A Week Without Kids

  This has not happened in forever, but last week I went without seeing my kids all. week.  All week! I left them in capable hands (Ducky and Grandma).  Hubby and I were off to work on a site in NW Missouri.  It was a fascinating Antebellum homestead site and I hadn't been on a dig since before the kids were born. I'd been studying the time period and was anxious to get my hands dirty uncovering artifacts from it!
  We've been on a a high activity swing here.  The last month and a half has been run, run, run and when we do that I tend to be a little looser with the technology limitations we like to keep on ourselves.  So, when I dropped the kiddos off with Ducky and Grandma while I didn't expect them to do school I gave the kiddos a helpful list of things they could do to not be attached to a computer or tv.  Most of the things were off of Bubby's Boy Scout requirement list that really would double for schoolishness ;) I didn't have to worry though, I think that if homeschooling had been more accepted when I was young, my folks would have excelled at it because they are always coming up with interesting pursuits for the kids.
  They built contraptions out of gummy bears...

which also included color sorting and counting for Shorty.
  Hunted morel mushrooms...

they had started out hunting frogs for a Scout merit badge but got a little sidetracked ;)
  Created interesting things.  And also helped Grandma try out concoctions for vacation Bible school snacks.

They even did some technical school things like journaling and Life of Fred.

We are just trying out Life of Fred.  Bubby loves it, Mookie not so much.  But she is enjoying her Kahn Academy.
  After a long week we were all a little sad and Ducky and Grandma brought everyone out a little early for a trip to the site and then the kiddos stayed and helped - well, Bubby did and the other two played.

And we just soaked up time out in the wilds of NW Missouri together.

stomp rockets!

Learning with the Amazing Race

  We needed a good geography study again.  A few years back, we utilized our enjoyment of the tv show The Amazing Race.  We would make a lapbook and do crafts associated with the countries they visited.  It went really well.  We gave it up when during one episode they were in Vietnam and they had the teams sing a Communist propaganda song.  As a daughter of a Vietnam veteran I took extreme offense to such a thing and we boycotted it.  But, it is an effective tool to use for a curriculum base. It's entertaining:  The teams' challenges reflect local customs; It's quick paced: at an episode per week you have to keep moving with it, there's no putting it to the back burner; It's multi-media: you can incorporating, reading, art, music, geography, dvds, etc... all within one subject.  So, The Amazing Race was on again!
  This time around, our schedule is such in the evenings that we don't always have a chance to catch the Race on primetime, so we accessed an older season with our Amazon Prime membership and scheduled an episode per week.  That's enough of a spread to get some good crafts in and keeps the kids temporarily at bay when they are begging to watch the next episode ;)
  Watching on primetime requires a trip to the library each week to gather resources.  This time around, I can browse the episode descriptions and plan out our library gatherings a couple weeks in advance.  Things we check out are things like this...

This is part of our selections for the England/Scotland leg of the race.  For the Viking craft, we created our own Viking brooches too.  We found instructions for them over at : angelicscalliwags.com

We read aloud Paddington by Michael Bond too.  The kids really enjoyed it!  Bubby absconded with it and finished it in short order and the other two listened with rapt attention during each chapter.  We made our own Paddington bear as a craft.

We used a cork for his body, then puff balls, pipe cleaners and puffy paint.  The adorable hats we found at Hobby Lobby.
  We amped it up a little bit for the big kids and I am having them do lapbook parts on World Governments thanks to a Hands of a Child lapbook I had on hand.
   This might become our winter project each year.  Something that is a lot of hands on when its too cold to want to get outside!

Why you should use Genealogy in your Homeschooling

  When normal life doesn't get in the way, I am a rabid genealogist.  In fact, I saw this meme this week on Facebook and couldn't agree more...

  Because of my love for all things family history, I look for a way to also get the kids excited at any chance I get.  I have found it extremely valuable in our schooling too!  So, why should you do it?

1)  You make history come alive!  A few years ago we started using Beautiful Feet for our history studies.  One of the books was the Matchlock Gun by Walter Edmonds.

Have you read it?  Oh my goodness, it is one of my most favorite suspense building read-alouds ever!  It is based on a Van Alstyne family in New York (although it is not clear if it was based on a real story or an embellished one).  Nonetheless, Hubby's ancestors were Van Alstynes from the same part of New York, and had a similar situation with a great grandma who had to hide with the baby in an old log while the Indians walked all around.  Talk about an opportunity to get the kiddos interested!  The kiddos sat with rapt attention when I read that book! 

2) You create a personal connection to historical events.  Valley Forge is just where George Washington had a hard winter vs. your ggggg-grandpa Elwell spent the winter in George Washington's army at Valley Forge.  Its an attention grabber. Throw in some wonderful hands on things, and history is not boring!

3) Its a great lead in for teaching the hard issues.

