Homeschooling stuff

We're into our fourth month of school this year, though we've only actually gotten in about 50 days so far. Our move took a couple weeks out of our schedule. The state of Georgia allows homeschoolers a full year to get their 180 days in. I don't think we'll have any problem getting it done by May or June, since we don't take off much time for Fall or Spring break, and the kids don't get two full weeks of chaos for Christmas. I usually can't handle the lack of routine for that long!

Jacob is not officially registered as a student this year. In GA, only children 6 and older have to be registered for school. However, Jacob is doing official Kindergarten work, and by the looks of things, will probably be doing first grade work before the end of spring. The Kindergarten curriculum for phonics and math are pretty easy, and he's doing 2 and 3 lessons a day for most of the year so far. He is also picking up reading a little faster than I expected, so we'll see how far he gets in that.

Katie Mei continues to work on little skills, such as colors, shapes, counting, the alphabet, and fine motor skills. There are some days she will sit and concentrate on one thing for a good half hour, and other days she is just annoyed at having to do anything for more than four minutes and will start bothering us to play with her. It's interesting having a toddler underfoot while I'm trying to teach the other two, but we're making it work. The main thing is to keep KM occupied, and sometimes that means stopping everything to play with her baby doll for a few minutes.

But no matter the inconsistencies, the frustration, the confusion, or anything else that makes homeschooling irritating sometimes, it is such a blessing to be able to watch the kids learn and enjoy learning. I cannot imagine not being the one to witness Jacob reading his first sentence by himself, or watching Merrilee's face light up when she "gets it" upon learning a new science concept. It's just too marvelous watching my own kids grown and learn, and getting to see what makes them tick. Kids in our neighborhood get on the bus at 7:20 am and don't get home until 4:30 pm. That's 9 hours a day they're gone! And then they have homework to do after that! I just cannot imagine being away from my kids 9 hours a day. I'd consider four hours pretty long, but 9 hours...just impossible.

Anyway, here are a few highlights from the past month or so. As I was sorting photos into files on the computer, I realized that trying to choose the ones to go into the "homeschool" folder was a little sketchy. When you homeschool, there are just too many "teachable" moments, so the whole day becomes school. Technically, I take the kids to the zoo and aquarium as part of their education; I do the same with teaching Merrilee to cook, letting the kids help me plant flowers, letting Katie Mei glue leaves onto paper, etc. So if I actually put all the education-related photos into the homeschool folder, the folder would pretty much include almost all our photos. So I'm just picking out the photos for this blog that are strictly academic. Enjoy.

Gluing leaves onto the autumn tree

Jacob making words with consonants and vowels he chooses.

Everyone working quietly...it only lasts for about two minutes, but it's nice while it lasts!

Merrilee doing an experiment to grow and observe crystals.

Katie Mei stringing Cheerios. We did this on the morning we visited the zoo for the first time. She wore the necklace, and I'm glad she did. I forgot to take a snack, so she ended up eating the Cheerios in the car on the way home.

Katie Mei kind of came up with this activity on her own. I drew circles, squares, and triangles on the paper and gave her felt pieces to match. She would pick up a shape...

study it...

then she would look for a matching crayon.

She picked out the crayon...

colored in the corresponding shape (and I had two of each shape drawn on the paper)...

and then she matched the felt piece to the shape she colored on the paper.

I think I spent more time one-on-one with Merrilee when she was this age, and she had her alphabet and other skills learned in no time. Merrilee was academically very smart and still is. However, Katie Mei has to spend more time on her own, and I think she has more creativity and imagination than Merrilee did at 2.5 years old. I wonder if it's just each of their own natural abilities, or if it has to do with the amount of individual attention they each received. Hmmmm...very interesting.

Happy November, Everyone.

Hugs,

Petrie

Halloween Highlights

October seemed to go by much too quickly. I guess it's because we were so busy moving in, exploring the area, and trying to get into a routine. We're almost there now, but we're also heading into that season when routine gets all messed up once again. So we're just trying to enjoy life and keep up with the kids' education. We're managing to do that with both books and fun stuff.

Our fall season kind of got started with an afternoon when Katie Mei started showing the ability to place eyes, noses, and mouths on faces. So I got out the construction paper, cut out the pieces, and let her go at it with the glue stick. This girls LOVES glue sticks and doesn't behave very well when her task is complete and the glue is taken away. She did a great job making pumpkin faces, and they're still on our window despite the need for turkeys now.

