Category: Everyday Learning

Many of my most treasured childhood memories involve one-on-one time with my father: ice skating, hiking trips, studying astronomy. (Okay, and cuddling on the coach watching the original Star Wars movies too.)

I remember eagerly anticipating each lunar eclipse, comet or meteor shower, knowing that we’d get to see it together.

I have waited many years to share this joyful experience with my kids. After studying the ‘butterfly life cycle‘ and ‘leaves and seeds,’ we turned our focus this winter to astronomy, studying our moon, planets and their satellites in the solar system, and constellations in the night sky.

We stargazed with the help of Google Sky, the fantastic Earth Sky blog and Facebook page, and Skymaps with monthly, free printable sky maps…

… poured over dozens of great astronomy books (our favorites being Zoo in the Sky: A Book of Animal Constellations, Glow-in-the-Dark Constellations, and The Stars):

… observed the moon cycle with the Phases of the Moon app (that allows you to scroll forward and backwards through time to see how the moon changes each day) and this craft project:

… discussed the order, size, and characteristics of the planets and their satellites in our solar system with this craft project, these puzzles by Ravensburger, Melissa & Doug, and Crocodile Creek, and a craft similar to this one:

… explored the Greek and Native American myths explaining the stories behind our constellations…

… practiced identifying, drawing, and embroidering constellations:

… celebrated our daughter’s six birthday with a solar system themed party:

… visited the planetarium at the California Academy of Science and created our own version at home (with this fantastic activity)…

… and watched our daughter write her own astronomy book (from Imagine Childhood with this white gel pen):

Three months of study and we still have so much to learn! I have a whole bunch more astronomy-themed activities on Pinterest to explore in the future.

So many fun projects, so little time!

This autumn we studied ‘leaves and seeds.’ With colorful leaves and dried seedpods littering walkways across Sonoma County, we gathered specimens everywhere we went. We may not have correctly identified all of them, but we had such fun spending time outdoors, learning together.

We made bark and leaf rubbings…

Separated seeds from their pods…

Labeled and compared our saved seeds…

(including, clockwise from top left: apple, delicata squash, and amaranth seeds)

Set up our fall nature table…

And learned about leaf characteristics, wrote our own tree field guide, and played endless rounds of leaf bingo. (See my previous post for pictures and more info about those activities.)

We all enjoyed celebrating the fruits of autumn!

We started off the school year with a typical math textbook. We figured we’d try it. After all, repetition can be a way to learn (i.e. memorize) arithmatic. As the year has progressed we’ve been doing less workbook and more hands on math activities. The difference in our daughter’s interest, passion, and comprehensive in math since we started doing more projects and less workbook has been striking. (Not much of a surprise there!)

Some recent math activities we’ve been enjoying include:

Making Fraction Flags…

Operating a Fraction Pie Shop (with this game and this cash register; although this newer wooden one with an actual calculator may be even better)…

Coloring quilt squares to practice fractions…

Creating Fraction Flowers…

Playing Math War to practice addition and subtraction…

I feel thankful for fantastic math resources like MathART Projects and Activitiesand Math Art: Hands-On Math Activities enabling me to NOT have to reinvent the wheel, i.e. create math curriculum from scratch. That means one fewer item on mama’s to-do list, thank you very much. So far each math activity has been a hit!

Goodness, we are loving homeschooling. This makes for a nice change from the first week of the school year when I panicked, as I enviously watched my friends suddenly have their mornings free when their kids headed off to school. After I quietly (and quickly!) mourned my lack of down time and reminded myself why we are doing this, we instantly found our homeschooling rhythm. We’re all having so much fun.

We’ve been busy…

learning the scientific terminology to describe, categorize, and identify leaves while writing a tree field guide,

using fun art projects to reinforce math concepts, such as this money and fractions activity from Math Art: Hands-On Math Activities,

saving seeds from everything we eat,

and playing leaf bingo to practice recognizing common leaves (available to download for free here).

Over the last few weeks my favorite parts of each and every day are those quiet just-us moments. When the baby naps, big sister and I rush to the kitchen table to get some time alone together, to tackle coursework, before he wakes and my attention becomes divided. Yes, we learn all day, but I treasure the one-on-one time with my five year old.

I feel so thankful that I get to spend every day with her.