This weekend is the annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival. It is a pretty neat deal... with arts and craft shows that feature wool products, food tastings and cooking clinics (with local lamb, of course!), and a wonderful "sheep parade"... yes, they bring the sheep down Main Street in Ketchum, Idaho! You can check it all out at http://www.trailingofthesheep.org/.

 

I LOVE the flexibility that homeschooling offers. We are highlighting sheep literature and activities here starting today and through the weekend. "Sheep in a Jeep", by Nancy Shaw is a fun little book, "Baa Baa Black Sheep" from the Real Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes makes a great song and poem for narration. For bible, we can focus on Jesus leading his Flock. Today's craft was a little hand held sheep we can take to the parade with us... and most importantly, we get to go and learn about and see the sheep FIRST HAND. Learning through living is the ONLY way to go....

 

 

 

(Oh, and best of all? Today, we learned in our pajamas)

MeaningFULL Handicrafts vs. Twaddle Filled Art

The points to be borne in mind in children's handicrafts are: (a) that they should not be employed in making futilities such as pea and stick work, paper mats, and the like; (b) that they should be taught slowly and carefully what they are to do; (c) that slipshod work should not be allowed; (d) and that, therefore, the children's work should be kept well within their compass."

 

Being that I am not the most craft oriented mom, this particular philosophy of Miss Masons perfectly meshes into how I see our homeschool! The only person I can draw is a stick figure... and I am not kidding! I have never been artisitcally inclined. Lightness aside, I tend to agree with the statement. How many of us brought home hundreds of useless crafts that our own moms felt obligated to gush over and save forever? I see mom friends posting their own kids arts and crafts activities on facebook.... and I think "what was the point of THAT craft"? What does making a horse out of a wrapping paper roll teach them? Why not go and pet live horses or watch a documentary on them if you live in the City? THAT would teach them far more about horses and waste far less of their time. Unless gluing will be important when they are 20! <grin>. I have a friend who homeschools and her co-op did a FANTATIC activity of Pre-Ker's rebuilding the Great Wall of China. They had fun AND they learned something in the process. A worthwhile activity, in my opinion. The Early Years are so importnant. Why fill their heads with nonsense?

 

Yesterday, we worked on jewelry making. The Bug and The Cat made their grandma bracelets for her birthday. This helped with motor skills, patterns, sorting, sequencing, and colors in addition to learning a skill they can use throughout life and also reinforced an essential habit of giving to others. THAT is a craft worth doing. And Grandma was also pretty darned happy to get those bracelets.

 

 

The Weather is a Changin'

Fall is hitting the Idaho Mountains with a vengeance. I am sorry to see Summer go, especially since Spring and Summer weather lasted a total of 15 weeks! This time of year, we get so many weather changes. We *might* get snow in the higher elevations! My first thought was to let the kids journal their weather observations every day... but being that The Bug is just beginning to write and the Cat is just learning to trace, I knew I would be doing all the work! Instead we made these "weather wheels" yesterday. I attached them next to the kids window so that when the blinds are opened in the morning, they can see what the weather is doing and move the arrow accordingly. We will still journal the weather through art on Nature Study days, but as for a daily task, I think this is much better suited to their age level.... and they already seem to be having fun with it.

 

 

Homeschoolers Wanted: No money needed!

The Bug started MEP Math (the reception year) today. It was a curriculum that I was a bit hesitant about, I guess because I thought "how good can it be if it is FREE?" After reading a lot of reviews and going over the entire year of curriculum myself, I decided to give it a whirl. The Bug loved our first day and was asking for more, so that is always a good sign. If you haven't looked at the MEP you can look at it here: http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mep/default.htm

The think that the amount of free curriculum and resources out there is amazing. Just yesterday I found a fabulous fall nature journal from the US Forest Service for kids ages 3-12. The entire site is geared towards nature study. It is totally worth checking out at http://www.fs.fed.us/fallcolors/kids.shtml. Of course, I also utilize http://www.starfall.com/ for the kids phonics and reading and closely follow the entire FREE curriculum at http://www.amblesideonline.com/. And at that, I found compilation books for 70% of the Year 0 recommended reading for under $16 incl. shipping on http://www.amazon.com/. The rest, of course, will come from the local library.

Free is not always substandard. Homeschooling on a tight budget CAN be a successful endeavor. It takes a little research, a lot of dedication, and a complete love for our children. How simple is that?

Best of all He loved the Fall....

“Best of all he loved the fall … the fall with the tawny and grey, the leaves yellow on the cottonwoods, leaves floating on the trout streams and above the hills the high blue windless skies" ~ Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway wrote this of our community and his words are so very fitting. There is no more spectacular season in Sun Valley, Idaho than the Fall.

In anticipation of fall, we spent the last day of summer up in the mountains communing with nature. The Bug got some fishing in with his Grandpa and we all walked to a beautiful waterfall. The Cat collected rocks, inspected a dead mouse, and found her usual collection of sticks. The Bug found a skeletal jaw bone (he thinks it is a dinocaur but I am betting on a cow) with teeth attached. The moon was a crescent in the blue sky and I took the opportunity to explain fractions to The Bug. He said "look mommy, it's a half moon". I told him it was a quarter moon and found a stick on the hiking trail to break in half then quarters. Such a simple way to learn fractions! He got it right off the bat. After getting home and cleaned up, we headed to one of the nicer steakhouses in town and the kids showed perfect table manners.... or as close to perfect as a 3 and 4 year old can get.

Learning comes so naturally to young children. Making every day a day that more knowledge is gained is the healthiest way to fuel the young mind.

Nature Lovers!

We started our Nature Journals today! Being that The Bug is just learning to write and The Cat is nowhere near writing, I had to help a bit. We spent the afternoon at the pond making discoveries and observations and then drawing them or gluing them into the first page of the journals. The kids LOVED it and I loved watching the innocent joy on their faces as they worked.

 

Artificial Associations vs. Independant Thinking

"Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things, and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of coloured paper, or plant straw trees in bead flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences." (pg. 196)

I was re-reading some of Miss Mason's writings on the early years and this one particularly stood out. It is so basic and yes so polar opposite of what we as a society are taught to believe. Parents are getting their little ones into preschool earlier and earlier.... some for academics, others because they feel their 3 year old is "advanced" or "accelerated" (I hear these alot!), and yet others for the socialization factor. Parents are pushed into placing their kids in preschool and in turn, the young children are forced into learning a plethora of things that a preschooler doesn't need to know. A young child should learn from their environment. A young child should be free to discover and make connections and observations on his own. Rather than memorizing random facts about the weather, he should be outside watching the storm roll in and see the lightening strike the hillside. That is something he will carry with him far more than he will looking at a cloud on a classroom wall in the weather station.