Summer is slowly ending...

Late summer family reunion at the lake. Bonus 25 week belly picture!

which means the best time of the year is just around the corner! I've mentioned that summer is not our favorite time of the year here in our home. No, we are definitely autumn kind of people! Bring on falling leaves, pumpkins, apples, crisp air, earlier nights and later mornings. A dear friend and I have a description for our favorite kind of weather: hoodie and flip flop weather. When you can comfortably wear both, it's the time of year to be outside enjoying all nature has to offer! Of course, this friend and I have both been known to extend our hoodie and flip flop uniforms into late winter when the ground is heavy with snow, so use your own discretion with this. ;)

Late summer and the approach of autumn also mean it is back to school time! This has different meanings for us this year. We've considered ourselves homeschoolers for the past year or two, but have fallen more in the unschooling camp. We have focused on playing, reading to our girls, and encouraging our now six year old's natural interests. This year, however, she is of compulsory attendance age. So we have paperwork to file with our state. This includes a vaccine exemption form, and a form laying out our curriculum choices. We bought a first grade curriculum, and as all our paperwork needs to be filed by the 26th, I'm spending this weekend setting out lesson plans, and getting everything ready to submit. Organizing a school shelf in the bookcase, making a daily schedule for the girls and I so we know what to expect when, and making a meal plan so I'm not going crazy while adjusting to "doing school".

We still are focusing on making learning fun. Lately, there's been a huge interest in learning about history. Which her definition of history is "old things, like Elvis." Well, sort of, sweetie! We're reading through the Little House series with her sisters. Last week we read chapter one of Little House in the Big Woods and she painted pictures of the corn husk dolls we're going to make as soon as we dry the husks from our corn we're getting at Farmer's Market on Thursday. A couple hours east there is a living history farm that we plan to visit. I'd like to wait until it is not only cooler, but closer to Thanksgiving time, since there is an Ioway Indian village site, and I'd like to incorporate that into our learning about Native Americans.

She's been scared of storms this summer. So when our zoo (whose membership includes free IMAX movies) began showing the IMAX screening of Tornado Alley, we took her so she could learn about the storms. Now, instead of the girls being scared of storms, they tend to just ask about how bad they'll be getting, and are secure in their knowing that a storm turning into a tornado is unlikely. That's not saying they never get scared. The storm that had 70mph winds and knocked power out for 13 hours was scary to them because the lights were out at night. But they knew if it were to develop into a tornado they could simply go to the hall closet and how to stay safe.

Learning fun w/Clifford and Iowa Public TV at the Iowa State Fair!

The end of summer is also bringing an end to our first gardening efforts. They, unfortunately, haven't been very fruitful. I blame this mostly on my asthma keeping me indoors and not tending to the plants as much as I should have, as well as on our alternately too dry and too wet conditions. That's okay. This was a year to learn, not to produce. I did learn that next year we'll do raised beds, as I wasn't a fan of containers. Once our tomato plants are all done with for the season, the girls are going to paint the buckets in autumnal colors and designs, and we'll put some autumn flowers (mums I believe? I'm not a flower person!) in them to decorate the front of the house. The herbs that survived the heat (sage and rosemary) will be brought indoors, and we'll probably add some others to grow inside over the winter.

This week we will begin canning. Whatever we get from farmers market, from our little tomato plants, and produce sales will be preserved to use in winter months. Next month we'll be canning lots of apples. Apple butter, apple jelly, pie fillings, etc. We're kind of nuts about apples. We'll be experimenting with using the shed to store squashes and such over the winter, too.

Even more exciting than planning school schedules, field trips, apple orchards, pumpkin patches, and Halloween is that the coming autumn brings the arrival of our new baby! Being the one giving up precious organ room and pelvic girdle comfort to house the baby's current uterine digs, I like to think this excites me the most. ;) This pregnancy has been simultaneously easy and incredibly difficult. When it's easy, it's very easy. But when the hyperemesis or symphysis pubis dysfunction decide to make it hard, it can be extremely hard! I am looking forward to labor, birthing, and mostly to having a new baby to snuggle and love on. Walking without waddling doesn't sound all that bad, either!

