Geocaching: As told by Leif

See that white arrow? The box was hidden under those sticks!

Today the family went to Red Top Mountain to try Geocaching for the first time. I thought I'd let our kids tell the experience from their perspective. 

Leif's account:

We went geocaching at Red Top mountain. First, we got a GPS unit from the park ranger and then we hiked a really long ways. We followed the red and green path. Then we found it hidden under a pile of sticks by a big boulder.

First I saw a stick pile and then I saw a metal thing in it, and then I was like “esh!” I didn’t tell my mom until she almost gave up. Then we had to move the sticks. It was like a big metal box, about three bricks big. I don’t know who opened it, but someone did. Oh yeah, I opened it. It was silver. We saw toys inside. We traded cars (Mater and Sally and another) for six sided dice, and a lizard and a yellow bear. 

Then we followed my Dad and we found a very big piece of quartz, near a hollow tree. The part that I didn’t like so much was that we had to look all around the big boulder for a long time. If you see a blue ribbon, you just go up from that and you’ll find a hollow tree and that’s where you’ll find the cache. In exchange for the quartz we left a car in the hollow of the tree, it was from the movie Cars2: Francesco. I bet you’re going to bring babies to the Geo Cache when I say this, because babies like Cars.

Log book

On the way back my brother fell and it was red, like straight red. My parents carried him back to the car and we had to clean the cut, then we drove home.

Owen's account: 

I went running down the hill, and then I hurt myself. I falled when I run and I was running. I was just dripping. It hurt. Mommy carried me first, then Dadoo.  My favorite part was getting the Geo Treasure!

Advice from Leif: 

One thing I would do differently, would be to make the path shorter next time, because it took like three miles there and three miles back so it was six miles. I recommend you bring more water than just one cup, and don’t drink it all while you’re going there. 

One of the things we had to find on our way was a "small residential structure"...aka birdhouse!

 

We found this quartz next to a tree with a hole in it near the coordinates for a cache. We wondered if this was actually the cache, because it didn't seem very "official", but we took the quartz and left another more obvious treasure.

Science experiment: Fireworks Fail?

I told the boys to make an "oops" face with our 1st attempt.

I found an easy-looking experiment on pinterest called "Fireworks in a Jar".

The idea is that you have a jar of warm water. In a separate plate you put oil, and mix in some food coloring. You then pour the oil into the water, and as the oil sinks, the food coloring suddenly dissolves into the water creating the appearance of fireworks. (see link above or watch our videos below)

Attempt #2, using a plate to keep the coloring separate.

In our first attempt we used a measuring cup for the oil and food coloring. There wasn't enough space to keep the colors apart, so we ended up with a black cloud in our jar.
In the second attempt, we used a plate for the oil and food coloring, so the colors would stay separate, as shown in the picture. However, somehow our yellow mixed in very quickly so as the other colors "exploded" in the water, it sort of looked like we had a jar of urine that was slowly getting dirty...again, I missed the fireworks.

Charles watched the videos with me and thought the experiments were fairly successful, so check them out and judge for yourself.

I'm not saying the experiment couldn't work. In fact, I may give attempt #3 a try at some point and try barely warming the water- maybe ours was too hot.

A still picture I took and brightened, so the yellow is a pleasant color.

Either way, it's no problem. It's good for the kids to experience failure (or disappointment)  and try to figure out how to correct, or as in our case, we can just dump out the dirty water and move on.

Attempt #1

Attempt #2

School year 2014-2015, Week 1

 Here we are! Week 1 of the 2014-15 school year! It came SO early this summer, I was hardly prepared, although another part of me was starting to miss the structure of the school year. Owen is attending a Montessori school through the GA pre-k program. It is the same school, same classroom, and two of the same teachers that Leif had, which has made Leif feel very nostalgic this week. Leif LOVED that school, and Owen is also loving it so far.

Leif was very worried about Owen after we left.

Leif and I are adjusting to it just being the two of us, and for the first few weeks we are going to be doing a lot of hikes, field trips and learning on the go, so that we remember how to have fun together.

Our first day of school began with a hike at Leita Thompson Memorial park, one of our family's favorite places to walk. I packed a picnic and some lessons, and we sat in the field after our walk and did our reading lesson together. Then I read a chapter of A Wrinkle In Time. It was a beautiful beginning to our year.
On Thursday Leif had a home school day at Skyzone, and on Friday we had a play date! Each day we squeezed in our math and reading, and then went off to have fun. Even with all of our fun, by about lunch time each day, Leif was asking if it was time to go get Owen.

