School Begins: Secret Agent Style

School is off to a great start here in The Muddy Schoolhouse. Here is a picture of our first day blackboard. I am going to teach Cammy how to write in cursive this year. We ended the school year this spring reading creation stories from around the world. We probably read ten different versions...everything from Norse frost and fire giants creating the world to Japanese versions, Native American stories , Aboriginal accounts, biblical and more. So I felt it natural to move into the study of man and community and how we communicate. We are starting the year off by studying the origin of language. We talked today about the oral tradition of history and language and how man began to communicate in more elaborate ways. We are reading passages about the history and evolution of language in several different books but by far my main source is the book Letterbox:The art and history of Letters by Jan Adkins. My daughter is very comfortable with it now but I use the quote "What catches the eye, inspires the hand" all the time. It is kinda like a slogan around the house. So the eye represents what we see around us. The iris is like a clock with ancient symbols at each of the hours marks on the clock. In the pupil a sun radiates the time that our day is to begin 8:15. The eyelashes are the cursive letters that she will be learning this fall: tops are capitals and bottoms are lowercase. The eyebrow is a rainbow. I love to draw a new amazing picture to captivate and grab Cammy's attention at the beginning of each week.

I have been setting up our learning centers all summer. We have a new roommate in what used to be the office so we have had to make a few adjustments in furniture arrangements. This is a tray of rocks and pinecones and any other interesting nature finds on a low shelf so that Karma can get to them.


Here is Cammy posing in front of the new blackboard drawing. You can see the shelf beside her where I have our math center and all of the dividers for each subject ....color coded. I'm really trying to prove to myself that I can be organized.
I put up a bulletin board of sorts a few weeks ago. The idea was for her to write down anything she was interested in learning about. The light bulb above her head was her bright idea! Inside it I wrote the questions Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? We have been talking about different ways of brainstorming ideas. Last year Cammy loved it when we built a time machine to study history. So I came up with the idea of extending that playful learning with a twist. Last year my husband issued Cammy her very own official Universal Time travelers license. This year I sent her an official letter stating that she has been recruited to be a special secret agent for the Universal Time Travelers organization. Today she had her first meeting with my husband complete with an ever changing accent and in disguise (a tablecloth over his head and a dust broom mustache) Cammy laughing her head off. The fake meeting to discuss her training (school work) lasted almost an hour. My husband played his role up so much I thought I was going to wake up the baby I was laughing so hard.

Here is our secret agent in training. In keeping with the secret agent theme we are going to be doing a lot of work on puzzles and riddles and decoding secret messages. Highlights magazine publishes some books that follow this theme. Today she had to decode a secret message that was tied in with ordinal numbers assigned to the alphabet and when she decoded the message it read "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing"
Here I am trying to get organized for the school year again. Cammy seems to work best and is more focused and less anxious if she can see the plans visually. I have posted under each subject the basic concepts I would like to cover for the year. Hopefully this will help keep us on track. I am all about teaching Cammy what she is interested in but I also want to keep to some kind of path at the same time and meet certain goals even if we do branch off from the main tree trunk at least we have our roots firmly planted.
This is a glimpse of part of our science center. We go on a lot of nature walks and I am always collecting bits of eggs, bones, fossils, butterfly wings ....all kinds of things to study. Mark jokes that the kids are going to start thinking I am a witch....what with bat wings and slug slime in the jars beside the kitchen...I don't really have those but I can see where he is coming from.

Spring brings change: change is good

I haven't been blogging much lately because it has been a very rapid transition into spring: lots of orders to fill (a good thing) but lots of tugs in different directions ie. children, pottery, homeschooling, teaching at the preschool, new store consignments, spring shows, the garden, holidays, and the list goes on just as it does for every family. We are all tugged in many directions all the time. I love it when I am able to find that alone time out in the studio, just me and my clay. A couple of years ago my mom gave me a great T-shirt that said in big black letters across the front "I NEED MY GARAGE TIME". I have been finding myself spinning my wheels out there thinking about what is working for our family and what direction we want to go in. I love teaching Cammy from home. I also really love the times when I teach a larger group. I volunteer often at the preschool and sometimes with the church but transportation has been a problem with being a one car family. I am really looking forward to opening up a classroom in the city again. I miss teaching more kids. I have no real desire to become a public school teacher and be chained to a set of requirements and curriculum. I much prefer a more organic form of teaching. I like being able to just go with where a child's mind wanders. I find myself in awe sometimes when I watch my own daughter in her quest for knowledge. I love it when she asks "Hey Mom, I'm really getting interested in dragons lately can we start learning about that next?" She is telling me what she WANTS to learn and NEEDS to learn for herself now. Why should I constrain her or put up fences and gates of set standard curriculum. It is a much more time consuming approach to teaching . It would be much easier to just follow a yearly standard curriculum or school in a box approach. I don't fit in that box and I don't want my children to fit in any specific box. They will find and fill their own organic form. I am just honored to be there to help nurture and guide their interests and to present inspiration and challenge their minds bodies and spirits. When her interests change I often find myself a little sad because I didn't get everything in or didn't get to some special project that was going to be the highlight of that topic. I also find myself thrilled to meet the next challenge. I thrive on that energy. I know I will spend a couple of late nights scouring my book shelves and the internet, but it's worth it. It's like a reward in the end getting to help her expand her knowledge and view of the universe.
I am excited and scared at the same time to be teaching on a broader scale meaning to more children again. It is going to be such a change of pace for our family. I have gotten so used to our flow at home and spending so much time outside....It will take some adjustment. We are also going to put the youngest Karma into daycare at one of the schools where Mark and I teach. She is very active and social and absolutely loves it, but it tugs at my heart that I will be away from her so much. Hopefully we can pull her back out a few days a week once we see how things are working at the new classroom. I need to find that inner strength and courage to run with it. I know that I will find a lot of support in the community as well. Much love and light to all who embrace the role they play in teaching the children of the world.