She did these all by herself!

Days after the paper pumpkin faces, we decided to make cookies. Merrilee had been begging me to do this, and I prepared the dough ahead of time, so we were ready to go. This was Katie Mei's first time at independently cutting and decorating cookies. She loved it!

Surprisingly, Katie Mei really is quite adept at tasks that involve finer motor skills. She's doing very well for her age.

She did her own decorating.

Grandma and Grandpa arrived last week for their first visit to our house. We looked forward to taking them to the zoo, the aquarium, and showing them around town. But I think they enjoyed spending time with the kids the most. With Katie Mei growing and changing so fast, it doesn't take long to feel like you've missed out on something if you don't see her daily. G & G hadn't seen her since August and could already tell she'd improved dramatically in her speech and skills. She really is a blast...she's got a personality that is just so animated and unexpected. She's like a grown-up in a little person's body, and she has a sense of humor that takes us by surprise and keeps us all laughing. It was a joy to share her with my parents.

Back to Halloween.... This year I got out of pumpkin carving because Grandma and Grandpa were willing to deal with the muck. This was Katie Mei's first pumpkin, so she wasn't really sure what to make of the mess. In the end, she was glad to have Grandma clean her pumpkin out for her.

Grab it here...

Open it like the big kids do...

Peek inside to see what all the fuss is about...

Stick my arm in to find the candy...

Ewwww...this isn't candy!

In the end, they got their pumpkins carved with Grandma and Grandpa's help. Grandpa even cleaned the table and floor for me. (THANK YOU BOTH SO MUCH! YOU REALLY CAN COME TO OUR HOUSE FOR HALLOWEEN EVERY YEAR!) The kids were happy they had their pumpkin faces, and I was glad I didn't have to do it.

The night before Halloween, Merrilee and Jacob, my party animals, planned a little party and invited us. Here is the invitation (the scanner cut off the side of the page, but you can figure it out):

[Those are bats next to a pumpkin] "You are all invited to a party"
"You are invited to a party. It is fun. Everyone can come it is not scary. You can talk, you can play games, you can lisin to misic. It will be fun."

"Party time ya!"

There was music,

Dancing,

And a bat!

The kids finally topped off Halloween with a trip to the Baptist church for a fall festival party. It was rainy in our neighborhood, and most of the neighbors didn't even have their lights on. We decided not to even try knocking on doors after failure at the first house, so we headed into town. The kids got gobs of candy for playing the games and having a good time. And Mom and Grandma didn't have to treck around the 'hood in the rain! Can't beat that!

Katie Mei was the cutest little bat ever, Merrilee was an angel, and Jacob was a very disheveled red ninja.

So this holiday is over, October is a memory, and we are now into November. Yesterday we went to the library for Crafternoon and the kids made the handsomest little turkeys out of pipe cleaners. When I was in Kohl's the other day, the Christmas decorations and little lighted trees were up. Now it's time to spin through decorating for Thanksgiving, planning the big meal, taking down Thanksgiving decorations, Advent season (the best part!), Christmas decorating, church Christmas events, Christmas shopping, tree trimming, Christmas dinner, and all the details in between. You know what? Today the newspaper had printed in big letters "ONLY 50 SHOPPING DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!"

This year I just want to focus on finding a church home and celebrating the season of our Lord's birth with my family. Since when did Halloween become the opening act for the Christmas season? Crazy, isn't it?

Until my next post (I have lots of catching up to do here!), I send my love,

Petrie

Katie Mei's first trip to the zoo

We visited the Chehaw Park Zoo last week and had one of the most lovely fall days ever. The day was sunny and the park was shady. The temperature was just right with the slight hint of fall smell in the air (well, in between the whiffs of Bison poo and reptile aroma).

We started our visit with a look at the black rhino and the flamingos. Katie Mei thought those pink birds were pretty interesting since they were standing there on one leg.


Then the path led into the main part of the park, with the cheetahs to the right and the meerkats to the left. We went right. It was not what I expected.


The cheetah area was a fairly good sized grassy space with a few rocks and trees, and I initially saw one cheetah pretty far off lying in the grass. Typical, I thought. The animals at the zoo are usually asleep and couldn't care less if we stared at them or not. Just about the time the thought was completely formed in my head, this larger, sinewy, "real-looking" cheetah came out of nowhere staring me right in the eye and heading right towards me. I have to admit, this is the first time I ever felt threatened in a zoo.



