Day #7/175 Days

Today was an “in between day” full of lots of outside activities spread throughout the day.
The boys worked on completing their projects for co-op that meets tomorrow. Lego-Man is doing a presentation on forest animals of Maine. Conductor is doing a presentation on the National Parks in Maine. Happy is doing a presentation on winter in Maine.

They also worked on completing their judging cards for 4-H. We are entering their projects in the last fair (for us) on Wednesday. The boys do not give me as much trouble over doing this now that they have seen the money they can earn for a small amount of time. Now I just need them to finish the rest of the paperwork for the year end.

Our last bit of the day was piano lessons for all (including me). I found an older homeschool girl (graduated but still home) who has been teaching for a bit. We have a two hour block on Tuesday afternoons for all four of us to take lessons. Today we all received our books and began. I think it’s going to be a good fit.

Day #6/175 Days – Fine Arts

My sister and I started talking about a month ago about ways to incorporate more of the fine arts in our school year. She came up with the idea of a little mini co-op with just the two of us. One time a month we all head south to her house and the other meeting she comes up here to ours.

We meet at the end of August and planned out what we were going to study. We are using some videos by Barry Stebbing for our art history and drawing lessons. We are using a hodge-podge of other materials to round out everything else.

Today was our first class day. Overall it was a good day. We realized we have too much reading planned for the music appreciation time so we may end up changing that a bit.

Mornings are reserved for music while after lunch is art time. My sister will lead the music time and I will lead the art time.

• We began reading in Story of the Orchestra about the violin.
• We listened to the recommended track of the Story of the Orchestra CD of the violin.
• We listed four things the boys learned about violins on the white board. They then choose three to copy on to their mini books (found at Homeschool Share).
• Read about the harpsichord in Story of the Orchestra
• Listened to the recommended tracks
• Listed four things (one from each boy) and they created their mini books for this instrument as well.
• Read about Bach in Meet the Great Composers
• Read more about Bach from A Young Scholar’s Guide to the Composers book.
• While reading from the above book, the boys had the Student Review pages. Anytime they thought they had heard the answer to a question, they raised their hand, read the question, and answered it. This kept them pretty engaged.
• Listened to the CD track from Meet the Great Composers of one of Bach’s songs. We had the boys try to pick out violins or harpsichord.

At this point we figured the boys had done enough music. We had wanted to read from Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers but thought it would be too much sitting at this point. There are also notebook pages as part of the Young Scholar’s book but the rebelling over writing had started so we saved this as “homework.”
We let them go have some fun play time while we made lunch. After lunch we tackled art.

• Watched Lesson 1 of Barry Stebbing’s “God and the History of Art.” This covered “What is Art?”
• We created color wheels using tempera paint. The boys were given red, yellow, blue, green, and purple and had to create all the other colors needed from those (including orange).
• I read to them from Art in Story about Rembrandt.
• We then looked at a lot of portraits (self and otherwise) in a book I have of Rembrandt. The reproductions in it were very well done. We talked about what the people in the paintings may have been and what clues we saw in the painting to support that.
• The boys then created their own self-portraits simply using paper and pencil.
• We also talked about etchings and how Rembrandt created those. There were some examples in my book as well so we looked at those.
• We used some simple etching kits picked up at the Dollar Store to create our own etchings.

Overall a full and productive day.

 

 

Day #5/175 Days – Field Trip

Every year there is a fort here in Maine that hosts a Medieval Festival. For that one day everyone pretends they are in a castle rather than an old garrison for soldiers on the river.



It’s always a lot of fun. I was able to convince my boys to go check it out and we met up with my sister and another great friend of ours and spent the afternoon exploring the fort, watching knights battle it out on the lawn, listen to authentic music, and just enjoy the day together.



The best part were two “knights” who were stationed outside the fort entrance. They had all kinds of chain mail, weapons, and helmets for the kids to try on. They were great and answered any and all questions. The boys had a great time touching items and trying them on.

 


The night before we left, I remembered I had an old “Robin Hood” costume from a history fair we had done. It fit Conductor and he was eager to wear it. Happy was sad he didn’t have one. I spent two hours on Friday night making him a night costume using a paper grocery bag, gray primer spray paint, and foil tape. He even ended up with a mini-matching shield. Then we arrive at the Fort and conductor decides he isn’t going to wear the Robin hood costume after all. ::sigh::   Lego-Man snagged the hat though and brought along his walking stick as well. He received many compliments on the hat and all knew who he was suppose to be.

Happy showing off his costume.

I loved listening to the music. The gentleman playing the guitar-like instrument (I think it’s a lute) looks like he could have stepped out of a time machine. The costumes – for the most part – were very well done.

Another really fun aspect to the day was the launching of these great crossbows.   The last time we went to this Fair (seven years ago) they had a huge catapult launching pumpkins in to the bay. They had a smaller one launching apples that the children could launch. This was the only big weapon we saw this day and we stood here for a good 15 minutes or so watching them load and launch at their shields down below them.

Another authentic looking gentleman.  He was loading the crossbow.

They were all having a very good time firing these off.

Two group shots of all the kids.