Jumping into Dreams

OK! so I have not blogged in a while. Our family has been struggling with choosing a path. We are loving our homeschooling but are finding that we are really being tugged back to the city where we used to live 45 minutes away all too often to teach. Now I know that lots of people have long commutes but it doesn't make our family very happy seeing as we only have one car. My days are spent here unable to go to libraries or parks or playdates as of late. Don't get me wrong....we really have it made in the shade out here. We are only four blocks from the river and community docks and there is a beautiful little lake in the community that we walk around quite often. But I get kinda stir crazy sometimes. I have been combating this pent up creative energy of mine by really loving on the land. I have been spending hours in the yard and garden this spring with my hands in the earth ...making things grow. In part out of frustration at our situation and also because I really was loving the land and needed to put my energies into something more. Earlier this winter I found myself in the front flower bed reworking the stones that border it. I was trying to make a spiral in the flower bed but found myself making multiple branching paths over and over again not quite satisfied with the layout each time. It is still unfinished and I have moved on to other areas of the garden transplanting overgrown daylilies and other bulbs that had grown up into the bushes. It has dawned on me this week how significant this compulsive gardening and path making really was/is. Recent events have revealed and opened up a pretty clear path. We are embarking upon a huge cosmic leap for our family right now and I am so excited and scared at the same time. Mark and I have dreamed of opening up an art center some day. We have been fortunate over the years to have had the opportunity to share our creative energies throughout the community. Now thanks to our partnership with Lovebird Studio in Wilmington, NC. We are thrilled to have been given the chance to teach and share our creative musical and artistic gifts with even more of our community. I have been homeschooling my children for almost a full year now and really enjoyed it. There is nothing better to me than seeing my daughter loving learning and finding new ways to keep her journey on the search for knowledge as creative and engaging as possible. This being said I really miss my interactions with other families and children. I have built up quite a stockpile of teaching materials and resources over the years and cannot possibly use all of it for just my two children. I am really looking forward to sharing my creative energies and knowledge with other families again. We really want this to be an opportunity to feed a lot of young creative minds and it will take a real community effort to pull this off.

Spinning in Circles

 Spinning in Circles

 

Our Monday morning chalkboard.  I love to draw a lovely picture full of symbolism for the week of studies and what they are supposed to be focused on. 

We are studying creation stories from around the world this spring.  I chose to focus on the circular form of the earth for a start.  Drawing and discussing the round form  helped us get centered.


We have literally been spinning in circles for two weeks now. I started off the new year with the intention of introducing some form drawing. We started off with two simple forms that are universally recognized among many cultures. We studied the spiral and the circle. I thought it would turn out to be fairly simple, we would draw and practice the forms and we would move on to new forms the next week. These two forms turned out to be more powerful for Cammy and myself than I could ever have imagined. We have been reading about community and the theme of being centered and of the connections we have with others. These two forms fit right into our current studies.

This list literally went on for another full page.

Circles were the clincher for Cammy. She embraced the circle wholeheartedly. She said the circle made her think of a hug:) So began our journey with the circle. I had Cammy make a main lesson book devoted entirely to circles. She included a circle picture dictionary with magazine photos of things that were circles with the words written beside them.

Cammy and Karma bubble painting.

We blew bubbles and attempted some bubble painting. We drew concentric circles by tracing cups, bowls, and lids from around the house. We drew abstract circle designs.

Here we drew concentric circles with sidewalk chalk on roofing tar paper.

We painted kinetospheres or energy spheres around ourselves. I had seen this in a book called Wonder Child by Peter Lorie. It's a book about staying connected with the magic that is childhood. It is one of my all time favs. The kinetosphere at the top is one of mine drawn with chalk on a sheet of roofing tar paper. When I was in college I couldn't afford canvas for painting class and I had found a roll of roofing tar paper at the home I was renting and took to painting on it. I love to paint and draw on a black surface much more than a white surface. The tar paper is also nice and stiff and holds up well to many mediums. I found that rolls of roofing paper were much cheaper than conventional paper so I still draw and paint on them to this day.

Cammy was so proud of her homemade paintbrush.

We needed long handled paintbrushes for our kinetosphere project so Cammy invented her own long handled paintbrush with a piece of cornstalk and some pine needles.

A flyswatter has a long handle...why not paint with that too.

Our kinetosphere experiment got very experimental indeed. The picture above is Cammy dipping a fly swatter in some of our paint.

This tickled.

We painted with our feet.
We painted with a sponge mop.

Here is Cammy circling herself with the paint to form a kinetosphere. It took her a while but she really built up her kinetic energy but it didn't stay in the shape of a circle for her. It went everywhere.
Needless to say ....when my husband got home he was slightly speechless.
Below is one of Cammy's kinetospheres. It turned out like a sun.

This kinetosphere was painted with a mop, a flyswatter, a pineneedle brush and feet.

We studied balls and motion and talked about kinetic and passive energy. We rolled balls and bounced balls. We made graphs of what bounced and how high.

For the second week we talked about how the spiral is symbolic of the path we follow in life. We drew spirals, we walked in spirals, we made spiral cinnamon buns,we looked at spirals in nature.

This was one our kinetosphere painting from week one and we just went in with our inspiration from the spiral studies of week two and painted the leaf together.  Cammy is getting the hang of drawing the spiral form without the lines touching.