The place where I was standing was only about eight to ten feet off the ground and there was a fence around the cheetah's area about four feet out in front and below me. You can see from the photo that the fence really didn't even separate me from that cat. And though I don't have any photos of him heading straight for me (I was trying to get my camera out and hanging on to the stroller ready to run all at the same time), his look was sinister and I would swear he was eyeballin' Katie Mei like she was lunch. I could envision one swift leap and he'd be over that fence to grab his sweet snack.

Finally, as Katie Mei and I stayed in the background, the creepy cat walked away and jumped up on the rock to stare down the meerkats. I was left with that shivery feeling of what it must be like for people who live in areas of the world where wild cats are a real threat. Those animals are absolutely gorgeous, but they are still beasts of prey and are not to be taken lightly. I think the reason this one really bothered me is because it really did look right at me as if it was sizing me up. You don't usually have zoo animals look at you as if they care.



I was ready to high-tail it out of there. I've always wanted to go on a safari. Now I'm wondering if that's such a good idea....

So we moved on, passing some monkeys with whom Katie Mei seemed to find a common bond. She really enjoyed them. After we left the park we asked her if she remembered seeing the monkeys, to which she replied "Yes! Jacob mukmuk!" (her word for monkey). Hmmmm. I wonder if she thinks Jacob and monkeys are one in the same. Takes one to know one.

Then we got to the black bears. Miss KM knew exactly what the huge black animal was through the fence, which surprised me. She has seen lots of drawings of bears in books, but as in most kids' books they are the Teddy Bear-looking cartoon bears. I don't know where she might have seen a real bear photo. But in any case, she knew it was a bear. And a BIG bear it was. However, if cheetahs are the fastest land animals in the world, how come there was more fencing for the bear than the cheetah? This lead me to wonder how high a cheetah can actually jump, and this is what I found: http://hownow.brownpau.com/archives/2005/11/deer-and-cheetah/ . Makes me feel better about the cheetah not eating my baby.

We then took a meandering path to see an eagle and a couple bobcats. Neither was very interesting. I'll skip on those photos to save you the trouble of trying to find the animals among the trees.

The trail then brought us to the American Bison. This is a beautiful, powerful, amazing animal. I was really surprised by how large he was. I know I've seen bison in zoos before, but maybe it was our proximity to him that made me realize how truly awe-inspiring they are. I then started thinking about how scary and wonderful it must have been to witness a stampede of these things thundering across an open prarie early in American history. It is so sad that these beasts' numbers have dwindled. As powerful as they are, it's a wonder they aren't more of a national symbol like the bald eagle.

Katie Mei was very much taken with the bison and didn't want to leave. We had to stand there for at least 15 minutes while she watched him lick his own nostrils and tried to imitate him. Blech.

When we could finally convince her to leave the bison, we passed by a few more displays and made it to the zebras. Ahhhh, real zoo animals, right? Seems we always think the three main ingredients for a zoo are elephants, zebras, and giraffes. Why is that? This little zoo was beautiful and had not a single elephant of giraffe. Maybe it's just because they're so exotic that we always think of them as being in a zoo.

Anyway, the zebras were delightful, and like most of the animals in this zoo, they were active and close enough to see and enjoy. Katie Mei had no problem identifying the "zee-bahs".

We rounded out our trip with a kiddo photo on the cement turtle. I couldn't resist, since we also have a photo of M & J on a cement bear from our first visit to a zoo with the kids back in 2006.

(now)

(then)

And we eventually came full circle and found the meerkats. They had to be the cutest little boogers I ever saw! And I think they thought the same of my kids!

This little guy found Jacob rather interesting. Maybe he thought Jacob looked a little like a monkey in sunglasses.

Katie Mei found some fast friends in the meerkats.

Our visit to the zoo ended with a trip to the reptile house, which was essentially a bunch of snakes, toads, and lizards behind glass so that flash photography results in pictures of reflections of flashes of light. No lizard pics. Sorry folks.

We did get a photo of the gopher tortoises digging and flinging dirt, though. So here is the final photo of Katie Mei watching the "too-too" dig it's hole.

Hope you enjoyed our visit to the zoo as much as we did. And despite the fact that I was originally going to title this post as "The cheetah wanted to eat my baby", it was a wonderful visit and we're looking forward to doing it again soon.

Love,

Petrie