Rockin' Field Trip to the Aquarium

Reason #4982-6 why homeschooling my kids this year rocks:  week day field trips with no crowds.

Last year I started squirreling away a little money to pay for our field trips this year.  I didn't want to waste the chance to visit all our local (or not so local) hot spots, but that can get expensive.  My plan was to purchase annual passes so we would have the freedom to visit these places, not once, but as many times as our schedule would allow.

Today was our first trip to the Adventure Aquarium outside of Philadelphia.  Both my girls are fascinated by the ocean and sea creatures; Maddie so much so that she has decided to make her living as a marine biologist some day (specifically, as a dolphin trainer at Sea World).  

We have visited the Aquarium a few times before, but only on weekends when the lines are long and it is so crowded you can barely see the exhibits.  This week, we went at 1pm on a weekday.  It was empty!

After a quick lunch at California Pizza Kitchen, where our waiter, 

Jeff, amused the girls and spoiled them by refilling their Coke glasses far more often than I would have liked, we made our way to the Aquarium.  

We looked at every kind of fish, gazed at the sea turtles, 

shrieked at the scary sharks, pointed at the clown fish,

 touched sting rays, pet the bamboo sharks, poked the star fish, laughed at the sea lions and watched the penguins paint.  Yep, you read that right.  The penguins paint at our Aquarium. 

 The staff concocted an outrageous idea to dip the penguins feet in paint and let them waddle across a canvas.  Then they sell the paintings and proceeds go to fund wildlife rescue operations. 

 We just happened to be there as they were setting up. 

The penguin keeper mentioned that this is something your average penguin at the South Pole would not get a chance to do.  Um, ya think?

We had an incredible time, and didn't even make it to see the hippos or the shark exhibits.  

But guess what?  We are homeschoolers with annual passes, so we'll go see that stuff next week!

Creative Writing and Art...Isn't it ironic?

When I first started telling people I was planning on homeschooling the girls, one of the first questions everyone asked was, "do you feel comfortable teaching that math?"  That math is the rather challenging math program our township uses that frequently has parents pulling their hair out all over town between the hours of 5 and 8pm on any given night.

Yes.  I was a bit concerned about teaching math to the girls.  I like math, but it has never been my passion.

My passion, obvious to anyone who knows me, is creativity.  Art and creative writing were the areas where I excelled as a kid. I don't know if I have any particular gift, I just know I love it.  I feel alive when I am painting, drawing, designing or writing.  I thought teaching this to my girls would be a slam dunk.  No problem.  Easy as pie.  A cinch.  A no-brainer.  You can see where this is going...

It turns out, math has been a pleasure to teach.  The material is straight-forward and objective.  There is a clear beginning and an end.  There is only one right answer.  Everybody knows what is expected of them.

Creative writing and art?  So subjective. So many right answers.  And when the writing or the drawing is wrong somehow, it's often hard to explain why.  There is no formula to follow to make the correction.  

Still, some of our most spectacular moments over the past few weeks have involved riding our bikes to the lake and setting up easels.  Even though I have struggled to explain "vanishing point" and "perspective" in a way they can understand, it is still an uncommon pleasure to 

lean over your daughter's shoulder, paint brush in hand, and show her how to poke a puffy little cloud into her landscape in a way that looks more realistic, and less like the cartoons she is used to drawing.  With the sun shining and the dog at our ankles, it ceases to matter if we "get it right."  Thankfully, there is no formula for spending time with your kids...

Sometimes Math Can Be Fun...

In addition to all the fun stuff we get to do during the week, we are also actually doing a little work!  But "work" is a funny word.  The attitude of the person doing the work determines how much "work" is actually involved.  Almost anything that sounds like work can be fun if you make an attempt to make it so.  (Okay, so probably not scrubbing the toilets and a long list of other stuff, but hear me out here!)

I don't think you could say math is my girl's favorite subject.  They don't dislike it, per se.  And they don't struggle with math at all.  I just don't think it thrills them.  Since I get to be the teacher this year, we are trying to make math fun.

We have a giant blackboard in our library downstairs and one cozy, reading chair.  Before homeschool, I used the chair only to listen to the girls practice piano in the afternoons.  But now that we do math lessons on the chalkboard, a friendly competition has broken out (read: big fights) over who gets to sit in it and who has to sit on the floor.