Adventures with the math gnomes

We welcomed the math gnomes into our family with a special candle lighting ceremony. Cammy made each of the gnomes their own hand rolled beeswax candle complete with their math symbol decorating it. She also decorated an advent candle for our family and we lit them all. I finally finished the math gnomes for Cammy for her Christmas present this year. She knew they were in the works because she has seen me working on them off and on for months now. We had such a busy fall that all my intentions to introduce her to many of the math concepts through the adventures of these curious little gnomes fell by the wayside. We have been doing lots of math all along but she has been so worked up and eager to do math with these characters I didn't think I was going to be able to contain her. Ever since we did a unit on Medieval and Renaissance times with our time machine she has been asking "Mom, when are we going to start with the math gnomes?" She has them linked in her head with that time era because I had my husband dress up and pretend to be King Equals one day and ask Cammy for her help in solving a dilema on how to divide a cake evenly among everyone who was invited to the royal ball. We did this by folding paper to see how many cuts would need to be made to make enough pieces of cake for everyone. Good King Equals was insistent that everyone's slice be the same size to be fair. Then we cut into an actual cake that we had baked together using the folded paper guidelines. The King was surely going to need more help in the future to count his treasures so he insisted that Cammy help him find the legendary math gnomes. Thinking I would have the gnomes ready right away she was charged with going on an adventure to find these math gnomes that were known for their knowledge of numbers. Needless to say the math gnomes did not get finished that night and we got sidetracked by about two months to be exact. She took a trip back to the present in her time machine and the benevolent King Equals was left to count his own gold and cut his own cakes.

Here are the four gnomes in their cave each with their own math symbol representing the four basic math processes: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Well, needless to say she was thrilled when she saw the little gnomes complete with bags and hats along with a small King Equals by the Christmas tree. She wanted to do math with them that very day but we waited to go on any math adventures for a few days until all of our Christmas guests took their leave. By this time some of the gnomes had misplaced their hats. With my husband distracting her I surprised her and set up the gnomes in the front yard by the twisty wisteria and pine tree. I hung a blanket to make it more cave like and confined because the gnomes lived deep underground. It was very cold and windy outside the day we went adventuring with the gnomes and luckily the blanket blocked a little of the wind.

Here is the yellow gnome whom we have named Times Multiply climbing up through the twisting tunnels of the mine to get to the surface. Below is the blue gnome whom we have named Marcus Minus at the entrance to the cave.
I was inspired by several different Wadorf homeschool bloggers and their own math gnome stories. I took a bit here and there and pieced together a story for an adventure that I knew would fit into our studies. I got a great deal of my inspiration from Serendipity here is a link where you can get her math gnome stories. She has many marvelous ideas and pictures and has been amazing generous in making these available to download.
Download gnomes_and_gnumbers_lesson_one.pdf

Here is a shortened version of the story I came up with for Cammy.
The Gnomes ran out of jewels to gather and count deep in their underground cavern so they made their way to the bright surface. It was a long, winding and treacherous path through the tunnels of the mine. None of them had ever been to the surface before and didn't know what to expect when they came to the cave opening. They had never seen such a blinding bright light as the sun.
When their eyes had finally adjusted they saw before them a vast and beautiful land and they bravely began to explore sure that they would find huge troves of gems. They soon came across a huge pile of colorful gems at the foot of a great tree. The Yellow gnome having spotted the treasure first started grabbing all the gems for himself but the red gnome named David Divide suggested that to be fair they should divide the gems evenly among themselves. The gnomes had never had to count or divide such a vast treasure and were unsure of how to count so many gems. They thought long and hard wanting to be sure that the gems would be divided evenly.
Finally the green gnome named Adam Plus suggested that they use sticks to count how many gems there were. This got confusing very quickly as they laid out one stick for each gem that was counted and they were running out of sticks to count with. The red gnome suggested that they break the stick in half and make the shape of a V (like the shape between your fingers when you hold up five fingers) when they had five gems. The gnomes continued counting deciding that one stick before the V would be four IV and that one stick after the V would be six and so on. When they got to ten they decided to cross two of the sticks to make an X. We laid out the gems and practiced making the roman numerals with sticks that we found around the base of the weeping willow tree.

Prismacolor Ice Sculptures

This beautiful ice sculpture resulted from two days worth of freezing coastal temperatures. It isn't often that it stays cold enough for more than a night around here for water to freeze outside but we have had a cold streak this week. Cammy and her friend have been playing by the icy ditches....throwing stones and sticks to try and break the ice in them all the while calling themselves the rainbow ice princesses. So we decided to take advantage of what mother nature was throwing our way and last night I let them loose with all the plastic containers in the cabinet and some food coloring and a pitcher of water. The next morning Cammy woke up early and went outside to the back porch (no shoes on) to check on her ice blocks before she did anything else.



These were our beautiful rainbow colored containers of ice the next morning. Cammy observed that the really full ones were still (wet) on the inside, but the thin ones were frozen solid. I found myself wishing that we had filled a few more containers to freeze. They were so jewel like.


Cammy got wise pretty quickly and got a pair of Daddy's socks to keep her hands from freezing since we couldn't find her gloves. Poor Karma couldn't seem to keep anything on her little hands and her fingers were bright red. Cammy was fascinated by the way the ice would actually stick to her hands or the socks and I was unable to give her a satisfactory answer as to why it sticks to things. I found myself thinking about that Christmas movie where the little boy sticks his tongue on a lamp post. Why does it stick anyway?

Paper Chain Story

Cammy has been begging to learn how to make paper chain dolls. She still has a hard time cutting well with scissors and gets frustrated easily but is getting better. I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to help her hone her skills and tell a story at the same time. We have been engrossed with our study of Native Americans and pilgrims for the past two weeks. I came across a book by Jean Stangl titled Paper Stories. It has a lot of really cute stories to tell and paper patterns to go along with them. I chose one about Indian maidens and adapted the story to fit what we are studying a little better. Here is the story I told.

One day a young Indian girl named Pocahontas was playing in the woods near the sea shore when she saw a strange sight on the horizon of the water. There was a dark shape coming towards land. It was an English ship with strange people on board. They came to shore and immediately she wanted to meet these strangers but she thought that her father Chief Powhatan might be angry with her for this. She didn't know if these new people with their light skin and hair on their faces would hurt her so she ran through the woods as fast as she could to tell her father the chief what had seen.

