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Friday
They began with playing coolmathgames.com.
Then they moved on to Lego play, interspersed with a game they made up with one of them as puppeteer and controls the other one’s movements.
We made some mini donuts for breakfast.
We played a few games of Chess an Lilah did some gymnastics.
After that we headed off to the Museum of Natural Curiosity. Here they are watching themselves appear on a screen in front of them.
They climbed and slid. They put on puppet shows and made stop motion animation movies. They explored the Magic Shop. They spun and zip-lined.
On the drive to and from we listened to a recording of Howl’s Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones, one of our favorite movies as well as an excellent book.
When we got home, there was just enough time for a game of Mermaid’s Island for the kids while dinner was finished up.
Thursday
They started with computer play and Pokemon and My Little Pony watching.
There was lego play and pony play.
Lilah drew pictures of her friends with their names and hairstyles and favorite colors taken into consideration.
We baked muffins with mixing and recipe reading and chocolate chip allotting.
We puzzled.
After lunch we headed up to our favorite spot by Storm Mountain and hiked by the stream. It was cold but beautiful. We collected maple leaves and I dabbled with a little leaf art. We decided that Lilah needs a collecting bag to bring with us on walks and hikes.
On the way down we noticed a pine tree full of pinecones. We wondered if they are the kind with pine nuts so we brought a few home to check out.
When we got home there was sticker sticking fun and then we did some Spanish together – food and animal words.
We finished the Rocky Mountains puzzle. It was a beautiful and fun one, and we would definitely like another with Charley Harper art on it. We even noticed several of the species from the puzzle on our hike today!
Tuesday
There was Pokemon watching.
Gavin built with Magformers while Lilah and I made waffles.
After breakfast there was a game where they walked round and round the room while going imaginary places.
We read a few articles about the eruption of Mount Ontake in Japan. Then we looked at a video of a fish with a transparent head on National Geographic’s website. “I can see it’s brain! And it’s eyeballs are moving!”
There were baths and cuddling followed by several sudoku Chocolate Fix challenges together.
A lego garden was built with poison berry plants which grow berries that are red before they are ripe so people might think they are apples and eat them, then they have tiny black spots and then, when they are ripe they turn black.
We read an article for kids about Ebola and talked about what it is, where it is and how scary the outbreak is for Africa. We looked at our globe at the part of Africa where it is now.
There was more lego play.
I read a chapter of Wise Child to them and then we did some Spanish practice – animal words today.
We made some popcorn with our air popper (always fun to watch!) and read Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride by Stephen Krensky.
We listened to and danced to Ella Fitzgerald.
We enjoyed all of it.
Wednesday
There was computer play for Gavin and part of a Garfield movie for Lilah before the three of us baked muffins for breakfast.
We read a chapter of Wise Child. This book has some great issues to explore for us at 9 and 6, like being scared of differences in other people, peer pressure, fear of being alone, improving skills through practice and needing to do things you don’t like.
There was lego play and reading some newly borrowed library books.
We did more Spanish on Duolingo and Mindsnacks Spanish numbers.
I brought out our And Then… story starters and we each chose a story starter, then wrote the next part. The story starters are a box of beginnings of stories, each with a charming picture on it. It’s a fun way of inviting the kids to write imaginatively. Lilah dictated her story to me and I wrote it out for her and then she illustrated it. Gavin wrote his out and then illustrated. We’ve found that lined paper makes a huge difference in his confidence and quality of writing as he gets so easily frustrated and overwhelmed when trying to write. After we finished we each read our story aloud and enjoyed them.
There were handstands and arabesques and hula hooping.
Lilah decided she was tired and asked me to read her a book and then she lay down down for a bit. The fact that she recognized her need and acted on it without worrying about missing something makes me happy.
I wrote out a scavenger hunt for the kids to do around the house full of things like something blue, something fuzzy, something that smells good, something funny to do while I did yoga.
Gavin made map hunts for Lilah and I to decode.
Lilah and I headed out to a Spiral Scouts meeting and Gavin and Dad headed to his soccer game to finish off our day.
Thursday
They started on with some Pokemon and some My Little Pony watching.
There was lego creating. Gavin built robots and Lilah discussed primary colors she was choosing to build with.
We baked oatmeal cranberry chocolate chip muffins. They turned on the oven, read the recipe, measured, stirred, set up the pan and even tried our mortar and pestle to grind up some cardamom seeds!
Then there was more lego imaginative play. “There was a black-out!” “He bumped into her house and crashed into the window.” (Indescribable sound effects here.) “And then Nya came out to help.” “Yeah…”
I invited the kids to join me in making a color wheel out of legos. We dug out lots of colored blocks and tried to place them according to where they belong between the primary colors. Gavin chose to make a white/light grey/dark grey/black gradient to accompany our color wheel.
Lilah made a hammock out of a scarf tied to the table and rolled a ball inside and then gave her bear a nice place to swing and nap.
Then Gavin and I picked up his friend from school and came home to play “LEGOS!” They got out our lego board game Heroica sets and put them all together. Chips and salsa were eaten as bosses were defeated and weapons were earned. Then there was a Magic The Gathering game, followed by an epic tale of stuffed animal surprise attacks and spying.
