Must. Keep. Updating!

I am trying very hard to keep on top of this. Not too much to update about though recently.

Robin Hood Men in Tights:

We watched it yesterday it kept her and her friends entertained me and their mom also lol! This is educational right??

Or how about my not yet two year old, he started saying "attitude" yesterday! You wouldn't be wrong to assume he hears that a lot lately! Someone please tell me there is a time between five and the teenage years this goes away for a while! I am not sure I can handle having to deal with this for another 13 years. Oh yeah did I mention the new baby is a girl??! Yikes! Maybe boarding school is actually the best option for us :p

High Cliff State Park

We got back last night from our weekendcamping. While we did have a bit

of a series of unfortunate events we really did have a great time! We love to go camping as a family so this was a bit of a

mini vacation for us. It came as a surprise to me my daughter had no idea how state parks work because we have done most of our

post baby camping at a lot of land friends of the family owns. She has been to the local state park a couple of times but not in a few years. Funny how it is the long term goal of me and the hubby to visit all of the Wisconsin state parks but this is the first new one we have been able to cross off our list since I was pregnant with Lucy. I guess the extra kid stuff, camping stuff, and long trips wasn't to appealing to us, I hope though we continue this quest with our kids because there really is so many neat things our state parks have to offer!

High Cliff was a great renewal of camping hope for us (aside from the fact it poured on us the whole night on Friday and we threw our

tent away on our way out of the park!) Lucy just loves a new environment to explore or investigate as she calls it.

They had a cool

observation tower to climb with an amazing view of Lake Winnebago

This is Chief Red Bird from the Winnebago tribe in Wisconsin.

We also got to do a bunch of hiking all with amazing views!

We also saw a bunch of Effigy mounds and a limestone quarry. They had a really neat historical general store turned museum. Lucy got her explorer book and worked hard to complete the activities to earn her badge.

And Sam, well he worked hard at getting dirty and chasing chipmunks! So that is pretty much our trip. :)

Still alive I swear!

Yikes! I am embarrassed by how long it has been since I have updated. I wish I didn't let this much time pass it makes me want to update less because I feel like I am too behind. So for the sake of me not feeling like I need to fill everyone in on the last 6 mos lets assume I have been busy frolicking in the meadows with unicorns and butterflies, that is very hard work you know! Honestly though a quick overview of the important things...

We moved- In January, see I really did get busy! Lets be honest we are technically still moving yup this is not the only thing I am slacking on. So yup we moved. It is a much bigger house and we are out in the county now as us Kenoshians refer to it, meaning we live not in the city the country lol. We love it here and now our school room is in a centralized area which is good and bad because now Sam can freely destroy it several times a day o_0

Thats our purdy new house :)

We are having another baby- Yep I am a bit more then half way through growing spawn part three. Sam will be a ripe age of just barely two when his baby sister is scheduled to arrive. This should make schooling interesting! The good part is we are planning for this to be our last baby so after we are done with the baby stage we will not be looking back (I however plan to savor that as long as possible!)

So meanwhile as far as school goes we are still being unschooly. Which I am comfortable with and I think is the style for us at least currently. Lucy has decided to write her own book. She amazes me everyday! She just took a composition note book and started writing. Her plan is to fill it and well she is kicking ass if I do say so! It is called "The Lucy Dog" No it is not all legible or spelled correctly, but I can read it! She loves it she just goes in her room and writes. She hopes that when it is done we can sell it online so others read it and has plans for part two! I love having a budding author! I think it is great practice and while she has kind of shyed away from wanting to read I am completely happy to have a five year old author!

I find that when I backed off she is finding her own love of things and she wants to read more and math has become her favorite! She is quite the adding pro. It started with adding her pez and now she is doing it in her head several numbers at a time. At any given time she comes out to tell me that 3+3+3+3 = 12 and I think that is awesome! Not much interest in subtraction yet but I think it will come when she gets bored with adding.

She has lots of questions about kind of absurd things but it is real life things that need to be taught eventually I guess. As an example last week we went and did a couple museums in town and a picnic and she would not have our day be complete without a trip to the cemetery! She saw one on the side of the road the other day and started asking about it and decided it was her mission to go to one. Maybe it has to do with her new fascination with her ancestors?