I was working on some research today and Bubby came and looked over my shoulder and saw this picture.  He said, "who is that?".  I said, "he was a slave who married a slave that our family had owned.  What can you tell me about him from his appearance?".  Bubby replied, "well, he has white features".  I said, "yes, his father was most likely his owner".  Mind blown.  We got into this great discussion on how I came to that conclusion, why people would own others, etc... Using family history as a lead in takes some of the edge off of the hard discussions.  Now there's still that reconciliation of why did my family do this to others, but you can take that and turn it into a morality lesson too and explain why they were not following the Christian values that they may have claimed. 

4) You can make history hands on.  Get out grandpa's old World War II uniform, the autograph album that has Civil War soldiers names in it, the crazy quilt piece that is 100+ years old.  To see and touch these things of those that went before us and where it fit in history is so important!

5) It creates a sense of belonging.  Visit the old homeplace, walk a cemetery where ancestors are buried.  When you can see your connection to history through these old places your family walked, you care more about it, you care about what it has been and its future preservation. 

The more connections to history you create, the more your kiddos will seek out history anywhere!

The Great National Park Adventure - Rushmore

Shorty at our Custer Cabin

  We woke up in Custer State Park to a beautiful morning - I could see my breath!  A beautiful haze was blanketing the huge trees.  Oh how I wish that we could have lingered a little longer in Custer.  They have wonderful wildlife and just neat areas to explore.  We were feeling the crunch though and after a brief stop at the visitors center in Custer that the CCC built, we were on our way to Rushmore.

wouldn't this be an awesome house?

  The drive up was just beautiful.  Even though it wasn't far from where we camped, the curves and switchbacks made it slow going, but really who minds when surrounded by so much beauty of nature?

   When we got to Rushmore, we could tell that it was almost the next weekend because the crowds had really picked up.   The cool thing was when we walked through the parking garage we saw almost a different state/province in every slot!  To be totally honest, I was very disappointed at the "grand entry" to see the monument.  I thought that the monument itself was grand enough and the other just took away from that.  It wasn't there when I was there 20+ years ago, so I was glad I had the memory of that time:)
 

   The exhibit area down closer to the monument was really well done.  They were interactive for the kids and great for all different learning types.   The kids' favorite one was where you could push a tnt detonator plunger and make parts of Mt. Rushmore explode using original video footage.

Making Rushmore go "boom"

getting sworn in as Rushmore Jr. Rangers

  The walk on the President's trail was so pretty with lots of great photo opportunities.  Bubby was really interested in all the Ponderosa pines in the area and would pick up the needles along the path and hand them to Shorty telling him what they were.  Shorty misunderstood and thought they were "porkapine" quills :)

  By the time we left Rushmore, our hopes of reaching Devil's Tower for an afternoon visit were slim, so we just headed for our next night's stay in Keyhole State Park.  It is about 20 miles away from the tower, but you can see it in the distance on your descent into the park.

  Our cabin at Keyhole was more basic (without a heater or close showering facilities), but it was still lovely and lakeside too! 

   Oh how majestic that tower looks!  I've been 3 times and am not tired of it yet.  We got there right when the visitor's center opened and got "rock star parking", which was good, because when we left a couple hours later, it was getting really busy.  

  Surprisingly the kids didn't get really tired of all the hiking we did.  They all trooped along, just excited to be seeing what we saw at each place.  Shorty didn't care much for the faces on the mountain at Rushmore, but he did enjoy the tower - maybe it was because of all the rocks he could climb along the trail.

walking the tower trail

 

  

the kids on the debris at the base of the tower

   After earning their 5th and last Jr. Ranger patch, we started on our last leg through the mountains in Colorado - um, or so we thought.  From about Gillette, Wyoming on we drove through rain.  When we reached a few miles north of Cheyenne the road signs started saying that all roads were closed from Cheyenne to Colorado - huh?  We'd been without internet/tv/phone service for a couple of days so had no idea what was going on.  After we got cell service I made a call to Ducky and Gigi to find out what was going on and they told us about the flooding going on in Colorado.  What a blessing we weren't a day or so earlier in crossing the state border (they had closed the border just that day) - we had been planning on heading to Estes Park area.

  We turned east on I-80 and decided to drive on home.  When we hit pea soup fog in Nebraska, we were doubting our choice.  It even had strong winds with it, but the fog was unaffected!  When we stopped for gas, the attendant said that it had been like that for 2 days.  Thankfully, we ran out of it and had a great uneventful trip safely home.  Shorty woke up when we pulled in at 4am and cheerfully shouted "Home!".  He was more than ready to be there, his schedule had been shot to high heaven on this trip and he was done.  Actually the rest of us were wearing thin too, that is except Bubby.  That kid just fed off of each place we went.  We told them in stages where we were going over the next day or so, that way they would enjoy each thing and not be looking forward to the next to do.  Every time we'd let them in on the schedule, he'd say "I've read about that place and have always wanted to go!" and tell us some odd fact about it.  

  The funny thing about this trip was that the kids asked what we'd be doing about school since they were missing it.  They thought we were weird when we told them that they'd been doing school the whole time!  But really, all the intensive Jr. Ranger research, all the math figuring out ETA and how long the trails would be, P.E. (the hiking), geography, history, etc.... it was the ultimate in school! 

   Who knows when we'll have the opportunity again for something like this, but we'll be ready when we get it! :)