Well, it appears I have taken a rather prolonged siesta from my blogging. Wow, five months since I’ve written anything here. A lot has happened in between. We have sold the house you see in the below post, and have decided to build the house I had mentioned in a previous post. So I have been rather waylaid to say the least.

I am still homeschooling, and my kiddos have now entered the 5th and 7th grades. It has been a little tougher to set my teeth into another year of homeschooling this year, but more on that later. What I find amazing is my reader levels haven’t dropped off. So in honor of all you folks who drop by now and then to see what this homeschooling stuff is all about, I will endeavor to keep new material on the ins and outs of our homeschool journey on this blog.

It’s been pouring buckets on our island here, so the weather has provided us with lots of time to really dig into our subjects. I’ll make sure I fill you in on what some of those subjects are in future posts. For now, I’ll leave you with a photo of what usually happens around these parts when the sky parts and brings forth its rain….a rainbow!

Homeschool Perk #3: Family Bonding

I have been writing on a continuing theme over at Heart of the Matter Online for the last few months, with the emphasis being on the many perks of homeschooling. Head on over to Heart of the Matter to read all about it here. While your there, feel free to read through the previous homeschool perks, listed at the bottom of my article on their site. See you there!

To repeat what others have said, requires education, to challenge it,
requires brains.  – Mary Pettibone Poole

A place for everything and everything in it’s place. That’s a very satisfying sentence, don’t you think? For some this comes easier than others.

Managing a household on a single income can be rather challenging these days, at best. Throw in trying to make your house a home, designing  or decorating it accordingly, and establishing organizational flow can be rather difficult on a shoestring budget. Garage sale and thrift store finds work well for the budget or collector enthusiast, who don’t mind refinishing or re-upholstering. There is an art however, to making this work and still be able to maintain style throughout your home. I did this for a long time and happily called it eclectic. Ecclectic did it’s time, until I tired of having to acquire additional finds for extra storage space that my eclectic pieces simply would no longer accommodate.

My husband and I have been renovating our exisiting 1950’s home for the last eight years, and any additional money generally went towards another room that needed fixing up. Finally, the renovations were near complete, and I found myself carefully scrutinizing the present purpose of my once satisfying finds. I was on the hunt for maximum storage and clean lines. Living in a small space made me look at vertical storage. I hunted. I found. I rejoiced. IKEA! (applause)

Being a homeschool family, we naturally had an insane amount of books. When you homeschool, by the way, books become treasures. We like to have our treasures visible and readily available. The mismatched eclectic bookcases went out, the IKEA Billy bookcases went in (more applause). The book cases in the below pics were purchased at IKEA, all for under $500 including taxes. You can mix and match this system for your own room dimensions, adding or subtracting pieces accordingly. You can pick your own finish, and add or subtract as many doors (with their own variety of designs) as you like. You can even do a happy dance.

Below are our books in all their book lover’s bliss. So, where do your books live?

Billy Bookcases

Billy Bookcases

“What line? I don’t see a line.”  This was what I actually spoke out loud less than two weeks ago. I quickly scanned my environment,  naturally seeing nothing but mere spectators. I was after all,  in hot pursuit with my camera in hand, trying to catch a photo of my daughter as she took off from the starting line for the 100 meter race. It was the annual year end Small Christian Schools Track Meet, and I was working hard to capture her energy in motion.

“Excuse me, your standing over the line!”

There it was again. This time I looked more carefully, slightly annoyed that I was going to miss my photo opp. To my horror, I discovered those weren’t mere spectators, but annoyed parents – who happened to all be staring at me,  due to the fact that I was standing  r-i-g-h-t  -i-n- t-h-e- m-i-d-d-l-e  of the runway for the L-O-N-G   J-U-M-P   P-I-T!

Whoops…..

Needless to say, I missed my shot.

We did; however, win the meet!

Yes, you read that right – Owl Puke. The technical name would be Owl Pellet, or something much more refined, but this title got your attention, yes?

I recently attended the 2009  Homeschool Conference in the lower mainland of our province. This was their second year however, in a new venue, and even though there was less to take home (vendors brought less merchandise due to space constraints), there were still a few goodies to find. That said, I think I’ll be making the trip to BCHEC conference in Kelowna next year. However, I digress – so back to my finds.

My youngest daughter is a birding (and owl) enthusiast, so when I saw this little package labeled Owl Puke, I couldn’t resist. The kit comes with a dissecting tray, a nifty little book, and a sterilized owl pellet. The fun starts when you get to carefully take apart a most disgusting intriguing little owl pellet and look for the remnants of the sorry little rodent creature who fatefully became this owl’s lunch. What kid wouldn’t love that? Okay, so I wouldn’t touch it, but I didn’t let on. I have, inadvertently passed on some of my own fears to my children in the past, so I carefully concealed my disgust and put on my best enthusiastic face. It seemed to work – in fact, she couldn’t wait to get started.

Taking apart owl puke, however, takes time and patience to carefully extract teeny tiny little bones, then sort and clean them. But the fun doesn’t stop there. No, after sorting out the sorry remains in this owl’s lunchbox, the kids can reconstruct the skeletons, and then identify the ill fated victim. For your scientific pleasure, I have included a diagram of the skeletal system of a friendly rodent in your neighborhood. Just print it off, then have the kids glue the bones right on top, or mimic the shape on their own piece of construction paper.

