Pabs has been gone for the last month, finally back for a week, and taking off again next week. The last month I’ve been taking it easy with the kids school, there’s only so much I can do while waiting for.. whatever it is our future holds.

Anyways while scanning articles, I came across this funny one that hits home.

http://www.thehomeschoolmagazine.com/matrix/EscapingtheHomeschoolMatrix.html

The kids are all so smart, there’s so much going for them that I need to step back and look at the big picture every once in awhile and not stress out.

At the last day of the kids charter school day, Pabs was following hte kids around taking photos in their class, and telling me after how smart the kids were in their classes. Alex was the only one raising his hand to answer the teachers questions and Celine was reading so well etc.., so it was nice for Pabs to see the kids in their element in school, since he’s not super involved with their school, so he really enjoyed seeing that, and it’s perfect for me when I need encouragement.

Now that Pabs has been back, I’ve been sleeping in, and allowing myself to go to the library on my own. Yay! I’m not looking forward to him being gone again. Oh well.

Early Learning at Home

Whenever we’re about to make some lifechanging move we blitz and do all the fun things to do in our current city.

So.. here goes Homeschool day at Legoland, California. (US is great with these days geared to Homeschoolers at a fraction of the price)

Balboa Park.. on our quest to find all the San Diego smashed pennies.

Last School day at our Charter school. They ended up disecting a squid.. yay!! Alex was so excited.

And last but not least, one of the wonderful things about San Diego, a beach day in the middle of winter.

http://searchpowayusd.blogspot.com/2008/01/school-officials-say-proposed-budget.html

Homeschooling doesn’t throw our life into a tumble when things like this happen, we get to merrily go on our way. On the news families were saying that they might have to move. The less teachers the larger the classes, and that’s not what any families want.

Santa Monica Pier Aquarium

(The reason we take so many photos of the actual aquariums and signs etc.., is because this is also part of our science for this month (learning oceanography), and we can look back and remember what we saw when we do the worksheet pages on the subject).

Hollywood sign and Car Museum

We went to this Car Museum a couple years ago when getting the kids Chilean passports, since it was right across the road (unfortunately we didn’t realize we were in the middle of Hollywood at that time).

And they had the Batmobile from Batman Forever, and the Time travel car from Back to the Future movies So this time I really wanted Alex and Eric to see it, but.. they weren’t there anymore. Anyhow.. the first car you see is the car from one of the James Bond movies. And there was so much fun to be had anyways. There was a portion of the musum dedicated to Hotwheel cars and as we passed it (we were going around) Diego said “when are we going to MY place”.

Story of the World Activity Book

I have been using this textbook for the kids history. It goes along with Classical Education, the process of learning history that I haven’t really looked into. But now that I’ve been in the charter school, this was the history books they were using.

One thing about Homeschooling was being able to incorproate Bible history into their schooling. And this is a very easy, albit minimal way of introducing it.

The Story of the World, Volume one is from the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor

It starts with the earliest people settling in the fertile cresent, and becoming the great Egyptian Empire, it includes the story of Abraham, in a way I had no idea. Starting with his wealthy merchant family, and then when his father dies, and hes wondering what to do, he hears God speaking to him. It goes into him moving to canana.

It includes ancient India, China, Assyria, it’s a read aloud book with minimal pictures, but it’s engaging and interesting. Alex (8 years) is really enjoying it so far. if you want to learn more, its easy to get library books. There’s also a narration activity book, with maps etc that you can buy seperatly. Narration means that after a portion or chapter is read, the child tells back what was read, to ensure comprehension. There’s also lapbooks, or minibooks, coloring pages etc.., that could be done as well. –OR– Just read the book and use the narration questions.

Amazon.com has some reviews on this as well.

The day we met is coming up in May, and that is a date that Pabs and I like better than our actual, going-down-to-city-hall arrangement. I had ideas of a cruise, and now ideas came up for doing it at a beach across the border, or at a winery.

I still haven’t talked it over with Pabs since we already decided that as it gets closer we could choose to do something with our kids in honor of it, and not actually do anything big.

So stay tuned.

–Here’s a cute kids–: Always after a birthday the kids talk about their next birthday and what theme it’ll be. And Diego says “mum for your birthday I’m going to give you a dress”, and Celine says “mum, I’ll be giving you a christmas dress” and Eric pipes in “And I’ll give you a red dress”, Finally Diego says “Well, I’ll be giving you the glass slippers”. Oh gosh. I feel like a princess.

Celine Packet 4 Little House Lapbook

What is a Lapbook? This site explains it simply and has a bunch of links to get started checking out other great lapbooks.

I’ll be slowly uploading videos of our lapbooks, most of them I can’t take credit for, and I’ll have links on the side of the main Lapbooking sites I glean the ideas from.

the Lapbooks we have done this year are:

Ancient China: The Dragon King

Pilgrims

Little House in the Big Woods

Ancient Egypt

Curious George/Africa

Oceans

A preschool Transportation Lapbook

Explorers of North America

Australia

I’m posting on Lapbook Project video a week.

Tools for Tots

(They also have some fab Lapbooks)