Category Archives: it’s cool to school

weekending

Posted in advantageous adventures, it's cool to school, kiddie-do by

ahhhh yes. spring! we officially sprung forward around here so even though that equinox hasn’t made it official…it’s spring dangit. we made it outdoors for some activity this weekend. it was glorious.

after all my grumbling about not being able to take darla on a nature hike like a year ago at my parents’, i decided to go for it even though snow was still on the ground. because, why not? and i’m so glad we did. it was the perfect day for it. the skies were clear, sun bright, temps just warming up so we could sit and literally watch the snow melting off the trees into the creek:

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we hiked over and examined rocks and the creek bed. we tossed sticks. rested on fallen logs and listened to the many birds. we guessed at animal tracks and got our boots muddy. we listened to the slow trickle of melting snow and the occasional plop of a big chunk as it fell into the creek. we basked in the greatness of my sycamores.

oh how i long for my indiana home.

creekside

Posted in advantageous adventures, it's cool to school by

we spent some time with the rivers and the creeks this past week. darla enjoyed throwing things into said bodies of water. it was very nice of mother nature to give us those temperature spikes that allowed for some outdoor exploration. this is pretty fantastic time of year for getting a last little communion with nature.

although, i am hoping for some winter hikes this year :)

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i think you all should know that she was trying to teach the ducks to fetch in that second photo. she’s special.

wawwy

Posted in advantageous adventures, familyness, i dig music, it's cool to school, parenting apparently? by

no matter what happens tomorrow i’m glad i was there for this.wawwyjay z obamawawwy

and i’m glad i was with these two line buddies. darla was a real trooper. i mean it. we were there from 11 in the morning until 5 and she was great. she got a little bored during the boss’s slower songs so she started playing games on my phone. as soon as jay z started she just handed my phone back to me without even so much as breaking gaze of the stage and stared transfixed. so maybe she’s into hip hop. she a fly girl. she a j-lo.

just now during bedtime routine, i asked her what she thought of the rally and she said “oh it was great. it smelled like popcorn and the nerds you brought were yummy.” soooo maybe she didn’t really get that much out of it…but she told me she really liked the parts where she got to yell with everyone. that’s enough for me.

happy voting tomorrow, everyone!

ps. here was my main reference point for the day to darla. i may rely on an american tail as a teaching source just a little too much:

first field trip

Posted in advantageous adventures, it's cool to school by

our first field trip with darla’s school was more like a patch trip, pumpkin patch that is.

on monday, darla’s school arranged a visit to nearby Circle S Farm. i was pretty impressed by their set up. lots for the kiddos to enjoy and learn from. and they enjoyed it for sure. and how. let’s have a looksie, shall we?

the first thing that made the day special was getting to hang with darla’s friend kaden and the second thing was the pumpkin donuts. yum. YUM!

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and then it was on to playing in the hay barn

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and then it was on to hayrides through sunflowers

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to pick our pumpkins

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and spy on woolly caterpillars

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then it was back to the farmyard for animals, hay maze and more jumping in the hay

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and my favorite two moments of the day

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we had a really great time. more than that, we had two tired kids who wore themselves out having a great time. score.

c week

Posted in it's cool to school by

remember our letter learning from earlier in the year such as here and here?

well, i’m attempting to bring it back and work in conjunction with what little miss darla is learning in her preschool. they go over a letter each week so we’ll be reinforcing here at home.

this week was C. here’s our brief activities:

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coloring and candy all while listening to chicago. that’s my kinda schoolin’.

school dayz

Posted in it's cool to school by

we tackled our convergence with traditional education in these past weeks.

while other parents snapped cute photos of their little ones posed neatly in front of signs THIS is what i had to work with

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let’s take a closer look at those facial expressions

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ha ha. yeah, well she’s really going to regret it when i make her come back to this sign EVERY YEAR on the first day of school and reenact these photos. i mean it.

despite what these pictures portray, her first week of school went off without a hitch. in fact, these pics are taken from orientation day, at which she tried to keep us from coming in the room with her. she just held up her hands and said “bye, guys. bye.”  right after these shots she wanted to clarify “soooo….the next time we come to school you’re just going to drop me off and then leave, right?”

it seems we’ve both been looking forward to a little time apart. i’m happy to have a little girl who is well adjusted and ready to be independent.

we had time the following school day, the first official day of school, to snap a few nice ones:

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i tried to honor her wishes with a quick goodbye on the first day but i did snap this shot of her right before she strapped all three baby dolls on herself. she’s a tiny, baby-wearing enthusiast.