While we toured the fort (I do have lots of photos of the inside too), we came to the food storage areas (root cellars). One of the last ones had a hole to the ground above for air ventilation. This area was pitch black other than the hole shining light down. I took this shot with no flash.

All in all it was a fun day. The boys were able to see some of what we had studied about last year in history.

Day #4/175 Days - Fun Day

Today we headed to a nearby town (okay it was about 45+ minutes away) to set up for yet another fair. Our 4-H group is trying out putting in projects in another county. Not sure how it will go but it only took us a little over an hour to set up.

Because it didn't take as long we were done earlier than I had planned. We headed to the nearby bread store. While doing all this driving we listened to an audio book - The Boxcar Children. Both Lego-Man and Conductor have read the books, but it's always fun to listen to them as well.

I needed to get groceries but didn't want to go with hungry kids (or mom) so I surprised the boys with a trip to the playground. We pretty much had it to ourselves.

We had a lot of fun playing.

We then headed to the grocery store and stocked up for the week. After we headed home to unload it all. The boys watched some videos.

Then we headed back out to the library. Why didn't we go earlier? Our small town library is only open on Wednesdays from 2:30-6:00pm and Saturdays from 4:30-6pm. I typically order all our books from the state library system. However, every once in a while I like to take the boys to a real life library.

The boys had a great time picking out new books to read. Our little library has now automated as well. When we return this stack of books, I'll sign the boys up for their library cards as well (they need a birth certificate or photo ID).

All in all a good - fun school - day.

Day #3/175 Days

Here is an "unschooling" day....

• Happy & Conductor played a game of Made for Trade
• Conductor finished working on his walking stick.
• All the boys played outside for over an hour this afternoon.
• They played some Wii sports this morning (before they lost the TV remote and thus lost all TV, Wii, and computer privileges for the day. This is an ongoing issue.)
• Lego-Man read quite a bit (more than an hour).
• They all watched a "digital field trip" of a desert. This is a review product so more will be coming on that later. It was cool though.
• They played more games tonight with Daddy.
• They listened to audio books (Lego-Man listened to Your Story Hour & the two younger boys listened to Magic Tree House).

Day #2/175 Days - Field Trip

I'm continuing to "sneak" in days of schooling without the boys knowing or guessing or well, it's not "formal" stuff yet. I have had friends tell me to follow my own advice, so that is what I am doing.

Even though today was Labor Day, my hubby decided to work. He wants Friday off instead. Since Daddy wasn't home, we I decided to take the boys on a hike. Even having a friend overnight didn't stop me, I just brought him along.

This waterfall is only about 20 minutes away from us. The boys had gone with me once before but didn't remember. It had been a couple of years. It's very pretty. We only saw two other families. One was hiking out as we were hiking in and the other was hiking in while we were hiking out. We had the whole area pretty much to ourselves.

The falls are pretty. The highest one is just as your enter, but you can continue to walk up and further in to see smaller ones. All told we spent about 30 minutes in the woods.

The boys also played a ton of Wii games today - mostly Wii sports. They enjoyed a rousing game of hide-n-seek as well. Since we live on 100 acres, they have plenty of spots to hide!

Lego-Man and his friend also went for a walk in the afternoon on the logging roads behind our house.

Conductor was a bit jealous of Lego-Mans's nice walking stick so he decided to make one. He took a piece of slat wood and spent the afternoon sanding it down. He did a really nice job on it. He worked hard and was very diligent in finishing the task he set before himself.

Day #1/175 Days – Co-Op

It seems like we just finished our year last week (oh wait, we did), but here we go once more. We are technically taking the next two weeks off from regular schooling but other things are happening that (thankfully) I can count as a jump start on our year.

Our Co-Op has expanded so much this year, I’m still a bit speechless. Last year a “big day” was having about 15-20 kids. Our first day? We had 41 from ages 5-15. Yikes!

My friend who really is the one planning this and making it happen did a fantastic job of keeping our “field day of fun” happening. I was also playing with kids so I only grabbed a few photos. I’m not posting though due to all the faces seen.

Our plan for the year is to do a Maine studies this fall. We’ll be meeting every other week instead of weekly (thank goodness!). The children will pick topics each week and then take the time between classes to research them. When we meet back, they will then do a short (5-10 minute) presentation on their topic to their classmates. I think it will be fun.

We originally going to have two groups but due to the large turn-out, we’ve split them in to three groups. It will be ages 5-7, ages 8-11, and ages 12 & up.

In the afternoons on the same days we meet for co-op, we’ll be heading to our favorite local natural history museum for classes on Maine history. Our first one was on Native Americans in Maine.

All the kids (and moms) got a chance to toss a spear with a atlatl. It was fun. Happy had a go at it (my older boys were with the older group so I didn’t get any photos of them).



After they all tossed the spear, we headed in to the building to check out the Indian artifacts. It was so hot but I think the kids were able to listen and learn.


Happy is getting a chance at the moose call made from birch bark. Thankfully hubby has a more modern version to take on his hunt at the end of the month.

We ended the day in the classroom where all kinds of tools were discussed and tried out.



We were there for two hours but with 37 children participating, it can take a bit to get all the information out.
I think co-op will go well this year and the boys love it. That’s why I keep going.