First day of school "classroom"

Our curriculum so far consists of the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, Sonlight curriculum readers and lots of books for reading. We are using Mathematics Enhancement Program or MEP and we'll be in a Classical conversations group which will cover history, latin, science and art, along with some math and grammar facts. CC meets one day each week and we will take the topics from our CC day and use them to create our unit studies each week.

For the first few weeks until CC begins, we figured we would form our unit studies around whatever interested Leif. We recently read The Princess and The Goblin by George MacDonald. (free to listen to on Librivox) The hero of the story is a miner-boy named Curdy. So, Leif has been very interested in mining and precious stones. (also influenced by Minecraft) Charles took Leif by the stream behind our house and the collected Mica and Quartz and studied them. They created a cool little document about their studies that I can't seem to upload here, but these are the stones they collected, which now reside in a small treasure chest on Leif's desk:

Mica & Quartz from our stream.

We watched a YouTube documentary on the 3 types of rocks and panning for gold. Then I took Leif to a local jewelry store to check out precious stones. So now, as Leif plays with his Legos, he will pretend the red translucent single pieces are rubies, or the blues are sapphires. I'm hoping to take him panning for gold this year, and also to the Tellus Museum where apparently they have a precious stones exhibit.

Last year when home schooling hit our family rather quickly, I depended on an online program called Time for Learning. I'm really grateful for that program because it entertained Owen, and helped me survive the transition. It wasn't very hands-on, and it didn't require much teaching on my part. This year, as I'm braving the world of home school minus technology, I'm excited for the time that Leif & I will spend together learning. I'm excited that we can have a picnic and do our work. But, I'm also facing the reality that I am a generally impulsive, unorganized person, and this is going to require some planning! I'm ready to take this on, and I'm excited to learn and grow through all of this.

Science experiment: Inflate a balloon with Coke and candy

Our supplies

 The kids have been begging for science experiments, so I found this one on pinterest. Basically, you combine a bunch of poison Coke & candy, and the reaction releases air and inflates the balloon. Fun times!









Directions:
1. Funnel Nerds and Pop Rocks into balloon.
2. Put balloon on the top of the coke bottle without allowing candy to fall into coke. (see video for that image)
3. Once the balloon is sealed, dump candy into soda and watch.

Before doing step 3, I asked the kids to guess what would happen when we put the candy into the soda. Their hypothesis: The balloon will inflate and then pop. After the experiment we recorded the result: The candy released the air in the soda and inflated the balloon. Despite the lack of explosion, the kids were still pretty happy with the experiment. 
After the experiment was over, Leif asked if they could taste the soda, so I had him guess if the soda would be fizzy or flat. He guessed flat, and was correct. Fortunately neither kid asked for more than a sip...and some candy, of course.

Fibber Island

Thanks to They Might Be Giants, today we are living on Fibber Island.
Here is our Fibber Island Poem, written by Leif:

Here on Fibber Island....
We walk on the ceiling,
Our toys stick to the floor.

We dip our heads in chocolate pools,
And we can't breath out of the water.

We have eggs for pets,
And dogs are wizards,
And wizards are bears.

We eat bananas filled with letters,
and letters are bananas,
so you can never write "Elephant".

All we ever say is
"Hello, Goodbye,
Please, Thank You
and You're Welcome."
And, we high five
With our feet.

I wish we really did live on Fibber Island.

- Leif Gordon (age 6)

 

Is it Friday yet? (Week 13)

Since starting to home school, we’ve had a lot of good weeks. This was not one of them. I woke up Monday feeling total despair. My back hurt and I had pain shooting down my leg. My mind was stuck on negative. I couldn’t believe it was only Monday, and I would have to wait until Friday to be alone. Why am I never alone? The house was cluttered and messy, and I felt hopeless about how much time I spend cleaning up and how easily it is undone. Discouraged.
And, it was raining outside so we were stuck inside.

"The Green Slicer"

I thought about going to the gym and just hiding for 2 hours while the kids playing in child care, but Leif is technically not supposed to go in the mornings now that he’s 6, so I figured we would start online lessons, and just go from there. Of course Leif picked a lesson that he required a lot of reading, so before even having my breakfast or coffee, I sat down with him to read his lessons. It was on Vikings, and it ended up being kind of fun. This lesson had an assignment for the student to give Viking names to 5 toys or things around the house, because the Vikings named their weapons. Owen had just mowed the lawn with Charles, so they named the lawn mower, “Lawn Mowery with green slicer power!”, which we shortened to “Green Slicer”. And of course, they named their nerf guns “Hole Maker” and “Fire Shooter”. We all enjoyed it, and that helped my mood a little.

