day4: a finding walk.

thursday, elle and i took a field trip of sorts, right down our very own street. when i slow down enough to take notice, i find that wonder blooms with extravagance in the cracks and seams of my ordinary world.


a few steps from our front door, we happened upon an industrious bumblebee.




elle plucked an acorn from the dozens that line our driveway and crunch and roll beneath our sneakers.




a silvered leaf.




we brought along our field journals, and sat down at intervals to sketch our findings.




(this beautifully crafted journal came from my dear friend gina, and also holds bits of my favorite quotes and wonderings.)






a leaf from a ginkgo tree (rare in the midwest, and yet our end-of-the-street neighbor has one in his yard).




a heart-shaped red bud leaf.




there's something preternatural about the way the fur of a seed head snares the light.




our trove of treasures, arranged just so.






“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.” [roald dahl]

school with elle: day3

calendar: the usual...yesterday's date, today's, tomorrow's; days of the week; counting the number of days in the month thus far (two is nearly as funny as one).

chalkboard: again with our sentence, weather observation/recording.

baking: cookie bars, following the tollhouse cookie recipe, but we like to use whole wheat flour, a spoonful of wheat germ, and a cup or two of oatmeal. we talked about recipes (their purpose and general format), then discussed measuring cups (1 cup, 1/2 cup, 1/4 cup) and how many of the smaller measurements were required to fill the cup.

journal: while the cookie bars baked, elle wrote her name, the date, and drew a hot-air balloon with a face and two happy passengers.

snack: cookie bar, grapes, milk.

lit: where the wild things are (i read; elle helped decode a couple words: max, wild). how much do i love this book?!

tangrams: we discovered that the sun could be a full circle or four quarter-circles; the sails could be a large triangle or a square with a pair of small triangles.


i don't know if she's learning anything, but i'm having oodles of fun.

:)

school with elle: day2.

calendar: date (yesterday's date, today's, tomorrow's), days of the week, counting the number of days in the month thus far (elle found it hilarious to count to 1).

chalkboard: together we wrote the sentence: Today is Tuesday, September 1, 2009. we discussed capital letters, commas, and periods. we observed/recorded the weather.

snack: peanut butter toast (straight from the toaster, melty and warm).

journal: elle wrote her name and the date, drew a picture, and dictated descriptive sentences to me. (today's masterpiece? a garden.)

alphabet soup: we trekked outdoors to play this chalk game, adapted from inchmark's idea. in brooke's version, the mum or daddy calls out letters and the children find them; in our version i called out words and elle spelled them, hopping on each letter as she did so. we started with words she knew: her name, dad, stop, mom, then tried her brother's name, which she didn't yet have memorized but could easily sound out.



all in all, a happy way to spend one's morning.

school with elle: day1.

after forking out exorbitant sums of cash to zee's preschool in exchange for what was, essentially, glorified playtime, we decided to homeschool our youngest two for the preschool year. em is now happily blitzing through first grade, so i assume i didn't trammel his education too horribly, and now we are on to the very last little: elle.

seriously, how are my children this old already?

with em, i admit, my inclinations toward exhaustion and distraction, combined with his general lack of enthusiasm toward Mom Thinking She Is The Teacher resulted in a somewhat haphazard preschool year. elle, however, is the lastborn and infused with inquisitiveness and has mom all to herself, so the odds of a sound education have increased exponentially.

so. we'll do school 3-4 times per week (i have standing morning appointments to work around), following a loose sort of montessori meets unschooling meets waldorf meets project-based meets reggio emilia. what a plan.

mostly we'll do the things i love plus the things she loves, and also a lot of snacks. i know some of you homeschool for the early years, so i'll try to briefly chronicle our days in the hope that our activities may be of use to you. (many of them are kindergarten-based, so if you're working on that year, feel free to borrow from our ideas as well.)

day1:



calendar: date, counting the days in the month, days of the week

chalkboard: we write the date and read our sentence together, then observe/record the weather

snack: popcorn and orange slices

mosaic: we studied a few mosaics in an art book, then elle arranged/glued shapes to create her own mosaic for the cover of her journal

journal: elle writes her name, the date, then draws a picture and dictates a few descriptive sentences to me

globe: we talked about globes, then found our country and state on the globe, then read a brief overview of the united states in THE TRAVEL BOOK [sidenote: i know local geography is recommended for small children, such as plotting one's own neighborhood and town. we will do this as well.]


and such was the steady, quiet start to what i hope will be a year of wonder. i can't wait for tomorrow.