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.

Unschooly Fun

After a break over the holidays, our River City Unschoolers group is getting back to their Thursday afternoon gatherings. This week, Gail was the gracious host, and Matthew had a great time learning to use her pottery wheel.


Trampoline jumping and Rock Band are two other must-dos whenever Matthew visits there! The kids in the group are starting to participate in our yahoo e-mail group and are getting involved in planning activities for our Thursday meetings. We're looking forward to more pottery, Valentine candy making, science experiments, and whatever else the gang is inspired to organize.

Then, on Friday, Andy and Matthew headed to Gainesville for the Hoggetowne Medieval Faire. They had a blast!!

Jousting Tournament

Archery

Andy and Matthew got to fence! They had a balloon on each shoulder, and the object was to pop the other player's balloons. You can see Andy won the match, with one remaining balloon

Matthew was in his element!

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.

Our Education Journey

Since I'm sure my interest (bordering on obsession) in alternative education will come up in my ramblings here, I thought I'd post a little synopsis of the education journey we've traversed with our kids to date. This will, for the most part, be a cut and paste of a post I wrote on a home schooling message board where people who had kids both at school and at home were discussing the challenges of having a foot in both of those worlds. For those of you who don't frequent message boards...DS= Dear Son, DD = Dear Daughter, DH = Dear Husband

Year 1
Send oldest DS to neighborhood public school (with fabulous reputation) for Kindy
Have serious philosophical issues with the school and end up moving him to a private Montessori school at Winter Break
Years 2&3
Happy with Montessori school – over the next couple of years, younger sibs follow
Year 4
Yikes – 3 kids in private school!!
Doing lots of reading about unschooling – fantasizing about quitting work, having the kids quit school and living our lives freely together
Reality – I can’t afford to quit work – even with the savings on tuition
Year 5
DH – to the rescue – he’ll stay home with kids (he already an at-home parent at this point – but will agree to have them with him f/t)
DH attempting to live out my fantasy – me jealous, DH unenthusiastic
Year 6
I swing a way to do most of my work from home - to become more a part of the home life and to allow for more flexibility (not everyone has to go on every outing, etc)
Older 2 decide they want to try neighborhood public school – want to be a part of what ‘everyone’ is doing
So – we quickly go from 1 parent home with 3 kids to 2 parents home with 1 kid!!
Year 7
After a year home alone, youngest DS decides to try public school as well
He is less than thrilled with the PS experience and comes back home at Winter Break
Year 8 (the here and now)
Older 2 in their 3rd year of public school and still happy with their decisions
Youngest DS still at home and we are finally having more success developing a social network, and bringing along Dad’s enthusiasm. DS has a faculty of teachers! DH substitute teaches on Monday and Fridays – so my mom (a.k.a. Grammy) has DS on Mondays and I have him on Fridays. DH has him Tues, Wed, and Thurs.
With Grammy he does a lot of cooking, sewing, gardening and outings. With DH he goes violin lessons, golf lessons, PE class (DH leads this class for a homeschool group), field trips and get togethers with home schooling groups, does science experiments, woodworking and practices baseball and football.
With me on our Fridays together and sometimes in the evenings (when the others are either doing homework or in bed) we tend to get slightly more schooly. We are on the 2nd volume of Story of the World, he is doing Rosetta Stone Spanish, Life of Fred Fractions, we are doing a read aloud, we sometimes do spelling/vocab work – but always with plenty of sword fighting and youtube surfing (or whatever his passion of the day happens to be) in between. The more open I am to following his lead and joining him in his world, the more willing and open he is to following mine.

So, that is where we are. Enjoying the journey :-)