Our matching stripy shirts for dancing.

I ate breakfast while Leif did his next lesson. At the end, one of the little animated creatures that was teaching the lesson did the moonwalk across the screen to celebrate. I mentioned the moonwalk, and both kids had no idea what I was talking about. So, of course, we had to look up Michael Jackson, and watch him do it. Then I looked up a tutorial, and talked the kids into trying to learn the moonwalk with me. I told them in order to dance, we had to clean up the room, and they helped me clean up. (this greatly improved my mood) We put Dubstep Radio on Pandora, and watched several tutorials on the moonwalk.
Leif and I got the movement, but not really the flow of the dance. Still, it was fun. I was pleasantly surprised that I pulled out of my funk, but Tuesday I woke up in pain again, and crabby.

We made it through Tuesday somehow, and Tuesday night I got to bed late, around midnight. Owen woke up at 3:15am and was up for an hour and a half. Wednesday seemed unbearable. Not only was I tired, but Owen was also exhausted and wept about EVERYTHING.

At the playground.

Thursday we had a play date scheduled for mid-day, so we focused on lessons and got out of the house early. I got to spend over 2 hours at the park with two other home school moms. One of the other moms showed up with red eyes because she had been crying in the car feeling like she was the worst mom ever. It was so healing for me to see someone else who didn’t have it all together. We talked about our times of discouragement, but even better than that, we just talked, sometimes not even about our kids. It was just what I needed.

Leif demonstrating the moonwalk.

Leif painted a piano for the Piano Tuner.

Leif's partially finished viking ship painting. Leif claims it is finished, and that there are no oars, and no sails because the vikings are eating breakfast. 

Charles and Owen working on a "Whirlpool" picture.

Owen was very proud of his picture.

Learning from our mistakes (week 12)

I love how mistakes, big or small, can lead to learning. Leif and I did a lesson on Vikings this week, and the text said something like this, "Although some Vikings were pirates (or something evil), some were explorers, traders, (some other good things) and shaped our world today..."
Leif hears this and says, "Aren't traitors bad, mom?"
Me, "Oh, no, traders are good! For example, say we had a garden full of corn, and our neighbors grew a garden of tomatoes (two of Leif's fav foods), we could trade them some corn for some tomatoes."
Leif, "Yes, but aren't SOME traitors bad?"
Me: "No, buddy, it's a really good thing. We even do it today with money. Daddy goes to work...."

You see how the conversation went and why both of us left it a little confused! I was telling Charles  about the viking lesson, and remembered this conversation. I still didn't figure out the mistake, but as soon as I said it out loud to Charles he said, "Were you talking about traitors or traders?" and spelled them to me. I laughed so hard. I can't believe I didn't figure it out while talking to Leif. BUT, it led to a great teaching/learning session on homophones. ("not to be confused with homophobes" - thanks so much, Wikipedia) Leif was especially delighted with I/eye/"Aye, my hearty!"

 Sometimes it's good to be able to laugh at our mistakes, and learn from them. 

The average day...(week 11)

Ever wonder what an average day looks like in our house? It's not easy to describe, so for a few days I shot short videos of us doing our average home school things, and put together this video:

Leif's finished watercolor. We both drew elephants, but he liked mine, so I made copies and all three of us water colored versions of this guy:

Front Row Seat (week 10)

Home Schooling is hard. I freaked out the first month or so. It was hard to tell if Leif was making progress, it was hard to get the boys to get along, it was hard to get the boys to focus. It still is many of those things much of the time. I sneak in workouts, I run to the grocery store when Charles is home with the boys, I sneak in showers whenever I can, often after the boys are in bed at night.
But just like other areas of parenting, every once in a while, there is a moment or a break through, and it make it all worth it.  This week had a few of those moments.

I knew that Leif was beginning to read but he was still very shy about it. He was so afraid to be wrong, so he would whisper his reading lessons. It sounded like he was getting them, and he seemed to be understanding, but it was hard to tell. On Wednesday, Charles got to be home for the morning which is unusual. He got to observe Leif doing some of his computer home school work. Leif actually read out loud to Charles. And then he read aloud with me during one of our Scaredy Cat reading lessons. Part of the assignment was for him to write his own sentence, choose punctuation and read it accordingly. He decided to put three different punctuation marks at the end and then read the sentence through three

times using different intonation based on the punctuation mark, just for fun.

