Tag Archives: spanish

unschooling

Late February

Enjoying the park and the sun.  Spinning is such fun.

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Harry Potter – listening to the books in the car, making it their own with their legos, trains, etc., watching part of the 6th movie.

Spanish game playing.

Puzzling.

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Train track building.

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Watching several TedEd videos.  Learned about Hatshepsut (a female Egyptian pharoah), simple levers and bats.

Visiting the Museum of Natural Curiosity, exploring the maze, pushing building posts into the ground, spinning.

 

Dressing up and acting in winter scenes.  You can see what they are doing in the room and then how they are projected onto the film clip on the screen.  They also spent a lot of time making stop motion animation films with astronauts and octopi.  The animation room is a favorite.

More Spanish game playing.  Enjoying the quests and practicing numbers from twenties through one hundred, simple conversational phrases.

Admiring the city at night from the sky bridge downtown.

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Spiral Scouts, learning songs and playing games.

Rainbow loom creating; trying a new design, getting frustrated, persevering.

Trying out some chinese jump ropes.

Writing a letter. (It was an excruciating proposition, but after empathizing and cuddling, the process and result were alright.  I’ll take it.)

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Planting seeds inside and making labels.  “How do you spell cucumber?”

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Roller skating.

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Reading Dr. Seuss in an impromptu read-a-thon.  (It was snowing huge flakes and I mentioned oobleck.  A few minutes later, Lilah had located Bartholomew and the Oobleck.  Then Gavin pulled out a few other Dr. Suess books.)

Hula hooping.

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Working on cards for Grandpa.

 

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unschooling

Wednesday

They watched an episode of Peg + Cat and played with the train set first thing today.

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The kids had a doctor appointment this morning so we hurried through breakfast (and I did my best not to knock over any train track that was meandering under the table and my chair) and took some books to read with us while we waited.  We started a new book: Matilda by Roald Dahl, one of my favorites.  The kids did well with getting immunizations, even though they were both nervous.  The nurse was fantastic at being fast and distracting them so they barely noticed.  I was quite possibly more grateful for her skill than the kids as it’s been really scary for them in the past and there have been many tears and pleadings on their part and worries on my part about having to just hold them down and get through it by force, rather than support and encouragement.

When we got home we finished the first chapter of Matilda.

They made pendants out of Legos to fit on the chains they got at the doctors’ office.

We watched an episode of Cosmos: a Spacetime Odyssey and learned about plants.

There was more train track building and loading the cargo containers up.

Lilah read me How To Babysit A Grandpa by Jean Reagan.

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We drew together.  We took turns adding one thing (a shape, line, pattern, concept) to the paper until we felt done.  Maybe tomorrow we’ll add color!

The kids asked to play Spanish games so they both took turns doing that.  They’re working on color names and days of the week still.

Gavin and Chris and I played a game of Magic the Gathering and Lilah was my consultant and die keeper.

Then it was time to pop some popcorn for Spiral Scouts.

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The three of them headed off to learn about computer coding (well, Chris probably won’t be learning too much, since it’s what he does for a living) while I stayed home to have a little time to myself and do some yoga.

Here they are coding!

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While they were away I put out their pajamas, but I dressed a stuffed pony in Lilah’s and a stuffed panda in Gavin’s.  Lilah had made a sweet request the other day that I put their pajamas on their animals sometime soon (It’s something I’ve done a few times before to amuse us all) so I thought tonight was a perfect opportunity.  When they went into their room there was lots of giggling.

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unschooling

Monday

They began with computer play time and watching Pound Puppies and Wild Crats.

We headed out for a grocery trip.  “Mama, can we get flowers?  I like these daaaark purple roses.”  “What’s the (bulk bin) number for the lentils?”  “Where is the yogurt?”  “Let’s get rainbow carrots!”  “Hey kids, did you see these tiny apples?”  “Ooooh, we could have tiny apple slices!”

After putting groceries away and lunch there was play with Legos and ponies.

We did some Spanish practice together – days of the week, colors, months today.  The kids did some more Spanish word matching games on their own while I started a stew in the slow cooker.

Gavin read several stories from the National Geographic Kids magazine.  After we read about a big cat researcher in Tanzania, we got down our globe and found where she is and talked about what we know about that part of Africa.

We all headed out – to gymnastics for Lilah and soccer practice for Gavin.  They both got a few minutes to watch the other too!

We came home and the kids and I read some library books and a chapter of Searching For Dragons while Chris escorted another mouse we caught to it’s new home in the canyon.  Then we had dinner together, and cuddles and songs and bed.

 

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unschooling

Friday

There was computer play followed by tumbling and nest making.  They brought blankets and pillows out and made their own cozy space.

