Photo Update

Long Beach





Cookie sales

Learning about birds at the local nature center, including making our own bird call device. We also met this friendly snake.

EveryBody's Doing It

My Olympians

We continued our studies of ancient Greece this week with the alphabet, Homer, and the Olympic games. We discovered that although the barbaric Dorians and Sea Peoples (Philistines) destroyed the developing culture of the Mycenaeans, which led to the Greek Dark Ages, over the period of a few hundred years these same barbarians developed their own culture; a culture which looked very much like that which they had decimated on arrival. They learned to read and write, built homes then cities then a government, and pretty much became the Greeks we know and love to read about today.
We've been reading various books and watching some cool videos about the Trojan War, the Illiad, and Odysseus's struggle trying to get home to Penelope and Telemachus. Today we tried translating our names into Greek (hard to do when you have Ss and Ls!) and even held our own little Olympic Games, complete with a torch to announce the date and contests in javelin-throwing, long-jumping, and, of course, a foot race (stade). The girls made their own wreaths from our tree out back and proudly placed them on their heads.

One Guess: What is it?

We bid adieu (good riddance, whatever) to the 2nd Ipod and replaced him with another, shall we say quieter, easier, friendlier, more useful animal for the family menagerie: Red Wigglers!!! Stay tuned in the next few weeks for photos of the happy decomposers that live in a bucket under our kitchen island... ;)

Gardening 101

I've mentioned before that we have gone to volunteer at a non-profit community garden in the recent past. Here are a few photos of us that I snagged from their website. I really must try to remember to bring my camera next time, but as you can see we all work pretty hard while we are there ~ painting signs, moving dirt, harvesting veggies, collecting eggs, etc.

From the Science Files

Today we attended a fair put on by the Science and Technology Education Partnership. Considering the fact that we are doing the Animal Kingdom and not physics at the moment, I went with the intention of simply instilling the whole science-is-cool/fun/exciting attitude in my girls. It was a decent (not great) event but we all had a fair amount of fun. It helped that we were with friends and we had a great meal (from Simple Simon's) in our bellies. There were alot of schools there though so we had to fight the crowd, which is never fun.

Tennis, Anyone???

My 9 year old is absolutely loving tennis. I enjoy watching her patience and discipline grow as she learns to listen to the voices of her coach and her body instead of the voice in her head that seems to expect her to everything perfectly the first time around. They really could use some shade at the matches though. I mean, over 2 hours in the high desert sun on exposed bleachers is not exactly showing much fan appreciation. Am I right???

Who Says Homeschoolers Don't Have Friends???

W E - G R O W - O U R - O W N ! ! !Click HERE to join The Friends of The Friendless.
Brought to you by The Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago.

From the Science Files: NaturePrints

This was super cool to work with - and fast, too!
We went to the botanical gardens @ UCR to collect interesting plant specimens to use for this project. Our favorite by far was the evil horned one that the girls thought looked like the saber of an ancient Egyptian god up to no good...

[The other photos are from the other day in the pool; taken from the 2nd story window.]

What We've Been Up To Lately

I've been a bad blogger but I have a really good excuse: My less-than-2-year-old computer --- you know, the one connected to the $1200 monitor, the $600 printer? The one that is the life-blood of my very connection with the world??? --- Well, it's good as dead. I got a virus. A really, really BAD one. And so now I'm stuck with a borrowed laptop that has none of the capabilities of the old that I was so fond of :(
Today I managed to upload & edit some photos so here's an update of some of our recent activities.

We set up the pool in the front yard in this 100+ degree weather. The girls vacillate between jumping on their boogieboards in the 2 ft deep water and riding up and down the empty street on their skateboards.

We're continuing our studies about the ancient Egyptians, mummifying Barbies and making pyramids out of sugarcubes. I also built this most-awesome model from a book in this series by Iain Ashman/Usborne. (We also have the skeleton and Trojan Horse ones for science and later history studies!)

Finally, we joined a community garden effort near our home. Thus far, we've only toured the grounds and spent a few hours harvesting sunflower seeds, but we are all looking forward to how we can schedule gardening days into of our learning-thru-living lives.

The 1st Writing

We have been exploring the people of the Nile and the Fertile Crescent in History these first few weeks of 1st and 4th grades. I gave the girls a choice of whether to write in heiroglyphs or cuneiform and they decided that pictures were more interesting than wedges.
I am happily surprised how much Ella can retain after reading our section in The Story of The World. And Shelby told me this week that History is her very favorite subject this year :)

Mission San Luis Rey: Oceanside, CA

Yesterday.

Fun With Math: Tangrams

WANNA PLAY?

I {heart} Cognitive Psychology+Education

My older daughter is my own personal poster child for the premise of this brilliant slideshow by Harvard-educated cognitive psychologist, David Willingham. And she'll share the frame with Daughter #2 after another year or two of decoding work!
Down with READING CURRICULUM!
Down with CONTENT WARS!
Down with ACCOUNTABILITY!
Down with DELIVERY MECHANICS!
Down with DRILLS!
Down with QUIZ TRICKS!
Down with STRATEGIES!

JUST. DO. IT... READ.

A Poem by My 8 year old Home Scholar

Doodles are moodles.
Moodles are poodles.
Poodles are coodles.
What are coodles?

Coodles are wonderful little things;
They are enough to make you sing.

Loodles are woodles.
Woodles are voodles.
Voodles are zoodles.
What are zoodles?

Zoodles are big and stinky and fat;
They are big enough to swallow a cat.

Boodles are foodles.
Foodles are goodles.
Goodles are hoodles.
What are hoodles?

Hoodles are things you say when you say goodbye;
Oh no! Oh no! Just look a the time.

I guess it's time to say goodbye.
Goodbye! said moodles.
Goodbye! said zoodles.
Goodbye! Goodbye! Goodbye, they say.
Goodbye! We have to go away...

TOODLES!