Playmates

I don't always feel like everything about homeschool is a win, but one thing I am consistently glad about is how much the kids play together now. Of course they would never admit that they are best friends, but they play together all day long and it makes me so happy.

Closed Day

I have been taking the kids to a drop-in ninja gym in Kearney for a few weeks, the same gym where a friend of mine told me she takes her kids to a home school gym class. I was told today was the first day for the year, so we rushed out the door early this morning to drive the 35 minutes to get there. When we arrived, the doors were open, but there was no one inside. It was bizarre. It's a very large gymnastics gym full of equipment, the front desk computer was turned on, but after calling and calling for someone and waiting for 10 minutes or so, we gave up. I was frustrated, and I felt like going home now would just be a waste of the hour+ of driving time. So I asked the kids if they wanted to keep heading south and go to Science City, the Kansas City science museum where we have a membership. They were excited and we decided to turn the day into a field trip. After driving another 30 minutes, parking, and walking through the large Union Station building to the science museum we found out it was closed for cleaning! We couldn't believe it, what a weird coincidence! We decided today must be National Closed Day and no one had told us. Lucky for us, the gift shop was open, so we stayed for an hour or so to look around.

After that, we decided to try the KC Central Library. It's famous for being decorated with building-sized books on the exterior, but we've never been.

It is a cool looking building, but after taking some pictures out front we realized that the book-clad building is not actually the library, but a giant parking garage and we didn't know how to find the actual library. Not to mention, the road beside the parking garage was actually closed. Closed Day continued!

We soon found the library just a little further down the street and had a wonderful time there. The children's section there might be the best I've ever seen. It was lots of fun.

After the library we headed to Costco for lunch (which was thankfully NOT closed) and then drove the long drive home. Closed Day started out frustratingly but was fantastic in the end.

Unschooling Wednesdays

I've read a lot of great things about unschooling and I see so many possibilities in it, but I'm not ready to jump in with both feet. This year I'm trying something new where we unschool on Wednesdays. That means instead Khan Academy or writing, we meet in the morning to make a plan for the day that includes things the kids are really interested in learning. Today Davey has spent all morning experimenting with video editing (he already realized it is much more difficult than he thought), the littles have been working on murals (drawn on big paper), and Jake is making our lunch (although along the way he started a load of laundry and washed our big pot). I'm glad we don't do this everyday, it's exhausting! But the kids are having fun and learning what they're interested in, and it's a nice break from our regular schedule.

Field Trip to the Pond

Some of the kids had a lot of feelings this morning. After several melt downs, I decided that rather than try to push through our grouchiness we better get out of the house, so we walked down to the pond for a field trip. It's warm and gray out today and the bugs are very loud this time of year. We picked a bunch of little sour apple things and threw them into the pond. Everybody relaxed a lot. We found a beautiful thistle and a giant, stunning spider in the middle of her web.

Art is Happening

We've already got some pretty great art happening this year:

June, 5

A herd of elephants and a lion. A friggin' masterpiece by Ben, 3

Davey, 8

A comic from Davey.
A long time ago in a galaxy far away... well, you know the rest.
"Did ya see the game last night?" "YES. TOTAL BUMMER."
Meanwhile: "Our robot spy works!"

Homemade Hummus

We made hummus today! It turned out gross, but that's just because I hate hummus. Everyone else liked it. So we had hummus and pita sandwiches, something we started eating after Karen brought The Sandwich Swap home from the library.

The Billy Goats Gruff

Today was super busy. We met up with a bunch of other homeschool families at the park in Cameron and the kids had a blast playing, then a friend came over to play all evening and the kids had a Nerf battle. But we started the day with a little theatre. Here are the kids performing The Three Billy Goats Gruff.