Valencia Family Memoirs: Homeschooling Adventures In October

Since homeschooling by definition tends to include experiences at 'home', I'm limiting this post to include just the days, projects, stories and pictures at home in October. All other activities, like ACE, dance, music, parks, field trips, 'play dates' with friends and the numerous other extra curricular activities will saved for other blog posts. We do so much outside of the house, that this homeschooling thing is beginning to make this home-body-mama second guess her supposedly stay at home mama homeschooling gig. Not really, but I certainly have a mouth full of answers for those who ask the popular "what about socialization" question.

For now, here is a short glimpse into our home-homeschooling adventures we had in October.

Shape shadow boxes

Esperanza has a journal notebook. We use it for various types of writing/illustrating. Sometimes, she'll draw a picture of something representing a book we just read, and then write a word or phrase below the picture. Other times, she'll draw a picture of something we are learning about. Here, she is drawing a picture of a hummingbird, one of the animals we spent some time researching and learning about. Below her picture, she wrote something short below it.

They cook too! So much learning goes on just during the few minutes it takes to make pancakes.

My vacuuming fairy visited me

I'm trying to get and stay organized. Trying is the key word. It's a struggle for me.

Pop-up books are so cool

We've recently taken up needle felting. One of the neatest crafts I've ever discovered!!!

Ezra looking at some picture books

Quilt squares for Esperanza's future Kindergarten quilt. These ones turned out beautiful!!

October's art door. It gets pretty overcrowded.

Just some 'educational' materials we borrowed from the library. Lots of info on apples, pumpkins, fall, leaves, the human body, hummingbirds, history, fairies, horses, phonics, polar bears, and other random interests the kids had.

We did many fall themed activities and baking this month. Here we did stamps with apples then we baked pumpkin muffins with maple syrup icing. Yum!

My first attempt at 'zen tangling'. Esperanza did one as well (below this picture).

Fun with the marble run (motions, gravity, physics, engineering...that covers science for the day)

Oh sweet sleep

After dance class school work by the candle. We light a candle when we begin our work, it's a nice transition and it does help keep us focused and grounded with what we are doing.

Shapes, colors, words and picture magnets.

We did a small 'unit study' on the Human Body this month. As a fun project, we decided to trace our bodies with chalk and draw our skeletons inside. Did you know we have 206 bones? And 650 muscles. Fun stuff!