Backtrack: School This Winter

Having some fun with inclined planes.

Obviously, I didn't post in January or February, but things were still happening around here, so I'm slowly trying to go back and document them.

For science we continued to learn about simple machines. Our homeschool group had a Science Fair in January and Aaron helped each of the kids build a simple machine to demonstrate at the fair. I didn't get a picture of Ivan's because Rue and Ollie were causing a distraction, but he did one too.

We read Hatchet as a family read aloud and my boys got really into it. They designed their own bow and arrows our of Knex, and even made a quiver to hold the arrows. There was all sorts of archery going on around our house for a little stretch there. I love it when they get excited about what they read. I love to watch them internalize it, process it, and then act it out in their play. That is that kind of thing that helps me to feel like read aloud is a good time investment, and that it's a worthwhile part of their learning and imagination. 

Hatchet wasn't our only foray into language arts either. We kept up pretty well with our Tuesday Poetry Tea Time (although I admit, it isn't always Tuesday when we do it), the kids love it, and so do I. Often it is the highlight of our week.

Nature Journaling has gotten tricky with the freezing weather. Sometimes we improvise by doing it from the inside of our car. We drive around until we find a pretty spot, and then I park, and the kids draw, and we never have to leave the nice warm van. 

I think we've all felt a little cooped up. We've taken lots of opportunities to borrow Aaron's church key and go have "P.E." at the church gym. We've played basketball, t-ball, frisbee, and run laps around and around. And of course the big boys liked to bring their bows and arrows to see how far they could shoot from off of the stage.

If it's not too horribly cold, then the kids will bundle up and play in the yard. I wish there were more of those days, but mostly this winter was freezing, ice cold. And no one wanted to be out.

Adelia has been on an art craze lately. She has been creating and creating and creating. I love her ideas. I don't so much love the mess she leaves all around, but we're working on that. For awhile she was really into making puppets and putting on puppet shows for us. That was really fun. And another thing she really loves is watercolor painting. The picture below is probably my favorite piece of art she's ever created to date. It just screams Adelia. A happy person with a huge smile, and wide open hugging arms, surrounded by all of her little treasures at her feet. Haha! I love it. All the kids made sunset pyramids too, using our At Home Art Studio program. I thought they turned out nicely.

One thing the kids did in their free time that I thought was great, was to set up their own library. They build shelves out of cardboard boxes, figured out a system for sorting and arranging their books, issued everyone in the family library cards, determined what hours they would be open for operation, and had someone manning the desk at all times while they were open. Very creative. They had a post office and mail delivery system going for a couple of days too. But both the post office and the library shut down because they weren't getting enough business to keep things interesting. :)