This week we stumbled upon the idea of competing to sit in the chair.  Two girls, two math problems on the board, whoever solves the problem correctly first gets to hightail it into the chair (which is often occupied by our Aussie Sheppard, Satchel, who thinks he is being homeschooled as well).  This resulted is speedy math solutions and peals of laughter.  For the time being, math is fun.  

Next up:  I'm eyeing that great big, bare driveway outside and a bucket of sidewalk chalk.  That might put a nice spin on our upcoming Algebra lesson.

Helping out in Jack's class

Jack's 3rd grade teacher invited me to come in and help with a project, so naturally I asked, "Can the girls come too?"  She said, "Sure!"  

Because homeschooling is fairly uncommon in our little town, I think both parents and teachers alike are fascinated with our family's decision.  I am happy to report everyone has been generally supportive.

On Friday we showed up with glue and scrap paper to help the class decorate their Writer's Notebooks. 

 The kids were given a chance to personalize their journals with colored paper and pictures of family and friends.  Maddie and Jenny relished the role of big-girl-helpers and were amazed at how small their old elementary school looked.  

This is probably the first of many times I will say, the girls never would have been able to do this had they been in school.

  Jack loved having them come in to help.  May I also mention, he was the only kid that day to forget to put his folder in his back pack and Mom had to speed home to pick it up!

Technology and (pre)Teenagers

I took the girls shopping this weekend for dresses for Dance Assembly, which starts in a few weeks.  We met up with three other girls and their moms for a fun couple of hours of shopping and laughter.  The twins brought their newly acquired cell phones.  This is an excerpt from an actual conversation that happened in my car on Saturday.

Maddie: Jen, stop it!

Jen:  What?

Maddie:  Stop reading over my shoulder while I'm texting!

Jen:  I'm not!  I only saw a little.

Maddie:  Don't read any of it!  Mom! Jenny's reading my text messages!

Me:  Jenny, that's rude.  Please don't look over other people's shoulder's as they are texting.  It's private.  It's none of your business.

Jenny:  Sorry.

Me:  Maddie, who are you texting anyway?

Maddie:  Jenny.

Friends, I am raising an 11 yr old Abbot and Costello act!  Tickets go on sale Friday.

Clever Maddie

Does every mom think her kids are clever? I do. I think most kids are clever, but it's a special treat when your own child can make you laugh or shows you a side of her sense of humor that takes you by surprise. To that end, I will share a poem Maddie wrote on our way home from vacation last month. Keep in mind as you read, she is a BIG fan of Shel Silverstein.

I Love the Beach

by Maddie

The sand in my swimsuit is bothering me.

The ocean is much too cold.

The crabs are pinching my cheeks pink.

There are sharks in the sea I am told.

The waves are much too boring.

My surfboard is too unsteady.

Mom and Dad are packing up?

Hey, we are leaving already?!?!

I am...

The twins had their first poetry assignment today.  They were provided with the prompts in red below and had to complete the sentences.  It's always a surprise to see what they write about themselves.

I am an artist

I wonder what will be drawn next

I hear in my mind what to paint

I see colors all around in different ways

I am an artist

 

I pretend I have another person’s style

I feel my mind give me an idea

I touch my heart to find out what I can do

I worry in many ways about my art

I cry to my art of how I feel

I am an artist

 

I understand other people’s style

I say that anyone can be artistic

I dream about my art

I try to keep my artistic abilities

I hope that I can do better each day

I am an artist.

 

 

I am a pretender

I wonder why I am here

I hear questions

I see laughter

I want to always be happy

I am a pretender

 

I pretend I can fly

I feel the wind in my hair

I touch the clouds

I worry what will happen next

I cry steady rain

I am a pretender

 

I understand I cannot fly

I say, “ I might”

I dream I can

I try to hope

I hope to try

I am a pretender

We never did THIS in school!

The first few days of public school for any kids are usually a blur of organizing the desk and figuring out the schedule and well, not a lot of academics happen.  So we took the opportunity to just enjoy ourselves and celebrate our freedom from the classroom.  Wanna know what we did?  Check it out!

First we dropped Jack and Bay off at our wonderful, local elementary school for 3rd and 1st grade respectively.  We rode our bikes over and Maddie and Jen bopped around checking on their siblings and saying hello to old teachers.  