Chief Powhatan was glad to see his daughter come back to the village...she told him of the new visitors by the shore with the white skin and clothes all over their bodies. Chief Powhatan told Pocahontas how brave she had been and sent several Indian scouts to check out these new people and greet them. They returned with an Englishman named John Smith. They did not speak each others language but tried to communicate the best that they could. John Smith could see that there were many Indians in the village so he asked Chief Powhatan how many children there were. The Chief said that there were many but did not know how to tell John Smith a number in his language. John Smith said do you have one child? two children? three children? All the Chief could say was we have many....so he got out a piece of animal hide and folded it up and made a few cuts. When he unfolded it to reveal how many John Smith counted out loud so that the Indian chief could learn and understand in his language.

*This story can be simplified or changed to suit whatever your needs and is a great way to teach basic counting skills. We had a lot of fun afterward reading and singing along to a book we have called One Little , Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims by B.G. Hennessy

This is how you make it:

The first thing you need to do is get two pieces of paper that are about 6" x 20" for each character you want to cut out. We used brown paper grocery bags and just cut them at the glued seam and trimmed them to the size we wanted. I use them for a lot of our craft projects: they are thick and strong enough to take paint and best of all they are free. Fold the paper into 2" accordion folds and trace or draw half of a figure for the character you want in your story. We drew a Native American girl (Pocahontas) and a pilgrim boy for our story plot. Make sure the arms go all the way to the edge of the fold. Cammy had a hard time understanding why this was necessary at first until I showed her what would happen if you cut the edge of the fold all the way off ...all the figures fall apart. Make sure you cut the feather and fringe lines on the Native American girl. As you tell the story cut the figures out and at the end slowly unfold and have the children help you count along.



Cammy drew and cut out the pilgrim boy and colored all of the figures when we were through telling the story.

The paper grocery bags are stiff enough that they can even stand up on their own when you cut the figures out. We pretended the Indian girls were dancing around a fire.

Where did our rhythm go?

Being gone for two weeks has really disoriented me. The kids seem to be readjusting better than I am thankfully. We have been back for almost two weeks and I still haven't quite gotten back into the solid rhythm we had working so well for us before we left for the mountains. I think part of it is that I really didn't get a good dose of nature when we were there. It rained nonstop the entire time we were there.....so no hikes in the woods or up mountain trails or dips into mountain streams. I usually get so invigorated and renewed by a trip to the mountains but not so this time. I left feeling unfulfilled and kind of empty. Then we had a craft show the next weekend on the road where it rained and sales were lousy. We made enough money to get home which I am thankful for but I am still a little bummed. I haven't had a show that slow in years. So.....getting back into my groove in the pottery studio has been difficult.
I have had a hard time getting myself really focused on Cammy's school lessons as well but we are trudging forward. I have made it really fun and loose this past week with a lot of imaginative play thrown in. We built the time machine last week and took it on our first adventure this week. Monday, Cammy launched from headquarters and went back in time to the Medieval/Renaissance period in history. We chose this time period because I am teaching a workshop in Charlotte later this month and we will be going to the Renaissance festival.
We have been doing some work with telling time and with calendars and so it was a nice fit to build the time machine. The other neighborhood kids have been congregating on the porch to play with the time machine as well.
I must give credit to the many Waldorf homeschool bloggers who I pulled bits and pieces of stories and ideas from to create our adventures from but I do not always know how to insert a link....gotta get some tech help from my hubster when he gets back home.
For the first stage of our adventure Cammy took her time machine back to the Renaissance period and ended up in the castle of the benevolent King Equals who was quite distressed because the Dragon of Numeria was very angry with him because he had not been invited to the last royal ball. The dragon had locked the gates to the land of Numeria until someone brave enough and clever enough to solve his math riddles could unlock the tweleve locks. We have had a jolly good time pretending to be a host of characters this week. My husband stood in as King Equals being quite dramatic and begging Cammy to help him decipher the dragons riddles. I was the royal servant (kitchen cook, maid, messenger, etc,) and the demanding Queen. Cammy was herself ....although she did have to change into proper attire for the time period for the Queen did not approve of a lady of the court wearing pants. Cammy had a blast. I as the royal servant showing her the lay of the royal land upon the request of the King and Queen was quite fascinated with the odd trinkets she brought with her in her time machine. Cammy thought it was so funny that I didn't know what all these modern technological things were and she was delighted every time she had to explain to me what something was or how they did thing now versus how they made things in the Renaissance. I was most fascinated by her iron horse which she called a bicycle that she rode on in the streets( apparently she brought everything in the house including the kitchen stove with her in her time machine...she said she had a shrink/enlarger machine on board).
I (the kitchen cook ) enlisted Cammy's help in determining how to cut the cake or in our case brownies up so that everyone invited would get an even sized piece; for the great King Equals always wants everything to come out even and fair for everyone. We traced the pan onto a big sheet of manilla paper and cut it out and then folded it in halves until we had an adequate number of pieces for everyone who was invited. This was a good lesson in doubles and fractions.
I did not have our beloved math gnomes ready for the adventure yet so word has been sent via paper origami cranes for them to come and help their dear friend King Equals and Cammy with her training before she goes up against the math dragon. We started some of her physical and mental training even though the gnomes are not here to oversee everything yet. I made bean bags with numbers up to twenty on them for the girls. On one side there is an even number and on the other an odd number. We played games on the castle stairs like even or odd or greater than or less than where I tossed out bean bags at random and if it was even she jumped up one step or if it was odd she had to jump down a step. For Greater than or less than she got to jump forward if it was greater than or down if it was less than the previous number, etc. We also did some double digit addition this week and Cammy picked up on it with no problem and took to writing her own problems on the board and solving them. I also challenged Cammy to see how many blocks it would take to build the castle stairs. This involved adding multiple single digit numbers. She also got to build some nice block towers in the process for Karma Kong to knock down. All in all we had a royal good time.

