Esme had a wonderful Christmas and is getting ready to study study study in the new year. She's reading at a second grade level now - she finished Frog and Toad and quickly moved on to books like Little Bear, Blueberries for Sal, and pretty much everything she can get her hands on. She's reading songs in church, road signs, and pretty much everything I try to write privately too. She's mastered nouns and verbs, is close on adjectives, and is working on compound words too.

In the New Year we're hoping to teach her more about space, visit the Museum of Science again, and keep her moving along at grade level in Math.

What's Going On

Esme has been busy! She's been taking Acro, playing soccer, and of course participating in Girl Scouts. She is reading Frog and Toad Together and doing quiet well. Her math skills are improving and she's doing well with her facts. She's very interested in learning more about astronauts and space.

Our family has discovered how fun gallery walks can be! We went on our first one Saturday night and had a great time. Esme got to see a wide variety of styles and types of art.

Esme's first official day of school for this year was Thursday. She reviewed a bit of math, and got back to her Bob Books. She is super interested in space so she will begin her Solar System/All Things Space unit tomorrow. I can't wait to see all of her projects!

Another Educational Family Trip

As part of our family vacation we visited Plymouth. We stopped and took a look at Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrim Memorial, and saw the Mayflower II. We thought this would be a great way to kick off the social studies unit we're planning to do this Fall. Esme will officially go back-to-homeschool this Thursday. She'll be studying reading, writing, math, science, social studies, art, music, sports, and of course many other things. She'll also be continuing with lots of great group activities like Daisies, soccer, and more! Please wish us luck as she enters First Grade!!

A Summer of Learning

Esme has had quite an exciting summer. Her dad and I are both working, so she's been having lots of adventures. She spent several days with Grandma, traveling and visiting. She has been to work with her dad a couple days and it sounds like she is ready to take over the library. We took her to New York City last weekend on a mini-vacation and highlights for her including visiting Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and seeing the Statue of Liberty from a distance. Probably what Esme has found most exciting though is her three weeks at Girl Scout camp. At camp she's had the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of activities including swimming, playing group games, making fairy houses, learning all kinds of arts and crafts, and so much more. She's also accomplished some goals like learning the pledge of allegiance and has even taken an active role in the flag ceremony three times. She has made lots of new friends and is having a blast! It has been a very positive experience for her.

This coming school year is the first time I will have to report our homeschooling activities to our city. I am feeling semi-confident, probably only semi because this is my first time. I spent a long time working on my letter of intent, and researching exactly what I need to include, etc. Ethan and I are really looking forward to getting back to our regular routines!

One Busy Kid

Esme has been very busy the last few weeks! Last weekend she had her first ballet recital. I was so impressed how well she and all the girls in her class did. Their song was "Every Girl Can Be a Princess" and they were dressed like Cinderella.

This past Monday was her Girl Scout fashion show and court of awards. This was a wonderful evening. I was super proud of all of the girls, especially Esme. She got up and led the entire crowd in singing "Make New Friends" and in saying the Girl Scout promise, in addition to dressing up as Tinkerbell in the fashion show.

She has a busy summer coming up as well. She'll be attending three weeks of Girl Scout camp (I'll be working there) and one week of vacation Bible school. She'll spend one week at our house with Grandma, and probably a significant amount of time with Nonna and Auntie Lisa too. We hae all kinds of plans for this Fall, and we're looking forward to getting back to our regular homeschooling schedule again.

First T-Ball Game

Whirlwind of Educational Activities Last Week

Tuesday morning Esme and went to her first marionette show. The puppeteers performed Cinderella and were lit up so that the audience could see the show and how they make the marionettes move.

Friday, the most exciting day, we took our first family trip to the Boston Museum of Science. We decided this would be the perfect way to end our Human Body unit and segue into our dinosaur unit. Even though we've really been studying dinosaurs all year, it will be official for the next few weeks. The museum was WONDERFUL!! Our family universally agreed that it was a fabulous trip. Esme particularly enjoyed the senses room and of course the dinosaur section. She also liked the classification room and the anatomy room. She was disappointed that we didn't get to see every singe exhibit, but we have assured her that we will go again very soon!

Saturday Esme and I attended an all-day Earth Day celebration with Girl Scouts. Esme made her own applesauce over a campfire, cleaned up a campsite, made her own paper, went on a hike, explored wetland muck for life, made lip balm, sang Native American folk songs, beat a drum, and had a yoga session with a professional instructor.

Although Sunday wasn't an official homeschooling day, we did get a chance to spend some time at the beach and explore some things we don't see around our town every day. We waded in salt water and searched for hermit crabs with Esme's cousin, Dylan. Esme and Ethan made a great sand castle, and later we climbed on some very cool weather-beaten rocks.

Today Esme had her regular Girl Scout meeting and had her first TBall practice. It has been a whirlwind, but wonderful!

old units and new activities

At last, the human body unit we have been working on forever is drawing to a close. This is our last week on this unit, and our book of the week is The Ear Book by Dr. Seuss. We are not 100% sure what we will work on next, because semester breaks create a strange schedule for our family. Since we have already covered so much information about dinosaurs this year, we are considering doing a brief dinosaur unit.

I am excited that I am also going to start doing some new lessons. This year we have divided up labor just about 50/50. I have researched and written lesson plans, and coordinate the series we've participated in and planned field trips. Ethan has done ALL of the sit down, day to day lessons. It has been a bit hard to fit everything in, so I am going to start helping out a bit by doing some reading with Esme at night. At least three days a week she will read to me from her Brand New Readers sets, and I will read chapter books to her. We are hoping this will free up some time during the regular lessons, so that Ethan will be able to focus more on activities around Book of the Week, spelling, grammar, etc., but Esme will still get the extra reading practice that she needs.

