Afternoon at the creek

It's always a fun time out at the creek,

Until someone falls in!

Birthday Sink

I have hated our sink since the first day we moved in here. I thought it was a great idea but the little sink on the side turned out to be a big pain. Everytime we would rinse food off into the disposal, we would end up with water all over the counter. Erik was always confused about where to put his food and would usually get it wrong so I had to fish out his food with my hands into the other sink. So I spotted this sink at home depot and started dreaming about it. But we couldn't really justify spending the money.

Then I found this same sink on amazon for $50 cheaper and it being April, I decided to just buy it for myself. I love amazon! So my loving handy husband (with a tiny bit of help from me) has spent yesterday and today putting it in.

Habitats

The kids spent a good portion of their day painting these animals and making habitats for them. I thought they turned out cute.

Unschooling

Unschooling can mean a lot of things. It's also been called child-led learning. The biggest part of it, to me, is that you don't force or manipulate your children into learning. They should be free to say no to things they don't want to do, and they should be in charge of their own learning.
We have been slowly easing into this for years. The first year Taryn and I did hard core curriculum, she cried a lot, I cried a lot, and it was so frustrating. Add to that, she didn't really learn anything because it was so stressful. So the next few years we scaled back a lot to relieve the stress, but it still wasn't enjoyable for her, which is one of my goals as a homeschooler.
I read a lot about unschooling but was too afraid to commit. I was afraid of them turning into idiots, and afraid of all the judgement from everyone else.
But I really have seen that the things my kids learn and retain, are the things they have done on their own. They read a lot and we have lots of conversations about the things that are important to them. And they learn a lot from the nature around us. The lessons that I have spent hours preparing, they find interesting, but the information is soon forgotten.
So with Taryn going into fifth grade, I decided that now was the time to jump in. My heart wasn't into trying to find new and exciting ways to get them to do the school that they're not interested in, so I'm giving up.
Part of what makes this work for us is the structure of our days. My kids don't watch a lot of TV. They have to have their rooms and the playroom cleaned before they can even watch tv, and then it's only for about 2 hours. So they have a lot of the day to themselves. They play tons of imagination games and they play outside a lot. We spend time together talking, going on walks, and reading.
I feel very comfortable now with this idea. It makes so much sense to me and I finally decided that not doing something out of fear was plain stupid.
So that's the long of it.

Animal tracking

So the kids and I had a pretty cool experience yesterday. They were in the backyard swinging and Erik spotted two deer on the trail. They waved to me to come out so we could walk over and see them better. I was reluctant because I was exhausted. I had been up late the night before and was tiiiired. But I didn't want to be a party pooper and thought we would just be walking across the street. So I put on my clogs and out we went.
When we got across the street they weren't there. After looking around we found them out in the road walking up the hill, so we took off following them. We got up the hill and lost them again. The kids started pretending they were detectives and looking for clues. Erik thought he spotted deer tracks and we found them farther up the hill by the high school parking lot. We followed them in and in a while discovered that they couldn't figure out how to get out. They were backed up against this long fence and kept going back and forth trying to get out. A couple of times they ran smack into the fence trying to get over.
I thought we were probably not helping because we were scaring them. So the kids and I sat down on the curb for a while. I explained that the deer couldn't get out because we were following them and making them nervous. I thought we should leave. The kids both said they were worried about them getting hit by a car or the people bothering them. So we fanned out and tried to force them out of the parking lot. At one point the deer came charging toward Taryn. She started to panic and I told her to make a lot of noise which scared the deer to turn around and they finally jumped over the fence and went into the woods by the golf course. We figured they'd be safe there until night when they could make it back home.
I was so moved by my kids concern for the deer's safety. We have a soft spot for this family of deer and we think these two were the babies we saw last year. I was also grateful that I followed their lead to get out of the house so we could share this experience.

Earlier this year I decided to unschool for the rest of the year. Unschooling means a lot of things but for me right now it means that I'm not going to initiate any schooling. I am going to ask them if they want to continue our reading, but they are free to say no to anything. I've always loved the idea but have been afraid to follow it. So I figured now is better than later.
Anyway. After this experience with the deer, Erik came home and decided to write about it. It turned into a cute 2 page story.