Yes, these "lazy hazy" days of summer are slowly dragging to an end. For many they passed by far too quickly. For us, they took their sweet time and are welcome to make an early exit! We are eagerly awaiting the hustle and bustle that autumn brings to our home. And to adding hoodies to our flip flop wardrobes!

Hybrid Schooling

We are a homeschooling family. A homeschooling family who, as of January 25th, will have one daughter in public kindergarten. I still consider us a homeschooling family. We are doing hybrid schooling. Everything can be hybrid these days. Cars are gas and electric. Diapers can work both as cloth or disposable. Why can't schooling be a hybrid of classroom and homeschooling?

Our decision is one of both convenience and personality. A-L went in for her speech evaluation and she will need to be at the school for speech therapy 2-3 times/week. We do live close to the school, but the fact is that it would mean getting the other kids both dressed and ready to go twice a day 2-3 times/week when they don't need to go anywhere.

As we were leaving, I saw my first grade teacher, who is now the kindergarten teacher. We stopped to talk to her, since I've stayed in touch with her. A-L has been asking to go to Kindergarten. I asked the teacher, Mrs. W, about the possibility of Anna-Lee being in her class. She said they could definitely have her in class. We then went down to the room so A-L could see it. We talked a while, and Mrs. W told me to be sure to come down and help out with class parties, field trips, etc. whenever I could. We even discussed the possibility of us hatching some eggs in the class. She also made sure to tell me if public school wasn't working out, just let her know and if she could change anything she would. Otherwise don't feel bad about pulling her out. She also offered to get me in touch with other homeschooling families in town. Love this woman.

A-L and I also butt heads with my teaching style and her learning style. I think her and Mrs. W will be a better fit right now.

Which is where the hybrid comes in. I will continue to work with her here at home. Especially on science and history stuff. And I will work alongside the lessons she's learning at school with Mrs. W on other subjects. That way, she can be learning it while we work on finding a teaching/learning style that suit our mother/daughter dynamic. Best of both worlds. Hybrid schooling.

Homeschooling By the Seat of Our Pants

This summer, like last, was spent debating whether or not we would enroll Anna-Lee in our local public school. In the end we kept her home, but didn't really do any official homeschooling. We watched a ton of PBS shows, she played on her Fisher Price Computer Cool School, and we practiced capital letter writing and letter/number recognition. But we weren't particularly consistent or structured. This was, in large part, due to me being miserable and pregnant.

So this year we were faced with the same dilemma. Anna-Lee is a smart kid. She has amazing potential. But I was feeling a lot of outward pressure to send her to public school. To give myself a break. To get her the speech therapy she needs. After all, I had both of the kindergarten teachers when I went to school, so wouldn't this be the best year to give public school a try?

I thought Kelton felt this way. Mostly because of his lack of opinion! He's the strong, silent type and it isn't always a good thing. Last night, after going through the motions of getting ready to enroll her, I asked Kelton if he felt as bad about the decision as I was feeling. To my utter surprise, he was!

So we are homeschooling! We have decided to not go with a formal curriculum. We have more of the add-on discs for her computer, and will be doing lots of activities on it with her. We also plan on utilizing our zoo's homeschool classes, going to the children's museum, etc. Our goals for the year are to get her writing upper and lowercase letters (and using them in the correct places), learning phonics and reading, and really work on numbers and counting. This is an area she has demonstrated a weakness. I don't think these goals are particularly lofty or unrealistic, nor are they so attainable as to leave her (or us!) bored and unchallenged.

I'll be posting more about our adventures in homeschooling as the year progresses. Right now I'm just excited a decision has been made and set into motion!