Horses Everywhere....

It's true love, I think.

Fall Favorite

Pumpkin Farm Day --

The kids wait a whole year for this day (and start asking for it in July) so it is a pretty big deal. Really it's just a HUGE playground with no pumpkin picking involved. This year, Todd joined us for the first time :-) and as usual we stayed till we were about to drop over from exhaustion... seven hours, I think?? It was beautiful.

racing on the big trikes

(zoom this one in on Chloe's face ;-)

braving the giant slide(this caption applies only to Chloe since Evan went
upside-down, backwards, spinning, head first....)

petting cute sheep and goats



going down the bumpy tunnel slide

wandering through the maze --(Evan mastered this in two times through,
Chloe would still be wandering if we hadn't pulled her out....)

making a new friend and laughing and laughing and laughing together




climbing the hay bales




leaping off the hay bales!





crawling around on giant tractor tires




hugging the mammoth

taking a dad-sled down the big slide



digging and lounging in the cornbox


and other things my camera couldn't capture
because I forgot to pack extra batteries...



and finally calling it a day.



A very good day.

Finally -- A Pile

Thank you tree :-)

Geography

This morning I found Evan with his USA map (placemat) looking at the blank side, then guessing a particular state and finally flipping it over to the filled in side to see if he was right. He really knows a lot of states!

I had no idea until I overheard all of this, because, as you probably know by now, I did not teach him any of it. It came from his own interest and wonder of the world which all kids have. Homeschool in our house is UNschool. I trust him to know what he needs to know when he needs to know it, and amazingly he surpasses most kids his age and 'grade level' in what he does know.

After he quizzed himself, he let the Star Wars Lego droids loose on the map, giving them each a home state to rule over:

.... so there you have it, a geography moment in our homeschool :-)

Around the Block

Amazingly, this time, it was Chloe's idea to go out after lunch for a run around the block. She wanted her stroller and several (dozen) horses to ride along. Amazingly, Evan wanted to run as well instead of ride his bike. So off we went!



There is always a brief stop at the boulder to climb up and jump off....


... which Chloe can do entirely on her own as of about a month ago.

Evan is not in these beginning photos of our first lap around, because, oh man is he FAST. He took this running thing very seriously. Too bad he had to wait for me and Chloe so much.

We got back around to our house and they both decided they wanted their bikes, so off we went again...




I realized when we got back home and it was after 1pm that this had to have been Chloe's master plan all along.... to postpone the inevitable resting time which she tries to get out of every day. She didn't factor in how tiring it would be to bolt around our extra long block twice like we did, and ended up coming in without much resistance.

After that brisk outing, it was nice to just sit down and rest. That's when I realized: I need a bike so I don't have to run two laps anymore.

This Was the Year

This was the year Chloe really learned to pedal a bike with skill.

This bike thing came naturally to Evan who has been on a bike since he was two and a half and ditched his training wheels just after he turned five! With Chloe, there was always a sort of struggle in the area of leg strength.

Last year we noticed that since she always sat with her legs in a W shape her legs were becoming knock-kneed. Certain muscle groups were over-stretched and others were not stretched at all as they needed to be. So with much practice and encouragement to have long straight legs, she worked herself out of that habit. She still sits that way, but it is not as severe and we see her changing her position more often :-)

The other thing was getting her to run with confidence so she could strengthen the leg muscles she was stretching. She was a wee bit clumsy (probably because of the knee thing but still... ) so we gave her the baby doll stroller to push while running to keep up with Evan on his bike. It didn't take long before she would run the entire double wide block we live on two entire times without stopping. Amazing!

The combination of these two things gave her beautiful straightened legs and thigh muscles for pedaling. So this spring we got her a good bike hoping all the work and preparation paid off. And it did! Now we see her standing to pedal (like her brother) and skidding to a stop (like her brother), "off-roading" through the back yard (like her brother) and zipping down the sidewalk with speed (like her brother)!

I still don't think she'll be ready to ditch the training wheels by the end of next summer but she has come a long way in just a few months this year, so who knows what's possible :-)

Add This to the Books Post

I forgot to mention that we also have a bookshelf in the downstairs play area for books. Included there are books we kept since the days of buying for Evan or any book gifts we've gotten. There are a few chapter books that I picked up at yardsales too and some nature magazines. That's also where I keep the "readers" which are just fluff, but they do serve a purpose in learning to read. We have a Beatrix Potter collection and a Thomas the Tank Engine collection that make their rotation between upstairs and downstairs too. I think that's all....

Big Kids

Life without a baby (or even a toddler) around is so different than the days of diaper bags and helplessness and a frazzled mom with not enough hands to do it all.

Some days, right in the middle of doing something simple, I realize it so obviously: there are no babies in our family anymore.

Like this one.
We walked out of the house. Evan shut and locked the back door. They both climbed into their seats, buckled in and closed their car doors. They were even carrying their own accessories. All I had was my wallet and keys.


Even just six months ago, this scene was completely different, just as it had been for all the years since Evan was born.