It is hard to believe that we are almost to the end of our second year of homeschooling!!

Recent Lessons.....

This weeks book of the week is by the famous Stan and Jan Berenstain! We are so excited that Esme is reading on her own! We have also started using the Early Readers sets by Candlewick in addition to the Bob Books. Esme is learning about different types of words, and has a very good handle on nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

Esme is about to start graphing in Math, and then onto some more serious addition and subtraction activities. We're almost done studying the Human Body and pretty sure that she's going to want to do an Earth Science unit next. She is very interested in all things Science!

Meeting Mo Willems!

The big day finally came that Esme got to meet Mo Willems! He is the author of some of our favorite books, including Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, and the Elephant and Piggy books. He read two books aloud and then signed the children's copies. Esme had received a gift certificate to the bookstore for her birthday, so with our hefty discount she was able to to get 4 Elephant and Piggy books!

Traumatized

Esme is so intrigued by dinosaurs, we've been taking her all kinds of different places to learn about them, reading about them, etc. We were super excited that the Springfield Science Museum was having a special animatronic dinosaur exhibit, and as soon as we could go, took her down there. I think she could have handled the roaring. I think she could have handled when the T-Rex looked right at her and bared its teeth. But what she couldn't handle was the bloody prey dead at it's feet. Poor Esme! She knew that some dinosaurs eat plants and some eat meat, and she knew that eating meat meant they eat other dinosaurs, but the bleeding Triceratops was just too much for her and she burst into tears. We tried to move along and she was quite taken with a planteater for a while, and dug out some fossils with a brush while wearing goggles, but when the Velociraptors were devouring another planteater, we had to go. All she talked about the whole rest of the day was how she liked the planteater, but didn't like the meateaters. She had nightmares about dinosaurs that night - wake up sobbing nightmares. The next day she started recreating the scenes with her toy dinosaurs, trying to work through what she'd seen. She wanted me to tell Auntie Lisa about it. She still talked about it over and over, and was afraid to go to sleep again. By the next night she was more cheerful though, and said, "I don't have to think about the meateaters now, I can think about something else while I go to sleep." On Thursday she went out with Nana Carol and could recount the whole thing for her without being retraumatized, so I think she is doing okay now.

Tests and More

Esme has officially started taking tests in both Math and Spelling. She's done taken three Spelling Tests and gotten every word right, and taken two Math tests and gotten about 90% on each. We're very proud!

Esme has been enjoying her human body unit. We got a cow femur from a local butcher and they sliced it the long way for us so that she could observe the inside. A few days ago she ran into the kitchen and announced, "Parts of your body need oxygen blah blah blah!," and ran back out.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Even though Dr. Seuss passed away several years ago, kids still love celebrating his birthday! Since he was born on March 2nd, next week our lessons will revolve around a tribute to him. Our book of the week will be The Cat in the Hat.

Video

This is a pretty good video about some of the myths of homeschooling - trust me, I've gotten almost all these comments, many from complete strangers. I try to not to be bitter about it, but it can be frustrating. I believe this was made by some homeschooled children for their mom.

Esme is very interested in dinosaurs! We've been trying to read books about them and take trips to see evidence of them whenever we can fit them it. Esme has been asking to go see some actual dinosaur bones, so we took her to the local natural history museum this past weekend.

This week's lessons....

Book of the week is The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss. Esme did wonderfully on her short U words spelling test so now we're moving on so short I words. She's learning about bones and will soon move on to the muscular and circulatory systems. In church school she learned about needle felting, and we just started a 4-week Fractured Fairy Tales series at our favorite local bookshop.

It's Been a While....Updates

This year is flying by. We have sooo much going on and lots to share. After trying out a couple different things this year, we've decided that structured lesson plans are what work best for our family, and we have gone back to the more traditional schedule we used last year. We're glad we tried more of an unschooling approach, but now we know this is what works for us.

We are happy to share that Esme had her very first spelling word list and test this past week, and she got 100% correct on her test! Whooo hoooo go Esme. She is moving right along in Math and Reading too. Most of Esme's interest revolve around science, and we are considering an Earth Science unit when we finish up our Human Body unit. We are hoping that we'll be able to take a trip to the science museum soon. I am excited about the new art curriculum I discovered, called Discovering Great Artists. We've just started and Esme has learned quite a bit about Picasso. I am hoping to use this in conjunction with our Picturing America materials as well.

Esme has been staying very busy. In Girl Scouts she's been learning about how to care for pets including going on a field trip to Petco. This month we're concentrating on dance - last week the girls learned line dancing from Aunt Cathy, and next week they'll be doing folk dancing with our friend Ben. They also have a snowshoeing event coming up, unless we have a big thaw between now and early March. Esme is still loving ballet class and we are very happy with her new dance school. We'll be starting a new series for homeschoolers around fractured fairy tales starting on Tuesday. We are looking forward to seeing some other kids we haven't seen since Fall.

Grant Recipients!

I am thrilled to say that we have been chosen as participants in the Picturing America program. We'll be receiving 40 laminated images of great American art to use in our studies. It is kind of funny to see Esme's Homeschooling Adventure listed as a grant recipient on the website! One requirement to receive the grant is that we use it with a group, so for Fall I'll be working on a way to do some kind of program that we can invite our local homeschoolers to attend.

This is the second grant we've gotten since we started homeschooling in Fall of 2007. The other was two huge boxes of legos from Lego Systems, with the condition that we would then donate them to the public library.

I am very grateful for organizations that see the value in awarding grants to homeschoolers as well as schools and libraries. We will use the prints we are about to receive to their fullest, and share them with as many other families as possible!