If you wish to conduct this experiment on your own, it’s advised that you acquire only sterilized owl pellets as unsterilized pellets can contain nasty germs. Sterilized pellets can be ordered online at www.hawkquest.org. Needless to say, if you have a young owl or birding enthusiast in your household, I can highly recommend this little kit, it scores high on the Yuck -O-Meter, is suitable for grades 2 – 12, takes more than one afternoon to complete, and is educational money well spent!

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. – Gene Fowler

The last few weeks of our homeschool have been focused on how to write a formal essay. We follow a loose Classical/Charlotte Mason homeschool philosophy, and are transitioning from copywork and dictation exercises to more formal outlining and essay writing. Though we will be doing much more of this more formal style of writing next year, the opportunity came up to attend a writer’s camp through the DL school we are enrolled with. The camp was conducted in a small group atmosphere, and provided an opportunity for each of the kids to brainstorm their ideas together. 

Writing an Essay

I don’t generally insist on formal writing exercises with my kids (they write naturally, why make it feel like drudgery?), but over the years, I have gently introduced them to different styles and methods of writing.  As they get older, there is a need for more intermediate writing skills. One of my children is a natural creative writer, but seems to dislike formal writing for information exercises. My other child seems to be the opposite, being somewhat displeased with having learn the formalities of creative writing, but managed to write longer paragraphs than her older sister when it came to essay writing. This is often the way it goes, no? Sigh….

Gluing it on Poster Board

What I discovered during this little writing camp though, was an essay writing method that was easy for the kids to learn and follow along with. In fact, it is a method that seems to work well with children as young as 4th grade! Because the method was shared at a writing camp, I searched the web to try and find a replication of this method in order to share with you. You can take a look here, and here – they are very similar. I would also recommend conducting a little writing camp of your own. Using the steps in the above mentioned web sites, a small group of 6 kids would probably work really well with ages between 10 & 12, or grades 4-6.  Once set up, try to pick topics the kids are passionate, or somewhat knowledgable about, this kick starts their creativity and can inspire them to dig deeper into their research. Most importantly, don’t forget to communicate to your kids the purpose of a persuasive essay:  to persuade their audience to accept their idea or point of view.

Include Some Pictures!

The finished essay can then be typed, or handwritten, or if you wish (as my kids did), cut and pasted onto poster board complete with drawings. Schedule the final week of your writing camp to be a presentation week – the kids can present and read aloud their reports, and encourage one another. If time allows provide some snacks and time for play afterwards. Don’t know what to do with a giant poster board when you get home? Before you recycle, take a photo of the project, and either burn it to a disc, or print the photo and keep for your homeschool records. This way, you can keep the project and do away with the clutter!

In the interim, I’ll leave you with this:

You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what’s burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke. – Arthur Polotnik

My postings have continued to be sparse at best – so, what’s going on with me? Part of our homeschool journey inevitably involves one’s own individual personal growth, and unfortunately this has taken it’s toll on my blogging. I won’t share any details here, because it’s – well, personal. However, occasionally I ponder the value of sharing personal developments now and then. My main purpose of this blog in the beginning was to encourage those both new and old to homeschooling in their homeschooling journey, and even though one’s own blog is truly their public expression of themselves, I’ve tried to keep this one solely focused on homeschooling. There is; however, part of the word homeschoooling that I sometimes forget about. This would be the home part. So, seeming I have regular readers who quietly follow my blog, I will venture now and then to share some of the home in my homeschooling – entitled House and Homeschool.

So, what shall I start with? Well, how about the fact that it is presently an 80% sure thing that we will soon be building a new home! This is big news for me, considering my little family of four has quite happily lived in the upper level of our home, being a cozy 1000 sq ft, and containing only one bathroom. Big news indeed.  In the past, I have occasionally written many posts (on this blog and others) about living and learning together in a small space. Many of you have commented and inquired about some of my creative uses of said small spaces. How do I come up with such ideas? Well, some of you may not know this, but previous to homeschooling, I had a brand new career in interior design. I was just getting my feet wet, so to speak in the interior design world, before I felt led to homeschool my children. I know I’ll return to again, but in the interim, I’m left to redesign my own space and periodically give a friend or two some design tips.

As of yesterday, there is a “For Sale” sign in our front yard, so from here forward, I’ll try and write an occasional post re: the sale of our home and pending build of the new one. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the before and after pics of my existing living room. This is the room where we like to hang out and get cozy with a book or two.

The home is a 1950’s model, with original hardwood floors and cove ceilings. We chose to remove the texture from the walls in the living room to tie in with kitchen. The opening from the living room to the kitchen (on the left of the before pic) was partially removed and restructured in order to create an open concept living area and accommodate two built in eating bars. The fireplace was re-faced with cultured stone, the heatilator was removed and replaced with a gas insert, wall sconces, pendant lights and pot lights were added to the wall and ceiling. There was not a single ceiling bulb in this living room before the renovations! The built in shelves to the right of the fireplace were removed. Blinds that have the ability to be drawn from the top down were chosen for the window – this allows light to flow in the room, while obstructing the view of the road, as we live on a rather busy one. Be sure to tune in next week for more House & Homeschool!  In the interim, feel free to share your own interior face lifts – I will try to add a Mr. Linky, but if that doesn’t work, feel free to link back to your site in the comment box below.