Homeschooling Lately

We've been taking a break of sorts from our regular curriculum to more of an unschooling type of approach. It's nice to have options when you're feeling burned out on the regular routine. I've actually been quite surprised how much 'school' stuff goes on when we take our breaks. Archie is now reading chapter books rather proficiently, with very little help on some of the bigger words. He is re-reading (all of his own deciding) Gooney Bird Greene and Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, both books we use with our Sonlight Curriculum, as well as several short story books out loud to Lawrence--Dr. Seuss, Barenstein Bears, whatever he can find on the shelf.

We are fortunate enough to have a Scholastics warehouse close by. Every so-often, they have sales going on where you can get their stuff 50-80 percent off retail. So we headed there a couple of weeks ago and stocked up on neat stuff. Archie has been dying to get a model skeleton that he can build, so we got one there. We also got quite a bit from the 'scratch and dent' section. We got a neat science/geography game set, which has a whole bunch of variations of games to play.

The biggest hit so far is something I just threw in the buggy as a "We'll see if we like it" kind of thing. It's a kit which teaches wilderness survival skills. I haven't even had a chance to look at it. However, Archie has barely put it down. I guess it could be described as a Survival Skills Unit Study. You go through the booklet doing the projects it describes. You write in it how the projects go and by the time you work through the whole thing you are a Survival Skills Master or something. It comes with an "ID" Member Card and even dog tags!

Archie made his own waterproof matches and he made a shelter. Here he is in the shelter.

It even kept the rain out. Granted, he would've had a problem in a downpour, but it was raining when I took this picture and he was perfectly dry in there! He did discover how he could've made a better roof, but it was a fine first attempt! The shelter stayed up for about a week. We have a ways to go in the Survival Study, but I'm glad he's enjoying it.

He's also had a bit of an entreprenureal bug lately. This is his first attempt at small-business ownership:



I guess I could've taken a better picture, but he's playing songs for a quarter a piece. Now, you think...who walking down the sidewalk could resist a little boy wanting to sing for a quarter? Well, plenty of people, apparently. I was his only customer. :-)

Since that didn't work out as well as he expected, he tried a new approach a couple of days later. Yard Chef!! I was praying there would be no takers now, because this came up after I'd already cleaned the kitchen for the evening and had no intention of making French Toast for anyone.



His spelling is not perfect, so I'll run down the menu for you. Basically, anything in the cabinet was up for grabs:

$1.00 Grilled Cheese
$1.00 Peanut Butter & Jelly
$1.00 French Toast
Brownies Free
Cough Drops Free

I can see we need to focus on spelling. I'm getting Explode the Code soon.

His clay-making class and homeschool art class wrapped up last week. We will miss those classes over the summer! I took some photos of some of his projects:

I forget what this is called, and Archie's not around at present for me to ask. But it is basically a repeating pattern.

My favourite piece of his is this birdhouse. He did a beautiful job painting it and it was fun to see the transformation from just the bare clay, to painted, to glazed, then kiln-finished!

This is the first piece he did in clay class. It's an African mask.

He did this at Easter time. It's a little ceramic jar. His teacher helped him with the bunny's eyes. Those eyes were really hard to get right!

He is getting better and better with his detailed painting.

He made the following two pieces for Mother's Day in his Homeschool Art Class. It is a copper heart with glass melted over the top. Again, I'm sure there's a name for it, but I can't think of what it is. He made a ring and a necklace.



This is his Cowboy doll he made out of wire, newspaper and tape. The clothes are made of wallpaper scraps. The face was originally a 'girl' face, but his teacher helped him paint the face to look a little more manly. The cowboy doll has jumped on the trampoline a number of times, and is not looking as perky as he once did. Right now he's resting on a piece of petrified wood in the tea room.

It's been a nice break, but I'm ready to get back to our academics. It just goes to show ya, learning takes place all the time for everyone! Whether you want it to or not!