Who Makes Seeds?

Taven bought a potato gun last week at the natural science museum with his allowance money. Finally! Real bullets! He sits on the porch out back and shoots them into the chicken coop.

 Here is a birthday card he made for his friend Josh. His drawings are getting more and more detailed and I LOVE them! He even drew a tree with leaves next to the cats (yes they are cats) but I do not have a picture. The cat on the right is pregnant and has a baby in her belly.

 Here are the girls at Josh's party. They had their face painted for the first time and it was exciting!

 HOWEVER, everyone was not so chipper when we got home. There was screaming and crying over balloon animals coming apart and popping, over me not bringing enough food home, and over face paint being wiped off. Serious serious crying! Oh and bubbles from the goodie bags being lost in the car. When I finally got them to bed, Naia was the only one left crying (over the face paint) but finally started feeling better when I let her give me a high five as hard as she could. I pretended it hurt REALLY bad, that made her laugh, and we were good to go.

After the kids are in bed, this is what awaits me in my room. My desk full of my children's' questions and library books. As you can see, I am a bit behind on the questions. "Who makes seeds" is a doozy. If I say seeds come from plants they say "yeah I know but where do plants come from!"? Then I say "seeds" and they say "but who makes seeds"? It's the never ending question. What came first? The chicken or the egg? Then we talk about God and mysteries and how amazing life is. When I told Eaden to write her question down in the book she said she didn't want to. I asked why and she said "because there is no answer." My answer to that? "Maybe not, but that doesn't mean we can't talk about it."

 Why the artichoke question? Well here is our artichoke aftermath. The kids get their own artichoke and when they are done I get to fish through what they left and scavenge for "meat." Yummy.

 Mirek is the only one not sold on artichokes yet. He is a clementine fool and he will NOT let me help him peel them!

 Eaden mapped out a little seed starter tray the kids made.

 I'm not sure much will grow. We will wait and see. There is supposed to be a lot of rain the next few days and then we are going out of town. If the kids fail, we will plant again.

 I forgot to show the new buttons we purchased last week. Bring back Pluto!!!!!

Classical Failure

I knew the time would come. We've given up on any sort of classical education that remained in our days (which wasn't much). I was somewhat trying to have the kids learn about Ancient Greece and the olympics while the olympics were on. Eaden is a bit interested, but she would much rather be learning about earthquakes (on this day). Also, I realized that we have had our Ancient Greece library books for 6 weeks and now they must be returned. We have not read even 1/3 of them...and I'm pretty sure we had them for 6 weeks before that.

 So we returned every book on Ancient Greece and checked out one on fun activities to do at home. Here is Eaden attempting to write a message in invisible ink with lemon juice. It worked...for most of the letters...ha!

 Naia would rather eat the lemons.

Please take a close look at these hands and fingernails. Remember the image for later...

 The girls love watching doodle bugs crawl upside down.

 The boys find the bugs. Excuse the flash. My camera has a mind of its own (I guess that's what "AUTO" means).

Okay, remember the hands? They are making cookies now! And I know for a fact that she did not wash them!

 And I'm pretty sure he didn't wash his hands either! (I did NOT eat cookies).

 This booger face loves plantain chips with ketchup...to each his own.

 Last minute fort before Mirek's nap.

 Mirek is sleeping. What do we do? What do we do? ....PAINT!

 So here is our new homeschooling style. I will have to change the little "how we homeschool" tab up top! We created a book. A book of questions.

The kids are always asking me questions! Most of the time I do not know the answer. HOWEVER, I am a librarian! I did get a Masters in Library Science for some reason right!?

The kids write their questions in the book and I help them find the answers. I do not give them the answers, but I show them where they might be found and I provide them with activities they might find engaging.

So here is our "curriculum." Completely self directed and completely INTERESTING!!!!!!