Lonely Goatherd

This blog post title is only too appropriate as this song is a constant refrain in our house.  In between the other Sound of Music songs, that is. We saw the play at Asheville Christian Academy a few weeks ago as the kids' sweet babysitter, Miss Amy, was Maria.  She was amazing and Owen was totally riveted the whole two and a half hours.  Caelum and Esmé took turns napping but enjoyed the play as well.

Two weeks ago, we went to Mountain Top Creamery for a homeschool field trip.  It was tucked up in the mountains near Chimney Rock, quite close to where my parents rented a mountain house for a little reunion last summer. The field trip was awesome.  First the boys bottle-fed kids that were only three days old.

Owen, bestie Grant, and Caelum

Then they had a tasting of goat milk, goat milk cream, and various kinds of goat cheese.  Caelum could not get enough of the goat milk. And Owen's favorite? Aged goat cheese! It had a strong flavor that even some of the moms couldn't handle, but he loved it. Such a refined palate from an otherwise picky kid.

Chugging his second cup of goat's milk

Then we took a tour of where they milk the goats and make the cheese.  My favorite part was when one little girl started gagging because the goat cheese smell was so strong in one building.  The culmination was milking Lady Caroline. Caelum was all business.  The lady who ran the creamery wanted to make a trade for him and have him work there.  Owen also did great and was not at all tentative.  I shouldered my way past the kids for a try and apparently did it wrong. "No, not like milking a cow.  Just gently squeeze." You'd think I'd know enough about milking at this point.

 After the tour portion was done, we had a picnic while surrounded by 300 goats.  We purchased some plain goat cheese (which Zach and I polished off in a few days) and a wedge of aged goat cheese, for Owen. It was a great time and educational!

Mark Me Absent

Let's say, hypothetically, that I've been homeschooling my kids.  I haven't really been.  We're lucky if we get a day or two in per week.  I keep telling myself, "This is only preschool for Owen! We'll kick it into gear next year when Kindergarten starts." Despite my laziest efforts, I feel that Owen - and Caelum - have actually learned a decent amount this year.  We've had a lot of fun "field trips" (ie doing what we would normally do and maybe learning something along the way). I've appreciated my Nature Center and Biltmore House passes for this very reason. Also, separate goat creamery field trip post to come.

At the Biltmore Estate Gardens, doing a plant scavenger hunt (with special thanks to Gretchen, who came up with the hunt!)

At Biltmore, again, with other homeschool friends

 

At home, if we actually do school, it's a pretty easy routine.  Now that Classical Conversations is over, we're just focused on reading, writing and 'rithmetic.  We occasionally talk about the calendar and weather.  Owen and now Caelum both do a lesson from The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading.  We read a story from the Jesus Storybook and Owen writes a summary sentence in his journal and Caelum draws a corresponding picture in his journal. They'll each do a page or two in their Singapore Math workbook. And then we usually call it a day.

Caelum's rainbow for the story of the flood.

Owen doing some math

Classical Conversations was a great way to feed Owen's insatiable appetite for history.  He loves to sing the various history sentences, and for the end of the year recitation, his class got to present the history section.  He was overjoyed.  This morning he was singing his favorite one as he played with trains: "In 1994, South African President de Clerk allowed free elections.  Nelson Mandela became the first black president, demonstrating apartheid was ending."

Owen's class doing silly faces

Watching the egg drop on the last day of class. The kids made egg protectors and then they were dropped out of a first story window.

  Only two survived. Here's the crowd, watching the decimation.

At the rehearsal for the end of the year program, I let the much-neglected-at-CC Caelum stand up front.  He recited all of the history selection and sang the presidents song.  This kid is so ready for CC, but he's still too young.  Next year I hope to be more active about working with him during the class time.

At the rehearsal

Singing the presidents song at the performance

The end of the year program was great.  Owen loves to be in front and really enunciates and speaks loudly.  I wish I could put the video up of him doing it, but our computer is on the outs.  There was also an ice cream social at the end, which was a fun way to celebrate the end of the year.

All of Owen's class

 When I allow myself to stress about whether this homeschooling thing is going to work or if they are learning anything at all, I can easily calm myself with how much reading we do.  It's still mainly me reading to the kids from our huge stack of weekly (or bi-weekly) library books, but more and more, Owen will want to read.  He also loves to be read to from chapter books.  We've read From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Mr. Popper's Penguins, Farmer Boy, Little House on the Prairie, all of the My Father's Dragon books, and many Magic Tree House books.

The boys did a read-a-thon with Usborne books and in two weeks, we tallied 13 hours of being read to and 3 and a half hours of Owen reading.  The boys get some books as a reward and a portion of the money raised is used for books for a women and children's shelter in Asheville. Caelum wanted to "win the competition" so he would try to read along with me, which translates to mumbling and then saying the last word of the sentence after me.  I'm glad the desire to read is there!

Reading!

 Now that our weather has been so nice, there's been lots of yard time.  For our "plant unit" we did leaf rubbings, planted lots of seeds, labeled parts of plants, used straws to demonstrate stems, and talked about the Parable of the Sower.  And the continuation of this lesson has been lots of weeding and watering!

 
I am so thankful to be home with these sweet faces.  A big shout out to all my other, um, relaxed? homeschooling moms out there. Let's call it our educational philosophy.