Then we got on 

our bikes and made our way to the Pie Lady on Main St.  We sat on her front porch with giant slices of pie (for breakfast! I know!) and did our devotions.  We talked about what it means to call God "Holy."  A difficult concept, even for me.  Then we read a chapter of Pride and Prejudice,

 which we started at the beginning of the summer.  It is slow going, but the girls are really enjoying it.  We just met Mr. Wickham and we agree with Elizabeth that Mr.Darcy is 

superscillious! (yeah, we had to look that word up).

Next up, new cell phones.  The twins have convinced me that they are the ONLY kids on the planet who don't have a cell phone.  While I am not concerned about the cell phone ownership 

of their peers, not having an extra phone was becoming a problem for us.  No matter how many times I said, "these are not YOUR phones, they are FAMILY phones," my girls took to those cells phones like a personal appendage they had been missing since birth.  Jenny has been texting photos of her stuffed animals to our neighbors non-stop.  Sigh...

Now I know I said no academics for the first couple of days, but we could not resist breaking out our new copy of Rosetta Stone Spanish.  We are all learning together and unlike my own personal experience studying Spanish for 6 years in school, this is actually a lot of fun.  I highly recommend it.

When the little 

ones got off the bus, it was time for an ice cream break. 

 Mmmmmm....ice cream!  

And poor Satchel got a bath.  He was starting to smell like a dog!

Day 2 was wonderful.  Another day of blue skies in our bucolic town.  We took our bibles, a copy of Pride and Prejudice and our collapsable easels down to the community center lawn for the morning.  We read, we drew, we hung out...

 

After lunch, we went for pedicures at the nail salon on Main St.

This was a big deal!  I rarely get a pedicure myself, and this was a new experience for the girls.  It was a big treat, but hey, a girl's got to have pretty toes! 

 

Later, we stopped at old Navy 

for some back-to-er...homeschool shopping.  Maddie pointed out

that we did not need to buy much because they will be home most days(and often in their pajamas).  Gotta love that kid!

Back at home more Spanish and piano practice.  We can now all say "the man eats the green apple" so that's progress, right? (El hombre come la manzana verde...tada!)

I know every week will not be filled with so many special treats, but I hope we can maintain the feeling that school, and life, can be unexpectedly enjoyable.

  

And so it begins...

And so it begins…yesterday was the first day of our homeschool/unschool adventure.  It was a spectacular fall day here in the northeast, and the perfect kind of weather to spend the day playing hooky from school, which we did…and plan to do all year.

 

So many people ask me why I decided to homeschool the twins for 6^th grade, so answering that questions seems like the best way to begin our story.  The short answer is, “Why not?”  Other than the loss of a bit of my free time, I can’t think of any other reason not to keep the girls at home.

 Here’s the long version:

 

1. They are growing up so fast, my beautiful girls.  They’ll be out the door to college in the blink of an eye and this year will give me a chance to slow the clock down a bit and cherish them right where they are at this moment.  Every one knows preteens start to pull away from their parents around 6^th grade as they become young adults. I want to make the most of this time.

 

2. I miss them.  The school day is so long here and guess what?  I am not at my best at 4pm and neither are they.  Everybody is tired and ready to relax, but there’s little chance of that for kids in the afternoon these days.  It’s a rapid succession of homework, piano practice, sports, dinner, bath, make lunch for tomorrow, load the backpack, brush teeth, off to bed.  Not much time for anything else.

 

3. That “anything else” would be all the things I dreamed of doing with my children.  I want to teach them to sew, bake bread, paint and draw and a million other things that we never seem to have time for when we are on the public school systems calendar.

 

4. Not to mention time to be spontaneous.  Try as I might to get my girls to talk about important issues or share their secret hopes, dreams and fears when I have a free moment, they always seem to decide to share these things at random moments, when I many not have time or energy to hear it all.  This year, I will.  And we will stop right in the middle of our math lesson and talk about boys or bullies or the meaning of life or whatever!  

 I could come up with a dozen other reasons and talk about how successful homeschooling is and how much time is wasted in the average day in the public schools system and the negative influence of peer pressure, but I won’t.  Because while those are valid reasons for homeschool, it’s not why I am doing this. 

 I hope this will be an adventure.  I hope we will travel and explore all manner of new things.  Most of all, I hope to build an enduring friendship with my oldest girls that will last a lifetime.  And if we accomplish nothing else, that will be enough…