Building a time machine

That's right, we are building a time machine. Inspired by our recent trip to the mountains to visit Nana. We had a great time despite the rain. Cammy enjoyed it......especially watching Nana's cable TV (it was verrrry rainy). She got to watch a show called Time Warp Trio and got interested in time travel. The whole way back from the mountains she was rapping about everything and talking about what she would do if she was a kid in Time Warp Trio. Karma was so entertained she didn't cry once......for five hours in a car!!
We started our project today. After a few review lessons today we went on a scavenger hunt for materials to make our time machine with. We got a great big box from a local heating and air place. It was big enough for Cammy to kneel in ( I secretly wish it was bigger so I could get in too). To make it a little bigger we taped a sturdy banana box to the top and cut out a hole for Cammy's head. I keep a box of odd sculpture stuff like cd spindles, bottle caps, broken toy parts etc. in the garage because you never know when you are going to need spare parts for a time machine.
We are going to the Renaissance festival in Charlotte, NC at the end of the month. I have to teach a workshop for the Red Hat society and the girls and I will be topping the trip off with the festival. I have been to one in Sarasota, FL and it was great. Cammy is going to love it. I wanted to work the subject of the Renaissance into her lessons but it felt like an awkward leap from our current studies but the time machine solves that. Now instead of feeling like an awkward leap we are simply jumping back in time with our new time machine. That's all!
Cammy has been building great block towers and asking about Leonardo Da Vinci, so I guess it's a good fit right now anyway. To start the time machine journey off right we rented Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and made some popcorn. After taking a few test spins through the centuries and encountering dinosaurs and dragons Cammy decided she wanted to work on "What do you call it mom....the outside of the space shuttle....you know the part that keeps it from burning up? The musilage?" "The fuselage," I say(while I'm thinking how does she know this stuff?...because she reads a dictionary for fun in the car). So we got out the tin foil and some glue sticks and duct tape and got part of the box covered in a protective shell. She also wanted some rocket boosters so we taped on some cardboard tubes and now we are turbo charged. Since Cammy is the captain she said that apparently if you don't have security clearance to operate the time machine you will go straight up into space and the computers will go all wacky.
It must have been meant to be because I found a great book for a quarter entitled The Time Traveller Book of Knights and Castles by Judy Hindley.


Also on our last trip to the library Cammy checked out the book Ms. Frizzle's Adventures Medieval Castle by Joanna Cole.

We already had the book Castle by David Macaulay.

We are going to the library tomorrow to see what else we can find.

"What Catches the Eye Inspires the Hand"

"What catches the eye inspires the hand." (unknown)

This is a quote that I came across somewhere many years ago and it has had a profound impact on my approach and level of perception in daily life. We are in a chaotic whirlwind right now, trying to get ready for a trip and a big fall show. I have to be in my friend's wedding this weekend and then the very next weekend we have our biggest show and sale of the year Festival in the Park in Charlotte, NC. So that means we are going to be out of town for more than a week. I have been working late into the night lately trying to get enough pottery made for the show and to fill all the orders for the galleries and shops. I didn't even really try to start school off this week because we are leaving mid week. The flow and routine are definitely interrupted this week. So I cleared off the chalkboard last night and drew this picture and quote. I introduced some cursive writing to Cammy last week and she loved it and has been trying to read it wherever we see it so I wrote the quote in cursive. It made her so proud that she could read the cursive writing. The eye is a very powerful symbol in a lot of my art. In this picture the eye contains a heart for the pupil symbolizing the love that I have for all that I see around me good or bad, ugly or beautiful we have something to gain from it all. Around the eye I subtly introduced the roman numerals (Cammy has come across them several times recently and asked what they stand for and seems to understand some simple addition concepts with them) we are also working with time. Inside the eye I drew the mountains because that is where we are going on our journey. Under the eye I traced my husband's hands and mine as trees of knowledge losing their leaves for the upcoming fall. Cammy is really interested in finding purple leaves and wants to prove that a fall leaf can be purple. We did end up doing schooly stuff this week we always do around here sometimes without even trying. Monday we watched the nature documentary Earth by Disney.We also went on a nature walk each day.....it has become a very good habit. Cammy insisted on checking on the crab apple tree up the street (she thinks the apples are going to be ready every day we visit it). I find that if I don't come up with an assignment for Cammy she becomes bored easily and asks if she can do at least three workbook pages. She is so hungry for knowledge. I only hope that I can help to teach her to observe and to keep her eyes and heart open to what every encounter or experience has to offer as inspiration. No matter how insignificant something seems at the time it can lead the mind or the hands to broader matters like a chain reaction. I often find that when I am in the studio and I am supposed to be making a specific soap dish the images of my day will inspire my hands to work in a different direction. I see this tendency in Cammy as well. She can become so excited about something and spout off these grand project ideas that are often out of reach in their entirety but I try to find something to pull from that is attainable and that we can make happen or try to do. I try to let her row her own boat to a certain extent and go with the currents of her creative mind. So far it has taught me a lot about the development of ideas and how to help them grow into fruition. I am loving homeschooling so far.

Second Week

Second Week in review: OK! so here it is Monday night and I am just now finishing my week in review. I never really knew we would be doing so much learning everyday around here. It's at times chaotic, occasionally peaceful (when Karma is napping), often entertaining especially on days when Dad is home, always full of creativity here at the Muddy Schoolhouse. This was one of the weekends when my husband Mark goes out of town to sell my pottery at several shows. That means I'm playing catch up for a few days. I don't get much time in the studio when he's gone. Karma is a goat....she will put anything in her mouth. There is hardly a day that we don't have to rescue something from her mouth....so the studio is off limits to the baby for now. I started writing this sometime last week and couldn't find the time to finish it until tonight.