But there we were. With no babies. Just these two big kids.
And it's just so strange sometimes.....

Systems :: Kids' Books

Books are a big part of our everyday lives. We have time to read aloud and to read privately every single day.

So many books, so little time?

That's what I used to think before I realized that not all books are created equal. The more we read, the more discriminating I become. Some books are what I call fluff. Others are really GOOD books with really GOOD artwork. This is important because with homeschooling I want to make sure we are spending our precious time only on the best and not just wasting it consuming fluff. I think everyone will define fluff differently (and some may not define it at all which is fine) but this is what works for us.

When Evan was a baby I was a book scavenger. I bought a lot of little board books and kids' picture books. Most of it was fluff and most of it we never used at all for Chloe.

Now, we exclusively use the library. I don't buy anything. I started a master list that I refer to so I can choose which books I want to put on hold on the library's website for pick-up. There are actually two lists -- one for Chloe's age and one for Evan.


This is our list of favorite picture books (for ages 3-5)

A Garden for a Groundhog --Ballan

Billy and Blaze series --Anderson

Blueberries for Sal --McCloskey

Caps for Sale --Slobodkina

Chanticleer and the Fox --Chaucer/Cooney

Chestnut --McGeorge

Choo Choo --Burton

Cock-a-Doodle Dudley (and others) --Peet

Ferdinand --Leaf

Grandaddy's Place --Griffith

Harry the Dirty Dog (and others) --Zion

House for Hermit Crab --Carle

I Wish That I Had Duck Feet --Seuss

James Herriott's Treasury for Children --Herriott

Katy and the Big Snow --Burton

Katy No-Pocket --Payne

Lentil --McCloskey

Little Farm by the Sea --Chorao

Make Way for Ducklings --McCloskey

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel --Burton

Millions of Cats --Gag

Miss Rumphius --Cooney

Mr. Putter and Tabby series --Rylant

My First Little House series --Wilder

One Morning in Maine --McCloskey

Owl Moon --Yolen

Ox-Cart Man --Hall

Pancakes, Pancakes --Carle

Roxaboxen --McLerran

Seven Silly Eaters --Hoberman

Stone Soup-- Brown

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble --Steig

The Little Engine That Could --Piper

The Little Fir Tree --Brown

The Little House --Burton

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers --Gerstein

The Mitten --Brett

The Story About Ping --Flack

Tikki Tikki Tembo --Mosel

When I Was Young in the Mountains --Rylant

Where the Sidewalk Ends --Silverstein

And this is the one for Evan (for ages 6-7) which is mostly chapter books:

A Child's Garden of Verses -- Stevenson

Charlotte's Web -- White

James and the Giant Peach -- Dahl

Just So Stories -- Kipling

Pippi Longstocking -- Lindgren

Stuart Little -- White

The Aesop for Children -- Winter

The Velveteen Rabbit -- Williams

Winnie-the-Pooh -- Milne

James Herriott's Treasury for Children -- Herriott

Little House in the Big Woods -- Wilder

Farmer Boy -- Wilder

The Trumpet of the Swan -- White

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -- Dahl

I have ongoing lists of books to read for the upcoming years but that's a bit much to put here and I don't know how to link my Word document to this post...

We go to the library once a week to pick up books I have on reserve and return ones we are done with. There is one bookshelf in the house for all library books so we don't lose track.

On the left are the read-alouds. On the right are the informational type of books. My books are above on a different shelf -- I usually have three or four of my own.

Since it is nearly impossible to stop a kid from picking out his own books in the library we just set a one book limit unless we are trading ones we are done with. All books are subject to my approval ;-)

Read aloud time is usually in the morning around breakfast, again around naptime (sometimes Chloe doesn't want a book but I will read to Evan while she is resting), more when dad's home and is asked to read, and always at bedtime for twenty minutes.

Most kids watch tv; we read :-)

Creativity

How fascinating is it to watch children do what they do? They are wired for creativity.



Using beads for horse food, necklaces for grazing pastures and handmade signs to divide up mares, stallions and foals by age and type.


Evan and Chloe worked on a horse pasture set-up in their bedroom over the course of an hour and were so proud of it.


I believe creativity is using what you have and making it work, instead of complaining about what you don't have and doing nothing.


Obviously neither of them could complain about a shortage of horse families (thanks to an outpouring of love on Chloe's birthday), but you get my point :-)

Backyard Fire

The first of the season .... hopefully many more to come

Juicy Fruit

The kids get to pick a free piece of fruit every time we shop at the co-op, and they are always trying new things. I love that. We've had all colors of peaches and plums (quite good), all flavors and textures of apples (most not so good, we're gala people), some lemons, limes, kiwi.... they tried to take a whole watermelon once, but that wasn't on the list ;-)

Last time they both picked grapefruits. They've been asking lots of questions about them recently and then plunged in with the latest free fruit taste test. We put a light sprinkling of sugar over the top just to take off the initial bitter sting.


I present,

"Enjoying Grapefruit: I Can't Believe It Either."

Eaten to the rind before they even touched their real lunch foods.

The Joy of Fall