Friday, June 18, 2010

June 10-13 Part 1


Even though I've kept up my goal with being fairly consistent with this blog (making at least a few entries every week), I still miss recording so much of what my kids learn every day. I suppose a person could never list everything they've learned in a day no matter how hard they tried.

Still, I love to have a record of all the amazing ways the kids learn and have fun to look back at over the years. That said, for some reason, I've captured quite a bit more about our lives in the past few days than I usually do.

The kids received so many things for their birthday at the end of April that I took a few little things and put them on the side for later. This past week I pulled out the box I'd set aside. The kids discovered the little kites and had fun trying to get them to fly.


Making large bubbles continues to be a huge hit around here. Alexa found making bubble hand prints just as fun.

I started a new thing I'm tentatively calling Activity Box time. As unschoolers, we won't have a set curriculum, but I believe very strongly in constantly introducing new things to the kids. I keep a box in our room, and I look for things they might like and new things they haven't been introduced to yet, and add to it whenever I can. Then on Monday morning or afternoon, I bring out the box and invite the kids to pick something in it to do with me. I've filled it so far with books on craft projects, games, books, and DVD's. I'm so excited about garage sale season so I can stock up on tons of fun stuff for the next year. I've also ordered the books Science Arts and Math Arts by Mary Ann Kohl and Knights and Damsels (since they love knights and castles so much). I'll make sure we have most of the supplies on hand, and then I'll place the book in the box for the kids to choose projects and activities that interest them. Of course, they don't have to do anything in the box, but they haven't yet found nothing they'd like to do.


Jared's favorite choice this week was a Scooby-Doo game that I actually received for free at a thrift store. It's really just a memory game. He's never wanted to play memory games when Alexa and I have played them in the past, but because it was Scooby, he was really excited. He was so good at it! He blew me and Alexa away in points.

Alexa chose an art project (she usually does). You were to draw a picture with pencil, paint with water inside the drawing, and then dip your brush in watercolor and dab it into the water.


There was quite a bit of lounging on the couch reading. Alexa is reading a book about mummies in the picture above. We've been into learning about Egypt lately. They watched an episode about Egypt from the Families of the World DVD series, and we just finished up reading Mummies in the Morning, the third book in the Magic Treehouse series.

DK puts out a great CD-ROM called My First Amazing History Explorer. I checked it out from the library, and Alexa loves it. She loves all things computer related, and if I'd allow it, she'd literally play for four to five hours straight. Some of the material is a bit above her head, but she really loved exploring the program.


My friend came over with her son and two month old baby girl on the 10th of June for a little playdate. The kids played in the sand, and I attempted to get the little pool blown up, but things didn't work out quite as I'd have liked. They usually like to have the slide go into the pool, but I couldn't get it to work. Still, Jared and J played for a bit in the water, and Jared wowed us with his flying leaps from the edge of the pool. Alexa's been a bit funny about water lately, so she didn't really go in that much. 



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