Monday:I have a mild cold right now and am feeling like laying back down but I don't want to throw everyones rhythm off this early in the newly established routine....it's going beautifully. It was rainy this morning so we couldn't go for our morning walk around the triangle.
We baked homemade biscuits this morning. It took a good amount of measuring practice and we discussed the fractions associated with 1 cup and all the different ways to get to 1 cup. After breakfast we read our new poem on the chalkboard about the Fuzzy Wuzzy Caterpillar and Cammy copied it down into her journal. I got out the rubber stampers and she created a picture doing Ed Emberly style fingerprint caterpillars along with all sorts of other rubber stamp additions. We worked on geography in the Maps Globes and Graphs workbook. Worked on mapping with just shapes and colors to keep it simple. Worked on making a calendar for the start of the new month on Tuesday. Talked about capitalization rules for months and days and did a worksheet. Did some work on ABC order and also sequencing events and numbers.


Tuesday:
I had to go to town this morning to get some clay and glazes for the upcoming shows and orders. So school was on the road today. I quizzed Cammy on her spelling words from last week just out of curiosity. I did not test her last week. She has always been a strong speller ...probably better than me, Ha! She got all the words right except for one of the challenge words: neighborhood. Whenever I am in Wilmington I always have to stop at this thrift store called The Rescue Mission. Most of the time they have lots of toys and books and sometimes good kids clothes. It's the kind of thrift store where you go up with a pile of stuff and the guy says just gimme a buck mam. Gotta love it! I always walk away with a bag full of books for the kids. Cammy paid and practiced counting out her change to the man. We got back in time for me to still get to work in the studio.

Wednesday:
We walked the block this morning and talked about drawing a map of the block or in our case triangle. We counted houses and observed which side of the street they were on. Cammy drew a map of the triangle when we got back. We read The Secret Shortcut by Mark Teague because our triangle has a secret shortcut through the woods. Cammy hesitated to include the shortcut on the map because she didn't want anyone else to know about the path. Worked in our People and Places workbook in the chapter about neighborhoods. I had Cammy do a review page about finding things on calendars and she did a workbook page about whether or not to capitalize the names of the seasons.
We ate caterpillar snacks made of grapes(cut in half), raisins, pretzels, bananas, cheerios, puffs and honey.Mark did some music and movement with the girls when he got home from work. I could hear them on the baby monitor from the studio, I just wish I could have seen them.

Thursday:
It was a very nice cool morning. One of the first of many to come in fall. I can't wait. Cammy needed to get out some energy and I needed a good walk with Karma so we visited Jubilie today. Cammy rode her bike all the way there. Her confidence is building slowly. She fell right when we got to their driveway but didn't cry a bit. She was so proud of herself. On our way back we discovered that an army of fuzzy caterpillars had consumed half the grape vine overnight. So we started a caterpillar poem book when we got back. Cammy wrote a poem with one line for each letter of the word caterpillar. We did a little grid based mapping math work today. Cammy became a card carrying member of the library in town today. She was so happy:).She was only allowed to check out three books on her first visit. I was allowed to check out 24 books because I was already a member. She kept handing me books because she didn't want to waste her three....hers had to be the most special books of all that she found. She did great! She was choosing books on her own about what we are studying right now.

Friday:Ok! We are missing my husband Mark already but are trying to forge ahead on schedule.
We tried to go for a bike ride again today....Cammy's confidence of yesterday is completely gone. Before we could even get around the curve she was scared stiff, crying and unable to get off her bike. We had to walk it back to the house. Where did it go( the confidence of yesterday)? She pulled herself right out of her downward spiral by turning on the funny Cammy and rapped about her baby sister Karma the whole way home.
"Karma is my sister yeah that's her name and saying goo goo gaa gaa that's her game and it's gonna put her in the hall of fame. Yeah Karma is my sister and that's a tongue twister. " That was all I could remember...it changes every time she sings it for someone. She said on the way home that she wanted to be a rapper now and could someone be a rapper and a teacher. "Of course! Look at Daddy."
I recently brought down all of the play scarves from Cammy's dress up basket in her closet to a large basket in the living room. They have been the center of many hours of play as of late.So when we got back to the house I decided it was the right time to do some fun yoga I had been planning. Earlier this week we read Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We have been talking about the life cycle of the butterfly this week. We got out the colored mats when we got back. I had asked Cammy to curl up like an egg on the green mat.She went straight for the yellow mat wanting to be on a bright sunny flower instead. So I took the leaf and we sat curled like caterpillar eggs and rested. Then we hatched and stretched out on our bellies and became caterpillars wiggling across the floor eating our way through leaves and flowers (scarves and pillows). Then we wrapped ourselves up in scarves (Cammy folded herself up in the mat like a burrito) like we were forming a cocoon. Three weeks later (three long breaths later ) we unfurled our beautiful butterfly wings (scarves). I want to help Cammy plan a butterfly play to perform for her relatives and maybe the daycare up the street or the schools that Mark teaches at each week. I would like her to do this yoga as part of the performance while I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
We talked about symmetry vs. asymmetry today and Cammy colored a symmetrical butterfly. While she colored her butterfly I read the See How They Grow Butterfly book. All this talk of symmetry led me to my book The Reasons For The Seasons published by Little Brown Books. It has a lesson about feathers and symmetry. We examined our vulture or hawk feather closely and tried to figure out what part of the bird it fell from. We think it is from the mid wing area because of it's rounded tip. I let this lead us into a form drawing lesson that I just hadn't found the right time to introduce until now. We talked about how to use a feather for a quill pen and cut the tip off at an angle and got out the india ink and a small glass jar and I let Cammy do her form drawing lesson with her newly crafted quill pen. As she experimented with the forms she gravitated toward drawing bunny faces focusing on the circle. But upon closer examination she managed to design her bunny faces to incorporate all three of the forms we had just learned although she only talked about the circle. Cammy wanted to know more about writing with quill pens so we talked about the history of writing. let this lead us into a form drawing lesson that I just hadn't found the right time to introduce until now. Cammy really struggles with keeping her handwriting under control. I am really loving the way Waldorf introduces forms and letters and I wish Cammy had been introduced to it that way. However she was not....but I can certainly take the time now to reinforce what she does know with a deeper understanding of the forms that inhabit our world and our writing. Today was the first time I tried form drawing with Cammy. I introduced a circle : refering to the circle as symbolic of a hug or embrace, of a sense of being united like a community around you, of a the earth round and big, of being like an eyeball, etc. I also took the time to reference all of the letters that required the use of this form. This excited Cammy and she started shouting them out faster than I could write them on the chalkboard. I know I probably should have stopped at this one form for the day but I went ahead and taught her the other two that have been on the board since last week when we started this adventure. The others were a plus sign: symbolic of a crossroads or a compass since we are studying mapping and geography. The arrow was the last sign that I introduced. It was again introduced because of our unit study topic. Later in the day I referenced a book called Letterbox which is about the history of writing. Cammy was fascinated with this topic and that they used to write in clay and she laughed and said "What if? Mom- our whole table was covered in clay and we had to do our schoolwork and it got stuck in the clay?" All I could do for a minute was laugh. When we went back outside later in the day I showed her how to write with burnt sticks that had turned to charcoal. She loved this drawing for almost an hour....all the forms we had been working on.
We rented a movie today for our weekend without Dad. Cammy picked out Around The World in 80 Days with Jackie Chan saying it to the lady at checkout "We are studying about geography at home because my mom teaches me, we homeschool"