After playtime with Gavin’s friend, we ate and ended our evening with Dad reading some Ranger’s Apprentice by John Flanagan before bed. We’re in the middle of the fourth book now.
Friday
They began with Pokemon and My Little Pony watching.
Then we made double chocolate muffins together. At the end they put the chocolate chips on top. “Mama, I don’t have enough.” “Well, if you have two muffins that each have two on top and you want three on top, then how many more chips do you need?” “Two!”
There was lego and pony play.
After lunch we headed up to Storm Mountain where we love to hike up to the stream and then climb up and down the rocks in the stream. On the drive up, Lilah noticed a truck blowing exhaust out of a pipe on the top. “Look, that truck keeps doing that. Yuck!” Which led to a conversation about pollution, what pollutes and what doesn’t. Gavin remarks, “If people want to see the North Pole when it’s all melted they’ll have to build a platform for people.” Lilah says that to build it without polluting more, they would have to use divers instead of machines.
As we are hiking up the trail, we hear some birds. Gavin asks, “Mama, is every sound in music a note?” I try my best to respond and give him a few ideas in answer: Every musical tone is a note. There are 8 notes and then they repeat. They are called A through G and that the whole group is called an octave. And, that everything in a piece of music can be written and read. “Maybe we can learn how to read music?” We continue and observe what’s around us. A grasshopper jumps on my ankle and the kids are fascinated.
They found a nice flat slanted boulder to slide rocks down into the pool below. They had races and decided big ones moved faster and made larger splashes. We looked for frogs, but didn’t see any. We did spot a bird taking a bath in the stream and bobbing up and down. Lilah called it the bouncing bird. It was fun to watch it as we moved along behind it. We kept our eyes out for stinging nettle (We are learning to recognize more plants in our area and that and poison oak are what we started with) and found some beautiful maple leaves to bring home and press. The leaves are beginning to turn! Gorgeous! We watched the clouds swim across the sky and found a new trail down to the car.
A stop at the store and then we came home to dinner with Daddy. A wonderful day.
Thursday
They began with computer games and pokemon watching. Then puzzling and a bit of balance play on the balance beam.
There was oatmeal muffin baking. And talk about rising batter and baking powder and falling as the muffins came out rather flat. But they tasted delicious anyway!
While Gavin worked more on our latest puzzle, Lilah glued some flowers we pressed from a hike earlier this summer onto card stock to give a friend.
Gavin wrote some thank you letters for friends. He embellished one with a Spiderman illustration.
Lilah read several Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems to me. They are some of our favorites!
There was lunch, more writing and balancing.
We did some silly walking, inspired by Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks and some more lego play.
Then off to City Creek Canyon to go up to the top for the last time before they close the road for the season. We went two miles up, to the snow data collection whiz-gigs. Right near the bottom we spotted a lynx cub a little bigger than our pug heading down toward the creek. No pictures as I was busy watching and pointing it out to the kids. I didn’t expect unschooling to pay off like this, but I was very excited! I’ve never seen a wild lynx close. It looked like a big cuddly cat with a short tail. Amazing!
We saw many kinds of mushrooms that I hope to research later based on pictures we took. We climbed and tossed rocks in the creek. We saw a snake, lots of grasshoppers and butterflies.
On the way down, the kids were world-spinning, each choosing a weapon to master and having their own school to master it in, with elaborate backstory. “I learned to use the sword as a kid from my father.” “Well, my mother taught me to use a staff.” Then they were bears, eagles, rhinos and a rhino-corn, evolving into different forms. They found curved sticks and used them as pretend bows to hunt, “but not really, Mama, because I don’t hurt animals in real life.”
Finally, back home for dinner and evening rituals.
It was good.
Unschool Kick-off
“Mama, I’d like to do the puzzle. Would you help me?” We puzzled. “This could be a monarch but it doesn’t have enough white.”
“Mama, can we get Mung Daal? And some other new things?” We picked up our Community Supported Agriculture share and the Indian Market. And picked out some new foods to try. Then drove past new library in our neighborhood, looked at construction progress.
We made brownies – fractions and chemistry! “How many 1/4 cups are in a 1/2 cup? How can you tell the difference between a Tablespoon and teaspoon measure?”
We put up the tent in the living room to dry after our rainy Yellowstone adventure.
And read Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren, which they both adore.
We read a book about history, geography. Learned that the lowest sea on Earth is Ross Sea in Antarctica. And that in India they speak 22 official languages but only Hindi and English used by the government.
They made a pokemon deck together and cross referenced with our pokemon sticker book.
The kids made crowns, necklaces, climbing ropes out of pipe cleaners.
We had some computer time.
We picked thai chiles, tomatillos, tomatoes, eggplant of two kinds in the garden.
We looked at butternuts, dumplings and pumpkins growing at different stages and compared squash leaves. We talked about ripe versus unripe tomatillos, jalapenos.
Then we finished off our day with dinner together, brownies, card from Mama, a song and a tiny bit more puzzling for our Unschool Celebration.
And there was love.
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