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They wrestled.

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The Goldie Blox sets were opened and stories were read and blocks built with.

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We did some Spanish together – more animal and food words.  Soy un vegetariana.

We watched an episode of Cosmos: a Spacetime Odyssey.

Next we headed to the rink to roller skate.  This was the kids second time roller skating and they were still working hard to get it, but enjoyed it nonetheless.  They began without the balance supports and did a few laps and then when they got tired and frustrated with that we rented the supports and they had a ball twirling around in the middle of the rink.  I skated too and realized I need to learn how to stop better.  We skated for a good hour and a half before heading for home and dinner and family time and bedtime.

 

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unschooling

Thursday

They started with computer play and Pokemon and My Little Pony watching.

There was lego play and pony play.

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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.

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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!

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unschooling

Wednesday

Right after breakfast we headed up to UMFA with my sister.  It was their monthly first free Wednesday!

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We really enjoyed looking around.  It’s hard not to touch things though, when some are practically begging for it!  There was an artist there, Tony Feher installing some art on windows with painters tape that looked like a tile mosaic.  His exhibition is opening later this week!  It was fascinating to me to watch him.  He also had a piece already hung using pink tape descending from the very high ceiling in a grid.  It blows a tiny bit in the indoor air currents and seems like chaos but if you stand in between rows you see the linear pattern.

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The kids enjoyed the South Asian art and the Indian art especially, as well as a video of a performance piece where an artist in throwing rocks in bowls of paint and they drip down over many boxes, each with its own bowl of paint waiting.  Rock, Hard, Place it was called.  I cannot remember the artists name.  We looked at Ganesha carved in stone and wood.  We admired a Horus casket painted beautifully and holding a grain mummy.  We looked at paintings of Utah and noted some places we’ve been.  It was very enjoyable for all of us, not too terribly packed, and filled with fascinating art from all over and many eras and we’ll do it again on another free day.

After we got home we watched an episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.

Then we did some Spanish practice, followed by a request for music to sing along to.  “Ella’s Playhouse is already in the player, Mama!”

Soon it was time to head out for Gavin’s soccer game.  Lilah enjoyed the playground while Gavin enjoyed playing with his team.  They are the Earthquakes, named for the MLS team who wears blue and black.

Afterward it was dinner and bedtime, with snuggling, reading and a few songs.

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unschooling

Tuesday

They began with computer play and Pokemon watching.

We watched the construction right outside our house and its’ progress, wondering about what would happen next.

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Then we learned how to say good morning in German and Spanish: guten morgen and buenos dias.  And how to say and: und and y.  We decided to try an app to learn Spanish together on my phone.

There was lego play and we read another chapter of Wise Child.

We looked at flowers and plants and animals and talked about different kinds of symmetry.  Lilah drew a flower, with radial symmetry.

I asked the kids if they’d like to do some math and they said yes, so each of them answered a few questions on the whiteboard.  I was wondering if Gavin would remember the greater than, less than symbols.  He did.  He enjoys math very much.  It’s a language that makes sense to him and he especially loves story problems so I try to throw a few his way regularly.  I enjoyed watching his process of division drawn out.  It’s fascinating to see what way a kid approaches a puzzle that can be solved in so many different ways.  Lilah enjoys math puzzling too, especially patterns.

After lunch we looked up the weather on wunderground.com and Gavin wrote down info in his weather journal.  Then we discovered it’s a new moon so we took name suggestions and voted as a family on this moon’s name, inspired by our beloved teacher Leslee’s class the last two years.  Suggestions included: Kitten moon, Owl moon, Hoot hoot moon, Magical moon, Starlight moon, Magic moon, Meow meow moon, Squirrel moon, Woof moon.  We settled on Meow meow moon.  Some stuffed animals got in on the voting.

The kids worked on assembling our vacuum.  On a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day last week our old vacuum broke beyond repair, so we were very excited to have and try our new one.

We tried out the Spanish app, Duolingo.  It was fun, though I’m not thoroughly sold on it being fantastic for young kids.  If we do it together it’s pretty accessible.

We took a trip to the library to return books and find new ones to read and came home with three armfuls, one for each of us.

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Gavin immediately dove into a map book where you find treasure by using mapping skills.  After he finished he read about the other related books and requested we try to find them.  Lilah was very interested too and asked to read it on her own as soon as he finished.

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We played with density using water, vegetable oil and coins, legos, plastic animals and rubber bands.

Lilah and I went to her gymnastics class where she practiced candlesticks, arabesques, cartwheels and handstands while Gavin played Civilization with Dad and then helped him with dinner.

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