We ate caterpillars today!

At the start of the week I was at a loss as to what to put on the chalkboard this week but then I found this little poem in one of our Kindermuzik handouts. It has fit with our continuing study of butterflies. So keeping with our theme we found a really cute snack recipe idea in the very same handout "A Garden Flower"


Yes it's true, we ate caterpillars today but not the kind you usually think of. These caterpillars were the snack creation of Cammy herself. I set her to task on making grape and raisin caterpillars for our snack today and she went to town....full creative license. She used bananas, grapes, raisins, pretzels, goldfish, honey and puffs to create her edible caterpillars. She loved it and so did Karma and I. Yum!!!

Our week in review

Our first week of homeschooling is at it's end though we never stop learning around here. To help me maintain my grasp on this new endeavor I am going to try to do a review of the week and list or write about some of the things we learned over the course of the week. I know it is already well into the next week and I have probably forgotten half of what we did last week but better late than never....spoken like a true procrastinator.

Monday: "Muffin Monday"
I teach in the morning from about 9 until 12 then we all eat lunch together and I put the baby down for a nap and go out to the studio to work until dinnertime. Mark gets to work in the mornings and he has the girls in the afternoon to teach and entertain. The plan is for the subject emphasis on Mondays to be math, mapping(for now) and music with Mark in the afternoons. A little bit of everything else is thrown into the mix as it fits.
1. Introduced the weekly routine chart( We are talking about one day at a time because it is still subject to change as we see how our week flows and we don't want anyone to get overwhelmed)On Monday mornings we will be baking and doing some measurement related math. By baking on Monday we will hopefully have a tasty snack like muffins ready for several days for the girls. We also prepared a crockpot meal ...enough for dinner and lunch the next day.
2. After breakfast we went for a morning nature walk and found some small sassafras trees and dug roots for tea. We made sure to identify the leaves online. We made tea and Cammy drew and wrote in her nature journal about the experience.
3.Talked about maps and globes(We have been mapping all of our Etsy sales this summer so Cammy was familiar with a map somewhat)
4. Read section 1 in Maps, Globes and Graphs workbook
5.Tried to draw a map(This frustrated Cammy quite a bit because she wanted to draw a very advanced map, her brain is about 100 steps ahead of where her actual skill level is at sometimes) finally calmed her and got her to draw just a simple map of her room.
6.Introduced weekly spelling words: map, globe, earth, land, ocean, where, compass, north, south, east, west and bonus words: direction, community, neighborhood
7. Listed the order of the universe form home to street to neighborhood to city to county etc.
8.Did a few simple addition workbook pages for review and started our grow a pony(one of those spongy things that grows in water)
9.Music didn't make it into the day but a trip to the beach with dad did.

Tuesday: "TV Free"
No television at all even for the grownups when the kids go to bed.
Luckily Cammy takes well to no TV most of the time and Karma seems to have zero interest in it so this was no problem in our house. Same game plan with me teaching in the morning, lunch together then I work in the afternoon and Mark works in the morning while I'm teaching. The subject emphasis for Tuesday is on telling time and reading and writing.
1. Cammy was a little resistant to start the day so I made her go and find the funkiest hat in the house to be her thinking cap. She immediately ran upstairs and grabbed this black and whit checker board patterned hat. Awesome choice I say! It worked like a charm she was into it now so I had her play a little word game with our spelling words. As it happens all of the weeks spelling words actually had a least one hidden word inside them, for example earth has ear and art inside or where has he and her hidden inside. Cammy got it right away even catching some that I had missed and I thought this game might be a little hard for her.
2. Cammy did some copy work of the list we had made about geography on Monday
3. Cammy copied her spelling words and put them in abc order
4. We built a tee pee in the back yard with some small trees that the power company had chopped down.
5. Cammy did some time oriented math worksheets

Wednesday: "Wacky Word Game Wednesday"
Again I teach in the morning while Mark works. Then I get to work until dinner time....Mark is a great cook. I'm loving this, he even does the dishes.
1. Cammy was a little resistant to start the day so I made her go and find the funkiest hat in the house to be her thinking cap. She immediately ran upstairs and grabbed this black and white checker board patterned hat. Awesome choice I say, now that is the hat of a genius! It worked like a charm she was into it now so I had her play a little word game with our spelling words. As it happens all of the weeks spelling words actually had a least one hidden word inside them, for example earth has ear and art inside or where has he and her hidden inside. Cammy got it right away even catching some that I had missed and I thought this game might be a little hard for her.
2. To continue with the wacky word game theme I distracted her with a little busy work of some math worksheets and writing in her nature journal. While she did this I hid some rebus puzzle note around the house and put some mail in the mailbox for her to find. It was a letter addressed to Special Agent Cammy and required that she help this family solve a series of mysterious images that have been popping up in the most unusual places. She figured out the rebus picture puzzles no problem. They spelled out I love you, but she was angry that I had tricked her into it and that it wasn't a "real" piece of mail.
3.Made a compass rose with some glow in the dark window cling paint
4. Did a couple of math review pages
5. Read some more of Maps, globes and graphs
6.The girls went to the beach with Mark again and talked about the horizon line out on the ocean and where you would be if you went straight out until you hit the next body of land....turns out on google earth that we are directly across from Morocco.

