Day 003: Field trip

Our field trip today brought us to a local beverage making company.  Our kids were split into two groups, preschoolers and those that are older. The big kids toured the museum first, while the little ones hung out with the moms. After about an hour, they got to go to the lab and make their own beverage including a presentation and a slogan. I think they all had a blast working in teams, tasting and creating. Coqui came back so happy.

The little ones got to see the museum while the big kids were in the lab. The tour was pretty interesting, especially seeing how things were done like a hundred or fifty years ago, compared to today's technology and how fast the production times have become. Very neat field trip.

Day 002: PE with kids of all ages

This is a picture of our local PE class. It was beautiful, so they went outside with the kids to play Flag Football. We all know that COqui would love that, but even my girl did love it.
Now this is awesome. A class only for homeschoolers run by former homeschoolers. The games change every week. They build muscles but also good sportsmanship. They teach to play in teams, to help each other, and support the weak. I really love bringing my kids there.

365 Days of our Homeschooling Days - Day 01

It has been a looong time since I last blogged and the simple reason is that our lives are very busy. We are out and about every day, adventuring, socializing and learning. Who said that homeschoolers are not socializing? (rhetoric question!)

So I came up with a plan to get me on this site a little more often. One point on my Lifelist is to plan and execute a 365-day photo shoot. Until now, I never knew what to photograph to keep it interesting enough for me to shoot and for you to look at. But now I found it: I will take a picture of our homeschooling life for the next 365 days.


Now I know, some of you are absolutely not interested in following us on this journey, and that's okay. But for those of you that do, welcome and I am glad that you are here. I will try to keep it engaging and entertaining. A warning before we start: these photographs will most likely be snapshots, I am not trying to win a spot in the next exhibition at the Met.

So I started a few days ago, but have not had the time to download the pictures onto here. (surprise, surprise) Let's get started before something else comes up:

Here is a picture that just says it all about homeschooling for me: the youngest with the oldest, learning together. Even though the baby doesn't understand much yet, she is still getting some info, and, what is more important, she is getting the bond with her big brother.

Our First Salt Dough Map

As we are continuously studying Ancient History, we included some Geography as well. And which continent is perfect when you just studied Ancient Egypt, Joseph, and Moses: Africa.

Here is a picture of the final map:

The kids had so much fun making this, they didn't realize that they were learning and applying what they had learned previously. I think it came out really good.

You will need a pizza box (old or new), a printer to print the maps, a sharpie, the ingredients for the salt dough, paints, and

I found the recipe for the salt dough online. They are many out there, but we used this one - their Africa map looked intriguing enough for us. Before we could start, we needed to find a map big enough for our outline, I printed it on four pages from this website. Then we needed a physical map of Africa, which I printed from this page. We cut out the big map, taped it together, and then traced the outline onto the pizza box. We tried to be as accurate as possible.

Next, we mixed all the ingredients together:

Coqui really doesn't like to get his hands dirty! He is still smiling here, but soon he had enough and Peanut and I finished mixing it all together.

The next part was so cool: to see Africa take shape in front of us.

Honestly, they did all this by themselves, they just needed some help with the rivers.

 When the map was done and some dough leftover, they wanted to add some African 'things', so they sculpted a pyramid, a snake, and a volcano.

 The map needed to dry for at least a day, but we had to wait for two days to get back and paint it. The weather was nice, so we headed outside for this.

We really enjoyed this and can't wait to make another salt dough map of a different continent.

Draw and Write through history

We have been studying Ancient Greece since mid November. It's taken us a long time due to a vacation, the holidays, and the new year; there were a lot of school-free days. Lol. So here we are, almost done with this unit. Coqui loves history and art. It was a cold day, so we gathered around the fire place in the living room and spread all over the floor to do our learning.

I recently found out about these books called Draw and Write through history.
They are similar to the Draw Your World books - also called Draw, Write, Now. My history lover and I feel in love with the book that we bought, which is of course about Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. We used it before, but today was a great day to pull it back out. So Coqui and I sat down and drew this Ancient Greek soldier below.

Can you guess who's is who's?
OKay, so the original is all the way to the right, that is pretty clear. No one can draw this well in our family. I did not bad, but some of my lines were off. I did not correct them to show my trying-to-be-perfect perfectionist that it is okay to mess up. Of course, he hated his picture. But I am proud that he persevered through the end, even though half way through copying the drawing he wanted to give up. I think he did a fantastic job, but I am also a little bias.