Learning Life Skills

I am always amazed at how long I can go between posts. Oh well, such is the way life goes.

Over the past eight months, Emma has been busy learning a lot of life skills:

In April she learned how to ride her bike with pedals.

In May we took a family trip to Boulder, CO and Gramma met us there. We had a BLAST and got to explore a lot of cool towns and a museum.

In June she and I both got started with archery.

In July we went camping with friends and she got to go off and explore just her and her friend.

In August she got to spend a week at a friends house while Da was laid up in the hospital and I was hovering offering my support and help.

In September we decided to move to a bigger rental house so she got to learn (again) about packing and all that moving involves.

And this month? This month with all the extra room we have, she and I have started to learn woodworking.

Wall Frames

'The Handbuilt Home' by Ana White

Measure twice and all that. 

Yup, bought some new tools today.

Da was nice enough to take photos. 

Another new tool. This one is going to get us into so much trouble! It's so easy to use, Emma can set it up and use it on her own. 

See!

Da really wanted to give it a try as well. We decided to let him.

That cordless drill is really heavy for small hands. Emma had a hard time with it also...

A quick demo of how to use the sander.

She's a quick study. This wasn't her favorite part as she didn't like how numb her hands got. 

These hands sure do look cute though. And capable. So incredibly capable. 

Ta-da!

She even did a great job cleaning up after the project was finished. 

We really had fun making this. If the lumbar is already cut, I have a feeling Emma could make this entire picture frame on her own. Especially once we get her tools that fit her a little better...

The sawdust had hardly settled and she was already off to paint her new picture frame!

I can't wait to see what she ends up doing with her new picture frame!

Structure and Organization- 4 Week Check-up

Well, we just finished week number four of our new structured and organized schooling. I am happy to report that we all still like it (for the most part).

Here is a recap of the last few weeks in photos. Enjoy!

School work in bed.

Reading about the Sphinx while drawing birds

Planning out some hieroglyphs.

Planning out her cuneiform

 

Finished (but drying) cuneiform

Finished hieroglyphic scroll.

Horse Lessons!

She is finally learning that not all horses are stubborn and difficult. 

Learning about linking verbs

Learning about arachnids from homeschool co-op.

More linking verbs

Learning a lesson about frustration...

...determination...

...perseverance... 

...and triumph! 

Oh, also learning that when you ask Da for a push on the swings, 

he doesn't mess around!

Also learning that Da is silly, 

and so is Mama.

Learning more about riding- this time with a major headwind and on dirt.

(she is wearing a helmet, it's under her hood- that headwind was chilly!)

She has learned that sometimes what seems like meanness (forcing her to keep trying with those pedels) from her parents, can actually turn out to be pretty "asum." 

Learning that swim lessons are awesome, but even better with a friend. 

Learning about symmetry. 

https://flic.kr/p/n5RGML

And, last but not least, that memorization isn't awful.  

Despite the four inches of snow we got yesterday, it looks like Spring might finally have arrived! I hope Spring is showing up for you as well. 

Getting Organized

Getting more structured and getting organized seem to go hand-in-hand. So, I am here to bore you with how we organize all of our stuff. Well, all of our school stuff anyway.

We currently live in a 530 sq ft house. While we are really enjoying it (we now have a yard and a tree and it's awesome), sometimes it can be tough to figure out what to do with all our stuff.

To be honest, with me taking college classes, it's made it a lot easier to get rid of a lot of my crafting stuff. Eventually, I will need to reacquire everything, but that's the joy of using recycled materials :0)

Anyway, back to the point. We have lived in the little house for about 5 months, and we have rearranged a bunch of times since then (Jared will tell you way too many times). It's hard to figure out the best configuration even with my graph paper and furniture-to-scale cut outs.

Ok, I need to stop digressing. Here is our current set up.

These are the first bookcases you encounter when you leave the kitchen. 

Left bookcase from the top down

Cookbooks

Library books

Fiction- mostly series

Drawing/Art books and winter gear

More winter gear

Right bookcase from the top down

School books we are not using

Biographies (soon to be moved then it will be library overflow)

Horse books

Nonfiction books

Picture books

Next to the T.V. we have

Puzzles, games and blank journals

More GAMES! 

(Ticket to Ride is our current family favorite)

Printer and paper.

Lots of paper. 

The 'drum' box has old artwork of Emma's in it.

From the top down:

Globe

Binders for: 

Completed school work, blank worksheets, reference sheets, and letters received

Next to the binders are reference books 

Middle shelf is home to our letter writing supplies

Bottom shelf is random stuff

Our main school bookcase

-On the top we have a: Word Jar, basket of shells, a pot that my sister made me when she was in high school

-Under that is a skeleton hand, fun crayon holder that we made, a basket for more random stuff, the hole puncher and stapler, then next to that are some of the books we are currently reading and Emma's water bottle.

-Next shelf contains all kinds of marketing tools- pens (multiple styles and colors), pencils (ditto), markers, crayons, etc. We also have some white out, sticky notes, scissors and who knows what else on that shelf.

-Bottom shelf, left to right- This is all our current school curriculum and binders. Writing with Ease, First Language Lessons, The Story of the World, etc. Then binders- Science/Art/Music, History/Geography, Language (reading, writing, grammar and spelling), then Math. My school binders are next to Emma's

Well, that's pretty much it for our organization. Although, I do have a few photos I wanted to show you close up. 

Word Jar

Next week we will start using our First Language Lesson curriculum, and I thought it would be fun if we could do some activities with words to enhance our learning (identifying nouns, verbs, etc). 

Crayon Holders

When Emma does her map and coloring pages that go with the SOTW, she really doesn't need the ENTIRE container of crayons. So, we used a few small cans (from canned peaches) and made them into crayon holders. Yes, there are two there. It was Emma's idea to use the rest of the calendar page to decorate the bottom one. It looks pretty cool.

Well, that is how we have everything organized. I hope you enjoyed the visiting (I even vacuumed for you!). 

Cave Paintings

Emma had such a great time with her cave paintings and I think they came out really good.

Before she got started, we sat down and looked through some books that had pictures of actual cave paintings. We also went to the Lascaux Cave website and "wander" through the caves virtually. (I tried to link the site, but the site isn't working now).

Anyway, here are Emma's cave paintings.

The Cave

(located in the laundry room between the washer and dryer)

She was excited to discover the tools used in the making of these ancient cave drawings!

My favorite

A hunting scene

The complete collection. 

She really had a blast with this and I am super excited about some of the other SOTW projects that we have coming up. 

Hope you all had a fantastic week!