for the record, i prefer those shots of darla next to the sign over any first-day-of-school conventional poses.

quality time

Posted in it's cool to school, let me let me update ya, love and happiness by

i’m off to san fran for 5 whole days. FIVE.

so i made sure to have some quality time with my little peter venkman – as she sometimes likes to be called.

we spent a nice afternoon picnic lunch date at wallace garden plots in our neighborhood the other day after we visited the library. it was pretty cool to walk around all the different plots and take in the different gardening techniques. it was good to be around abundant gardens. it was peaceful and educational. i was able to show darla where sunflower seeds grow and we discussed the different ways plants grow their fruit.

yay for free teaching resources!

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i’ll sure miss that girl.

ps. that yellow flower is for my hair. laughy laughy.

I see. I do.

Posted in it's cool to school, Uncategorized by

“I” driven learning:

I see, I do

darla chose I for this week. i lucked out again since both st. patrick’s day and the ides of march fell during our time frame. well, the weeks are getting pretty sloppy and i think this might have been 8 days but whatevs.

ice was also a very versatile subject for us. we did our ice cream visit to jeni’s, made ice cubes with food coloring – an idea from jamie – and talked about ice in the arctic as it relates to polar bears. we saw the polar bears at the zoo and scoped them out a bit more in friends’ magazine. darla is pretty distressed by the fact that the polar ice caps are melting and the polar bear population is declining.

mike has been sailing around the south pacific islands so we looked all those up on the globe and then darla drew a picture of her “dream island” which she said didn’t really consist of anything besides pink trees.

for the ides of march i tried to get the kids to say “et tu, brute” to each other all day but do you know what 3 year olds don’t like to speak? Latin.

and of course the st. patrick’s day celebration was lots of fun and useful. we learned about ireland, watched the secret of kells, had irish inspired snacks i.e. irish cheddar – lazy mom – and we made four leaf clovers. i asked her to list four things she felt lucky to have in her life and her list is as follows: lipstick, crayons, glow worms, and her bunny. hmmm. her lipstick is actually chapstick and the bunny, incidentally, is not even hers. i may have to do a more thorough job of teaching her our blessings. for mine i listed family, friends, health and music. she made me write her name out underneath family because she proclaimed she needed her own spot. quite right, but i did point out to her that i didn’t even place above glow worms in her heart. such is the life of a mom.

darla is with her grandparents this weekend so i’m going to take the opportunity to recharge and come back with more dedication to education this upcoming week. we did start on G today – she picked it out but universe helped me with the start of gymnastics today and her visit to grandparents.

a week and a half of Js

Posted in it's cool to school by

i have been a little unorganized around here lately. that’s how things usually get about a month into it. We started with the letter J a week and a half ago but since i was being a lazy bum we had to kind of extend it a few days. Here’s our learning as we go:

J week

the week(s) included: books on jazz and josephine baker, cutting out jewelry from a lovely little junk mail magazine to create a jewelry box (momma liked helping with this one. shiny things!!!) we took in some jazz inspired art at CMA, broke out the trusty old solar system puzzle to learn about Jupiter. Darla is already familiar with Zeus so that was a big help in explaining the history behind Jupiter’s name. We colored some jelly beans and pasted them in a paper basket. We listened to Elton John a lot. She helped me draw pictures of J things, like Jack and the Beanstalk and our friend Jeff. Our french vocabulary word was jaune so we went through life pointing out yellow things. i’m just trying to keep it simple over here.

Feb 29, 2012

we had lots of jam & jelly and spent time with our favorite little J girl, Joni.

as you can tell, all of this kinda gets collected as we go along. I don’t really sit down and do lesson plans, per say. I just see what life provides us. I try not to be too formal. Sometimes I wonder if I should be buying work books or home school curricula but I think we’re doing ok. I like to be inventive and resourceful. I like to turn our junk mail into learning experiences. I can find more than enough materials at the local libraries, and my favorite, FAVORITE place for buying books is at the goodwill. So many barely read books are discarded and resold for less than a dollar. In my mind there is no need to spend a fortune on these materials at such a young stage.

This is just what works for me. creativity, flexibility and very loose boundaries are what i need to be a good teacher. I tried to have set lesson plans and it just made me frustrated and learning wasn’t fun for either of us. now we just learn as we go. isn’t that how it really is in life anyway? you learn as you go.

we will now pause for our “learn as you go, learn as you grow” commercial break.