Our Aquarium Visit

We visited the Aquarium to celebrate the end of our ocean unit! It was a wonderful and very satisfying experience to watch Esme move through the exhibits and see all the different animals she'd learned about. Her favorite part was touching the starfish. We had a book from the library about Starfish that we must have read fifty times, because she loved it so much. I think what caught

her attention and held her rapt the longest was the Beluga whales. We stopped and watched them on our way in and went outside again to watch their feeding. It is amazing how close they swim to where you're standing. She also really enjoyed the penguins and sea lions, as well as the florescent fish, clown fish, octopus (which she named Ursula), and a moray eel which Ethan and I both found disturbing. It was great to see how much she's really learned, and see her make the connections between the books we've read and the real live animals.

Paper Plate Sea Creatures

Two of Esme's recent projects - making a paper plate sea jelly helped Esme learn their two main parts - a bell and tentacles. We made the crab after reading A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle. In the story the crab uses all different ocean life to decorate his home. We let Esme choose any materials available in our craft area and she really made it a mixed media project with crayons, glitter, stickers, foil tape, rick rack, etc. I was very amused she chose to decorate it with vegetable stickers!!

Fantasy, Folk Tales, and Myths

It is hard for me to believe that we are in the last week of our second unit already. We've been studying the ocean for several weeks and have covered sand, water, and tons of animals. We are devoting this week to magical ocean stories. Our book of the week is Mermaid Dreams and we're also reading The Fisherman's Wife, Atlantis, and two Russian folk takes relating to the sea. Words of the week are is and see.

Next week we'll take a few days to explore Valentine's Day and then we'll be on to our next full unit!

Will you let Esme decide to go to school if she wants to when she gets older?

No. While we are certainly open to hearing her desires and opinions, we are ultimately responsible for her education and the decision to continue homeschooling or place her in a school setting will be made by us.

How long will you continue to homeschool? Will you homeschool all the way through high school?

This is an impossible question for us to answer. Throughout the process, Esme's education has to come first. We will evaluate whether homeschooling is still our best option at least every year. We can't know when she's 4 if homeschooling will be right for her at 14. We can only say that so far we love it, and that Esme is making good progress. At this time it is the right option for us. We hope we'll be able to continue for a long time.

Our Homeschooling FAQs

We get asked a lot of questions about homeschooling so I decided to write out some of our answers and make this a permanent section of our blog. It will be added to the links section. Here is what we have so far:

Why are you homeschooling?

What about socialization?

How do you know what to teach and how do you make your lesson plans?

What is your schedule like?

What do you do in an average homeschooling session?

Is homeschooling legal? What do you have to do legally?

How long will you homeschool? Will you homeschool all the way through high school?

Will you let Esme decide to go to school if she wants to when she gets older?

Is there anything I can do to help?