An "Unschooled" Moment

This afternoon Ethan wanted to do something "crafty."  My play suggestions kept being shot down until I consented to getting out the pipe cleaners.  It wasn't even five minutes later that he had this volcano built and was telling me all about it.  I told him to wait so I could get out my computer and write down his description.  These are his exact words, unedited.    

    

A Diagram of a Volcano

By Ethan Currier

The things at the bottom that are wiggly, those are the veins which go to the molten rock in the core of the earth.  The core of the earth is the molten rock.  The molten rock proceeds its way through that funnel besieging its way up to the volcano top.  Once its there, there’s lots of fire, and the molten rock spills out of the volcano.  Once it’s there the volcano makes a huge circle with a dip.  When it’s almost at the top it’s very hot.  The ashes are the cloud.  The lava flows down from the volcano.

The color blue is the ash.  The color green is the veins from the molten rock.  The brown is the mountain.

I think that’s it!                              

Calendar Time

Recently I stumbled across a really neat homeschooling mom's blog.  She had posted several pictures of their daily calendar routine, and even included links to documents so you could print out your own.  I've simplified the "morning routine" she does, only including the monthly calendar and weather graph for now, but the kids really enjoyed it today.  What really attracted me to it was that I could easily include Katie in on the activity without making any changes to the activity.

You can read about it and print out your own pages here.

Katie's calendar pages already have the dates written in,
so she traces the numbers.

Welcome to Curstins!

Every time we get together with our friends the Austins, the kids know there will be something special they get to do with David.  This time it was a fine dining experience, put on by the three oldest.  We all had a grand evening!

Happy Birthday, Ethan!

December 16, 2006 - I never knew motherhood would be so challenging...and fun...and rewarding...and surprising...and humbling...and...

Advent Activities - The Rest of the Story

Well, I admit by the middle of the month I was pretty exhausted by everything happening, both in and out of home, but we did get to continue our Advent fun almost every day.  Not all were picture-worthy, but here's a sampling of the end of our month:

Zoo - We went to Christmas at the Zoo on Ethan's birthday.  It was so fun to go in the evening - a time when the zoo is not usually open for guests.  The bats were actually awake, eating, flying, bantering with each other.  As a surprise bonus, we got to enjoy listening to Indiana Academy sing carols in the Cafe Commons area.

Shopping - Another evening we met Daddy down in Castleton and the kids got to go Christmas shopping for each other and other family members/friends.  They had such a blast!  They both were able to come up with appropriate gifts for each other without prompting.  When they opened their gifts on Christmas morning, we saw how perfect their gifts were for each other.

Crafts - When all else fails, there's always snowflakes, felt Christmas trees, and all sorts of other fun things to make with little ones!

Caroling!  We missed out on our church caroling adventure, so we created our own.  We visited a few neighbors and friends and sang a carol or two and gave gifts of apple and pumpkin butter.  The kids really seemed to enjoy it. (I'm sure the homemade vanilla ice cream at Mrs. Eakman's house helped!)

Christmas programs - We got to attend one put on by my school from former teaching days.  The kids enjoyed the singing, and we all were happy to catch up with friends.

Conner Prairie - What amazing gingerbread houses they have!

2nd Annual Family Gingerbread House - I had actually decided not to do this again, since it's kind of a waste of money.  We don't like the taste of it, and it's just tons of sugar anyways, but Christmas Eve came, and the prospects of enjoying a Christmas Eve service looked bleaker and bleaker, but I still wanted to do something special.  My brave hero of a husband scoured store after store looking for for any gingerbread kit to be had on a late afternoon of the 24th.  He came home triumphant, and the kids had a blast decorating it.

Overall, I'm very glad we did purposeful activities throughout the month.  Next year, I want to be more prepared and have things more organized and ready to just grab and do.  I also want to make it more "others-oriented" rather than just fun, shallow things.  We did have some of those, but I want the scales tipped in the other direction.  I can't wait!