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Outdoor Hour Challenge. III.
The Outdoor Hour Challenge has really helped direct our time spent on nature hikes each week. And since we joined the challenge already in progress I decided to take their advice and walk though the “getting started” challenges listed on the website. It’s been good advice. It’s reminded me of the hows and the whys of using The Handbook of Nature Study as our guide and it has served me well to give me direction and accountability in what I am attempting to accomplish through our weekly jaunts outside. Last week we used our words to describe what we saw and heard. On this walk I choose to combine both…
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words, not drawings.
These warm January days have been a gift. Sitting on our porch last week the kids and I were supposed to be working on our Nature Study drawings. The kids colored and drew steadily. But I didn’t draw that afternoon. Instead, I picked words over drawings. …… Blue, blue, so bright it burns. Mistletoe, woodpeckers and the sound of the mourning dove. “It mimics an owl,” London explains. And already she knows more than me. A kind of success, I think. We sit at the abandoned red table on the porch’s sunny side and even though it’s January, it’s warm and beautiful. And so so bright bright it almost burns.…
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a real thursday.
What is it about a plan, anyway? Seems like whenever you make one, it goes awry. Our homeschool’s motto is stolen directly from Charlotte Mason. I am. I can. I ought. I will. I get the first three. No problem there. It’s the stinkin’ “I will” that always throws me for a loop. It’s not the man getting me down, it’s me. This week I have once again renewed my efforts to establish a daily routine and a nearly-hourly plan for our days. (These schedules have ebbed and flowed for me over the many years of homeschooling, in accordance with our lives and the number of children running around in…
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Outdoor Hour Challenge. II.
We completed our second round with the Outdoor Hour Challenge. The week before we headed outside to begin our journey and this week it wasn’t even the least bit difficult to convince the kids to don their boots and jackets and slip outside. We are taking our hikes right after lunch so it’s a been a fabulous motivator to clear the table and tidy the kitchen in a hurry. Our assignment was Challenge #2: Using Your Words. And do you know what we didn’t do on our walk? Use our words. Get it? Oh, the irony. The assignment was to be quiet, to listen, to observe. We spent over…
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Outdoor Hour Challenge. 1.
I’ve been using the Handbook of Nature Study as a reference guide for as many years as I have been homeschooling. And our family has been compiling nature journals and keeping nature notes and taking nature hikes as a routine part of our school work. Probably about a year ago I linked from a friend’s blog to the site of a homeschooling mother who uses the Handbook of Nature Study to inspire her family and others to take a weekly Outdoor Hour Challenge. You can explore the website yourself (and you should) but the basic idea is for a family to go outside together once a week on a nature…
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a little educational facilities tour.
The School of Keigley has officially reopened its doors after a brief hiatus. (Still trying to rename our school, by the way. We think we have settled upon a better name option, but all parties involved have not come to complete agreement yet.) New calendar year, new location. And let me just say, despite the lower indoor temperatures, I love our little school room. The color is bright (turquoise) and the space is large and we can make a mess and shut the door without cleaning up when it’s time to eat dinner. I’m still working on some finer details and have quite a bit more art to display on…
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homeschool this week
I have been homeschooling at least one child in our family for the past six years. It took me a long time to realize that homeschool (school at my house) did not have to resemble main stream school in any way. I didn’t have to set up desks or ring a bell or take traditional tests or teach four years of history covering only the Civil War. I didn’t need a dress code and lessons need not be fifty-two minutes in length, eight times a day. And now I am in the middle of continually realizing that my homeschool (school at my house) need not resemble anyone else’s homeschool either.…
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Progress That Is Slow Is Still Called Progress
So much of homeschool seems like a Grand Experiment to me. I mean, I won’t really know if my work was a success or a failure until the kids graduate. Maybe not even then. I might not know until Berg is thirty or Mosely is married with kids of her own or Piper Finn is running her own small country. In other words, I won’t know if this project called homeschool worked until it is too late. Tell me, what other job works that way? Anyway. I feel as if some school projects seem as open-ended as school itself can seem. Take, for example, our School of Keigley Nature Notes…
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Try This At Home
At heart, I want to be a no television, live in the woods, everybody drink from a shared tin cup we dip in the stream outside of our door, type of family. Or so I like to imagine. But I married this guy and he likes movies and big televisions and gadgets. And, uh, I sort of have found that I love gadgets too. Plus, as much as I love the idea of a Laura Ingalls Wilder existence, (and I do love the idea – I mean, I named a kid after the Wilder family so that should prove something) I know that I would soon grow weary of an outhouse…
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Art. Found.
At the School of Keigley we probably place a heavier-than-some-might-consider-necessary emphasis on art. We like to smear our many small hands across canvas and hang it on our walls. We like to listen to music and draw what we think we hear. It’s how I want our homeschool to look. It’s what I want it to be about. This week we tried Found Art. Art that requires no money and no trip to the supply store. (Partly because it fits our budget, partly because we have all been too sick to attempt heading out in public and partly because I think it’s important to use what is in front of…
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hawke: a running/ jumping/ reading miracle
My boy. My Hawkeye. He no longer has a mohawk. Which makes me sad. But when I last trimmed the hawk, the Hawke would not sit still under the hair trimmers and I managed to mangle the hawk past all recognition as a legitimate hairstyle. He’s just a mess of a little man. But I love him. So much. He can read. Seriously read. Looking at a cook book sitting on our counter, he says, “Mom – is this Southern Fixin’s?” (Which might sound like a corny name for a cookbook. But man, the recipes are amazing. It’s my go-to cookbook for all things delicious.) Sitting on the counter (I…
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what did you learn today?
“Did you learn anything at school today?” someone recently asked my second grader. The second grader who is my student. The second grader that I taught that very day. The second grader that I hope learned something from my teaching. “No,” Scout replied. Inside, I cringed a little. (Or maybe a lot.) This isn’t the first time this has happened. And I am always anxious to step in and justify. Explain. Yes – you did, I want to offer. Remember learning about shadows? And the book you read all by yourself and the two sentences you wrote correctly and the picture you drew to go along with it? Remember history,…
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let the school year commence
Today. It’s the first day of the 2010-2011 school year here at our home. And this year the School of Keigley has a record number of students. Three. A second grader. A first grader. And a kindergarten student. (Not to mention that we also manage and maintain a very elite preschool and a rather crème de la crème nursery as well. So sorry – all vacancies are filled.) Ahh – the new school year. The books we cannot gather locally are ordered from our school’s personal suppliers- a.k.a. Barnes & Noble and Amazon. The classroom has been tidied. (Read: the kitchen counters are cleared and the sunroom table is free…