Well this was a book! Whew! Now just to keep up with it so I don't have to come back with my tail between my legs ;)

We are camping this weekend at a super cool campground with effigy mounds and cool cliffs and I hope to do some jr ranger work while there if the stinkin weather complies. Keep your fingers crossed!

a new path

We have been on a new unschooly path lately. Taking it easy more learning through play. Lucy was doing amazing still striving in the school room environment but as a stress reliefe for me instead of fighting sam to behave and taking our only free time whike he naps to rush our learning we are takingit easy and learning all day in a less intense atmosphere and things are going well! We are using pez for adding and subtracting, learning all about Hanukkah watching movies and doing our own celebrations. We learned oodles about Thanksgiving together so much i never knew and i loved it! Her reading is amazing she will sound out just about anything! We arent pressuring her she just reads to herself, her brother and her buddy all day and her choice for talking is now by spelling everything she says! So yeah we have been a bit mia but i hope to be back. We are doing well she is learning tons and we are doing it in an awesome way! I have always felt a bit unschooler at heart im excited to see where this takes us!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.4

we are back

We are back from our trip to Wisconsin Dells. It was a blast! Lots of swimming sliding and other fun! We went to Ripleys and the Tommy Bartlet Exploritory. The Exploritory was great! Lots ot hands on science! The whole thing pooked a bit outdated but there were tons of really cool exibits a lot of which i have never seen at other museums of the sort. If you ever get the chance it is worth checking out! I will have to post pics of the trip next time because i am on my phone right now and in the car. I am hoping to get back to the regular grind this week!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.2

Dialing it back a little

The past couple weeks we have been taking it a bit easy. As kind of a break to both of us.It is kinda making me feel like a slacker, but we are still learning just in a more relaxed way. There was no problem with how we were doing it before but if I want to have any sort of life out of the house at all I think we have to be a bit more relaxed sometimes. So we have been playing educational games, watching documentaries, doing some verbal spelling tests (which I must say I am super surprised what a good speller she is!) We are always learning about the world around us, adding in a bit of starfall and reading reading reading! The truth is I am pretty sure she is still learning the same amount! If not more! I apparently need to go easier on myself! Tomorrow we head out for our vacation we are all super excited! There are lots of lessons to be learned at the water park...Right?

Last week

Yes I am a bit behind I am ashamed to say. But don't you worry I am happy to report last weeks schooling :)
I feel like we learned quite a bit last week! Our water unit is moving right on along. we worked on the states of water with a fun little experiment. We put some ice in a pot on the stove watched it melt into a liquid and boil into a gas. Thanks again Lexi for the idea! This week we also learned about the water cycle with the help of The Magic School Bus! We read their water cycle book and watched the episode. We finished the week by Lucy creating a story board type water cycle herself. I just love how the hands on part of homeschool helps the learning become so much more clear!
The telling time is going alright. The first day I found myself a bit overwhelmed with all the information I was trying to spew out at her so we just called it a day at first and the next day I think I was better suited. I think she is picking it up fairly fast. She is great at knowing how to make it say whatever hour and she is also picking up _:30, but she needs more practice to understand each number means a different number. It will come. Honestly I am shocked by how much she is already grasping! She is only 4 for Petes sake! I am not trying to push her just moving along once she gets a concept, I feel like we have already gotten far in math and I am pretty sure so far math is her favorite.
This week for reading we didn't do too much exciting but Starfall did get a bit challenging for her so that is awesome! I am still shocked daily by her spelling skills and she has no fear to try and sound out any word. Go Lucy! She will be quite the reader I imagine!
We didnt do anything on the Kenosha unit this week we took our normal field trip day and went to Hobby Lobby for Halloween costume essentials. She decided last minute to switch from being a spider to the bride of Frankenstein to match her brother :) We came up with a really cute costume idea! So I guess we can call that home ec? LOL! Yesterday we also booked a mini vacation to the Wilderness in Wisconsin Dells, So she will e in a water unit wonderland! haha! We will be sure to take a gander at the Dam there in the Dells too. We are all quite excited! I am sure plenty of educational opportunities will present them selves!