Later during our math lesson Leif was learning how to add three single digit numbers together. He had done a lesson on that on Tuesday and had struggled with it. I worried that it was too advanced for him. But on Wednesday, the lesson explained it in a different way and Leif began adding three numbers out loud correctly. No finger counting, no Abacus, sometimes counting up but sometimes just knowing the correct sum.

I had the realization that home school is giving me a front row seat on my children's education, and it is very exciting and very rewarding.  

Our family!

Exhausted, and still content (week 9)

As I'm catching back up to date on the blog, I nearly forgot week 9. (March 3-7) It was a whirlwind of a week, filled with exhaustion and celebration, and some home school too.

Leif with his minion cupcakes.

While we were in Colorado, I needed to send out Leif's birthday party invitations for Leif's birthday on March 6th. Leif wanted to invite his entire Kindergarten class from public school, plus some new home school friends, church friend, etc. We talked him into having it at a playground, instead of our house for obvious reasons! The weather looked like it was going to be nice the weekend we were returning home from Colorado, so we scheduled it for that Sunday afternoon.
We arrived home on Friday night. I spent all of Saturday and Sunday morning frantically party planning, making minion cupcakes and decorations. Sunday afternoon was a beautiful, warm, fun afternoon! We had a pinata, 3-legged races, Duck-Duck-Goose, and Gru on the guitar. It was a wonderful fun celebration of our amazing 6 year old.

Charles helping Owen play Duck, Duck, Goose

Charles, dressed as Gru playing guitar.

 Sunday night I felt beyond exhausted. I finally got to bed after some clean up but was awakened by Owen a little before 4am. He was up until 6am (who knows why?) and finally fell back to sleep. I was so thankful that the kids and I were able to sleep in a little, and not have to rush Leif off to school. We were all very tired on Monday, the sort of day I dreaded when I first started to home school.
But, I got Leif set up with his computer lessons, and just decided to go easy on my end of teaching that day. Leif did his lessons, and had asked how Bricks were made, and we found a great documentary series on YouTube by the Discovery Channel called "How It's Made", which also has many other topics we've not yet watched. In the documentary, they mention the 3 Little Pigs, so we watched the 3 Little Pigs on YouTube as well. It ended up being a very peaceful, restful day, and I realized, if I can enjoy home schooling on a day when I am that exhausted, I think I really like this!

After our lesson on the food chain, we ate ice cream and tracked the chain from grass to ice cream. Leif's a good food model, isn't he?

And then it was Spring. (week 7)

In Georgia, in the winter, one day you wake up and the world is sunny and warm and not at all wintry. Except for the odd ball of snow that lived in a shaded spot, there is very little evidence of winter. That was our week. We did our lessons in the morning, and by the afternoon we were frolicking at a playground, or in the stream behind our house. I love the freedom in our schedule to take breaks and go outside, and all of the time we get together. Sometimes there is the complication of when to get groceries, or when to shower, but in general it is a joy to be together.

Snowschool? Sickschool? (week 6)

Last week it felt like if we just replaced the word "home" in homeschool with either "sick" or "snow", that would pretty well summarize our week. We did make it to the children's museum on Monday.

Tuesday morning Leif woke up sick. He was crying with a sore throat and was having trouble getting a full breath. After ibuprofen and a nebulizer treatment he was much better, but I let him have a very relaxing day anyway.

Wednesday, we started to do school, and at about 10:30am got a call from the neighbor that they were sledding down their street, so we called for an early recess and went outside! Thursday, we called for a "delayed opening" of school, because we "needed" to build a snowman before all of the snow melted!
And by Friday, I had Leif's cold and was feverish and had lung issues. I still taught...some, but again it seemed like a partial day. So, week six we can pretty much blame on a cold, or the snow, or something! Whatever it was, I was still sort of amused at how many parents were freaking out because their kids had snow days, and they were home from school and they didn't know what to do. Now that we home school, we always have a lesson, or a project to do if we are in the house, so there is no need to worry about what to do anymore.

Penguin for his best buddy Will.

Owl Valentine for Nana.

Kitty Valentine for Aunt Heather & the girls.

Oh, and of course we made Valentine's crafts to send to the grandparents, and give to friends.

I turned the Owl picture into a Valentine for Leif to hand out at his homeschool Valentine party. Leif signed "Love, Leif" in cursive, and Owen wrote his "O" with an alien face in it. (lots of eyes)