Thursday: "TV Free" no television at all again.
Mark works away from home on Thursday mornings so it's just the girls and I until after lunch.
1. We read a butterfly poem and talked about butterflies and symmetry.Cammy copied down the poem in her journal and drew a picture
2. Painted butterflies ink blot style: snuck in a little fraction math with paper folding and cutting
3. Did some claymation for Cammy's book "Karma Kong"
4. Cammy measure the grow a pony again and recorded the info into her math journal
5.Got out the slime chemistry set and made pseudo putty

Friday: ???
Mark works away from home on Fridays so it is just the girls and I until late afternoon.
1. We took an early morning walk and discovered a cicada casing in the driveway but Cammy refused to get too close to it or touch it. Visited the snails that seem to always be covering the neighbors driveway posts. Less than a block from the house we came across some vultures that were devouring something dead in the woods. Did a little math counting them as they flew away.
Cammy drew the cicada and the feather we found in her nature journal
2. Did some more reading in Maps, globes and Graphs
3. Did some writing in the Karma Kong story
4.Measured our grow a pony and graphed it's growth on a bar graph. Did a few simple math pages for review: Cammy tells me she is tired of this baby work! I was just trying to start her off easy since we didn't do any real schoolwork over the summer.

I am sure that I have forgotten tons because our days are full to the brim of questions and little side shows and projects. The learning never has to stop just because it's not "school time". I don't plan to do this review every week but for a while until we are settled into this new homeschooling routine I am going to try to keep up with posting a review so that I can keep myself oriented and focused.

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Finding our Place

Ok, so we are new to this homeschooling and routine is what we are trying for here but there is not always going to be a set curriculum exactly. When I taught in Wilmington for several homeschool families, what I loved most was finding that special something that really peaked a kids interest. You can tell the difference when you find what they are really diggin at the time. Teaching for me is a lot like going down a river...sometimes the flow is slow and smooth and sometimes it's like class 4 rapids. I must be a closet adrenalin junkie because sometimes I like the rapids more. Things are flowing smoothly in the Muddy Schoolhouse for now which is fine by me because my rapids are in the pottery studio right now trying to get ready for my fall show season and making enough to keep my galleries stocked for the end of the year....whew! I could use a few more people to row the boat with me right now.
So over the course of this week...we have been taking it one day at a time and really talking about how we want to have each particular day flow. To make the routine thing stick we have kinda themed each day with a fun name like "Muffins, Music and Math Monday" or "Wacky Word Game Wednesday". We have made Tuesday and Thursday "TV Free" that means no one can watch any television on these days. Thursday is slotted to be the day with an emphasis on science and nature so today we talked about butterflies. Cammy has been nuts about the butterflies in the yard lately....and this is where I am going with the flow ...I didn't plan on studying butterflies yet but it's what Cammy has a spark for right now. This week she has been screaming for me to get the camera everytime she sees a new butterfly. She is convinced that she has seen "that really rare one that flies to the mountains in Mexico every year" so we delved into the world of butterflies today. We greeted the day with a new poem on the chalkboard. I found this beautiful poem and wrote it down in one of my journals but do not remember where or when I found it, but it fit the day perfectly.It reads:

Come bright butterfly close to me
Your beautiful wings I should like to see
You fly like a bird, You sip like a bee
But you're really a flower the wind set free

After breakfast and reciting the poem I had Cammy rewrite the poem in her journal. We practiced folding paper in half and cutting and then painted these beautiful butterflies Rorschach ink blot style. We only painted wings on one side of the paper and then folded it in half so it would copy itself and print onto the other half. Cammy loved these...it was so magical the way they copied themselves.
Karma could only watch for so long before she had to get her hands into the paint as well.
They came out so beautiful didn't they!
I told you she really got into it ....there were more than this...I didn't have enough clothespins to hang them all.


This one is one of my favorites. Cammy thought it looked like a praying mantis and insisted on teaching me how to paint this special design.
While we were busy painting butterflies Karma got into the bag of pipe cleaners that were intended to be antennas. Cammy offered to clean them up but she had ulterior motives ....
She was so proud of this butterfly that she constructed from the pipe cleaner spill.
Cammy fancies herself as an author and loves to write chapter books. Her current book in progress is called Karma Kong and features her baby sister as the main character. Today just for fun and a break from writing in her story journal we got out the clay she was to create a line of Karma Kong toy figurines. Great fun was had by all upon seeing Karma Kong change forms.
The work in clay inspired even more Karma Kong forms to reveal themselves. Here she has made Bouncy Karma Kong and Bluehair. We had a lot of fun learning today balanced with some old school style book work as well. Cammy wrote her spelling word sentences. We did some fun math with a timer seeing what kinds of things could be done in a minute ie. put on your coat? tie your shoes? write your name 10 times? say your abc's? count to 100? You get the picture. Maps are frustrating her right now because she wants to be able to draw a really complex map but just doesn't have all the skills she needs yet. I am going slow on this one and introducing one or two very basic concepts at a time.
Cammy has been begging to do a science experiment from a slime chemistry set that I found at the thrift store. Today was science day so we got down the set and made our own version of silly putty.

Here is a little glimpse of what Muddy Mama is up to in the afternoons. Most of our intense schooling is done in the morning by lunch time and then after I get Karma down for her nap promptly after lunch I get "Muddy Muse Time". This has been working out great for us. We are homeschooling and I'm getting more mud time. Mark does his work in the mornings...shipping and computer work or any sales calls we need to make and then he takes over on kid duty in the afternoon.