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.