My New Art Gallery

Long have I bemoaned the fact that I had no "reasonable" space to display my children's artwork. My fridge front doesn't work for magnets. I've tried string and clothespins, but it always gets so stretched out. The girls love to tape things to the walls, but I don't like my paint getting peeled off too. Frames with clips sounded fun, but too expensive. Finally, I thought of something! Then I had to wait a couple months to go to a town with a dollar store. I purchased six clip boards, brought them home and painted them the color of an adjacent wall. I impressed myself by thinking of using twist ties to keep the clips open while painting so I could paint the whole thing. Karl suggested putting all the boards together and painting random shapes so you could see where they connected when separated, I liked the concept, but couldn't do it. I couldn't get the image of a branch out of my head, so that's what ended up on the boards. Not that it matters much anyway, they're here to display the work of much more important artists:

The Princesses And The Peeps

More baby chicks! Only this time the purpose is to put their eggs on the table instead of themselves.
Heidi is beside herself with joy, she can't wait to find out which are the girls and have them grow up so she can have the responsibility of collecting the eggs.
What? Isn't this what everyone does with their baby bathtub?
We got an incubator and hatched this batch ourselves, making for some great learning opportunities for us all.
This is probably old news for anyone with any knowledge of chickens, but I didn't realize that the chicks start peeping before they ever come out of their shells.
Or that it takes 24 hours from first little tap tap taps to baby chick.
I'm hoping we have lots of little egg layers in there.

Easy as ABC

Teaching a child to read.
For some unknown reason, that has been my biggest fear as I've thought about homeschooling.
Then Heidi wanted to learn, and I thought she was ready.
We began.
Her with excitement, me with trepidation.
You know what? It's not as hard as I thought.
We have our bumps and rough spots, but she's steadily learning and improving in skill.

My favorite part?
Watching her as she comprehends a word she has read and voluntarily offers a definition or uses it in a sentence.

"Cat" - "We had a cat but it got stomped on by the calves and DIED!"
"take" - "I will take you in the ambulance"
"has" - "the wood has fire on it"
"kiss" - "I'm gonna kiss you!" (this one ends with laughter as she tries to attack me with kisses)
"walk" - "we go for a walk in the hundred acre woods" (her name for our bush)
"rag" -"Oh, like, my clothes are all in tatters"

Alphabet

Heidi's been interested in all things reading and writing lately, so for the past couple of months we've been working on an alphabet for the wall. We finished last week and I can now just direct attention upwards when she has questions about the formation of a letter. I love that she is constantly wanting me to spell things out for her so she can write them, and that often her writing is for others. She loves to write letters to her cousins!

What makes me laugh is the words she deems necessary to record:

"Momma, how do you spell document?"

"How 'bout eternal?"

"Grandpa and Grandma Wagenhoffer and Grandpa and Grandma Root?"

What a world these 26 little letters will open for her!

A Bit About Our "Schoolroom"

One of the benefits of living where we do is the ability to observe and appreciate God's creation right outside our door. It's a gift I'm already finding advantageous for homeschool. For instance, while on a walk a couple days ago, we found both fresh evidence of a visiting bear and this delightful deer skull. Heidi, fascinated, couldn't take her eyes off it and had to question me about every little detail, the tongue, the teeth, the eyes, everything.
Believe it or not, the conversation ended like this:


"Momma, is there meat in deer?"
"Yes, there is."
"Ooh, yummy, I'd like to try some sometime."

Not exactly my thought upon seeing a decaying skull.


On another note, it humors me how she can be so oblivious and observant at the same time. While running through the woods she ran smack into a tree (sadly she does this often as she's generally more interested in the world around her than in looking where she is going). Rubbing her head, she stepped back and proclaimed, "Oh, this is an OAK tree". Silly girl, doesn't see the tree, but once she hits it, knows what kind it is!

Children's Museum

Yesterday we went on our first official outing with our home school group [I use the term loosely as technically I have no school age children yet, there's only two other families in the group, and we've only gotten together once before this]. We went to the Children's Museum in the city and it was a BIG hit, especially with Heidi. As we were leaving at closing time she informed me, "I would like to go to the Children's Museum again tomorrow, Momma. And the next day and the next". Judging from my exhaustion level today, It's a good thing we can't go every day.

The girls enjoyed driving a car,

riding sea monsters,

being astronauts,

experimenting with air,

exploring a train,

being postmasters,

playing with gravel and water,

and operating a backhoe!