Fall 2008

Fall 2008

I have about a month’s worth of blog posts to get up, so I’m going to just write in short check list for the some of the highlights from the fall, winter, and spring before their birthday. I hate to make it so matter of fact and would love to comment more and share what I thought about some of the things we did, but I’ll never get up to date. I really, really, really want to record more of our unschooled life to look back over through the years and to share with other families, so I have to figure a way to be more efficient at this and hopefully improve at making my posts more interesting to read as well! I hope to very soon post pictures because I love reading other blogs that post pictures along with what they are posting about.
So, here going our fall highlights:

Playing in the leaves

Making a dough sculpture by sticking leaves, sticks and rocks in the dough and letting it harden

Reading Blueberries for Sal and then eating blueberries for the first time, making blueberry muffins from scratch, and counting our blueberries

Carving pumpkins and lighting our pumpkins every night a week before Halloween while singing Happy Birthday, pumpkin (they came up with that entirely on their own!)

Reading Make Way for Duckling, Lentil, Frog and Toad series

Halloween costumes – Jared, pirate, and Alexa, pirate princess – trick or treating will all the grandparents, great-grandma and Aunty Cheryl and Uncle Zach

Museum of Science and Industry trip – climbing inside the combine, the Idea Factory, the Plane and Train exhibit – and watching the baby chicks hatch

Blackberry Farm – Riding the carousel, riding the train, painting pumpkins, looking at the farm animals

Cooking – Alexa helping me by cutting carrots, garlic and onions on her own, Jared stirring and mixing

Annie obsession – Watching the movies about seven or eight times, singing Annie songs while at the dentist where everyone in the waiting room could hear!

Music we loved listening to – Glen Miller Orchestra, Andrea Bocelli, James Taylor, Credence Clearwater Revival, various classical CDs

Garfield Park Conservatory trip – splashing in the puddles in Monet’s Garden, watching the fish in the coy pond.

Naming different countries and states – they can locate dozens of countries and can locate most the states

Puzzles – Jared stated to really love doing puzzles. We have a forty-eight piece United States puzzles and within two weeks he could put the entire thing together without any help

Rolling trucks down the hallway

Walks in the Cermak Woods – getting within fifteen feet of a family of deer, throwing stones in the pond, running through a flock of almost a hundred geese.

Bounce City – celebrating cousin Owen’s first birthday

Music – playing on guitar, lots of singing, playing on Steve’s guitar, playing the keyboard

Wonder Works trip – Riding the floor vehicles, “digging for dinosaur fossils” by finding pretend dinosaurs buried in clay, exploring the wigwam, playing in the tree house