Real Life Skill

My girl has learned to knit. =D

She is using a lucet and making a garland for our Christmas tree this year. She is so proud to be knitting like mommy does. I love her so much and am so thankful that she is my blessing.

Growing Plants and Girls

H has been growing a plant. She started them at coop from kernels and beans in a damp plastic bag. Once they sprouted, we planted in a pot and have been measuring. Yesterday the corn plant (the only one we planted in the dirt) was 5 1/2 inches tall (she measured). This morning, a cat dug in the pot and tore the corn plant off the roots. Such is life... we will start a bean plant soon and put it somewhere up high where the cat won't get it. ;)

Reading

Tonight H read Gregory's Shadow to me all by herself. I have noticed that her reading is vastly improved over the last 2-4 months. It seems sometimes that she has memorized quite a few of her books. We haven't read Gregory's Shadow in a long time and she did so wonderfully reading to me tonight. We have also been talking about punctuation and how those make a story sound. Her reading is now much more story-telling like, rather than just sounding out words. I love being read to and my girlie is now reading to me. *wipes tears* How amazing is that? No better Mother's Day present than my girl hugs and reading. Sometimes, I wish I could just freeze time right now...

Coop Today

Today we showed up for the last school day of coop this spring. The cleaning lady/crew had already been there before 845am. The whole place smelled of bleach and ammonia. Thank goodness H has her first class in the gym, in another building. And her second and last class is way away from the stairs and kitchen where the smell was the strongest. I didn't fare so well and have been feeling "chemical'ed" all afternoon. She loves school and since it was the last day, I didn't have the heart to just leave and go home. School work is going fine. It is fun to look at her copywork from last fall and see the improvement in several months. She and I cleaned out her desk yesterday and looked through the papers. She is learning and improving, though she desperately wants to be a "middle" at coop. She is so not ready for that... maybe another year? The reading and writing has to improve quite a bit for her to move on. Gives us something to work towards!

4-23-09

Can ya tell I am draggin'?

Today we did addition, skip counting (again), she read 2/3 of Just Plain Fancy and we played outside. Her reading is really improving, though she tends to guess at the words rather than sound them out. Reading books on the computer is harder since we have to look at the computer screen and touch and sound out. But we have so many more books in the computer than laminated, at least for the time being.

When we were doing addition, she finally seemed to understand adding the ones column and then the ten's column. We will see tomorrow and the coming days if she understands or if it was a fluke. She hasn't been able to grasp double digit addition but has preferred to count up the blocks rather than columns. Hopefully it was a light bulb moment today.

Thursday, 4-2

Wow, 2 days in a row! Well, really 2 days posted on 1 day but, no matter. ;)

Today we stayed home. AND LOVED IT! We had a thunderstorm at dawn and all the snails came out on the compost pile...

See how pretty they are?






And this is the current state of the beautiful iris blooms...




H did copy work and some addition problems this morning. You would think that 20 minutes of sitting still doing school work was torture. ;) I am glad that she doesn't have to sit still all day long. This afternoon after room time, we went outside and blew bubbles, washed the oak pollen off the trampoline and jumped. Now it is supper time and mommy is tired. Imagine!

H wants to add something - her favorite part of today was making bubble mix and blowing bubbles. Catching the bubbles that mommy blew was fun as well. "We liked having Amy around with us and I like to torment her with the bubbles. She wiggled her ears when the bubbles popped. That was funny and I laughed at Amy. She shook her head and turned her head away from me."

Wed, 4-1

Today, not much traditional schoolwork. Big surprise and not really unusual for us. We left early (for us) at 8am and drove to Whole Foods. We cruised through there quickly and drove from Austin to Giddings to pick up ground beef. We played and ate at the park in Lexington and then drove home. We drove a total of 200 miles and got home and unloaded before 2pm. That is just a lot for us. H and I are home bodies and don't like to run around. She did lots of drawing and sounding out words in the car. I *love* the creative spelling at this age. She was helping me make a grocery list and spelled lettuce "ledis". So precious!

Spring as seen by a 6.75 year old

You must read this post from bottom to top. Apologies for this but somehow blogger wants to post my pictures going up the page instead of down. I am not savy enough to fix it right now. So without futher ado... here is the chronology of the iris 2009!

And this is yesterday (3-22-09) taken by H. Notice how bright the yellow is and how many buds we have left to watch! Stay tuned for tree pictures as well as some dog friends' pictures. =)


Opening up the next day... (all of these are taken by H)



And the next...


This is the next day...



H has been taking pictures. We will start with the iris' that Gran gave us about 4 years ago.

Naming our school

This is my idea for our school name. I think that I might even have little cards made as well. I googled the name and no one else had Shady Tree School. There is someone with a blog that is Shady Tree Academy but that is totally different. LOL We tend to spend quite a bit of time outside and we have lots of trees for lovely shade. In the summer, it makes being outside bearable, here in the middle of Texas.

We honestly lean much more towards unschooling. I just feel that pushing and battling H to "do" school work is counterproductive at this point. She can read, write, add, subtract and she is polite. What more could you ask for in a 6 year old? ;) She also loves to listen to classical history on CD as well as myths and tales on CD. So I am not as lazy as it seems with school? Nah, I am laid back and lazy... ;) Just want her to love and find ways to learn and not fight it.

Hopefully will post more regularly here but not promising anything.