Fantabulous Friday

Have I mentioned how much I love Fridays?? That's my day to play home school mom...my fantasy job :-) It means I have work hours to make up on the weekend, but it is well worth it!
Today started with building a fire - I was nice enough to do the outside work of gathering sticks/wood before waking Matthew (usually his job). We had breakfast by the fire and read Story of the World. We're on the second volume, and Robin Hood is in the picture on the cover, so we've been wondering when he'd appear in our story. Today was the day!

Next it was time to get dressed and head outside for some fresh air. Matthew said he'd like to go golfing, but knew I couldn't be away from my computer (work) for that long, so he settled for hitting balls into the net in the backyard.

We were taking turns hitting balls, and when I finished one of my turns, I couldn't find Matthew. Here's where he was....

(the roof of the garage)

Inspired by Robin Hood and his recent Medieval Faire experience, Matthew decided a little archery was in order.

He made this quiver last year after he got an archery set for Christmas. You see why we thought duct tape was appropriate for his stocking this year!

I guess the memory of making the quiver got Matthew thinking about pvc pipe and what else he might like to do with it, because he suddenly decided he wanted to make a geyser tube. This sounded like a good idea since one of his friends from the River City Unschoolers group expressed interest in doing the Coke and Mentos experiment, but when I heard there was drilling involved, I started looking to postpone this project to an Andy day. Matthew said he'd be happy to just get the pvc pipe cut for today, so he did that.

We headed back inside for some violin practice. Matthew's annual recital is coming up on March 20, so we are trying to get the current song he is learning down in the hopes of learning one more new one before recital time.

We fit in another chapter of Life of Fred Fractions before it was time to head out to pick up Patrick at school. This quirky quasi-curriculum is working out really well for us! Another week I'll have to elaborate on this resource that I stumbled on while reading this (AMAZING) unschooling mom's blog.

Lately, I purposely arrive a little early for pick up at Patrick's school to leave Matthew and I enough time to fit in a story from Roald Dahl's Boy: Tales of Childhood Days while we wait. This was a gift that my sister (the famous Aunt Zanny) gave Matthew during her last visit, and it's been a really fun read!

Truly enjoying the journey.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest...

So, there were at least two really fun outings yesterday that I forgot to take my camera on! So, how am I supposed to blog about them without any pictures? I'm not even sure they really happened.

Well, I'll give it a shot. The first was a bike ride Matthew and I took to the duck pond. We brought our Story of the World book, some bread for the ducks and some water and snacks for ourselves. We alternated reading about English knights and Japanese samurai with playing follow the leader, climbing trees and feeding the ducks. The weather was fabulous and we had a wonderful time :-)

Earlier, when he and I were working on Life of Fred Fractions at the kitchen table, Matthew told me "I have un-motion sickness." Took me just a second to figure out that he was telling me he had been sitting too long and needed to move! So, he ran around the house a couple of times, grabbed his nerf dart gun, snuck up on me and shot me with it, then sat back down to finish the chapter. I love that he was self-aware enough to figure out exactly what he needed and I really love the way he so aptly put it into words. Okay, I guess I just think he's cute ;-)

The other fun outing yesterday was dinner and Cosmic Bowling with friends from the River City Unschoolers group that we are a part of. This is a fairly new group and has been our first opportunity to meet up with other unschoolers in real life (as opposed to in cyberspace!) The group is relatively small, but we have really been enjoying the get togethers. It is the first home school group we've been involved with that Matthew always looks forward to meeting up with regardless of the activity. Andy and Matthew hang out with them on Thursday afternoons, but there are also occational weekend outings like this one that the whole family can participate in. We just plain enjoy each others company, which is a real find! I'm very grateful to my friend Keti for establishing the group and facilitating the gatherings.