting Jakey, so he joined the pictures.

Little Bit had been begging to make gingerbread houses since before Thanksgiving, when she saw the houses her friends, D & K had made with their grandparents.  So somewhere near Christmas, we got out the (graham cracker) gingerbread house making stuff and Little Bit got busy. Lexie was quite sure that Mommy wouldn't know how to do it, and that Little Bit would have more fun with her, so she joined in the fun.

To continue our month of dog-sitting, we watched another friend's yellow lab, Maggie over Christmas. Our Christmas present to her was spoiling her rotten. She took turns sleeping with Ashlyn and Lexie, and tried to sleep in our bed. I think Rodney would have been all for it, but since she was taking up MY side of the bed, I vetoed the idea LOL.

Oh and she and Ashlyn spent countless hours snuggled on the sofa. 

Christmas Eve was our normal family traditions of pizza, new nightgowns, and presents of games, books and videos.

Lexie started reading her new book right away.

But Ashlyn and Little Bit did convince her to stop reading long enough to play their new game before everyone settled down to watch a video :)

And Little Bit was just slightly excited to find that Mama had made her nightgown this year out of FROZEN fabric!!!!

Christmas morning was stockings and monkey bread and patiently(ish) waiting for grandparents to get here.

Once grandparents started arriving there was introducing Maggie, and more presents and catching up on what everyone had been doing lately . . . so pretty much our normal chaotic fun :)

Little Bit's Christmas included a though "Frozen-izing" of her bedroom, much to Lexie's annoyance, since they share a room (but I think we did a good job of giving Little Bit the Frozen decor she wanted without encroaching on Lexie's side of the room).  We put the big, Frozen Fever wall decal on the wall under Little Bit's loft. It fits perfectly and looks adorable, and is very much in Little Bit's "space".  

Little Bit also got a lighted Frozen "Canvas". I had been struggling a bit with how to give her enough of a night light up on the loft bed once Christmas was over and we took the Christmas lights off the railing of the loft bed. This works perfectly! We hung it above her bed and she can turn it on at night and it gives just the right bit of light! She also got a "projection" nightlight (fun, but honestly doesn't give much light), and a Frozen comforter. So her part of the room is well decorated!

Sunday we got in some final cuddles with Maggie before she went back to her family.

Since Christmas we have been getting back to "normal" and not doing much of any interest. Still working on unpacking and organizing. The girls have rediscovered their Legos, and Little Bit got Frozen Legos (of course) for Christmas to add to the general collection, so we are working on setting up a Lego area in the basement (waiting for Papa to help us finish it).

Also in the unpacking, Lexie showed Little Bit her American Girl stuff and humored Little Bit by setting it all up in her closet so they can play with it. We've also been reading American Girl books for Little Bit's bedtime stories, so she is well on her way to her own AG obsession :)

We've fluctuated between unseasonably warm temperatures (we had windows open on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, it was almost hot! and bitterly cold! Thankfully, while we've had lots of precipitation it's always come with the unseasonably warm, so we've had lots of rain, but no snow yet. I can live with that.

We're getting back into our normal school routines and Little Bit is asking for more school. She has asked Ashlyn to give her "sketching lessons" which is working well except when she is bitterly disappointed because Ashlyn doesn't have time for another lesson. While she still claims she can't read, I can definitely see progress in the learning to read without having to learn to read approach. She recognizes many words when I point them out to her and figures many more out by context.

To add to her on-going animal obsession, when I organized all our books on the basement shelves, I grouped most of our animal books (some of the "field guides" are in a basket on the dining room windowsill for easy access) on one shelf and she has claimed that as her shelf and has been "reading" animal books to her hearts' content.

And finally, the cats. Other than rather resenting all the dogs who've visited over the last month, they have settled well into life in our new house. As I expected, they love the wide windowsills, and all the windows of the sunroom.  Moccasin took over a laundry basket in our closet as a safe(ish) hiding place from the various dogs and continues to consider it his. I finally gave up and replaced the clothes that were in it with an old towel, officially making it his bed. They have all accepted the cat door as an acceptable way of getting to their food and litter boxes and they consider the pile of storage tubs (that are waiting for me to unpack) to be their personal castle, They will be very disappointed if I ever get through all of those bins and they go away :) On the unseasonably warm days I open the garage door a crack, so the cats can come and go as they please and they seem to like that, beyond that, they seem pretty content to stay in the house here though, definitely not going outside as much as they did at the old house.

Wrap-Up!

Hey look, I'm writing a wrap-up and it hasn't been a month since I wrote something!

So let's see, this past week . . .

My good friend Vicki and her family came to visit!!! It was WAY too short, just overnight. But sooo awesome! Little Bit had a blast playing with her girls. She even opted to sleep on the fold-out sofa in the basement with them. I fully expected her to come back upstairs as soon as they actually settled down to sleep but nope, she slept down there all night! After they left, both Vicki and I were disappointed to realized we hadn't taken any pictures while they were here.

The rest of our week was quieter. Baking cookies, co-op with friends.

On Friday, Daddy took the big girls to see the new Star Wars movie, so in honor of that they made "wookie cookies" to take to co-op.

On Thursday our weekend house guest got here. Jakey is a friend's Cavelier King Charles Spaniel and sweet as can be.

Jake reminds me so much of our Precious. I never realized how much of her way of doing things wasn't just her, it was the breed. Jake, like Precious, takes his job of "lap warmer" very seriously and was always right up on our laps. He took turns sleeping with the girls and was just generally a delight to have.

On Friday, while Daddy and the big girls were at Star Wars, Little Bit and I went for donuts, yum!

She was so excited about it too. I'm cherishing these little girl moments, when chocolate milk and a donut are super exciting. All my girls are growing up way too fast!

Whenever the big girls talk about books, since Lexie reads books really fast, and Ashlyn reads book very thoroughly (but slowly), there ends up being conversations where Ashlyn's yelling at Lexie to not tell her about things she hasn't read yet. Friday afternoon we got a new twist on that conversation when L&A came home from the movie telling me all about it, and discussing it with each other and Little Bit was yelling at them to not tell her about it because she hasn't seen it yet (she's also tried to convince them they can't talk about Lord of the Rings because she's going to read it SOMEDAY, but I assured her that she'll have plenty of time to forget any LotR spoilers she hears before she's ready to read it for herself LOL).

 Church this week was a Christmas program. They had asked the girls to do a reading. Lexie and Ashlyn read most of it, but had Little Bit memorize the last part so she could participate too.