Cincinnati Dayscapes: Miami Whitewater Forest

We had predetermined that no school would be done on February 29th. After all, a Leap Year Day only comes once every four years. Surely such a special day deserved its own observance!

Originally, the plan was to drive up to the Boonshoft Discovery Museum in Dayton. But, due to an unforeseen delay in our morning, that plan had to be scrapped. And, since the day was so beautiful, it was decided that an afternoon at a park was in order.

Our park of choice for an excursion was Miami Whitewater Forest. We picked this park for three reasons:

1. It had a great playground. (Toa of Boy's stipulation.)
2. It had some beautiful scenery. (Sweetling's stipulation.)
3. It was within a 30 minute drive. (My stipulation.)

Behold the playground:

....complete with stuff to climb in....

....a small zip line....

....a giant boat shapped teeter totter....

...and a big plastic climbing rock.

Behold the scenery:

Scenery is best viewed from a swing of course.

The sky was also quite lovely.

We took a short walk along the lakeshore and in general enjoyed the day.

We enjoyed the day so much, that I suggested throwing in the towel for school for the year and just skipping straight to summer break. Sweetling, as usual, was the voice of reason who reminded me of all the reasons that this would not be a good idea.

Still, it was a lovely afternoon.

Miami Whitewater also has several great trails. The ground was quite wet, so I was all in favor of a fantastically muddy hike through the woods to search for various animal tracks. Even Toa of Boy thought this would be a bit much, since we hadn't brought our mud shoes. (Yes, we keep a separate pair of mud shoes, because some of our outings are a bit grimy.)

We're looking forward to going back a bit later in the spring, with our mud shoes, to go hiking.

Wordless Wednesday: Ready for Spring

Weekly Wrap-Up: Craters, Chickens, and Tin-Foil

You know those graphics that are hot on Facebook right now, the ones that name a profession or hobby and have six photos---'what my friends think I do', 'what the public thinks I do,' etc--those ones? The ones that always conclude with 'what I actually do'?

Here's my "What I actually do" photo for the week:

This was, of course, a spelling lesson. I mean, really, isn't that obvious?

A few minutes before the spelling lesson reached this photo worthy state, the lesson included me running from the kitchen to the living room yelling, "I've got the Squeaker! I've got the Squeaker!" while Toa of Boy was chasing after me, trying to retrieve the round furry plush toy I was victoriously waving over my head.

That's not an atypical instance for us. I don't know how we transitioned from steal the Squeaker (who's real name is Speedy, thank you), to Toa of Boy and Mama (not me, my mother) wearing aluminum foil hats, but there you go.

Spelling got finished. (So did grammar, despite that last sentence.) It just had a few diversions along the way.

For the sake of my dignity, I briefly considered claiming that Toa of Boy's learning style is best activated when a few spurts of excitement and physical activity punctuate the school day. I would say that, but here's a Facebook post about Sweetling's geometry lesson from earlier in the week:

Today's geometry lesson ended with Mommy standing on the kitchen table doing a shake your bootie dance while Sweetling, though fits of laughter, kept exclaiming, "Don't draw dinosaurs on the ceiling! Do NOT draw dinosaurs on the ceiling!"

I am forced to conclude the common denominator is me.

Other fun stuff for the week--

We continue to love our new Apologia Exploring Creation through Astronomy book. It's chock full of hands-on projects about the solar system. We like hands-on.

Here's Toa of Boy making craters. The pan is full of a half inch or more of flour, dusted with a layer of cocoa. Pebbles of assorted sizes are dropped from above to resemble the formation of craters.

Yes, it got a little messy. All good school projects do. Toa of Boy cleaned it all up on his own.

And, because I don't think I've officially put this on my blog yet, Sweetling is officially a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

She tested for her black belt at the end of January. She broke all her boards on the first try. Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack. We celebrated by going out for grilled cheese donuts at Tom & Chee. (Sweetling's pick.) The Jedi had pre-ordered a black t-shirt for her which read, "Warning: Shirt comes with a matching belt." She proudly wore it to co-op the Monday after testing. She had to wait a couple weeks for the actual black belt to arrive at the dojo, since they come custom embroidered with the pupil's name in both English and Korean. (Her name is blocked out here for privacy.)


Toa of Boy is due to test for his high blue belt soon as well. In the mean time, here's a photographic portrayal of why Toa of Boy loves our Tae Kwon Do school.

This is self defense training of course.


Last, but certainly not least, I bring you....

........chickens.

Why?

Because that's how our homeschool rolls.

Click the link!  Check out what others are doing this week!

Weekly Wrap Up: A stitch in time

(Confession time--this is actually from a few weeks ago. I've kept this in my 'drafts' box till I got around to getting the photos in. All two of them. BUT, I'm sharing it NOW, and that's what's important.)

We have been sewing and unschooling this week. All week.


I'm a little nervous about this.

I don't know why.

LOTS of learning has been taking place. Sweetling is making something from a purchased pattern for the first time. So, she's learning to interpret the weird wording found only in sewing pattern instructions into actual "oh, so that's what they mean" steps. She's used a seam gauge, dress maker's pencil, and stitch ripper (cause mistakes do happen.) She's threaded the machine, wound the bobbin, machine basted, and reinforced selected edges. She's learned to slip-stich by hand and learned what fusible interfacing is and why its used.

Meanwhile, Toa of Boy, not one to be left out, has learned how to thread a needle and knot the thread on the end. He's learned sew on a bead (for a turtle eye of course) and how to repair a seam on a stuffed animal. (There was a small discussion when he first started trying to sew and was getting a little frustrated. He demanded to know why boys had to learn how to sew. My answer was that everyone needed some basic sewing skills to be able to do simple clothing repair or replace a missing button. He said he could get someone else to do that for him. I asked if he really wanted to pay someone $10 to replace a button when he could do it himself in half a minute. He said he'd get a friend or relative to do it. I asked what if he was by himself on a business trip to Japan and the button popped off his dress shirt right before an important meeting. He conceded to me the argument.) He then raided my scrap basket and is now sewing his own stuffed Kirby doll.

Toa of Boy also kicked my butt in chess. He's gotten much better at his end game. But truthfully, I was in trouble very early in the game. Look at this box he has put me in. What move could I make, as black, that would help dig me out of this trap? (Click on the photo for a larger, clearer picture.)

Now, we've done a little bit of our regular academics. Toa did three pages of math by himself on Wednesday and Sweelting taught Toa all his regular subjects on Thursday while I was babysitting. (That's part of our regular Thursday arrangement.) And we've started out each day with our Bible Truth curriculum.

But mostly we've unschooled this week.

I think I like unschooling for a specific length of time (this week), to accomplish a specific student selected goal (learning to sew from a pattern.). But I don't think I'm ready to jump fully on the unschooling band wagon just yet. 

I'm not worried about "falling behind" or not learning. I think I'm just worried that without just a little structure, days and weeks will go by....and we'll have done some housework, a couple baking projects, and just goofed off. I think I'm worried that we won't have the motivation to tackle anything that seems like too much work. Sweetling's sewing project happened because she wanted to make a costume for an anime con. But that's the exception to the rule.

I think my question to the unschoolers, because I do like the concept a whole lot....my question would be how do you stay motivated to attempt challenging projects?

So, that's us.

 Check out what others have done on Weird, Unsocialized Unschoolers.